state; if the party declares in favor of a gold standard, as you will if you pass this resolution; if you declare in favor of the impoverishment of the people of Nebraska; if you intend to make more galling than the slavery of the blacks the slavery of the debtors of this country; if the Democratic party, after you go home, endorses your action and makes your position its permanent policy, I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.” But Mr. Bryan was not destined to be driven from the Democratic party. He returned to Washington to persistently fight the financial policy of the administration until the Fifty-third Congress had adjourned. The withdrawal of the greenbacks, the granting of additional privileges to national banks, the Rothschild-Morgan gold-bond contract—these he opposed with the full measure of his mental and physical powers. In the meantime the Silver Democrats began the work of organization and propaganda in every state in the Union. In 1894 Bryan triumphed over his enemies in Nebraska in a convention whose platform declared, “We favor the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.” The Gold Democrats bolted the platform and the ticket. And until the last delegate was elected to the National convention which was to meet at Chicago in July, 1896, the Silver Democrats continued everywhere their efforts. They fought boldly and outspokenly against the administration they had helped to elect, and which was nominally Democratic. The result of their fight was the instruction of almost two-thirds of the delegates for an unambiguous free silver plank, with a certainty that the Gold Democrats, headed by President Cleveland, Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle, and hundreds of the leaders of the party, would bolt the action of the convention. Thus torn and rent by dissentions, with little hope or prospect for success, the Democracy faced that remarkable convention which was to repudiate the administration itself had placed in power. THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (1896) In the fall of 1896, within the period of one hundred days, William J. Bryan traveled eighteen thousand miles. He delivered over six hundred speeches to crowds aggregating five millions of people. Reduced to figures more readily comprehended, he averaged each day one hundred and eighty miles of railroad travel, interrupted by the stops necessary for the delivery of six speeches to crowds of over eight thousand each and fifty thousand in all. This was his personal service in the “first battle” for the restoration of bimetallism, acting as the standard bearer of three political parties.