Free Silver, Trusts, and the Philippines Persuasive
Speech
There are several great issues at stake in this campaign, but of course the greatest issue of all is
the issue of keeping the country on the plane of material well-being and honor to which it has been
brought during the last four years.
The one element more essential than any other to the prosperity of a great civilized nation is a
sound and stable currency. The only possible excuse for jeopardizing the prosperity of the whole
nation by attacking its system of currency is a conviction so intense that the issue must of necessity
be a burning one.
A word as to trusts. Beyond a question the great industrial combinations which we group in popular
parlance under the name of trusts have produced great and serious evils. There is every reason
why we should try to abate these evils and to make men of wealth, whether they act individually or
collectively, bear their full share of the country's burdens and keep as scrupulously within the
bounds of equity and morality as any of their neighbors.
But wild and frantic denunciation does not do them the least harm and simply postpones the day
when we can make them amenable to proper laws. Hasty legislation of a violent type is either wholly
ineffective against the evil, or else crushes the evil at the expense of crushing even more of good.
We need to approach the subject both with a firm resolution to abate the evils and in a spirit of hard
common sense as we search for the means of abating them.
Now a word specifically as to the Philippines. It is in connection with the Philippines that Mr. Bryan
has chiefly harped upon the “consent of the governed” theory.
Remember that to surrender the Philippines now to a little band of military usurpers would be to
surrender the islands to bloodshed and misery. Our stay in the islands is the condition precedent of
peace.
With us expansion means, as it always has meant, peace. So now the establishment of our rule in
the Philippines means to give the islands peace, and it is the only chance they have of getting
peace or of getting good government.
My fellow citizens, the truth as regards the present situation is simply and clearly that the American
people now have to decide whether or not they will play the part of a great Nation nobly and well.
To decline to do our duty is simply to sink as China has sunk. If we are to continue to hold our heads
high as Americans, we must bravely, soberly, and resolutely front each particular duty as it arises,
and it is because of the great truth contained in this principle that we appeal to every man,
Northerner and Southern, Easterner and Westerner, whether his father fought under Grant or under
Lee, whatever political party he may have belonged to in the past—to stand with us now when we
