William Jennings Bryan: Speech to Congress on Tariff Reform

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Twenty-first-century Americans have had only limited exposure to the issue of protectionism and tariff reform, principally through the debates surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the issue a hundred years or so ago was framed in different language and sometimes with considerably more passion. Originally designed to “protect” American manufactured goods against European competition by taxing imports, high tariff rates came under increasing criticism in the late nineteenth century from those who argued that most domestic industries were strong enough to survive on their own. Bryan capitalized on the long-standing suspicion among farmers, workers, and small businessmen that the tariff discriminated against the masses by forcing them to pay artificially high prices for manufactured products. He made the tariff a central issue in all of his political campaigns by insisting that high tariff rates amounted to an unnecessary subsidy for big business at the expense of ordinary citizens. In doing so, he frequently framed the issue as a battle against elite eastern industrial interests who placed their own economic self-interest above the interests of the common people of the heartland. His opponents, both Republicans and conservative Democrats, argued that tariffs actually promoted economic growth, which helped enrich the entire economy.

His detractors were quick to complain that although Bryan was an eloquent speaker, he had very little real understanding of economics. In short, they argued that his style bordered on demagoguery fed by widespread ignorance. Tariff reform remained a staple in Bryan's arsenal in the war on industrialists for almost two decades. In this speech, given during his first term in Congress, he demonstrates his skill at making his case that a high protective tariff—protectionism, he called it—was a threat to economic opportunity and even a potential danger to core American values. The original speech was three hours long and in printed form fills almost eighty pages, much of which is occupied with statistical evidence, but its most memorable lines are those with which he concluded his remarks, a notable characteristic of his oratory.

In this speech, Bryan attacks pro-tariff Republicans for claiming to protect infant industries from competition, but, in fact, they ignore the most infant and vulnerable industry of all, the American family. So, in a speech that begins as a statistical tour de force, Bryan reduces the argument to a single point, stating that a high protective tariff that raises prices on consumer goods is antithetical to home life. Thus, a young married couple cannot afford the basic necessities: furniture, kitchenware, rugs, even the lumber and paint from which they hope to build their first house. Quite literally, he argues, greedy industrialists and their congressional lackeys (in the Republican Party) are laying siege to the homes of America, by attempting to price them out of existence.

Part of Bryan's unstated message is also that homes, particularly those in the rural hinterlands, are economic units—a kind of business too—and are just as deserving of protection as wealthy industrialists. It is important to know that Bryan is borrowing the term home market from the protectionist vocabulary. In fact, one of the most effective protectionist lobbying groups was the Home Market Club. Bryan's solution to this threat to American values is to support the Democratic Party's tariff reduction plan, which warns protectionists to “let that home industry live.” His conclusion foreshadows a theme of egalitarianism that he used to great advantage in some of his most famous oratory, including the magnificent “Cross of Gold”Speech four years later. His final lines had his colleagues in the House on their feet when he intoned that someday “Congress will meet here to pass laws for the benefit of all the people” and “Democracy will be king! Long live the king!”

Bryan was still in his first term (and barely thirty years old) when he gave these remarks, and although he had managed to wangle a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, he was not yet a force in his party or in Congress. But this speech served notice that his oratorical skills were prodigious. Like-minded Democrats hailed the speech as brilliant, and even a few Republicans grudgingly acknowledged that Bryan was an impressive—albeit wildly partisan—performer; one even admitted that it was the best speech on the tariff issue that he had ever heard. Conservative members of his own party were less effusive, but virtually everyone, even casual observers in the House gallery, sensed that he had revived and recast the tariff controversy in compelling ways.