The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1925-07-30
FROM FARMER BOY
TO. NATIONAL LEADER
William Jennings Bryan Rose From Farmer
Boy to be Thrice Chosen As Standard
Bearer of Great Party.
HELD MANY HIGH OFFICES
Though Defeated for the Presidency, He Had Long
Had Great Influence in Shaping National
Life of This Country.

/ The Republican press spoke of Bryan
in terms compared with which Chas.
Evans Hughes characterization of the
Bolsheviks was a compliment. To the
Republican orators Bryan was wild
! eyed torch-bearer, ready to wreck the
United States.
Killed by Free Silver.
Free silver killed Bryan politically,
| insofar as elective office-holding was
| concerned, as dead as oil killed 9TH
ers; gold some, and free trade others.
Although the 1896 campaign was the
only one that Bryan made on strict
ly free silver platform, the mass of
the voting public could never be con-
WINGED that Bryan was not a hair
Drained theorist, whose cult was ruin.
Long after the body of Mark Hanna
had rusted to dust in a Cleveland
cemetery, the effect of the bitter cam
paign Of 1895 kept his veto on Bryan's
elective ambitions.
| In many ways, Bryan was q states
man in advance of his times. He was
accustomed to say that economic prog
ress, while it had made legal estab-
lishment of Free Silver, 16 to /, un-
necessary, had proved the soundnees
of its theory. He lived to see four of
his net ideas become the law of the
land. Prohibition, Woman Suffrage,
Direct Election of United States Sena-
tors and Direct Primaries.
| Bryan was q prophet, not without
honor, but without elective success in
his own country.
The mass Of the voters cheered him,
admired him, but wouldn't vote for
him. His issue of Imperialism fell
flat. His issue of governmental own
ership of the railroads was rejected
by his generation. Whether time will
vindicate that, as it did other Bryan
issues, time only can answer.
Bryans Last Political Flight.
In the convention of 1920, when
James B. Cox of Ohio was selected as
| the Democratic standaId-b bearer,
Bryan held proxy and made the fight
for dry plank in the national plat
form. With Bourke Cochran, he staged
one of the greatest debates of ca
reer full of oratory. The erect young
form that had electrified the 1895
convention had grown somewhat paun-
chy, the long, jetblack hair of yester-
year had begun to turn and was much
thinner But Bryan had the same force,
! the same magnetism, the same fire,
the same easy flow of thought and
! language, the same eloquence. Cock
ran, the great Irish orator of Tam
many Hall, was cool, keen, logical and
| incisive. And when it was over the
convention rose and cheered its old
time Bryan saw the standards of the
states plucked from sockets and car
ried in parade--for him. 1t was tri-
butte to the great party leader who
was passing-had just passed.
Voted Again Bryan.
Then the delegates calmly returned
to their seats and voted against Bry-
ans eloquence and for his oppon-
ent's logic and their own personal per-
formances. 1t was the party's part
ing salute to a peerless but stricken
! political gladiator.
Four years later-a little less-Bry-
an attended the meeting OF the Demo-
| cratic national committee at Wash
ington and was barely noticed. Gone
alike were his friends and foes. Many
were dead, including the brilliant
Cochran, his San Francisco adversary.
Others were retired from politics. Still
others had been violently retired by
the voters. 1t was as if Napoleon had
/ returned to the field Of Waterloo.
Champ" Clark, on whose ambition
Bryan had trampled at Baltimore, had