The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was a three-time candidate for the President of the United States who never won. In 1896 and in 1900, he was defeated by William McKinley. In 1908, he was defeated by Theodore Roosevelt’s former vice President, Howard Taft. He later served as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State.
Bryan was often referred to as “The Great Commoner” and pursued politics with a expressly populist campaign style. According to Karl Rove, author of The Triumph of William McKinley, a book about the 1896 Presidential election, McKinley was able to win by countering Bryan’s frenetic populist message and campaign style with money, organization, and strategy.
When McKinley was advised to go out on the road and campaign like Bryan was, McKinley astutely concluded that he could never “out-populist” Bryan who was seemingly born to be a “train-stop to train stop” politician. Rove relates that McKinley countered the argument for going on a nation-wide train campaign by saying that if he took a first-class train, Bryan would take a standard fare train and if McKinley took a common fair train, Bryan would ride in the baggage car, and if McKinley rode in a baggage car, Bryan would ride outside on an open air flatbed car like a hobo (my paraphrase).
Rather than compete with Bryan for every single person’s vote, McKinley strategically invited hundreds of different demographic groups to his home in Canton, Ohio. He would meet with them in very prepared and scripted exchanges and then feed them meals and send them on their way to represent him to their communities back home. Bryan made about 600 speeches all over the U.S. while McKinley paid for people to come to him and outspent Bryan 2:1.
Bryan’s autobiography reveals a politician who absorbed the Christianity of his Baptist father and Methodist mother, and Presbyterian youth group and eventually transformed religious sentiment into a political life dedicated to representing a distinctly evangelical worldview full of contradictions. He opposed imperialism in the strongest of terms and yet built his campaigns on a bedrock of Southern support in an age when the South was anything but “Christian” in its treatment of Black people. Bryan represented the poor as though they were Jesus crucified, insinuating that the interests of business were a modern day evil. It is not difficult to hear some of Bernie Sanders’ anti-corporatism in Bryan’s jeremiads against Wall Street.
In an address delivered at a banquet given in Chicago October 7, 1908, Bryan tried to explain that he was not against business. He was simply opposed to the sort of business that devalued human beings.
“There are many differences between the natural man and the corporate man. There is a difference in the purpose of creation. God made man and placed him upon His footstool to carry out a divine decree; man created the corporation as a money making machine. When God made man He did not make the tallest man much taller than the shortest; and He did not make the strongest man much stronger than the weakest; but when the law creates the corporate person that person may be an hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million times stronger than the God-made man. When God made man He set a limit to his existence, so that if he was a bad man he could not be bad long; but when the corporation was created the limit on age was raised, and it sometimes projects itself through generation after generation."
"When God made man He gave to mankind a soul and warned him that in the next world he would be held accountable for the deeds done in the flesh; but when man created the corporation he could not endow that corporation with a soul, so that if it escapes punishment here it need not fear the hereafter. And this man-made giant has been put forth to compete with the God-made man. We must assume that man in creating the corporation had in view the welfare of society, and the people who create must retain the power to restrict and to control. We can never become so enthusiastic over the corporation, over its usefulness, over its possibilities, as to forget the God-made man who was here first and who still remains a factor to be considered."
"I take it, then, that I can assume that all who are interested in commerce, and interested in the corporation as a means of developing commerce, will recognize the necessity of making competition between the natural man and the fictitious person approximately equal so that the natural man may not be trodden under foot.”
In response to the Republican insistence that America had a global destiny and a duty to acquire the Philippines, Bryan was adamantly opposed and on Biblical grounds. “Shame upon a logic which locks up the petty offender and enthrones grand larceny,” he said.
“Have the people returned to the worship of the golden calf? Have they made unto themselves a new commandment consistent with the spirit of conquest and the lust for empire? Is ‘Thou shalt not steal upon a small scale’ to be substituted for the Law of Moses?”
Bryan countered Theodore Roosevelt’s vigorous defense of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority with a heavy dose of multi-cultural American nationalism. In a speech delivered in 1899 in opposition to American imperialistic ambitions in the Philippines, Bryan faced the cheerleaders of Anglo-Saxon destiny head on.
“Much has been said of late about Anglo-Saxon civilization. Far be it from me to detract from the service rendered to the world by the sturdy race whose language we speak. The union of the Angle and the Saxon formed a new and valuable type, but the process of race evolution was not completed when the Angle and the Saxon met. A still later type has appeared which is superior to any which has existed heretofore; and with this new type will come a higher civilization than any which has preceded it. Great has been the Greek, the Latin, the Slav. the Celt, the Teuton and the Anglo-Saxon, but greater than any of these is the American, in whom are blended the virtues of them all."
"Civil and religious liberty, universal education and the right to participate, directly or through representatives chosen by himself, in all the affairs of government—these give to the American citizen an opportunity and an inspiration which can be found nowhere else."
"Standing upon the vantage ground already gained the American people can aspire to a grander destiny than has opened before any other race."
"Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights, American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others."
"Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to take care of himself, American civilization, proclaiming the equality of all before the law, will teach him that his own highest good requires the observance of the commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
"Anglo-Saxon civilization has, by force of arms, applied the art of government to other races for the benefit of Anglo-Saxons; American civilization will, by the influence of example, excite in other races a desire for self-government and a determination to secure it."
"Anglo-Saxon civilization has carried its flag to every clime and defended it with forts and garrisons. American civilization will imprint its flag upon the hearts of all who long for freedom."
“To American civilization, all hail!
“Time’s noblest offspring is the last!”
Americans voted for Theodore Roosevelt’s Social Darwinism and expansionism (“While Congress dithered, I acted” Roosevelt would say of his decision to take Panama). Within twenty years however, the world would see that Bryan was right on the battlefields of Europe, as an entire generation paid the price for Rooseveltian hubris, War-loving pride, and arrogance.
William Jennings Bryan is often remembered as the doddering old defender of anti-science in the play Inherit the Wind. Reading the speech that Bryan had intended to give as a closing argument to the Scopes Trial, may show him in a different light. One has to understand that he was responding to the argument for evolution as it was being presented in Hunter’s Civic Biology, the textbook that John Scopes was using in Dayton Tennessee, a book that states things like the following:
“Improvement of Man. - If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment….”
Under a section on eugenics, the book details certain types of people as “parasites”
“Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites."
"The Remedy. - If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.”
Here is a selection of the book that may provide some context to what Bryan will have to say about the teaching of evolution in Tennessee:
“The Races of Man. – At the present time there exists upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.”
And there is this lovely little sentence about how the Greeks took an island from the Italians
“They drove the Italian natives back into the distant hills, for the white man’s burden even then included the taking of the desirable things that were being wasted by the incompetent natives …”
It is in this context that Bryan’s warnings about the teaching of evolution (as it was then being taught) in public schools should be seen. Bryan will argue that he is not anti-science. He certainly is not opposed to John Scopes’ right to free speech. He simply objects to Scopes using a paid position as a public school teacher to promulgate a potentially dangerous political ideology in the guise of science.
The following is an excerpt from Bryan’s argument.
http://www2.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/wjb-last/wjb-last.htm
“Our fifth indictment of the evolutionary hypothesis is that, if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life, it would eliminate love and carry man back to a struggle of tooth and claw. The Christians who have allowed themselves to be deceived into believing that evolution is a beneficient, or even a rational process have been associating with those who either do not understand its implications or dare not avow their knowledge of these implications. Let me give you some authority on this subject. I will begin with Darwin, the high priest of evolution, to whom all evolutionists bow.
On pages 149 and 150, in "The Descent of Man," ' already referred to, he says:
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick: we institute poor laws and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to thedegeneration of a domestic race; but, excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
"The aid which we felt impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. * * * We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak serving and propagating their kind."
Darwin reveals the barbarous sentiment that runs through evolution and dwarfs the moral nature of those who become obsessed with it. Let us analyze the quotation just given. Darwin speaks with approval of the savage custom of eliminating the weak so that only the strong will survive, and complains that "we civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination." How inhuman such a doctrine as this! He thinks it injurious to "build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick" or to care for the poor. Even the medical men come in for criticism because they "exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment." And then note his hostility to vaccination because it has "preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution would, but for vaccination, have succumbed to smallpox!" All of the sympathetic activities of civilized society are condemned because they enable "the weak members to propagate their kind." Then he drags mankind down to the level of the brute and compares the freedom given to man unfavorably with the restraint that we put on barnyard beasts.
The second paragraph of the above quotation shows that his kindly heart rebelled against the cruelty of his own doctrine. He says that we "feel impelled to give to the helpless," although he traces it to a sympathy which he thinks is developed by evolution; he even admits that we could not check this sympathy "even at the urging of hard reason, withough deterioration of the noblest part of our nature." "We must therefore bear" what he regards as "the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind." Could any doctrine be more destructive of civilization? And what a commentary on evolution! He wants us to believe that evolution develops a human sympathy that finally becomes so tender that it repudiates the law that created it and thus invites a return to a level where the extinguishing of pity and sympathy will permit the brutal instincts to again do their progressive (?) work!
"Evolution is a Bloody Business"
Let no one think that this acceptance of barbarism as the basic principle of evolution died with Darwin. Within three years a book has appeared whose author is even more frankly brutal than Darwin. The book is entitled "The New Decalogue of Science" and has attracted wide attention. One of our most reputable magazines has recently printed an article by him defining the religion of a scientist. In his preface he acknowledges indebtedness to twenty-one prominent scientists and educators, neatly all of them "doctors" and "professors." One of them, who has recently been elevated to the head of a great state university, read the manuscript over twice "and made many invaluable suggestions." The author describes Nietzsche, who, according to Mr. Darrow, made a murderer out of Babe Leopold. as "the bravest soul since Jesus." He admits that Nietzsche was "gloriously wrong," not certainly, but "perhaps," "in many details of technical knowledge," but he affirms that "Nietzsche was gloriously right in his fearless questioning of the universe and of his own soul."
In another place, the author says, most of our morals today are jungle products," and then he affirms that "it would be safer, biologically, if they were more so now." After these two samples of his views you will not be surprised when I read you the following (see page 34).
"Evolution is a bloody business, but civilization tries to make it a pink tea. Barbarism is the only process by which man has ever organically progressed, and civilization is the only process by which he has ever organically declined. Civilization is the most dangerous enterprise upon which man ever set out. For when you take man out of the bloody brutal but beneficent hand of natural selection you place him at once in the soft, perfumed, daintily gloved but far more dangerous hand of artificial selection. And unless you call science to your aid and make this artificial selection as efficient as the rude methods of nature you bungle the whole task."
This aspect of evolution may amaze some of the ministers who have not been admitted to the inner circle of the iconoclasts whose theories menace all the ideals of civilized society. Do these ministers know that "evolution is a bloody business"? Do they know that "civilization is the only process by which man has ever organically declined"? Do they know that the bloody, brutal hand of natural selection is "beneficient," and that the artificial selection found in civilization is "dangerous"? What shall we think of the distinguished educators and scientists who read the manuscript before publication and did not protest against this pagan doctrine?
Quotes an English Author
To show that this is a world-wide matter, I now quote from a book issued from the press in 1918, seven years ago. The title of the book is "The Science of Power," and its author, Benjamin Kidd, being an Englishman, could not have any national prejudice against Darwin. On Pages 46 and 47 we find Kidd's interpretation of evolution:
"Darwin's presentation of the evolution of the world as the product of natural selection in never-ceasing war was a product, that is to say, of a struggle in which the individual efficient in the fight for his own interests was always the winning type - touched the profoundest depths of the psychology of the West. The idea seemed to present the whole order of progress in the world as the result of a purely mechanical and materialistic process resting on force. In so doing it was a conception which reached the springs of that heredity born of the unmeasured ages of conquest out of which the Western mind has come. Within half a century the 'Origin of Species' had become the bible of the doctrine of the omnipotence of force."
Kidd goes so far as to charge that "Nietzsche's teaching represented the interpretation of the popular Darwinism delivered with the fury and intensity of genius." And Nietzsche, be it remembered, denounced Christianity as the "doctrine of the degenerate," and democracy as "the refuge of weaklings."
Kidd says that Nietzsche gave Germany the doctrine of Darwin's efficient animal in the voice of his superman, and that Bernhardi and the military textbooks in due time gave Germany the doctrine of the superman translated into the national policy of the superstate aiming at world power. (Page 67.)
And what else but the spirit of evolution can account for the popularity of the selfish doctrine, "each one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost," that threatens the very existence of the doctrine of brotherhood.
In 1900 - twenty-five years ago - while an international peace congress was in session in Paris, the following editorial appeared in L' Univers:
"The spirit of peace has fled the earth because evolution has taken possession of it. The plea for peace in past years has been inspired by faith in the divine nature and the divine origin of man; men were then looked upon as children of apes - what matters it whether they are slaughtered or not?"
In his conclusion, Bryan asserts the danger of a science unregulated by morality.
"Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane--the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings, alone, can solve the problems that vex heart and perplex the world...."
Clarence Darrow would respond to Bryan’s argument by saying that Bryan was blowing everything out of proportion to suggest that evolution was a dangerous idea. Yes, he acknowledged that Leopold had read too much Nietzsche and had committed a murder that he probably would not have if he had not been exposed to Nietzsche's ideas, but that this was an isolated incident. “The building of railroads has cost many lives,” Darrow wrote.
“but they aided humanity. Each year automobiles kill more persons than are killed by homicides; but that is no reason they should be abandoned pack and parcel,”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond in that same year that Darrow was writing his rebuttal, Adolf Hitler was busy re-organizing the Nazi Party in an attempt to bring about a non-violent take-over of the German government. His plan called for an efficient and total implementation of the ideas hinted at in Hunter’s Civic Biology.
Question for Comment: So many of William Jennings Bryan’s arguments are still relevant today. Who should have the last say when potentially dangerous ideas are proposed for school curricula? What should the basis of American foreign policy be? What should be the limits of corporate power? What role should science and religion play in the culture? What does it mean to have a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”?
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