The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly
VOLUME 67 ~ NUMBER 4 ~ OCTOBER 1958
Bryan's Benefactor:
Coin Harvey and His World
By JEANNETTE P. NICHOLS*
THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES are
"temperamentally given
to experiments, to impatient and
Utopian solutions," according to a
distinguished British historian of the
present day,1 following a line
of thought traversed by many other
analysts, domestic and foreign,
past and present. Few Americans would
deny that the nation has
shown a lively and persistent faith in
innovation and perfectability,
and that that faith has thrived in many
regions. The Middle West,
in its days of greatest fluidity,
spawned its full share of causes and of
saviors.
Of the venturesome folk who sought the
Mississippi Valley to
better their fortunes, to appease their
wanderlust, or to fulfill their
dreams, the progeny of not a few were
enticed yet further west;
and some of these, whom the Further
West of the nineteenth cen-
tury failed to satisfy, returned,
undaunted, to the valley to preach
various causes. Such restless
souls--rolling stones--sometimes
widened their
personal-betterment-seeking to embrace preachments
of reform to the generality. This type
tended to adopt protest as a
career and eagerly sought leadership of
one group after another.
The valley at times seemed rather
hospitable to the endeavors
* Jeannette P. Nichols is associate
professor of history at the University of Pennsyl-
vania.
1 Frank Thistlethwaite, The Great
Experiment: An Introduction to the History of
the American People (New York, 1955), 320.
300 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
of such people, and their youth in that
environment had helped to
breed in them a redoubtable faith to
surmount discouragement--
faith in the possibility of achieving
great things from small begin-
nings. In these people Middle West
environment, overlaid with
Further West experience, joined with
heritage to determine their
choice of objectives and their manner
of striving. It is not uninter-
esting to observe a case history of
this type of person, to note the
confluence of change and accident, and
the unfolding and flower-
ing of zeal. "Coin" Harvey
offers just such a case history.2
Among the settlements in far-western
Virginia in mid-nineteenth
century was the hamlet of Buffalo, an
aspiring locale of perhaps
two hundred souls3 situated
on the Kanawha River, twenty-three
miles up stream from where it empties
into the Ohio above Galli-
polis. The Putnam County farmers
thereabouts tilled fertile land,
and hope and aspiration stirred within
them. They found expres-
sion for their cultural ambitions by
establishing a joint-stock sub-
scription list--a device then
frequently used for such purposes--to
erect a two-story school building.
Across the front of its wooden porch
they inscribed the proud
words "Buffalo Academy 1849."
Such folk then were wont to do
such things in such circumstances. Nor
is it particularly surprising
to know that, by 1858, Buffalo Academy
pupils were exercising
sufficient resourcefulness to produce a
monthly publication, The
Wreath of the Kanawha Valley.4 Middle West "academicians"
were not unlikely to find expression
for their cultural ambitions.
Sharing in this active environment was
a family occupying a
2 A manuscript collection of William
Hope Harvey materials appears to be non-
existent; but his two daughters, Mrs.
Hope Harvey Hammond and Miss Annette
Harvey, have graciously provided the
writer with helpful family recollections. Harvey
left no will and is understood to have
had no habit of saving his papers; those pre-
served by his first wife, Anna Halliday
Harvey, up to the time in 1900 when he left the
family domicile, were consumed in the
fire which destroyed their home in 1901. Miss
Annette Harvey to the author, December
23, 1955. The son closest to their father,
Thomas William Harvey, is understood to
have had no family manuscripts. Mrs.
Hammond to the author, December 28,
1955.
3 The 1850 census gives no figure for
Buffalo; in 1860 the township is listed at
267.
4 On the academy environment see Charles
H. Ambler, History of Education in West
Virginia (Huntington, W. Va., 1951), 103, and West Virginia:
A Guide to the Moun-
tain State (New York, 1941), 420-421. It was at Buffalo Academy
that John McCaus-
land, the Confederate general, prepared
for Virginia Military Institute.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 301
house adjacent to the academy. There
abode, in 1851, Robert Trigg
Harvey and his wife, Anna Maria
DeLimbroux (Hope) Harvey,
with their daughter, Fannie, and three
sons, Thomas, Robert Jr.,
and Clayton. Robert senior was a
Virginian of Scotch-English an-
cestry, who according to family
tradition was descended from that
famous British scientist, the William
Harvey who discovered cir-
culation of the blood.5
Anna Harvey was an Episcopalian, hailed
from Kentucky, and
had Virginia ancestors including Joshua
Fry, who was long a pro-
fessor of mathematics at William and
Mary College in pre-Revolu-
tionary days.6 Mathematics
is not known, however, to have had
other emphasis in the ancestry of
"Coin" Harvey.
Anna had also some French ancestors, as
had many folk in the
valley, especially within a twenty-five
mile radius of Gallipolis. Every-
body had heard tales of the rosy hopes
and rude disappointments
of that optimistic band of French
immigrants, chiefly from the vi-
cinity of Paris and Lyons, who sixty
years earlier had founded the
"City of the Gauls" in happy
anticipation of a transit of civilization
far too rapid for hard frontier
realities.7 Other migrants of French
blood, coming up from Louisiana or down
from Canada were
probably less misled in seeking the
Ohio Valley and therefore the
more daring; their offspring, too,
would be unlikely to dilute such
venturesomeness as was usually
characteristic of the westward mi-
grant breed.
The Harveys, in adding another son to
their brood, August 16,
1851, named him William Hope, favoring
Anna's family name
5 Mrs. Hammond to the author, March 1, 1956.
6 Mrs. Robert Harvey was a daughter of
Anna C. Fry, daughter of Robert Fry, son
of the Rev. Robert Fry, son of Col.
Joshua Fry, under whom George Washington
served in a Virginia regiment in 1754.
Miss Annette Harvey to the author, November
28, December 23, 1955. Joshua Fry
figures in College of William and Mary, History
of the College of William and Mary
from Its Foundation, 1660 to 1874 (Richmond,
Va., 1874), 24, 81; also in "The
College of William and Mary" in H. B. Adams, ed.,
Contributions to American Educational
History (Washington, 1889), I, 36.
7 Much has been written of the early
settlement of the "City of the Gauls," of
which two articles in the Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Quarterly are es-
pecially useful: John L. Vance,
"The French Settlement and Settlers of Gallipolis,"
III (1891), 45-81, and John F.
McDermott, "Gallipolis as Travelers Saw It, 1792-
1811," XLVIII (1939), 283-303. See
also W. G. Sibley, French Five Hundred and
Other Papers (Gallipolis, Ohio, 1901).
302
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
as a middle name for their offspring. In
the case of William, Hope
was to prove particularly appropriate.
With the subsequent arrival
of yet another son, Harry, the family
reached its ultimate total of
eight persons. In the course of time,
luckily for the youngsters, they
were taken onto a farm, from which in
wartime the four younger
brothers could attend country school at
a safer place than Buffalo.
For the strong Unionist majority in
western Virginia had their
conflicts with the secessionist
sympathizers, among whom were some
of the Harvey clan,8 and the
town saw bloodshed.
Buffalo Academy pupils gave way to
soldiery when a skirmish
pocked the walls and porch of their
schoolhouse with grapeshot,
bullets, and Minie balls; and finally
hospital beds stood within. But,
meanwhile, the Unionist majority was
winning out, so that by June
30, 1863, the village was a point in a
new state, West Virginia.9
The war was not without its stirring
effects on the Harvey family.
The parents sent their
next-to-the-eldest child, Fannie, to a convent
for safekeeping, only to lose her (or so
they felt) because she be-
came a nun.10 Biggest brother
Tom had marched off to become a
young colorbearer in Lee's army and was
wounded.11 Three years
after war's end he proudly was to
receive from General Lee his di-
ploma as a graduate of Washington
College, with the degree of
bachelor of law.12
After Appomattox, learning resumed its
sway at Buffalo Academy,
permitting Billy Harvey to trudge into
town to cap his country-
school instruction with some two years
at the reconstituted school.
There, some neighborhood Ku Klux
activities may have enlisted the
youth's interest, for he later was
alleged to have been active in the
8 A Virginia brother of Robert Trigg
Harvey is understood to have lost an arm
fighting under Lee.
9 The western Virginians overwhelmingly
demonstrated their Unionist majority in
conventions and a popular election of
1861, and by ratifying a state constitution in
April of 1862; under a presidential
proclamation of April 20, 1863, the way was
cleared for West Virginia to become the
thirty-fifth state sixty days later.
10 In the Order of St. Joseph. Mrs.
Hammond to the author, March 1, 1956.
11 Miss Annette Harvey to the author, March 2, 1956.
12 Thomas was one of the fourteen graduates in 1868,
having attended there from
1867 to 1868; in 1871, the year after
Lee's death, the name was changed to Wash-
ington and Lee University. Washington
and Lee University, Catalogue of the Officers
and Alumni, 1749-1888 (Baltimore, 1888), 17-23; Washington and Lee
University,
Alumni Directory (Lexington, Va., 1949), 118, 320.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 303
Klan.13 The war apparently
left him with less than admiration for
some Union generals.14 However
that may have been, his mother
was eager for educational advantages
for her children,15 and Wil-
liam was ambitious and restless. He
taught school for some three
months at the age of sixteen, and the
next year he went into adja-
cent Cabell County, where, about two
miles below the village of
Guyandotte, on the bank of the Ohio
River in the midst of some
scattered farmhouses, there stood a
brick building housing Marshall
College.
This struggling institution had been
incorporated as a Methodist
academy back in 1838, and despite
recurrent vicissitudes had
achieved, after twenty years,
incorporation as a college. In wartime
the structure had served alternately as
an infirmary for wounded
soldiers and as an elementary school
taught by unpaid volunteers.
But by 1868 the college had been
rejuvenated, via state appropria-
tions and sharp community rivalries,
into a state "normal school,"
though instruction then was chiefly in
secondary-level, academic sub-
jects.16 There William spent
three months, helping himself along
thereafter with another three-month
school-teaching job, at seven-
teen.17
Next the law seemed a promising field,
and so, like many another
ambitious countryman living far from
formal requirements, Wil-
liam "read
law" and was admitted to the bar easily and early--in
13 In the heat of the 1896 campaign an Ashland,
Kentucky, policeman, J. W. King,
signed an affidavit dated September 22,
1896, claiming that "about the year 1868" he
and Harvey both resided in Buffalo, and
Harvey then intimated to King that he was an
active member and that joining might
help King "in his vocation in life." New York
Times, September 25, 1896.
14 A Harvey speech at Clinton, Iowa,
October 5, 1896 (as reported by the New
York Times, October 7), referred to Generals Sickles, Howard, and
Alger as "old
wrecks of the rebellion who have lost
all their honor and patriotism, and are tools of
political Shylocks." Even the
Republicans conceded that the remarks did not reflect the
attitude of Clinton silver men.
15 Mrs. Hammond to the author, March 1,
1956.
16 On Marshall College see Robert Toole,
"The Early History of Marshall Aca-
demy, 1837-1850," West Virginia History: A
Quarterly Magazine, XIII (1951-52),
120-126; Toole, "A History of
Marshall College, 1850-1886," ibid., XIV (1952-53),
28-38; also Ambler, Education in West
Virginia, 169-170, 174-175; A. R. Whitehill,
History of Education in West Virginia
(Washington, 1902), 39-40; West
Virginia
Guide, 244.
17 Mrs. Veta Lee Smith, secretary of Marshall College, to the author,
November
16, 1955; Miss Annette Harvey to the
author, November 28, 1955. The college rec-
ords of this period are incomplete.
304 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
his case at the age of nineteen, in
1870. He first hung out his
shingle in the county seat of rural
Cabell County at Barboursville, a
village of some 1,200 population,
somewhat smaller than Harvey's
native village of Buffalo.18 Here
he remained three years.
In court appearance the youth was not
without assets. His blue
eyes had a penetrating quality (which,
incidentally, they never
lost); his slenderness and
habitually-erect bearing added further sta-
ture to his five-feet, ten-and-one-half
inches, and from the outset he
showed a penchant for unusual devices.
This penchant was early
demonstrated; in his defense of a white
client under prosecution for
marrying (contrary to West Virginia
law) a colored woman, Har-
vey ended his defense with this
challenge: "Can anyone in this
courtroom prove that this man
has not a drop of colored blood in
his veins?" The case was
dismissed.19
Meanwhile, Cabell County was being set
agog by Collis P. Hunt-
ington of Central Pacific fame,
a-hunting for an Ohio River rail-
head for his Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad. To the bitter anguish
of all loyal Guyandottians, Huntington
went a little past their vil-
lage and chose the locale of Marshall
College, where in 1871 a
new town was chartered, appropriately
named for the potentate.
Huntington was a "right big little
town" when the first train pulled
in, early in 1873.20 To William Hope
Harvey it evidently beckoned
with opportunity for a field of
broadened activity. His eldest
brother, Thomas Hope, undertook to
practice law there and for a
couple of years (1874-75) he had
William as an associate attorney
--until a lively old river town further
up the Ohio attracted the
restless twenty-four-year-old.
The thrust of the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad into the lower
Ohio Valley, and that of the Baltimore
and Ohio further north-
ward, only gradually undermined the
little river towns. One of the
bustling little centers was Gallipolis,
Ohio, about forty miles above
Huntington, and but little below the
point where there empties into
the Ohio that Kanawha stream which the
Buffalo academicians had
18 The 1870 census listed Barboursville at 1,228, and Buffalo at 1,448.
19 Mrs. Hammond to the author,
December 28, 1955.
20 Some aspects of early Huntington
history are related in West Virginia Guide,
240-241.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 305
immortalized. Gallipolis by 1870 had
achieved a population over
three times that of Barboursville,21
and the town, long since recov-
ered from the disastrous French
experiment, still was prospering on
river traffic, like many another center
in the Great Valley.
To Gallipolis in 1875 came William Hope
Harvey. Coming up
the paved incline from the water, he
could see the parapet running
along the bank, and a central square,
open towards the river but
built up on its three other sides. He
found streets lined with tall
elms set in neat, regular array. Many
of the homes were of old stone
or brick and frame, set rather near the
ground, with front stoops
hugging the sidewalk, and windows in
the French style. Even sixty
years later than this, it would seem to
a Frenchman that the town
still retained "a distinctly
Gallic atmosphere."22
The place had an air of pleasurable
activity and excitement.
Down the slow-moving, curving Ohio,
past sandbars and flat is-
lands, came tugboats shepherding barges
piled with coal and with
products of Pittsburgh, Wheeling, and
other river towns. Great
rafts of sawed timber came floating
along. At the wharves all man-
ner of itinerant craftsmen, merchants,
and dispensers of entertain-
ment tied up, to serve customers. There
villagers could find furni-
ture-makers, sawyers, blacksmiths,
"storeboats," and "shanty-boats"
--also showboats with orchestras and
gaily decorated saloons and
cabins. Travelers from Gallipolis to
Parkersburg could get there
quickly on the Chesapeake; for
Pomeroy they took the Humming-
bird. Gallipolis honeymooners bound for Cincinnati could
board
the Andes, with its musical
whistle, white cabin, and chandeliers
that tinkled.23 It was in
this attractive environment that the young
lawyer from Huntington met Anna, the
daughter of John T. Halli-
day; she was a native of Delaware,
Ohio, four years his junior, and
by all accounts a fine personality.
They were wed June 26, 1876.
But by some lucky chance Gallipolis
could not hold William and
Anna just then. They left that same
year for their first city experi-
ence. They traveled some 225 miles
northward to Cleveland, then
21 3,711.
22 Gilbert Chinard, "Gallipolis and Dr. Saugrain," Franco-American
Review, I
(1937), 201-207.
23 Writers' Program of the Work Projects
Administration in the State of Ohio,
Gallipolis (n. p., 1940), 29-34.
306 THE OHIO HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
well past 100,000 population and
expanding vigorously in com-
merce, industry, transportation, steel,
oil--and labor strife. Here
surely must be litigation enough to
nourish a nascent practice. The
Harvey family began to grow, too, with
the coming of little Mary
Hope and Robert Halliday. Yet Cleveland
did not satisfy, when
word came of broader possibilities at
the foot of Lake Michigan.
Chicago was hurrying toward a
population of half a million--
and doubtless a wealth of litigation.
Thence the Harveys moved in
1879, and there their second son,
Thomas William, was born. Yet,
Chicago lacked something--something it
was destined to provide
abundantly thirteen years later--and in
1881 the Harveys moved
back to the familiar, but much quieter,
Gallipolis environment. A
position as attorney for wholesale
houses in Ohio made it possible
to use that town as headquarters; and
so they settled down in the
long-established home area of Anna's
parents.24
The Harveys had excellent reason to
congratulate themselves on
their wanderlust, for during their
absence (in 1878) an up-river
boat, unloading yellow fever at every
landing, had approached Gal-
lipolis for "disinfecting."
With the dread plague it decimated house-
holds Anna and William had known. But
recuperative powers were
strong, here as elsewhere in the
beckoning Middle West, and
within two years after the plague the
villagers numbered 4,400.
Anna and William found, too, that
Gallia County now had ac-
quired a railroad--the Gallipolis,
McArthur, and Columbus--con-
tributing to a changing economy.25
Altogether, for some three
years the current of life flowed along
rather uneventfully for the
Harvey family by the riverside at old
Gallipolis.
But fate had decreed that William
should establish his brood in
six different homes before he was
forty. Stakes could not stay
down for long. Out in Colorado rich,
lead-silver ore discoveries
of 1878 had been causing silver to
supplant gold, for a time, as
the state's leading mineral. Silver
production there was rising
steadily--in fact continued to rise
until 1893. Down in the south-
west corner of Colorado prospectors
crossing the continental divide
24 The 1880 census listed the township,
as a whole, at 5,227.
25 Gallipolis, 30, 33-35.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 307
made rich silver strikes in Ouray and
adjacent counties.26 An errand
out there for a client in 1883 infected
the thirty-two-year-old
William with the lure of the mines--a
lure irresistible to many
persons in the United States. So in
1884 the Harveys pulled up
stakes again, bound for the Rockies.
Their westward party con-
sisted of William and Anna (expecting
another little one soon) and
little Mary, Robert, and Tommy--ranging
in age from near seven
down to three--plus ten picked young
laborers.
Arrived in Colorado, Harvey started
operations on claims in the
rich Red Mountain district about eight
miles above Ouray. A minor
tunnel operation, "The Silver
Bell," particularly attracted him.
There the tenderfoot laborers cut
timbers and dragged them up to
the chosen site, building an
engine-house, an ore-assorting shed, a
bunkhouse, and a mess hall. A little
way off down the mountainside,
they erected for the Harvey family a
cabin of numerous rooms
looking out on a far-reaching vista.27
The Rockies cast their spell over the
family, as they have done
to so many others. When the youngsters
from the comparatively
level Ohio riverside put elbows on
their Colorado windowsills and
looked out on the vast panorama, they
were wont to imagine
themselves traveling afar on the clouds
that floated before excited
vision. Meanwhile their father became
engrossed in mining opera-
tions. Wintertimes he sent his wife and
four children (daughter
Annette had arrived shortly after they
reached the mountains) to
the California coast, where he visited
them at Christmastime. Back
at the mines without them, he lived in
a room partitioned out
of one corner of the engine-house,
close to the sound of the winches.
As an engineer explained it to little
Mary Hope one summer's
day, "your papa sleeps like a boy
every night all winter as long
as the buckets come up and down like
clockwork. But let the
teeniest stop come, and he's out of his
room and down that shaft
to see for himself what's
happened." These partly-clad, nocturnal
dashes were to prove perfect for
contracting rheumatism. Harvey's
26 The cluster of mining centers named
Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride made min-
ing history at the time.
27 The move to Colorado and the early days there were described in the
letter of
Mrs. Hammond to the author, December 28,
1955.
308
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
superintendency of "The Silver
Bell" continued some three years,
during which the mine was reputed to have become the
second-
largest silver producer in its
vicinity.
Unhappily, mine developers encounter
grave obstacles. Wherever
transportation costs run high they
restrict operations to the higher-
grade ores. The costs of deepening mine
works, and of improving
milling and smelting, tend to supplant
small operators with large
corporations. Displaced independent
miners tend to swell the
labor supply and to lower wages. In
Colorado, labor unrest came
to erupt in strikes. Worse, close observers noted that
while silver
production was still rising, the market
value of the metal was
dropping ominously; the price of a fine
ounce in New York aver-
aged 111.2 cents in 1884, 97.9 cents in
1887.28
Production of silver lost its
fascination. William Hope Harvey
decided to abandon his mine
superintendency. He took up real
estate development, combining it with
the law. He tried them out
successively in Pueblo, Denver, and
Ogden, Utah. Gratifying, surely,
was a Pueblo experience. More than
halfway across southern
Colorado, to the east of Ouray, was
this booming town, then enjoy-
ing a heyday as Colorado's most active
industrial site, with four
smelters going full blast. There Harvey
developed a subdivision
and actively pushed (according to
tradition) an "Elixir of Life"
which reputedly helped many ailments
and was basic to well-being.29
Much of his energy found pleasurable
outlet in a special civic
promotion, in itself characteristic of
ambitious communities of this
period. Philadelphia's Centennial
Exposition of 1876 had spawned
lesser expositions hither and yon, and
there was talk of a gigantic
display at Chicago. Exposition
"palaces" to advertise regional
development became popular, with the
palace taking the name of
a local product, such as coal, ice, and
corn. General Robert A.
Cameron of Canon City told Coloradoans
they should have a
"Mineral Palace." A baker's
dozen of prominent citizens formed a
board of directors, and with support
from Colorado mining inter-
ests issued capital stock of $150,000.
Harvey, although not con-
28 Report of the
Director of the Mint (Washington,
1932), 127.
29 Colorado: A Guide to the Highest State (New York, 1941), 187.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 309
tinuously one of the directors, was
most outstanding in enthusiastic
promotion of the idea into reality.30
They aimed to have a palace more
magnificent than any previous
exposition building, and the results of
their efforts furnished a
capital demonstration of artistic
impulses of the period. Adopting
a design conceived by a local
architect, Otto Bulow, as a combina-
tion of "Egyptian" and
"Indian" styles, they produced in 1890 an
ornate structure 244 by 134 feet in
size, constructed of wood and
plaster. It housed an extensive
collection of Rocky Mountain min-
erals, displayed in cabinets lining the
walls and surrounding interior
columns "from floor to line of
sight."
Around the exterior ran an eight-foot
frieze portraying pioneer
mining life, supported by stone columns
twenty-eight feet high.
Twenty-four domes, large and small,
surmounted the whole, and
and the flora, fauna, and fossils of
Colorado were featured in vari-
ous decorations molded in plaster.
The interior boasted a dummy pipe organ
with pipes and pedals
of lead and with keys of copper. The
stage was embellished with a
fountain in a grotto made of great
natural stalactites and stalag-
mites, with "King Coal" presiding
on one side and a "Silver
Queen" on the other; these large
figures were constructed of coal,
tin, zinc, and papier mache. The
queen's scepter was topped with
a twelve-inch replica of a silver
dollar, in fulfillment of her mis-
sion to preach the parity of silver
with gold. Her hair of white
glass, and her gown and scarf set with
bright-colored minerals
and blue crystals, made her a gay and
attractive hostess, presiding
over the grand opening ball on the
historic night of July 4, 1890.
A street parade, with a barbecue and
speech-making at the fair
grounds, in the best gala tradition of
proud American cities, had
marked a day of fulfillment for the
sponsors of Pueblo's "Mineral
Palace," including William Hope
Harvey.
Thereafter the family tarried briefly
in Denver, but Denver
proved destined to join the ranks of
places which lost their charm.
30 Data
on the "Mineral Palace" promotion came from the Pueblo State
Journal
and the Sunday Chieftain, April
25, 1954, January 2, 1955; letters from Frank S. Hoag,
Jr. (publisher of these papers), and
from Ralph C. Taylor (news director), June 19,
July 6, 1956; Frank Hall, History of
the State of Colorado (Chicago, 1889-95), III,
480-483. The structure fell into decay
and was demolished about 1942.
310
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
The next trek was to Ogden, Utah, where
Harvey again combined
law and real estate and perhaps planned
to settle more permanently.
For their home, he purchased a cottage
on a one-acre lot at Twenty-
seventh Street and Jefferson Avenue. He
carefully improved the
homestead, turning the house around
ninety degrees so that it
faced Jefferson Avenue, making various
additions to the structure,
and fronting it with a red sandstone
coping to give it a touch
of elegance.
His business investments included,
among other properties, a
frontal of about one mile along Great
Salt Lake. He determined to
promote Ogden with a festival modeled
after the New Orleans
Mardi Gras, even importing the king and
queen of the original
Mardi Gras for the occasion.31
Unhappy tradition has it (apparently
unverifiable) that Harvey made himself,
personally, guarantor of
the outlay for the carnival, which
shared the financial debacle of
many carnivals and involved him in the
ruin.32
Such a disaster could have been due, in
part, to the current hard
times, especially hard in the
silver-mining states. Despite the silver
purchase act of 1890, requiring the
federal government to buy four
and one-half million ounces of silver
monthly (supposedly the
national level of production), the
price of silver would not remain
buoyant. The year 1893 brought the
onslaught of the panic, repeal
of the silver purchase act,33 and
the aggravated depression, with
silver falling to an 1893 average of
78.2 cents an ounce. The real
estate business in Utah perforce shared
in the general ruin.
Back in the Colorado which the Harveys
had left behind them,
the silver collapse hastened a shift in
mining emphasis from silver
back to renewed gold development. But
gold and Mr. Harvey had
little affinity for each other; and by
1893 he had come to feel an
antipathy for gold monometallism which
he determined to express
with vigor and effectiveness. Earlier,
he seems not to have identified
31 Material on the Ogden stay was kindly
provided by Miss Annette Harvey in a
letter to the author, December 19, 1957.
32 Utah: A Guide to the State (New
York, 1941), 212, 312. The lack of data on
the moves into various localities has
led to several errors in this Utah source.
33 The American effort to sustain the price of silver by government
subsidy is de-
scribed in Jeannette P. Nichols,
"Silver Diplomacy," Political Science Quarterly,
XLVIII (1933), 565-588, and "The
Politics and Personalities of Silver Repeal in the
United States Senate," American
Historical Review, XLI (1935), 26-53.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 311
himself nationally with silver
agitation, although he occasionally
attended meetings of the
Trans-Mississippi Congress and joined
members of it in expressing active
interest in bimetallism.34 How-
ever, he was not a member of the
"National Silver Committee" of
1890, nor of the executive committee of
that committee, nor em-
ployed by them, as far as
ascertainable.35 But now he struck out
on his own.
He chose Chicago as the scene of his
labors against gold and
for silver. It had not proved too
hospitable to revolutionary preach-
ments of foreign inspiration,
especially after the Haymarket bomb-
ing. But Harvey's
"radicalism" was of the native variety, and the
climate of the Middle West was to prove
excellently adapted to
the campaign which he was by way of
formulating. Chicago now
boasted more than a million inhabitants
and was outstripping Cin-
cinnati, St. Louis, and Cleveland as
the greatest center of middle-
western activity. Thither Harvey moved
his family in May of 1893.
He chose a location not far from
"the heart" of Chicago--134
Monroe Street. Inside of eighteen
months he--heretofore unknown
nationally--had made his address one of
the commonly known
places in the Middle West if not the
nation. There he established
and operated his "Coin Publishing
Company," devoted to preaching
the gospel that gold monometallism
enabled monopoly to maintain
a strangle hold on the common people,
which they could loosen
only by establishing free coinage of
silver at a ratio to gold of
16 to 1.
First he issued a weekly magazine, Coin, which lasted but a few
months. "Coin's Financial
Series" proved quite a different matter.
It was a sequence of short books,
usually paperbacks with yellow
covers--a satiric touch--manufactured
of the cheapest stock to
permit sale "quarterly for $1.00 a
year, single copies 25 cents.
Clothbound copies available at $1.00
each."36 Number 1 was
34 The
first of a number of "Trans-Mississippi" congresses appears to have
been
convened in 1891; they received passing
attention in the New York Times, March 28,
May 20, 1891, February 25, 26, 27, 1892,
November 28, 1894, and the New York
Tribune, May 10, 1895. Their resolutions went to the United
States Congress and
were aired by mountain-state
congressmen.
35 National Executive Silver Committee, Silver
in the Fifty-first Congress (Wash-
ington, 1890).
36 The advertisements printed on front and back pages of his various
publications
are the principal source of information
as to their number, contents, and marketing.
312 THE OHIO
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Bimetallism and Monometallism (78 pages), an earnest, British-
oriented bimetallic argument by
Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, pub-
lished in December of 1893.37 Number 2
was Coin's Hand Book
(46 pages), a compilation of
pro-16-to-1 figures selected and ar-
ranged by Harvey.
Number 3 was Harvey's masterpiece, Coin's
Financial School.
The author had had a crippling bout
with rheumatism, but from
his sickbed, as soon as he recovered
use of his hands,38 he began
writing its 168 pages, and they came
off his press in June of 1894.
It was this book, skillfully preaching
a single, simple cure for the
many ills of that unhappy time, that
made of Harvey a Bryan bene-
factor. Using what he termed an
"allegory"--a form he much
favored as enabling an author to clothe
argument in the garments
of everyday experience--Harvey told a
story of meetings which
he never claimed to be actual, but
which many of his readers
accepted as real occurrences. The story
seemed the more credible
because the villains of the piece
included the persons whom the
commonalty were most eager to blame.
Perusal of the pages demonstrates the
perfect tuning of the
writing to the times. Here is a story
of how "Coin, a young financier
living in Chicago . . . conducted in the
Art Institute," May 7-12,
1894, a school of finance. The sons of
well-knowns, and well-
knowns themselves, here attend and
receive instruction from a
bright little fellow dressed in black
silk stockings, tight knicker-
bockers, evening tails, stiff shirt,
and bow tie. Journalists, econo-
mists, bank presidents, and university
professors more or less
humbly ask questions, and often times
admit conversion to Coin's
gospel that free silver at 16 to 1
would restore prosperity.
Coin commenced with a barbed plea for
tolerance: "'If there is
anyone present who believes that all
who differ from him are
lunatics and fools, he is requested to
vacate his seat and leave the
room.' The son of Editor Scott, of the Chicago
Herald, here arose
37 The second edition of Coin's
Financial School carried an advertisement for No. 1,
stating that the large demand for it had
caused a reissue "on elegant bookpaper and
neatly bound," to be had, postpaid,
for twenty-five cents, "Regular discount to the
trade."
38 Mrs. Hammond to the author, December
28, 1955.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 313
and walked out. Coin paused a
moment."39 But quickly the first
lecture proceeded with eager questions and patient
answers. "Young
Medill, of the Chicago Tribune," stated a
gold argument of his
father's, which Coin contradicted.
"Then looking at young Medill,
Coin asked him if he had answered his
question. The young
journalist turned red in the face and
hung his head, while young
Wilson [of Farm, Field and Fireside]
muttered something about
Englishmen owning the Tribune."40
The fame of the first day's lecture
brought, on the second
day, an audience made up predominately
of capitalists, merchant
princes, and lawyers of local and
national reputation, bent on haras-
sing Coin. "Lyman Gage, president of
the First National Bank of
Chicago," led off in this effort,
failed, and at the close of the session,
he and others like him "walked out
of the room in a thoughtful
manner." They had listened to the
words of the "boy" and "been
compelled to give assent to his plain
and unanswerable views."41
On the third day Coin's replies to John
R. Walsh, "president of
the Chicago National Bank ... floored
the great financier," accord-
ing to a purported quotation from an Inter
Ocean editorial, and the
Chicago Times found Coin "unanswerable." On the fourth day
the
crowded hall led the audience to demand
a $2.00 admission charge;
Coin yielded "with the
understanding that the proceeds should go
to the 'soup houses' of Chicago."
Almost a note of autobiography
entered that day's lecture, when Coin
explained the speculative
nature, uncertain returns, and high
costs of silver mining: "In the
end ten lose to where one gains."42
The fourth day found "Professor
Laughlin, head of the school
of political economy in the Chicago
University" falling afoul of
Coin in challenging his figures on the
price of silver, and having
to admit he "was satisfied with the
answer. . . 'I am glad these
questions are asked,' said Coin, 'These
statements when used and
39 William Hope Harvey, Coin's
Financial School (1st ed., Chicago, 1894), 5.
Scott subsequently returns, apologizes
to Coin, begs permission to stay, and is retained
as a pupil on condition that he tolerate
others' views.
40 Ibid., 9. Victor F. Lawson, Jr., of the Chicago Evening News and
William Henry
Smith, Jr., of the Associated Press were
among other journalistic pupils.
41 Ibid., 25, 41, 42.
42 Ibid., 47-48, 67, 68, 74.
314
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
not answered confuse the people.'"
The discomfited Laughlin
"moved nervously in his chair, but
said nothing." Here was "an
object lesson," wrote Harvey, of
what happens when the theorist
encounters "the practical
statesman." Laughlin's "mental faculties
had trained with his salary. . . .
Combined capital all over the
world had been using professors of
political economy to instruct
the minds of young men to a belief in
the gold standard ....
There sat a representative professor on
political economy, at home
when with his school boys, but
powerless and confused in the pres-
ence of an adversary who courted his
questions." The newspapers
on the morning of the fifth day, wrote
Harvey, "twitted Professor
Laughlin with his attempt to trap the
little bimetallist by an
unfair question."43
On the sixth and last day of the
school, the smiling and victorious
Coin took a turn at asking
questions--of Lyman Gage. Coin asked
him where the selling of more bonds to
England, to buy gold, would
end. The hapless banker's final
response was recorded thus by
author Harvey: "'I don't know,'
hesitatingly replied Mr. Gage,
and with bewilderment in his face he
resumed his seat." The
school closed with another suggestion
of autobiography. "A fine-
looking gentleman . . . Mr. J. L.
Caldwell, president of the First
National Bank of Huntington, West
Virginia," mounted the plat-
form to call for three cheers for Coin.
"The hip! hip! hurrahs!
were heard through the open windows for
two squares away."44
One more triumph awaited Coin.
Petitioned by his many admirers,
he held a reception May 13 at the
Palmer House, then Chicago's
most renowned hostelry, at which he was
stopping. Any senator
coming down the receiving line drew
comments from Coin. He
advised "Senator S. M. Cullom of
Illinois" that United States mints
should be thrown open "to the
silver of the world." Senator
Sherman of Ohio was not allowed to
escape unscathed (although
he was not represented as in Chicago
that week). A "Mr. W. Y.
Miles, of Columbus, Ohio, a large, fine
looking, wholesale merchant
of that city, and a great admirer of
Senator Sherman," asked Coin
about Sherman's contention that
overproduction had lowered the
43 Ibid., 68, 69,
82, 83, 93.
44 Ibid., 140, 148-149.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 315
value of silver. Coin warmly asserted
that government statistics
proved that this was untrue; he urged
the people to "'try Senator
Sherman for veracity, and inquire into
the motive of him and
others for making this and similar
deceptive statements to the pub-
lic.' And Mr. Miles and the line of
callers passed on."45
On this note Harvey and Coin closed the
Financial School. Such
was the technique of the
"allegory." It offered solace to everyone
struggling against the hard times,
endorsing their divers resent-
ments against bankers, editors,
politicians, Jews, and Englishmen--
resentments against the successful, the
learned, and the notable.
In the same genre, it convincingly
entertained its readers through
the crude but effective drawings of H.
L. Godall. He drew Senator
Sherman slicing off Silver's head with
a pen (p. 17); two pages
further on Silver was assassinated at
the mint. Factories whirred
under bimetallism, stood stark and
still under monometallism
(p. 21). The cranium of the businessman
was exposed, filled with
wheels manipulated by a string in a
banker's hand (p. 26). Farmers
worsted a politician (p. 43) and
subsequently proceeded to buy
theater tickets with produce (p. 45).
The single standard appeared
variously as a one-armed, one-legged,
or one-eyed figure (pp. 40,
46, 48); and Sherman and Cleveland
busily undermined the silver
part of the foundation of a gold-silver
home (p. 51). The American
cow was shown as fed by the West, and
milked by New York
bankers, with New England financiers
carting off the milk (p. 91).
Thin, bankrupt farmers confronted
bloated plutocrats (p. 112); a
farmer paid for one restaurant meal
with four bushels of wheat
and four of corn (p. 115). A Rothschild
octopus held the world
in its tentacles (p. 123) and England
strangled the maiden Pros-
perity while Silver--in chains--looked
on helplessly (p. 129). A
Jewish Shylock clutched his gold (p.
144) and the entrance to a
gold standard structure was adorned
with skull and bones (p. 149).
William Jennings Bryan, visiting
Harvey's home, could scarce
shoulder his broad self through the
hallway, between the triple
stacks of the School there piled
high awaiting mailing to the thous-
ands of eager, would-be readers.46
As manufacture and sale of it
45 Ibid., 150, 151, 153-155.
46 Mrs. Hammond to the author, December
28, 1955.
316
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
was never conducted in a formalized,
routine manner,47 it is impos-
sible to ascertain the precise volume
of sales; the lowest serious
estimate is 650,000, the highest
"over one million."48 Efforts to
counteract it, made by
"goldbug" leaders and press, seemed but
to enhance its popularity. At
twenty-five cents for some of the
paper-bound copies it was within the
reach of practically everyone,
and when sold at fifty cents or one
dollar the deterrent was not
heavy. It was serving as a powerful
crystallizing agent in a free-
silver movement originated by others.
The office of the Coin Publishing
Company expanded to include
additional quarters at 115 Monroe
Street, where the tall, slender
figure of Harvey moved rapidly through
a twelvemonth of un-
ceasing activity as author and
publisher. To his 1894 output he
added a second edition, of 100,000
copies, of the School at twenty-
five cents, and two editions of Number
4 of the series, A Tale of
Two Nations. In its three hundred pages Harvey employed the
form of a novel to denounce the
"crime" of silver demonetization
and to picture bankers of the Jewish
race as bribing United States
senators in order to bend Washington's
monetary policy to London's
desires. Therein, a Bryanesque type
rescued the beauteous maiden
from her affectionate but corrupt
senatorial guardian's mansion,
and did this so gallantly that 100,000
copies were put out in a
second edition.49 Henry G.
Miller provided Number 5 of the series,
a 110-page bimetallic argument
reprinted in the Chicago Times.
47 In midsummer of 1894 some of the
Harvey output was advertised through a
coupon scheme of the Chicago Times. C.
H. Harrison to Bryan, August 8, 1894, and
W. G. Abbott to Bryan, August 21, 1894.
Bryan Manuscripts, Library of Congress.
The Arena Publishing Company of Boston
took Coin's Financial School and similar
literature in quantities of 500 to
1,000, and reviewed, advertised, and pushed their
sale for sixty percent of the sales
receipts. Smart to Bryan, February 8, 1895. Bryan
Manuscripts.
48 Sales passed 300,000 in the first
year; are "believed" to have reached 625,000
up to 1899; and his widow is cited as
estimating the total at 1,000,000 in the United
States plus "several hundred
distributed free." Frank L. Mott, Golden Multitudes: The
Story of Best Sellers in the United
States (New York, 1947), 170-171. Publishers'
Weekly, February 22, 1896, gave its sale at its height at 8,500
daily, with over 1,000,-
000 sold before the end of the 1896
campaign.
49 The back pages of Harvey's
publications sometimes mentioned volume of sales
and often listed different prices for various numbers
in the "Coin" series. Some edi-
tions of No. 2 (the Hand Book) were listed at
ten cents; Nos. 3 and 4 (the School
and the Tale of Two Nations) sometimes
were sold at fifty cents apiece; but these
three, plus No. 1 (Walsh's Bimetallism
and Monometallism), could be had on a "club
rate" for a dollar, in various grades of paper and
binding.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 317
The 1895 output included, among others,
Coin's Financial School
Up to Date, as Number 6 in the series; this 200-page, illustrated
book by Harvey was dedicated to readers
of the School and was
to be read "only" by them. Number
7 was the title chosen by
Harvey to include in one paperback his
debate with Professor J.
Laurence Laughlin of the University of
Chicago--an actual occur-
rence--and his favorite free-silver
arguments.50 The Patriots of
America, Number 9, presented Harvey's unique proposal for
achiev-
ing realization of monetary reform by
having the plans for it laid
in semi-secrecy.
With other devices besides books Harvey
appealed for votes for
free silver. From 115 Monroe Street
were dispensed silver badges
at fifty cents each (lower, wholesale),
austerely designed in the
form of a shield about one and
one-quarter inches measurement
each way, bearing the message "16
to 1." "A neat place to wear
them" was the vest under the coat
lapel, except on election day,
when they should appear on the lapel,
"or in plain sight on the
bottom of the vest . . . when open coat
is worn." A "Chicago
Silver Club" had its headquarters
at 115 Monroe Street, offering a
lecture bureau with speakers who spoke
for $20.00 and paid their
own expenses; local committees could
find the $20.00 by charging
admission and "also by sale of
books and badges." Also, the club
would assist in organizing a bold,
patriotic protest, essential since
"a monied aristocracy has seized
the reins of government." Any
reader of Coin's Financial School wishing
to assist in "making
FREE COINAGE voters" was welcome to write the Coin Publishing
Company for printed instructions, in
the assurance that there was
"no expense attached to the
method."51
This strenuous combination of writing,
publishing, and marketing
books, of lecturing,
badge-distributing, and club organizing, might
have absorbed all the energies of most
middle-aged mortals. Not
50 Laughlin published similarly, combining a lengthy argument against
bimetallism,
buttressed with illustrations, plates,
and diagrams, with the record of his debate with
Harvey, in Facts About Money,
Including the Debate with W. H. Harvey (Chicago,
1895). Much of Laughlin's argument had
appeared in the Chicago Herald and Chicago
Times.
51 Quotations in this paragraph and the preceding one are all taken from
the six
pages of advertising placed at the back
of the second edition of Coin's Financial
School.
318
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
so Mr. Harvey. He enjoyed a simple
faith which he felt had the
strength of the childlike, which was
why he portrayed Coin as a
child; as he expressed it on his
prefatory page to the first edition
of the School, "I thank
thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth,
because thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto
babes.--Matthew, Chapter xi., Verse
25." A faith unclouded by doubts
was stout armor against the
shafts of ridicule of his logic and
denunciation of his unorthodox
methods.
He felt secure in his sincerity, a
sincerity ruefully noted by
antagonists and sometimes acknowledged
in unexpected quarters.
For example, a New York Times editorial
of April 19, 1895,
pronounced Harvey's argument for
currency inflation a delusion,
but noted that the Harvey plea "is
not ... the plea of a demagogue
or of one who intends to conceal the
truth in order to mislead.
.
. It appears to be the argument of a sincere man pursuing what
he believes to be a good purpose."
The Times felt that Harvey
(then signing himself as president of a
"Bimetallic Executive
Committee"), in a recent open
letter had put to President Cleveland
fairly the main question at
issue--whether free silver would relieve
debtors.52
Put in a nutshell, the Harvey reasoning
ran thus: "The remedy
to restore prices is to remonetize
silver, and then issue more
greenbacks.... You increase the value of
all property by adding
to the money units in the land .... All
writers on political economy
admit the quantitative theory of money.
Common sense confirms
it." Independent action by the
United States would take the head
of the United States out of "the
mouth of the English lion." The
"integrity" of the silver
dollar should be preserved, by reducing
the content of the gold dollar to a 16
to 1 ratio, thus leaving
gold for more dollars and thus raising
prices.53
This reasoning had a vogue so
tremendous that the "goldbugs"
were hard put to it. A rash of answers
to Coin ran the gamut
from serious refutation to ridicule.
Harvey found two reasons for
52 The
Times argued that the advantage of cheap money to the debtor could be
but
temporary, because of the rise in
prices.
53 Coin's Financial School, 53,
83, 96, 140.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 319
this outpouring--the desire for honest
debate and the eagerness
of publishers to make money out of the
issue. He thought the
most dangerous replies were those
vilifying the book and its
author, because that might prevent
people from reading it and
thus might assist the money power toward
its goal of "official
despotism" and
"monarchy."54
Harvey wrote the editor of The Forum that
the bona-fide circula-
tion of Coin's Financial School in
its first eleven months exceeded
400,000 copies; that A Tale of Two
Nations in eight months sold
110,000; Coin's Hand Book, in
about a year, 130,000; and Coin's
Financial School Up to Date, 105,000 copies in the first few weeks
after publication. Professor Laughlin,
citing these results, under-
stood that liberal funds, a systematic
organization, and elaborate
propaganda were being used to put the School
and like literature
into the hands of people all over the
country; but he did not
particularize as to the funds or
organization and he must have
been acutely conscious of the fact that
readers of his critiques
were but few by comparison. Resenting
the impression that "a
person of standing had been
'floored'" at the school, he pointed
out that Coin deliberately catered to
prevailing prejudices and he
took great pains to refute Harvey's
doctrines.55 Jointly with Lyman
Gage, H. H. Kohlsaat, and others cited
in the School, and at the
suggestion of the Honest Money League of
Illinois, Laughlin
ruefully testified as to the School's
influence; they made a formal
denial that they ever attended such
lectures or that such lectures
ever were held.56
Scarce a week passed without the presses
emitting a book or
pamphlet in rebuttal of Coin. Their
titles sometimes suggested the
state of mind aroused in his
antagonists. There were, for example,
Henry White's Coin's Financial Fool, H.
L. Bliss's Coin's Financial
Fraud, J. F. Cargell's A Freak in Finance, L. G. Powers'
Farmer
54 W. H. Harvey, "Coin's Financial
School and Its Censors," North American Re-
view, CLXI (1895), 71-79.
55 J. L. Laughlin, "Coin's Food for the Gullible," The Forum,
XIX (1895), 573-
585; W. H. Harvey, "The Free Silver
Argument," ibid., 401-409. Laughlin's Facts
About Money could be regarded as a supplement to his History of
Bimetallism pub-
lished in 1886.
56 The
foreword of G. E. Roberts' critique of Harvey, Coin at School in Finance
(Chicago, 1895), carried the denial.
320 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Hayseed in Town, and E. Wisner's Cash vs. Coin. Less
alliterative
but scarcely less earnest were such
reactions as E. P. Wheeler's Real
Bimetallism, M. D. Landon's Gold, Silver or Bimetallism, and
John
Beatty's To the Readers of Coin's
Financial School: An Answer.57
Of course "Sound Money
Committees" flourished. That of Penn-
sylvania, organized May 28, 1895, began
the issue of free docu-
ments; Number 15 exposed the falsity of
an opinion frequently
copied from Bryan's Omaha
World-Herald and attributed to the
editorial office of London's Financial
News. It was to the effect
that world trade would not long remain
in British hands if the
United States adopted free coinage; the
News protested that it
merely had quoted an opinion of Senator
Don Cameron, who was
pro-silver.58 The
semi-monthly pamphlet Present Problems (emanat-
ing from New York) gave no hint of its
financing but was sold
at one cent per copy and aimed to
counter the School with homely
illustrations. Sound Currency pamphlets,
also small and semi-
monthly, were openly avowed by the
"Sound Currency Committee"
of the Reform Club of New York.
A full bibliography of the currency
literature of the Harvey-
Bryan epoch doubtless would require
more than one fat volume.
As early as November 1895 the
outpouring was inspiring sober
bibliographical essays. An early one
was J. F. Johnson's "Popular
Discussions of the Money Question"
in the Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social
Science.59 The Quarterly Journal
of Economics for January 1896 included Willard Fisher's lengthy
and rather meticulous "'Coin' and
His Critics."60
Debate with the opposition, in person
on a joint platform, seems
not to have been Harvey's best medium.
Harvey, rather than Bryan,
seemed to Professor Laughlin the
preferable antagonist, lest Bryan's
oratory outweigh professorial
statements of fact. Neither Harvey
nor Bryan nor Laughlin liked to debate
with very small fry
57 Chicago was the most frequent
publication center for the antagonists.
58 See London Financial News, April
30, 1894, March 10, 1896; Washington Eve-
ning Star, September 22, 23, 1896.
59 VI (1895-96), 518-522.
60 X
(1896), 187-208. As of May 16, 1895, The Nation had led off with a
few
citations to date. LX (1895), 374-375.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 321
requesting the privilege.6l
The Harvey debates attracting the most
attention were those in Chicago with
Professor Laughlin, May 17,
1895, and with Roswell G. Horr, July 16,
and eight sessions there-
after. Numerous "silverites"
and some "goldites"
came--some
from considerable distances--to cheer
their champions. Although
meticulous formal agreements on
procedure were made, the results
on May 17 were reported as more
entertaining than conclusive;
and the Horr conjunction lost appeal, as
it dragged its way along
the platform.62 Laughlin
reproduced his encounter as the last fifty
pages of his Facts About Money, a
presentation in popular guise.
Horr found five hundred pages essential
for his account. Harvey
published his Laughlin debate, as
already noted, as part of Number
7 in his series, adding supporting
materials. Sometimes silver man-
agers arranged that Harvey should debate
with a "goldite" who was
scheduled to debate with Bryan later.63
In party management, the creator of
"Coin" proved to be some-
thing of a "lone wolf,"
inclined to avoid stereotypes. He had
associated in 1894 with the
conservative, silver wing of the Chicago
Populists, opposing the socialist
element in state and city labor-
Populist conventions at Springfield and
at Chicago, May 28 and
August 25.64 A semi-secret, free-silver
group that excluded wage-
earners was a brief experiment organized
with the prohibitionist
Howard Taylor in the fall of 1895. The
principles and objects
designed for these "Patriots of
America" were set forth in general
terms in another "allegory" to
which Harvey gave that title.
Bryan and some of his supporters were
apprehensive lest secrecy
and factionalism weaken the silver
movement. Harvey sought to
reassure them. He explained that the new
organization "will give
us the finances for a national campaign
. . . in behalf of the
61 M. W. Meagher to Bryan, May 11, 21,
25, 28, 29, 1895, H. L. Bliss to Bryan,
May 23, 1895. Bryan Manuscripts. The New
York Tribune of May 10, 1895, pro-
nounced Harvey's voice
"pleasant" but not "silvertoned"; his face impressed people
as "suggesting much native force
and determination."
62 Chicago Daily Tribune, May 18,
July 17, 18, 19, 1895; New York Times, July
17, 18, 1895.
63 C. O. Baldwin to Bryan, November 1, 1895, Harris to Bryan, November 7,
1895,
and G. R. Laybourn to Bryan, November 8,
1895. Bryan Manuscripts.
64 Chester McArthur Destler, American
Radicalism, 1865-1901 (New London,
Conn., 1946), 169, 187, 254.
322 THE
OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
people as against the money
power." Its secrecy features and the
pledge that members must vote in
conformity with majority deci-
sions, were designed to prevent
"cunning and unscrupulous" ene-
mies from working in their midst.
"A few inside our own ranks"
were attacking the project, but Harvey
hoped Bryan would not
discourage people from joining. Bryan
would note that Harvey
had not taken the liberty of using his
name "allegorically" as actually
endorsing the movement (since he had
not been consulted); "[I]
simply have you say that it is the
people who must pass on it."
"I love you and shall always have
your good in view because I
believe you to be one of the first
patriots in the country."65
Wholeheartedly, Harvey entered into the
1896 campaign, making
a great many speeches on his favorite
theme, reported sometimes in
strikingly different fashion by papers
of different leanings.66 He
concluded that it was essential for the
Democrats, Silver Republi-
cans, and Populists to unite on one
ticket, for which he proposed
Richard Bland of Missouri as
president--"his name is a platform
in itself, just as McKinley's name is a
whole platform. ... I
tell the Democrats not to make their
platform too Democratic.
They cannot win as Democrats but as
combined Democracy, Popu-
lists and Silver Republicans."
Marion Butler, Populist of North
Carolina, should be the
vice-presidential candidate, and the Silver
Republicans should be promised three
cabinet places. Harvey himself
was a member of the executive committee
of the national committee
of the "National Silver
Party" and attended its convention in
St. Louis.67
It must have been highly gratifying
when the National Demo-
cratic Committee, in allotting
circulation for its eight million docu-
ments, selected one million of Number 1
of Coin's Financial Series
(Archbishop Walsh's Bimetallism and Monometallism), besides
65 Harvey to Bryan, October 22, December 12, 18, 1895, January 4, 1896, G.
P.
Kieney to Bryan, October 22, 1895,
Harvey to E. C. Gridley, December 16, 1895.
Bryan Manuscripts.
66 On his October 5, 1896, speech in Clinton, Iowa, the New York Times of
Octo-
ber 7 reported Harvey as finishing to a
"meagre audience," and editorialized on Oc-
tober 8 to the effect that it would pay
Mark Hanna to cover the expense of keeping
Harvey on the circuit. But the Clinton
Semiweekly Age of October 9 reported: "We do
not believe a man ever before in one
meeting convinced as many who were in doubt."
67 New York Times, June 29, 1896; New York
Tribune, June 29, July 1, 1896;
W. J. Bryan, The First Battle (Chicago,
1896), 154,290.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 323
125,000 of Coin's Financial School. As
Bryan freely admitted in his
account of the campaign, "among
the educational influences in
behalf of bimetallism during this
period the most potent was
Coin's Financial School. . . . It is safe to say that
no book in
recent times has produced so great an
effect in the treatment
of an economic question." The same
account mentions also Harvey's
Tale of Two Nations, Coin's
Financial School Up to Date, Number
7 and 8 of the series, and even Patriots
of America, besides includ-
ing a picture of Harvey with his name
writ large beneath. Judging
by complimentary letters sent Bryan by
Harvey and his sister-in-law
after his defeat, the campaign ended
with a pleasant relationship
between the two silver advocates.68
The train of explosives to which Harvey
applied the match had
been laid by the dire depression. As
the depression lifted, Harvey
tended to retreat toward obscurity.
People became less interested
in references to Sherman and Cleveland
as "donkeys" amenable
to Rothschild dictation. It no longer
seemed so certain that one
should believe "sound money"
meant "the sound of the clod on
the coffin." The day was passing
when it could be said of the
southern and western states that there
was "but one God--silver,
and William Hope Harvey is its
prophet."69
Lecturing continued, sporadically for a
time, partly to help
rejuvenate Democratic treasuries in the
Midwest. The presses of the
Coin Publishing Company apparently
rolled for the last time in
1899, to produce another
"school" allegory--Coin on Money,
Trusts, and Imperialism, an argument for bimetallism and against
trusts and colonialism. The next year
Harvey removed to what then
was one of the most remote sections of
the United States--a corner
of northwestern Arkansas christened
Monte Ne, where he undertook
to develop an ambitious plan for a
rustic vacation center. This
final real estate venture absorbed much
of his energy and capital
before it collapsed; and in the
meantime he established another
68 Bryan, First Battle, 153-154,
292, 435; Harvey to Bryan, November 5, 1896,
Mrs. J. H. Harvey to Bryan, November 9, 1896. Bryan
Manuscripts.
69 Laughlin had objected to Harvey's use
of the "donkey" designation in their
debate. Chicago Tribune, May 18,
1895. The coffin metaphor also was employed on
that occasion. Laughlin, Facts About
Money, 219. Harvey's prophet role had im-
pressed foreign observers, for example
the London Contemporary Review, LXX
(1896), 504.
324
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
press, the Mundus Publishing Company,
which emitted his further
writings--chiefly little-noted books on
schools, character-building,
and public policy. Another quarterly, The
Palladium, was essayed
to treat of money, banking, and
government ownership; it appeared
irregularly, March 1921 to April
1925.70
The tall, slender, always erect old
gentleman, with the piercing
eyes, felt a zeal which advancing age
could not quench. He con-
ceived successive schemes for curing
mankind of its chronic ills. He
became the chief executive officer of
"The World's Money Educa-
tional League," and one of his
last prescriptions was for saving
civilization by abolition of
"usury" (interest), rent, profits, and
taxes. Becoming finally convinced that
the civilization with which
he was familiar could not escape
oblivion, he commenced to build
a one-hundred-and-thirty-foot
"pyramid," to house artifacts and
writings which should reveal to a later
era the reasons for the fall
of this epoch. Meanwhile, however, he
was performing highly
practical service in pioneering the
building of good roads, serving
as president of the Ozark Trails
Association, 1918-20, and winning
acknowledged appreciation of his
efforts.71
Nor was political recognition wholly
lacking in these declining
years. Secretary of State Bryan tried,
though unsuccessfully, to find
Harvey a place in the department of
agriculture at the instant Bryan
took office. Also, with the depression
of the thirties came nomina-
tion for president of the United
States, by a small "Prosperity
Party" assembled at Monte Ne in
1931 and by a section of a
"Liberty Party" in 1932,
which together netted him some eight
hundred popular votes without any real
campaigning on his part.
Always deeply concerned for the welfare
of his native land, the
earnest eighty-four-year-old in 1935
loosed a final blast against
70 This
elaborate real estate venture is most fully described and illustrated in the
Rogers (Arkansas) Daily News, July 1, 1950. The Mundus
productions carried three
publication locales, Chicago, Rogers,
and Monte Ne. Among the longer productions
were such characteristic titles as The
Remedy (168 pages, 1915), Paul's School of
Statesmanship (184 pages, 1924), The Book (223 pages, 1930),
and a reissue of the
Tale of Two Nations (302 pages, 1931).
71 Abolition of "usury" was
espoused in Paul's School of Statesmanship (Chicago,
1924). The Money League was listed in
his biography in Who's Who in America,
1922-32. The pyramid was featured in the
Rogers Daily News, July 1, 1950. On his
labors for good roads see Clara B.
Kenman, "The Ozark Trails and Arkansas' Path-
finder, Coin Harvey," Arkansas
Historical Quarterly, VII (1948), 299-316.
COIN HARVEY AND HIS WORLD 325
what he considered disastrous policy.
He pronounced President
Roosevelt's silver-buying policy a
"travesty," and his gold-buying
program "unconstitutional." 72
But even the indomitable Mr. Harvey
eventually had to surrender
to the Grim Reaper. When this occurred,
February 11, 1936, it
seemed somehow unbelievable--out of
character. His life had been
characterized by "grandiose
idealism" and "heroic failure." When
they had laid him to rest at the base
of his unfinished "pyramid,"
it might well have been said of him
again that he was "an
agitator with a genius for exposition
so great as to sway public
opinion from the Alleghanies to the
Pacific and from the Great
Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Harvey
has made it certain and
inevitable that his name must be
forever connected with one of the
most remarkable chapters in the
political history of the country."73
72 On the failure to secure an appointment for Harvey in
the department of agri-
culture, see David F. Houston, Eight
Years with Wilson's Cabinet (Garden City, N. Y.,
1926), 1, 43, and M. R. Werner, Bryan
(New York, 1929), 212-213. Werner states
that Secretary Houston "had no use
for Coin Harvey." On the Prosperity and Liberty
party nominations see New York Times,
July 5, August 16, 27, 1931, July 5, 9, 27,
August 15, 17, 18, September 24,
November 9, 1932. Harvey published at Monte Ne,
irregularly from December 1931 through
June 1935, a monthly "Liberty Party" organ
which he named The Liberty Bell. On
the 1935 statements see Newsweek, February
22, 1936, p. 15.
73 Review of Reviews, XIV (1896), 131-132.
The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly
VOLUME 67 ~ NUMBER 4 ~ OCTOBER 1958
Bryan's Benefactor:
Coin Harvey and His World
By JEANNETTE P. NICHOLS*
THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES are
"temperamentally given
to experiments, to impatient and
Utopian solutions," according to a
distinguished British historian of the
present day,1 following a line
of thought traversed by many other
analysts, domestic and foreign,
past and present. Few Americans would
deny that the nation has
shown a lively and persistent faith in
innovation and perfectability,
and that that faith has thrived in many
regions. The Middle West,
in its days of greatest fluidity,
spawned its full share of causes and of
saviors.
Of the venturesome folk who sought the
Mississippi Valley to
better their fortunes, to appease their
wanderlust, or to fulfill their
dreams, the progeny of not a few were
enticed yet further west;
and some of these, whom the Further
West of the nineteenth cen-
tury failed to satisfy, returned,
undaunted, to the valley to preach
various causes. Such restless
souls--rolling stones--sometimes
widened their
personal-betterment-seeking to embrace preachments
of reform to the generality. This type
tended to adopt protest as a
career and eagerly sought leadership of
one group after another.
The valley at times seemed rather
hospitable to the endeavors
* Jeannette P. Nichols is associate
professor of history at the University of Pennsyl-
vania.
1 Frank Thistlethwaite, The Great
Experiment: An Introduction to the History of
the American People (New York, 1955), 320.