Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/468

 422

BRYANSK — BRYANT questions and his bent of mind turned his attention to Riga, md Vitebsk, and the south-western railways wa Gomel, politics. In 1890 the first Congressional district of it has rapidly grown in importance, both as a depot for Nebraska, a Republican stronghold, elected Mr Bryan the export of grain, and chiefly hemp, and as an industrial as its representative in the fifty-second Congress, and in centre. The exports via the Desna alone (grain, timber, 1892 re-elected him to the fifty-third. He was placed on oils, tar and pitch, metallic goods) are valued at £■ 110,000 the Ways and Means Committee, an unusual honour to a per annum, while nearly 50,000 cwts. of hemp and new member, and was known as a worker. He also won £10,000 worth of hempseed oil are sent to St Petersburg high reputation as a debater. Two of his speeches in every year. It contains large gun works of the Crown, particular attracted wide attention, those against protection several hemp - spinning mills, rope works, &c. The on the 16th March 1892, and against the repeal of the silver Bryansk Byezhitsk works close by, at the junction of the purchase clause of the Sherman Act, 16th August 1893. His Desna with the Dnieper, have grown to be one of the zeal for bimetallism in the fifty-third Congress was the most considerable centres in Russia for the manufacture main cause of his failure to be re-elected to the next. As of railway rails and bridges, employing 5000 workers. editor of the Omaha World-Herald, Mr Bryan championed Population, 23,520. bimetallism in the press as vigorously as he had advocated Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1878), it in Congress, his articles being widely quoted and discussed. The Democratic party was radically divided on American poet and journalist, was born at Cummington, the monetary policy. To secure the repeal of the silver a farming village in the Hampshire hills of Western purchase clause of the Sherman Act, President Cleveland Massachusetts, 3rd November 1794. He was the second had used all the power he possessed. In spite of this, son of Peter Bryant, a physician and surgeon of no mean however, the sentiment in favour of opening the mints to scholarship, refined in all his tastes, and a public-spirited the free coinage of silver rapidly gained in party favour, citizen. Peter Bryant was the great-grandson of Stephen so that in the Democratic Convention of July 1896 at Bryant, an English Chicago, nearly two-thirds of the delegates were against Puritan emigrant the administration and its gold regime. Mr Bryan was to Massachusetts a delegate-at-large from Nebraska in this Convention. Bay about the year It was here, in the course of a heated debate on the proper 1632. The poet’s Democratic attitude to the currency question, that he made mother, Sarah his memorable declaration, “You shall not crucify man- Snell, was a dekind on a cross of gold.” With the silver majority of the scendant of “ MayConvention he at once became an idol, and next day flower ” pilgrims. he was nominated as candidate for the Presidency. Mr He was born in the Bryan spent the entire autumn of 1896 upon the hustings. log farmhouse built He opened the campaign in the centre of the “ gold ” by his father two country, at Madison Square Garden, New ork, with an years before, at the address of remarkable ability. He visited more than half edge of the pioneer the States of the Union and delivered more than six settlement among hundred speeches. But the opposition both without and those boundless within the Democratic party was too strong to be over- forests, the deep come. At the election in November the popular vote stamp of whose was 7,107,822 for McKinley and 6,511,073 for Bryan. beauty and majesty Of the electoral votes McKinley received 271 and Bryan he carried on his 176. Though defeated Mr Bryan not only remained the own mind and reundisputed leader of the Democrats, but his power and printed upon the the respect accorded to him rapidly increased. Between emotions of others 1896 and 1900, except the six months of the Spanish throughout a long war,’ in which he served as colonel of the Third ebraska life spent mainly amid the activities of his country’s growVolunteers, Mr Bryan devoted his entire time to study, ing metropolis. By parentage, by religious and political speaking and writing in the interest of his party. His faith, and by hardness of fortune, the earliest of American ability, his sincerity of character, his wide information, and poets was appointed to a life severely typical of the first his quick and accurate grasp of the new issues arising century of American national existence, and of the from the Spanish war, of which “ imperialism ” was the strongest single racial element by which that nation’s most momentous, drew to him the support of many who social order has been moulded and promoted. Rated by had opposed him in 1896. As the time for the Demo- the amount of time given to school books and college cratic Convention of 1900 drew on, it was seen that he classes, Bryant’s early education was limited. After the was the only possible candidate. He was again nominated village school he received a year of exceptionally good for the Presidency, and again he spent his whole time training in Latin under his mother’s brother, the Rev. through the campaign upon the hustings. He was, how- Dr Thomas Snell, of Brookfield, followed by a year of ever, once more defeated by the Republican candidate, the Greek under the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, and popular vote standing 7,206,677 for Mr McKinley, and at sixteen entered the sophomore class of Williams 6,374,397 for Mr Bryan, and the electoral vote 292 to College. Here he was an apt and diligent student through 155. This result appears to have been mainly due to the two sessions, and then, owing to the straitness of his fact that the platform again demanded the free coinage father’s means, he withdrew without graduating, and studied classics and mathematics for a year, in the vain of silver. hope that his father might yet be able to send him to Bryansk, a district town of middle Russia, in the Yale College. But the length of his school and college government and 90 miles by rail W.N.W. of Orel, pictur- days would be a very misleading measure of his training. esquely situated at the confluence of the Desna with the He was endowed by nature with many of those traits Bolva, which brings it in connexion with Kieff, via the which it is often only the final triumph of books and navigable Desna. Since it has been connected by rail with institutional regimen to establish in character, and a