from Harper's Weekly, 18 July, 1896.
You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply, that instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. 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 to them:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
William Jennings Bryant would lose to Ohioan William McKinley in one of the most dramatic presidential races in American History, and America would stay on the 'gold standard' more or less for the next 70 years.