Haven't watched it. I will, but it opens with a now-familiar AI graphic. Voice to go with it. So what we have is another AI presentation. I'm not impressed with those, which are becoming common on the topic.
But there is another side to the story. Remember, from history class, the Free Silver party? The name meant "free and unlimited coinage of silver." That was government policy for a time - and YES, like all twisted policies, it made oligarchs rich and rewarded irresponsible behavior.
What it was, was currency-inflation, metal-backed-money style. Coin as much money as possible, buying as much silver as could be bought.
This enabled the silver magnates to grow rich - the Horace Tabors (Leadville, Colorado) and the European nobility that funded these shoestring mining companies that emerged all across Nevada and Idaho and Colorado.
WHILE
...allowing farmers and other capital-intensive businessmen relief from their debts - by inflating the currency. Fine scheme, which back then, in an era of stable currency, was new. Borrow dollars, have your corrupt representative work to debase the dollar through a Free Silver program, and get outta debt, easier. And, what it does to others, or to the future? They cared nothing.
This was nothing but an abuse of the fundamentals of a Sound Money system. To introduce a new monetary metal as secondary backing, and create huge amounts of coinage out of the changeover period, defeats the whole purpose of sound money.
The Expansionists tried to sell opposition to this, as some sort of crime, once the gold-backing proponents won. And of course, William Jennings Bryant. A populist - and I don't use that word as a flattery. A populist is a demagogue, and Bryant, with his Cross-Of-Gold speech, was HIDING the fact that narrow special interests wanted an inflation to duck responsibility for their debts, or to profit from silver-mining holdings, or to continue the (artificial) riches that were coming from unchecked coinage of silver.
Bah.