Speech

By: William Jennings Bryan

Date: 1903

Source: Bryan, William Jennings. "The Road Problem." In Proceedings of the National Good Roads Convention, Held at St. Louis, Mo., April 27 to 29, 1903. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903.

About the Author: William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), a leading Democratic and Populist reformer, was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Most closely associated with the movement for the free coinage of silver (an inflationary strategy to ease the debt pressure on farmers), Bryan was a gifted orator, able to rouse his supporters to great passion. With the prosperity that followed the Spanish-American War (1898), Bryan's association with free silver and Midwestern agricultural interests hurt his political prestige. Nonetheless, he remained a popular and powerful Democratic leader up to his...