Kansas City, MO Speech 2, 1896-09-12

Speech by William Jennings Bryan.

Speech by William Jennings Bryan
Saturday, September 12, 1896
The Corner of Eleventh Street and Grand Avenue, Kansas City, MO

Source: MR. BRYAN AT KANSAS CITY, Ten Thousand Workingmen Listen to the Candidate of Democracy., Omaha World-Herald (Sunday Edition), Sunday, September 13, 1896

HIS SPEECH UP TOWN.

"I want to suggest a few propositions for you to bear in mind in the discussion of the money question. Our opponents tell us that we are going in the face of natural laws. I assert that the advocates of free coinage are the only people in this campaign who base their arguments upon natural laws. (Applause.) The law of supply and demand is the great law of trade. We apply the law of supply and demand to the money question and say that when you increase the demand for gold you raise its price, just as you raise the price of anything else, by increasing the demand for it and that when you raise the price of gold in a gold standard country, you lower the price of all the products of which are measured by money. (Great applause.)

Our opponents talk about a fifty cent dollar. They refuse to recognize the fact that the moment the mints of the United States are opened to the free coinage of silver so that 70,000,000 of people can go out and secure silver, take it to the mint and convert into money and use that money to pay taxes and debts with, and for the purchase of property they refuse to recognize. I say, that the opening of our silver increases the demand for silver and raises the price of silver as measured by gold.

Now, another proposition. We believe not only that free coinage of silver will raise the value of silver bullion as measured by gold, but we believe that the demand created by the opening of the United States mints would be sufficient to take all surplus silver, and there being no silver on the market which cannot be converted into money at our mints to use in the development of our industries there will be no silver in the world which can be purchased for less than $1.29 per ounce in gold." (Great applause.)