The Silver Candle and the Moths

Grant Hamilton pictures the Democratic free-silver movement as a guttering candle labeled SILVER, around whose flame a swarm of politician-headed moths circles helplessly. Named figures include Altgeld, Teller, Tillman, Boies, Bland, Stevenson, and Cleveland—the full roster of contenders and champions of the 16-to-1 silver ratio then convulsing the Democratic Party. Some moths spiral upward intoxicated; others lie writhing on the tray as grubs or caterpillars, already singed and dying. The argument is bluntly Republican-protectionist: free-silver is a false light, and every man drawn to it—regardless of faction or region—will be destroyed by his own infatuation. The caricatures of Southern politicians such as Tillman carry the broad, exaggerated grotesquerie typical of the period's racial and regional cartooning, used here to mark them as rubes and demagogues rather than serious statesmen. The cartoon appeared weeks before Bryan's famous Cross of Gold speech secured the Democratic nomination.