The record-union., 1896-08-01
Joint Debate Between Senator ThurStOn
and Clarence S. DarrOW,
The Former Republican and the
Latter a Democrat.
Eight Thousand People Listen to a
Discussion of the rloney Question,
Thurston Arguing Against the
Free Coinage of Silver and DarrOw
in Favor of 1t.

TTSc SOlHdyc Vi SllNcI anu DdiiOW
in Favor of 1t.
MADISON CWis), July Ex-senator
Thurston of Nebraska, for the Republi-
can party, and Clarence S. Darrow, a
Chicago lawyer, for the Democrats and
Pcpulists, contested with oratory and
argument for Presidential votes this af-
te1noon ait Lakeside, the grounds OF
the Monowai Assembly, near this city.
The gathering politically was a Repub-
Ican one by a large majority, and the
assignment of the Senator to speak un-
der the auspices of the assembly on its
closing day by the Republican Ma
tional Committee made the event in
part the opening of the Western cam
paign. About 5000 persons, many of
them women, were present.
By a lucky chance only a fatality was
avoided on the Madison n-street side of
the lake. Senator Thurston had been
escorted by hundred members of the
local Republican marching club from
the Park Hotel to the pier, where steam
launches are taken to Lake Wisconsin.
There was a scramble of hundreds to
get tickets and reach the boats on
fral, rotten landings of single planks,
which threatened to collapse under the
extra weight. No attempt was made to
check the crowd, and some of the peo-
pie broke past the ticket takers to a
narrow pier used to load coal. The Sem
ator had embarked when this frail
woodwork broke, carrying a dozen per-
sons into four feet of water. William
Larkin, an old citizen of Madison, fell
fat in the water, his head striking a
rock, which inflicted a bad scalp wound,
but he was saved from drowning
Senator Thurston was first presented
to the audience, being allowed one hour
and five minutes to speak The Senator
said:
we are here especially to discuss
certain financial theories and views
which are disturbing our people. This
money question is a new one in this
Campaign. l was brought up to believe
that the judgment of the man who had
succeeded in life was better to follow
than that of the man who had failed;
that the word of the man who had
never broken his promise was better to
believe than that of the man who had
broken his word. Therefore I think 1t
Is safer for me to keep away from the
leadership of such men as Altgeld and
Tillman and Llewelling and Waite, and
to follow the lead of Allison and Reed.
and that greatest of all Americans
William Mckinley of Ohio.
-Four years ago the issue before the
people, made for the most part by the
men who are now presenting another
issue, is not the issue which they would
have you believe should be the one on
which to go to the polls in 1896. w. J.
Bryan made no other argument and ad-
Vocated no other issue four years ago
than the tariff. He and mis- associates
had no intention Of bringing forth this
new issue until they realized that they
were everlastingly defeated by the peo-
pie on the issue of free trade. on which
they secured a majority Of votes four
years ago. Mr.. Bryan said then, Give
us free trade and business will BOOM
but it bursted.
Now these men come before you with
a new promise. They say give us free
silver, and wages will go up; give us
free silver. and business will boom.
Don't you think, in view of the prom
ises given four years ago, and their de-
fault to pay, that it would be best to
ask for little collateral security on
which to back UP this new promise?
They say it is nostrum for all our ills.
Nothing sells so we'll in the United
States as patent medicine or a new
kind of chewing gum. The whole cam
paign of free silver is based on prom
ise of something better when free silver
comes.
Il do not want to MexicaniZe our
American dollar or apologize for it's
cheapness. Did you stop to think that
if free coinage of silver will increase
the value of that bullion. it will not
bring to the people higher wages or
give them better prices for their prod
ucts? Free coinage will either lower
the standard of our dollar to the 80
cent Mexican dollar, or else it will double
the value of our neighbor's dollar with
out expense to them.
The Senator mentioned that on July
11th the Chicago Chronicle" had
charged Bryan with being the paid
agent of the spokesmen of the bonanza
kings, who had really made the silver
issue, and that he had not met the
charge. THAT man." cried the Senator,
posing as the friend of the down-trod-
den masses holding a crown of thorns
in one hand and the bugaboo of a cross
of gold in the other. owes it to every
man, woman and child in this country
to say whether that charge is false or
whether 1t is true
He closed by arguing that cheap mon
ey would not help the poor man.
Mr.. DarIow was then introduced He
did not think the settlement of the free
coinage question would ever give the
laboringman that which he never had
under a Democratic or Republican adj
ministration-a full share of the product
OF his toil-nor lift from the farmer the
great burden of debt and distress under
which he lived. But it would do some
thing. He repudiated the Senator's pre-
scription of four more years of the gold
cure administered by Mckinley instead
of Cleveland. He accused the Cleveland
Democrats of working for Mckinley.
and asked the people to support what
was Major Mckinley's policy until he
became a candidate for the Presidency
1t was the first time that a national
party in the United States had asked
that silver money should be stricken
down, and gold alone used by our peo-
pie. The proposition was so outrageous
and unheard of that the men who
franked 1t at st. Louis were afraid to
openly advocate it. and added the inter-
national aCrpqp,e1,r rlanra con