Bryan Money

Bryan Money is about the tokens and medals issued during the 1896 and 1900 presidential campaigns, and center around the controversy of Bryan's platform which had advocated the "free coinage of silver to gold at a 16 to 1 ratio."  Because some of the satirical medals closely resembled legal United States coinage of the time, the United States Secret Service was also involved. 

In the wake of the panic of 1893 came the dawn of the upcoming presidential campaign.  Farm prices collapsed, banks failed, unemployment was at 20%, and the economy was stalled.  The money supply was backed by gold.  The government could not print more greenbacks without gold backing.  The protectionists wanted high tariffs to keep out foreign goods and create jobs in the United States.

The Populist party's remedy was to substantially increase the money supply by adopting a dual monetary standard.  With the acceptance of silver as an additional backer, more money could be printed.  We had vast silver deposits in reserve as well as in the ground, waiting to be mined.  The working man supported this addition of silver.  These issues polarized the people of the West and South on side and the Northeast on the other, farmer against the industrialist, the well-to-do against the lower economic classes.

Candidates need an issue or platform upon which to sell themselves.  For the elections of 1896 and 1900 William Jennings Bryan chose the issue of the standard by which the government backed its currency --either with just gold or his choice of both silver and gold.  Supported by both the National Silver party and the Populist party, Bryan, a Democrat from Nebraska, ran unsuccessfully against William McKinley of Ohio in both of those races.

Fred Schornstein's Bryan Money constitutes a complete revision of Farran Zerbe's Bryan Money, which appeared in the July, 1926, Numismatist.  Reprinted in 1961, it has been virtually impossible for the collector to secure.  Hibler and Kappen had listed 10 pieces of Bryan Money in their So-Called Dollars (1963).  This complete revision catalogs more than 300 pieces of Bryan Money, with about 350 photographs and nearly 20 cartoons from the period.  It includes a numbering and classification system for Bryan Money and provides a cross reference between the Zerbe and Schornstein numbering systems.  This is the definitive work on political pieces relating to William Jennings Bryan’s presidential campaigns.

Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Publication Date: 2001
Size: 8.5x11
Pages: 136