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Old Magic. Many a historian has supposed that the Bryan notions of "cheap money" vanished from the national scene in the bitter election of 1896. But that the Great Commoner's magic still casts a spell was evident throughout the Senate debate. Texas' little old Morris Sheppard, father of the 18th Amendment, hopped up during the silver debate to confess that he did not understand monetary matters but endorsed the Wheeler amendment "out of enthusiasm for the late William J. Bryan who thought there was something to the quantitative theory of money."*
Nosepicker & Upstart. The first time Carter Glass saw Bryan was when, as a Virginia delegate, he attended the 1896 convention in Chicago. Though not a 16-to-1 silver man he voted for Bryan's nomination because the other leading candidate, Richard Parks ("Silver Dick") Bland, picked his nose at dinner table. In 37 years Carter Glass has lost none of his personal prejudices, his sensitiveness to individuals. About Washington last week it was being freely said that one good reason why he might accept the Treasury portfolio was to spite Senator Huey Long who was working hard to keep him out of the Cabinet. In a Virginia gentleman's mind, a Missouri nosepicker and a loud Louisiana upstart would be closely bracketed.
* Such States: Arizona, California, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia.
* At Chicago in 1896 Bryan won the Democratic nomination on the fifth ballot with his speech for free silver. Most famed excerpt: "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying: 'You shall not press down upon Labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!' " He lost the election to McKinley by only 600,000 votes. That year William Edgar Borah ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a free-silver Republican. He voted for Democrat Bryan. Morris Sheppard, a law school student, was just old enough to vote.