The Great Commoner unenthusiastically summed up. (Oddly, the full
sobriquet never appears.) In this latest addition to the Library of
American Biography series, Cherny (History, San Francisco State U.)
presents spellbinder William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) - who three
times lost the presidency, yet saw his causes triumph - as the sum
of family and ethnic/regional influences: "Bryan's religious faith
converged with his Jeffersonian political principles to buttress
his belief in the people and his commitment to controlling the new
economic behemoths of industrial America." Though Cherny twice
refers to Bryan's "magnetic personality," there's no evidence of
it. (Personal characterization, indeed, is a near-blank.) More
importantly, though he ultimately pronounces most of Bryan's causes
worthy, you'd hardly know it from the text. Both series-editor
Hamlin's introduction and Cherny's account make a point of farmer
over-borrowing as bringing on the farmer/Populist demand for easier
money, or "free silver," Bryan's first crusade as 1896 Democratic
candidate; but they take no cognizance of debt-appreciating
deflation or the international food crisis, and Cherny appears to
give no credence to other farmer grievances (like high railroad
rates and storage charges). Other concrete Bryan espousals - direct
election of senators, the secret ballot, the income tax,
anti-imperialism and specifically freedom for the Philippines
(focus of his second, 1900, presidential campaign), international
conciliation, women's suffrage - are simply thrown into the hopper.
Those issues that are discussed are the more technical ones of
tariff and banking reform (in which Bryan had a hand as Wilson's
secretary of state); the one cause of which he's said to be the
foremost proponent is prohibition. For a brief biography, moreover,
there is a surfeit of local, Nebraska political detail. (Cherny is
the author of Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of
Nebraska Politics; and that, plus his opposition to Laurence
Goodwyn's "counterculture" interpretation of Populism, inflects the
whole enterprise.) On the other hand, Cherny doesn't dismiss Bryan
as a humbug or a trifler - he assigns him a role as "a fighter" who
rallied many to his causes. The trouble is that the fighter doesn't
come alive and the causes don't loom as worth fighting for. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Three times the Democratic Party's nominee for president (1896,
1900, and 1908) and secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson,
William Jennings Bryan voiced the concerns of many Americans left
out of the post-Civil War economic growth. In A Righteous Cause:
The Life of Williams Jennings Bryan, Robert W. Cherny presents
Bryan's key role in the Democratic Party's transformation from the
conservatism of Grover Cleveland to the progressivism of Woodrow
Wilson. Cherny draws on Bryan's writings and correspondence to
trace his major political crusades for a new currency policy,
prohibition, and women's suffrage, and against colonialism,
monopolies, America's entry into World War I, and the teaching of
evolution in the public schools.
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