1 Jan 1895 Jahr - John Pierpont Morgan arranges gold purchases to rescue U.S. Treasury

Beschreibung:

While their racial policies were abhorrent, that did not prevent the national Democrats from astonishing the country in 1896 by embracing parts of the Populists’ radical farmer-labor program. They did so in defiance of President Cleveland, whose decisions continued to alienate him from his party’s agrarian and labor base. Despite the worsening economic depression, collapsing prices, and a hemorrhage of gold to Europe, the president refused to budge from his defense of the gold standard. With gold reserves dwindling in 1895, he made a secret arrangement with a syndicate of bankers led by J. P. Morgan to arrange purchases to replenish the treasury. Morgan helped maintain America’s gold supply — preserving the gold standard — and turned a tidy profit by earning interest on the bonds he provided. Cleveland’s deal, once discovered, enraged fellow Democrats.

In 1896, amid such outrage, Democrats rejected Cleveland and nominated a young Nebraska congressman, free silver advocate William Jennings Bryan, who passionately defended farmers and workers and attacked the gold standard. “Burn down your cities and leave our farms,” Bryan declared in his famous convention speech, “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.” He ended with a vow: “You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” Cheering delegates endorsed a platform calling for free silver and a federal income tax on the wealthy that would replace tariffs as a source of revenue. Democrats, long defenders of limited government, were moving toward a more activist stance.

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