and oldest means known to humankind. With the end of free land, American men for the first time had occasion to look with envy upon the wealth of others, or with jealous scrutiny upon how they had acquired it. The end of free land was the beginning of those political issues which had to do, in one form or another, with "dividing up," or with curbing those who had much. The end of free land was the largest one of those causes which, in the years preceding 1900, gave rise to a prevailing mood of repression, of discomfort, sullenly silent, or angrily vocal. Opulent America, generous, full-teated mother, was beginning to wean her children, and they were restless. It is doubtful if any considerable portion of those who were fretful recognized this intangible, inexorable thing as the cause of it. It took time to pass from easy-going assumption that our land, our forests, all our natural resources were unlimited, to uncomfortable consciousness that they were not. The average American, more readily visualizing a personified cause for his discomfort, dwelt more upon causes that proceeded from persons, or organizations of persons corporations, "trusts," or what-not. There were such causes. But they were minor compared to the ending of the supply of free land. I have expressed this as the "ending of the supply of free land." I might have put it: increase of population in proportion to the quantity of land. Increase of population worked for other similar changes in the mood of America. It brought a diminishing of natural resources, which in turn led to regulation, the beginning of verbotens in America. In 1900, many men could remember when they could take their rifles, go out among the buffalo-herds, and get as much meat as they wanted, without let or hindrance. To men with that memory, regulations, hunters' licenses, were irksome. This is a small illustra THE MOOD OF DISCONTENT 149 tion of what happened in many fields. The frontiersman had hardly ever encountered law or regulation. With increase of population came limits on liberty, "verbotens,' 'forbidden by law," "no trespassing." Later, with machinery, came another variety of regulation. In the days of the horse-drawn vehicle, "keep to the right" was about the only traffic code. With the coming of the automobile, stringent traffic rules came into being. One might suggest there is here something like a law of physics: the amount of regulation the individual must endure is in direct relation to density of population multiplied by velocity of its units. IV To be specific, the most important of the causes that gave rise to the mood of social and political discontent during the nineties and on until about 1914, were: The ending of free land. The ending, or the realization of the limitation, of other natural resources. (This led to the Roosevelt policy of conservation.) The increase in population, out of proportion to the increase in gold supply. The cutting in half of the volume of currency. The immense increase in production of the silver-mines, faster than the increase in population, and very much. faster than the increase in gold supply. The action of the Supreme Court in 1896 in declaring invalid the income-tax law of that time. The oppressive practices of the early railroad managers. The rise of trusts and monopolies. The growth of factories and factory life. The protective tariff. The power of organized wealth in politics. The rise of the labor-unions and the treatment of them by corporation employers. All these contributed to the rise of Bryan. But the three which had most to do with Bryan, which he picked out as his issues, were the ones having to do with currency: the diminished output of gold-mines; the increased output of silver-mines; and inflation of the currency, followed by deflation. Most of the others of these causes of the American mood had to do more closely with Roosevelt, and will be discussed in connection with the Roosevelt era. We will examine now the ones that Bryan was associated with — gold, silver, currency. In every issue that Bryan, in his first phase, had, in practically every speech he made, these words appeared. CONDITIONS THAT GAVE RISE TO BRYAN Failure of the Gold-Mines to Supply Gold in Proportion to THE greatest single cause of the mood of irritation and unrest in America that expressed itself, successively, in Bryan, Roosevelt, and Wilson was the end of the free land and of other natural resources. To put it more exactly, it was the increase in the population of the country in proportion to the quantity of land. The same amount of land was there - but the number of people who wanted it had increased and was continuing to increase greatly. That contributed to the rise of Bryan. But the more direct cause of Bryan's rise was the increase of the population of the country out of proportion to the supply of gold.1 II The state of public feeling that gave rise to Bryan is comparable to a dough. Merely to lay hands on it, for the purpose of finding what of it had been yeast and what flour, is to change the appearance of it. To try to reduce it to its parts is instantly to transform it. Necessarily, 1 This way of putting it is found subject to fault by some economists who agree with the essential thesis and with this chapter as a whole. Certain qualifications will appear in the later amplification of the subject. therefore, any analysis of it is certain to provoke dissent from those who saw it only as a whole, and from others. whose analyses run along different lines. At best, currency and finance is the field which, among all the aspects of human affairs, is the most difficult to be clear in, the most hospitable to fallacy, most crowded with pitfalls, both those of honest error and those prepared by sleight-of-hand intellects. The conditions that gave rise to Bryan were brought about partly by man's imperfect management of man's common affairs, especially of his medium of exchange, and partly by nature. To try to identify these, and to show the part each had in the general result, is like analyzing a mixture that has fermented furiously and thrown up foam. To reduce it to its elements is to make it seem different from what it appeared as a whole, and invites controversy from those who lived through the period, saw it when it was in active ferment. Dissent comes also from those who, using other methods of analysis, have reached different conclusions. The present effort has ease of understanding as its principal aim. Because clarity is the aim, it is desirable to treat each of the main elements separately. But in operation, these elements were not separate. On the contrary, it was the reacting of each upon the others, and the fermenting of the whole, that constituted the essence of the condition out of which Bryan rose. The principal elements were: decrease in gold supply, increase in silver supply, and variations in the quantity of currency in circulation. There were other elements upon which some economists would put primary emphasis. Also some economists would phrase differently the causes I have named as fundamental. Finally, at times there was a psychological factor, the apprehension of the public about what the government was going to do hope from |