to come, a hint necessary for creating an atmosphere of attentive expectation:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: I would be presumptuous indeed to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened, if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty - the cause of humanity.

Having thus thrown out a hint, but only a hint, of passionate earnestness to come, he adroitly changed his gait for a moment, in order to disarm the hostility that might arise among many of the delegates if he were too strongly emotional at the start. He dropped back into a neutral mood to speak a few words about the parliamentary situation, explaining the alternative resolutions on which the delegates would be called to vote. Then again he put forth the hint of high eloquence to come:

The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.

Yet once more he fell back to the mood of unargumentative quiet, giving an extended review of the conflict between the gold Democrats and the silver ones. By this time he was ready to begin to soar into eloquent passion:

Then began the conflict. With a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit, our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory, until they are now assembled, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment already rendered by the plain people of this country.

He was still careful not to remain overlong, at too early a stage of the oration, in the mood of harsh insistence.

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From that height of sternness he fell ingratiatingly back to the disarming mood of tolerance for his opponents:

It is not with gladness, my friends, that we find ourselves brought into conflict with those who are now arrayed on the other side.

Then once more he returned to tense earnestness and, through a plausible device, managed, without being glaringly obvious, to name the classes of the community to whom he was appealing; managed to make a roll-call of the classes whose support he was seeking; and to suggest subtly the contrast between these humble classes on his side and the classes on the side of gold:

When you [turning to the gold delegates] come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course. We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in the spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet in the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.

Then followed, similarly adroit in its indirection, an appeal designed to stir strong and homely sentiments, associations with home, religion, nature, youth, death:

The pioneers away out there [pointing to the West], who rear their children near to Nature's heart, where they can

mingle their voices with the voices of the birds out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak.

By this time Bryan was ready for challenge, defiance: We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them.

Bryan now brought in the device of a direct personal challenge to an individual, a challenge of a sort most likely to excite the fighting spirit of his audience. It was a challenge difficult to make, considering the known high character of the individual he was challenging and the affection in which he was held. Bryan managed it:

Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans, and three months ago everybody in the Republican party prophesied his election. How is it to-day? Why, the man who was once pleased to think that he looked like Napoleon that man shudders to-day when he remembers that he was nominated on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever-increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena. Why this change? Ah, my friends, is not the reason for the change evident to any one who will look at the matter? No private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people a man who will declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this country; or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place the legislative control of our affairs in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.

From this Bryan passed to the gradual working up of his peroration:

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You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

Then came the superbly conceived conclusion, glowing with the atmosphere of Biblical memories Bryan evoked:

Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

7

LEADERS AND FORCES

THAT "Cross of Gold" speech, and the reception it had, was not a comet, a mere isolated burst of oratory. It drew its materials from the conditions of the time, and found the response ready in the hearts of millions.

The rise of Bryan, and also so much as has so far been given of the rise of Roosevelt, has been told in terms, chiefly, of their individual actions, as if these men did certain things and the rest followed. But there is another theory of how history is made. Bryan had a relation to certain forces that were in motion during his time. So had Roosevelt. Some forces were common to both. And it is important to identify these forces - especially, at this stage, the ones that had most to do with Bryan.

'II

As to any period, there must be, so to speak, a pattern of its history. We are compelled to believe so, no matter how great or how little our faith in one form or another of whatever we shall call it, whether divine purpose, or orderly evolution, as the mainspring of the universe. We are compelled to believe so, because any other hypothesis would assume mere accident as one of its premises, and chaos as its most probable outcome, a chaos that presumably would have arrived long ago if there were any probability in this kind of hypothesis. And so, one of the problems of the historian who tries to get far below the surface may be stated: to find, after the event or period, what would have been, before it, the pattern in the mind of Omnipotence the Engineer's blue-print, so to speak.