Sarah Lim: William Jennings Bryan stumped in Merced at turn of the century

During this presidential primary season, as candidates zigzag across the country and give as many stump speeches and shake as many hands as possible, one may ask who started this kind of campaigning?

Stephen Douglas may have invented the national stumping tour, but it was William Jennings Bryan who popularized the stumping tour through his railroad-stop campaigns during the election of 1896.

Bryan, one of the greatest orators of his time and champion of the common people, was in Merced at least three times during and after his three presidential bids from 1896 to 1917. Unlike other politicians who often used Merced as a convenient stop along the way to Yosemite National Park, Bryan saw Merced as fertile ground for populist ideas so he came to Merced to deliver a few of his major speeches.

In the late 19th century, Merced, a predominantly agricultural community in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, was experiencing an economic recession that plagued farmers throughout the nation. The crash of commodity prices, especially wheat prices, led to widespread foreclosures on farms.

One casualty of this economic crash was Merced city founder, wheat king and irrigation builder Charles Henry Huffman. His farmland and assets in the Crocker-Huffman Land and Water Co. was valued at about $10 million in 1888 as this was the price that his business partner, Charles Crocker, offered to buy him out. In the midst of the economic recession, Huffman sold his share of interest in the company for $600,000, packed up his family and moved to San Francisco in 1893.

It was in this climate that Merced was ready for Populist Democrats such as Bryan who advocated “free silver” in the 1896 presidential election. As the party’s nominee, Bryan believed that the increase of currency circulation through unlimited coinage of silver would help stabilize crop prices and help farmers repay their debts that had resulted from The Panic of 1893. Determined to be a voice for the common people, Bryan traveled the country extensively during the 1896 campaign and delivered over 500 stump speeches.

Merced County, in return, delivered 1,117 votes to Bryan while only 653 votes went to Republican presidential candidate William McKinley, who eventually won the election. After his first unsuccessful presidential run, Bryan began his national tour to galvanize support for bimetalism (the use of both silver and gold) instead of the gold standard. Six days before the one-year anniversary of his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, Bryan made his first visit to Merced on July 3, 1897, and delivered a bimetalism speech to an enthusiastic crowd on the east side of El Capitan Hotel.

The speech resonated with the residents of Merced County. Three years later, they would again deliver the county to Bryan in the 1900 election. Merced’s love affair with Bryan continued although Bryan lost his 1900 presidential bid. Bryan made his second visit to Merced when he stumped for Woodrow Wilson on Sept. 24, 1912. His whistle stop on the Santa Fe Railroad only lasted for 20 minutes, but drew a large gathering of people of all ages and from all over the county.

Bryan spoke passionately about the need for a government that was truly of the people, by the people and for the people, and the best person to lead such a government was New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson, not his opponents. Bryan pointed out that President William Taft was not a representative of real people since he was born and lived as an aristocrat, and that former President Theodore Roosevelt was not a true progressive since he was backed fully by Wall Street interests.

Such rhetoric reminded Merced residents of his commitment to fighting against the political and financial establishment for the common people. His whistle stop helped win Merced County for Wilson in the 1912 election as Wilson received 1,978 votes, beating Roosevelt by 400 votes.

Bryan’s third and most likely last visit to Merced was May 7, 1917, when he was invited by the Merced Chautauqua committee to give an address on the subject of “Fundamentals.” As he arrived at Hotel El Capitan by automobile, Bryan was treated to a special banquet in the hotel dining room with the prominent businessmen of the community. No doubt, many of them remembered his previous visits to the town.

By this time, Bryan had resigned from his cabinet post as secretary of state in the Wilson administration due to his pacifist stance against the U.S. entering World War I. Nevertheless, he believed that people should unify to support the government, especially during wartime, regardless of their ideologies. This relationship between men and government was one of the three fundamentals in his speech. The other two were the relationships of men to society and of men to God.

Corwin Radcliffe, a member of the Chautauqua welcoming committee, later remembered Bryan’s enthusiastic speech to more than 1,000 people was held in a large tent on a vacant lot at N and 17th Streets in one of his “Rad’s Ramblings” columns.

Bryan continued to add many miles to his travels and advocated for various causes including prohibition and women’s suffrage. In his final years, he concentrated his effort in lobbying the states to pass legislation to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools. His anti-evolution activism was best demonstrated in the Scopes’ Monkey Trial in 1925, where he fervently defended creationism.

Bryan’s legacy is very visible this election cycle. Not only did he popularize the modern-day national stumping tour, he also embodied a populist anti-establishment spirit.

For more history of Merced County, please visit the Courthouse Museum. Our current exhibit, “UC Merced at 10,” will end Sunday. Our next exhibit, “Gold Fever! Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush,” will open March 17.

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 9:28 PM with the headline "Sarah Lim: William Jennings Bryan stumped in Merced at turn of the century."