was really speaking to that massive transition in american society, american life. >> talking about money and politics since the very early campaigning in this country, but i want you to listen in the to the 1900 campaign in which william jennings bryan talked about the issue of transparency, knowing who was contributing to whom. here are the words of william jennings bryan from his second of three campaigns for the white house. >> an election is a public affair. it is held for the benefit of the public and is the means through which the people select their officials and give directions as to the policies to be adopted. there is no sound reason for secrecy in regard to campaign methods. and publicity will in itself move a purifying influence in politics. the necessity for publicity has increased with the growth of favor-seeking corporations. for the people ought to know what influences are at work in

the campaign, that they may better decide whether either party has to obligate itself to the great corporations as to make it impossible for it to protect the rights of the people. >> from the 19 08 campaign with william howard taft. has anything changed a century later? >> obviously, people love money. want government to do things they want the government to do. people with little money too do, too, but there's a loft of influence if you have if you have a lot of money. and bryan actually was in favor of public financing of elections. he didn't want private individuals to be able to give any money to elections. but he realized that wasn't going to fly at the time. his idea at the time was at least publicize the donations that people give. let's make sure that everyone knows it's above board. for example, in 1996, john

rockefeller just wrote a check on standard oil check for $250,000 and gave it to mark hannah. and that was not known until after the election was over. so bryan wanted that at least to be known if that happened. 1907, the first serious campaign finance law had been passed, which banned corporations from giving money directly to campaigns. individuals could still give as much money as they wanted to. the connection between influence and money is still something we argue about all the time and fight about all the time, and the court has ruled on it. it's an issue which certainly has not died. >> william is joining us from detroit. good evening, please go ahead. >> caller: how are you guys today? >> just fine, thank you. >> caller: i have a question i wanted to ask, because i just caught the program and i wanted to understand, william jennings bryan, was he a supporter of the gold and silver standard in currency in america? >> he wanted the money supply

based on both gold and silver, which at the time would have meant that more dollars would have been put in circulation. more money out there, prices would have gone up, but that meant also that people who produced crops would have seen their prices, that they would be able to get for their crops go up and interest rates would have gone down. so sounds archean, sounds exotic to us today, but the best way to think about it is bryan wanted cheaper money, more money in people's pockets, and interest rates to go down so people could borrow more easily. >> he gets the nomination in 1896. he is renominated in 1900. what happened in 1904? >> 1904, the democrats decided to go with a less exciting candidate, a more conservative candidate who they thought could appeal to a more traditional electorate. they nominated a guy who had never run for office before.

i'm sorry, he ran for judge before. alton parker his name was from new york. a very great candidate. a plan who did not go around the country giving speeches. but who was more like grover cleveland in many ways. he had some of bryan's politics, but none of bryan's charisma, none of bryan's appeal to ordinary americans. and he got killed in a landslide by theodore roosevelt. >> and the party comes back to william jennings bryan in 1908, why? >> well, michael, the party is in great need of a leader. and it's a party that's divided by region. it's had a great deal of difficulty uniting around a candidate and making its voice heard in the national election. and bryan is that voice. he's a tremendous, charismatic figure. >> and yet you have three republicans, william mckinley that was assassinated.

teddy roosevelt becomes president. and william howard taft elected in 1908. let's go back to something else that was i guess rather revolutionary. set up the debate that took place and how that occurred, technically speaking in 1908. >> there wasn't actually a debate the way we have debates now. but 1908 was the first time in which both candidates recorded speeches on wax cylinders, these things which are -- you can still hear very scratchy renditions of them, perhaps you'll play one that the library of congress owns some of these koeps. but this was the original short playing record. didn't last very long. they went into studios and they recorded them. this was -- bryan actually sold these too to campaign supporters. it was a way you could hear bryan, you could hear taft without them having to go out and speak to you directly. we take that for granted now. but this was a very new idea at the time. >> one of the campaign buttons of william jennings bryan in

1908. we're going to begin with the words of william howard taft followed by william jennings bryan. >> i have known a good many people, i have known a good many regular attendance at church and distant members. religiously, if you choose to use that term, refuse to contribute to foreign makers. i did not realize the immense importance of foreign missions. the truth is we've got to wake up in this country. we are not all there is in the world. there are lots besides us and there are lots of people besides us that are entitled to our imports and our money and our sacrifice to help them on in the world. >> imperialism is the policy of an empire. and an empire is a nation composed of different races living under varying forms of government. a republic cannot be an empire. for a republic rests upon the theory that government derive their just theories and

colonialism with this theerry. our experiment in colonialism has been unfortunate. instead of profit, it has brought loss. instead of strength, it has brought weakness. instead of gloiry, it has brougt humiliation. >> the -- did william jennings bryan change as a candidate from his first race in 1896 to his third bid in 1908, and what issues dominated the 1908 campaign? >> it was a key issue each of those campaigns. the key issue in 1906 was the gold and silver issue and the issue of the depression and class divisions in that sense. the big issue in 1900 was imperialism. the u.s. was fighting in the philippines to try to stop the philippine independence movement from winning a war of insurrection against the u.s. occupation of those islands.

1908, there were several issues. bryan tried to make the power of the corporations the big issue. his logo was shall the people rule. but taft was perceived as progressive at the time. he had been the secretary of war under theodore roosevelt. roosevelt is a progressive president. so in many ways, similar to some of your viewers remember, gorge h.w. bush in 1998 running as sort of the hand picked successor to ronald reagan. if people liked reagan, you thought well, if you like reagan, i guess i can vote for bush. people liked roosevelt, tend to think well, we'll be safe with taft, and that's why he won. so bryan tried to use a lot of the same rhetorical techniques. he went out to talk to hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people in that campaign, as he had done before. but it was very successful. the country was prosperous again

after a sharp recession in 1907. so times are fairly good. taft was popular because he was the hand-picked successor to a very popular president, theodore roosevelt. >> his closest race was 1896 as we look at the election results from 1900. joined by marie, who is joining us from connecticut. welcome to the conversation. go ahead, marie. >> caller: i'd like to know how did william jennings bryan come to live in miami, florida? >> in fact boca raton, florida. >> his wife mary contracted a very bad, really crippling arthritis. when she lived in the house, actually. she didn't want to -- really couldn't live in the winter climate of nebraska any longer. so miami was beginning to be a place for older people to go if

they could afford to. and also, he had been to the south before. he had a lot of very strong supporters in the south, did bryan. and so they would go into miami, they stayed at friends' houses in miami before, and they decided to move there. it was a very good move for mary certainly. >> and you tell a story in the book about how he was also used to help bring other people to coral gables, including the venetian pool that's still there today. >> he became a promoter. in the 1920s after he had given up all hope of becoming president, he began to make some money, giving speeches for land promoters. this was not one of his more honorable adventures, perhaps. but after all, he needed to make money and he did. >> then we move to 1912 and a democrat finally wins the white house but it's not william jennings bryan. >> right. it's woodrow wilson. the democrats had struggled for

some time and bryan had led much of the struggle against the republican party. and really for the votes of working people, i think. and the broad middle class. the republicans were able over that period to co-opt many of the issues that the populous and the democrats had brought forward. and develop their agenda as a ro greszive party. theodore roosevelt was the master of this. and bryan and the democrats had a very difficult time reaching that broad middle class and convincing voters that they could bring progressive change, not radical change, but progressive change. and wilson was able to do that. he was professor at princeton. he had been governor of new jersey. he was a very moderate reformer, but progressive reformer. and he was able to succeed, where bryan was not. >> you want to follow up? >> i want to faem size the only reason wilson won was because

the republican party split in 1912. and taft proved not to be a real progressive successor to theodore roosevelt. at least roosevelt didn't think so and roosevelt tries to arrest his nomination away from taft in 1912. fails to and then goes out and becomes a nominee of this new progressive party. if republicans had stayed united, we'll never know what would have happened. but it's quite possible that wilson would not have been elected. >> michael kazen who teaches politics and history at georgetown, university. will thomas is the chair of the history department here in lincoln, nebraska. and josh is joining us from phoenix. good evening, welcome to the program. >> caller: yes, hi, good evening. great show. thank you for your show. i wanted to ask something a little different. i wanted to see if the gentlemen could speak to mr. bryan's foreign policy attitudes and what he thought about the spanish american war or

american -- european colonialism and if he ever went abroad, and what would the gentlemen think how he would handle, for example, now afghanistan and iraq and the invasion. what was his mindset back then in terms of how the major colonial powers around the world were taken, going into other countries and controlling them and such. what was his theory about that, about all of that? and how did he feel, in general, his foreign policy? thank you very much. >> josh, thanks for the calls. he served at our 41st secretary of state, so maybe that best reflects his views on foreign policy. >> in some ways, before that it does. he served in the spanish-american war. once the war ended, he opposed the occupation of the philippines. and he was an anti-imperialist at a time when there was a very

large anti-imperialist constituency in the united states. he did travel around the world for a whole year with his family from 1905 to 1906, being financed by william randall hurst who he wrote articles for. as he went around the world, he went to indonesia, which was then controlled by dutch. he went to india, then controlled by the british. at each stop, he denounced the european powers who controlled those countries. in principle, he was opposed to rich countries dominating and owning poor countries. it doesn't mean that he was opposed to all wars. he was opposed to what he thought of as unjust wars. as secretary of state, he resigned in 1915 because he thought the united states was about to enter world war i. after the lucitania had been

torpedoed by a german u-boat. the u.s. did not get into war. but he resigned because he was so opposed to world war i. he thought world war i was an insane war that the u.s. should not be a part of. >> what was his relationship like with woodrow wilson in the campaign and his tenure as secretary of state? >> in 1912, he does come around to supporting wilson in the convention. he supports wilson in that convention, it helps to put wilson over the top at a time when you need 2/3 of delegate votes to win. a very old style convention. he and wilson never really were close. wilson had not supported bryan in 1896. wilson had been a more conservative democrat in 1908. wilson came to this house one point, came to fairview, and was not impressed by it.

he was an intellectual and bryan was not. he was sort of disparaging of bryan's intelligence and bryan's interests in the world. so the two were not close. bryan became secretary of state in large part because it was a political appointment. at that time, it was not unusual for the leading figure in the bert who is not the nominee to be nominated secretary of state by the incoming president. in many ways, wilson expected to be his own secretary of state. one of the reasons bryan was unhappy as secretary of state is he didn't get the kind of responsible he would have wanted. one thing he did do which shows something about his views about war and peace, he put together -- he convinced various foreign powers to sign peace treaties with one another, saying they would not go to war with one another. these are pretty much symbolic, but he gave each of them a little bronze plow share with the line from isaiah as a symbol

of these treaties. in the end, the treaties didn't stop world war i. but for bryan as a good christian showing a humanitarian face to the world was one way of actually acting in more humanitarian ways. >> larry is joining us from delaware. welcome to the program. go ahead, please. >> caller: thank you for listening to me. i do have a religious question about bryan's religion. but first, let me say that i applaud his efforts to level the playing field for the common man against big business. free enterprise defeated communism. about to beat democracy. what impact does your panel think bryan's fundamental christian religious believes had an impact on his election results? >> thanks for the call.

we should point out too the bible is open to the book of ezekiel at his desk. we are in the parlor at his home in fairview what. about the role of religion in his wife and his wife's life? >> it's a big question. one of the things about bryan is very important. he never really separated religion and politics. we think of that now as something that some people, more conservative people think that you should have a christian government and america is a christian nation. but for bryan, his christianity was what he called applied christianity. it was really the social gospel. that is he believed that if you're a good christian, you want to go out and save the world. you want to go out and help the poor. you want to help workers. you want to lel the playing field, as the caller mentioned. so for him, his religion and politics were in the separate. but in some ways i think this hurt him among some people that were not evangelical protestants. most people were. but catholics and jews were less enthusiastic about him because

he was such a crusader. also he supported prohibition beginning in 1910 and was a very big supporter of what became the 18th amendment to the constitution. this was a very divisive issue in american life. he wanted to purify the american body of politics. for him this was a christian issue. that meant that a lot of people from 1910 on didn't trust him. even people that voted for him before. >> one side note, he did not drink, but he did enjoy eating. >> oh yeah. sometimes when he was on the campaign trail, giving all these speeches, sometimes he ate as many as six meals day. he could devour three chickens at one sitting. >> if you're just tuning in, this is c-span's "the contender" series. we are looking at 14 candidates for the presidency. all 14 lost. but in their own way, they shaped american politics and in many cases resonate today with the issues that they put forth.

we are coming to you from his home in lincoln, nebraska, referred to as fairview. it's now part of the medical center here in the state capital. and our phone lines are open. 202-737-0001. for viewers in the eastern and central time zones, 202-737-0002. this is an exterior view of what the home looked like. you can see the medical center directly adjacent. this home is open to the public. it does offer tours. nay dean is joining us from palm springs, california. go ahead, please. >> caller: hello, this is nadine hill from desert hot springs, near palm springs in california. and i have a kodak picture. he has a relationship with my family. >> how so? >> caller: my family's

genealogy, i'm not a mormon, it's just my hobby and i research my family. i have 6,200 names in it. and i would like to know about buying the book or speeches or what you have and how much it is and where i send the money. >> well, before you get an answer to that question, we want to ask you who's in the photograph and what is your connection with william jennings bryan, at least through your own family research? >> as far as i know, he's in a car in this picture, like a kodak picture. and he's in the car with -- looks like a single seater with a top down. i always thought that the other man was the one who didn't believe in religion. i'm almost 95, so i can't remember his name now. but i have this and he is in my

family. i have 6,200 names i've researched and, you know, on my computer. and i don't say oh, i'd like to have that one. i research them and be sure they're my relative. >> well, i'm going to ask you to stay on the line and we're going to try get your phone number if there's a way we can get you connected with mr. kazen directly and his book is called "a godly hero." stay on the line, we'll get your phone number. she brings up another part of his life. dayton, tennessee, the monkey scopes trial and clarence darrow. >> i was just going to tell nadine that we have put all of william jennings bryan's speeches from 1896 online on our digital project so. if she'd like to use her computer to look at those speeches, there are hundreds of them. every speech he gave in the 1896 presidential campaign is online on the railroads and the making

of modern america website that we started here at the university of nebraska, lincoln. >> and all the material from this series is available online, 14 weeks looking at presidential contenders. the contenders.cspan.org is our website. the scopes trial. >> many ways, william jennings bryan is known, if he's known at all, for a lot of americans because he was one of the prosecutors in this trial in tennessee in july 1925, which was prosecuting a teacher named john scopes which was teaching the theory of evolution in high school, in dayton, tennessee. what was interesting about this is that this issue is still very much alive with us, of course. large number of americans believe that the bible -- that the book of genesis is the truth, is how the earth was

formed. and bryan believed that, too. but it's important to remember also that for bryan, one of the things he disliked about the theory of evolution is he thought it was not just darwinism, but social darwinism. that is he believed it taught the survival of the fittest. it taught that might makes right. he put out a series of lectures about evolution before the scopes trial, which was entitled "brother versus brute." so for him to be a good christian meant that you were against the social theory of evolution. he didn't really understand the science very well, but he believed rightly or wrongly that the way the science was being applied by some people who had done very well in american society, by some people in the military, was that those who were doing well in society were those who should do well, who were biologically inclined to come out on top. and this is one of the things he disliked about the theory. but again, he is a fundamentalist and he believed

what the bible said was true, so he thought school children should not be learning something which would counteract that. >> is an iconic photo in 1925 in tennessee. how did two come together for this historic moment in american history? >> bryan was asked by the prosecution to help in the trial. the state law had just been passed that year in tennessee. and they knew that if bryan helped them, this would draw a lot of attention to the case. similarly, once clarence darrow, this defense lawyer for labor figures like jew gene dibs and many others. when he heard bryan, a former friend, by the way, was going to work for the prosecution, darrow said he had to be on the other side. the american civil liberties union financed the defense of scopes. one thing that people should know about this, people might

have seen the famous movie starring spencer tracy and has the darrow character and frederick march as the bryan character. scopes never went to jail. scopes was basically -- he agreed to be a defendant because he knew a trial was going to take place somewhere in tennessee and his town of dayton, tennessee, where he taught high school was hurting economically. so he wanted to help bring some business tod dayton, tennessee. >> technology was a factor in the trial. cameras were allowed inside and it was broadcast nationwide on the radio. >> one of the amazing things, it was a courtroom, and for bryan to try to defend his christianity and creationism in

the courtroom, it was the context of the courtroom and cross-examination that made it so difficult for bryan to say what he really meant and what he was trying to convey about the importance of creation in his thinking and about the social darwinist logic that, as he saw it, was infecting american society. as michael pointed out. so it was a very difficult contest in which to make that argument. and so bryan ends his life really in sort of a man out of context, making an argument in a place where -- unlike 1896 where the context was perfect for bryan to make the cross of gold speech. the context of the courtroom in dayton, tennessee, proved very challenging for bryan. >> caller: hi, i'm calling because i've noticed that the gold standard debate appears to have made a comeback recently with networks like cnbc having debates about whether the gold center should be brought back. people will come out on the

other side of the issue arguing against the gold standard, against the federal reserve and for the government's ability to purchase its own currency. and those people in particular almost always seem to quote william jennings bryan to support their agent. so he seems to be making a comeback at least in that regard. my question then was if they themselves see any ways in which his cross of gold speech is relevant to the america we live in today. >> and let's bring it to the 2012 campaign, because ron paul has talked about the federal reserve and even governor perry has been critical of ben bernanke making some pretty sharp comments about him so. the-to-the caller's point and to what william jennings bryan was talking about a century ago. >> well, the gold and silver standard, the legacy of that debate i think was, among other things, the federal reserve system. it was also getting off the gold standard eventually in the early 1930s. but what bryan really wanted, and those who were on his side

in this debate wanted was a more flexible money supply. they wanted in hard times, interest to go down. in prosperous times, they were happy to have them go up. the kind of thing the fed does today, actually. when we get into economic trouble like we are now, people look for -- you might say penacias. but i think as a historian, i think that many ways one of the reasons we've been able to avoid serious economic downturn between the great depression and now is because we have had a flexible money supply and the fed has been able to take charge when necessary. i don't know, will might have a different point of view. >> i think that one of the big issues that bryan was trying to confront with the silver issue and the gold standard was the great contraction of the american economy, and we've lived through a similar contraction in