SOURCE: “William Jennings Bryan: A Crusader of Advanced Ideals,” in Famous Leaders of Character: in America from the Latter Half of Nineteenth Century,The Page Company, 1922, pp. 239-50.

In the following essay, Wildman examines Bryan's early career.

Judge Bryan's farm, about a mile outside of Salem, Illinois, was the show-farm of that section in 1866. It entended for five hundred acres, and included a garden and a private park where fine deer were kept. In this spacious environment William Jennings Bryan, born in Salem, started his career at the age of six. This disposes of some fiction about his being the son of a poor farmer. His father was, on the contrary, a cultivated man of local importance in Illinois. He was a Circuit Judge, had served in the State Senate, was a man above the average in his community. He wanted his son to have a classical education...