There was but one issue--and that the Bank. Clay had made it the issue with the officers of the institution and their allied business interests; the clever leaders of the Jackson forces made it an issue with the masses of the people, who had always looked with suspicion and dislike upon the powerful financial institution.[503] And then, perhaps, the “Emperor Nicholas” bitterly regretted having yielded to the blandishments of Clay. If he had not considered the cost in money to the institution when he yielded, Clay understood it as well as Webster. They knew that a fight against the “weak old man,” as they foolishly called Jackson, would be “no holiday affair.” Satisfied of the support of the business element, they had calculated the cost of reaching the people generally--and they had the work of Biddle cut out for him.[504] And almost immediately, Biddle was as deeply involved as Clay himself. The campaign plans of the two parties differed, since their special appeals were to different elements. The Clay men relied on the distribution, with Bank money, of the printed speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, of tracts and pamphlets. These, falling into the hands of the masses, were thrown aside. They were sympathetically perused by the bankers, merchants, manufacturers, preachers, professors, and lawyers who were in no need of conversion.[505] The Bank made desperate efforts to win to its support the press of the larger cities and towns. It was notoriously willing to prove its appreciation of such support with the coin of the realm.[506] That Webb’s paper had been won over with Bank money was common knowledge after the congressional investigation, and Amos Kendall, in the “Globe,” charged that the “Evening Post” had been “approached,” and that the “Standard” of Philadelphia had been offered five hundred dollars and a new set of type, and the inducement had been increased by five hundred dollars two days later. Thoroughly frightened, Biddle spent lavishly for the printing and distribution of speeches and articles. Mailing the president of the Kentucky Bank[507] Webster’s speech on the Veto, and an article reviewing the Message, he instructed that these, “as well as Mr. Clay’s & Mr. Ewing’s speeches on the same subject,” be “printed and dispersed.”[508] More than $80,000--an enormous sum for those days--was spent by the Bank under the head of “stationery and printing” during the period of the campaign. Thousands of friendly newspapers were bought in bulk and scattered broadcast, and Blair announced the discovery that “about four bushels of the ‘Extra Telegraph’ is sent to New York to a single individual for distribution.”[509] An analysis of Benton’s speech and a reply was printed in pamphlet form, and thousands flooded the country and burdened the mails.