ELECTION #28, 1896. The NASTY-METER is 6.

QUOTE from the NY Times in 1896: "William Jennings Bryan is an irresponsible, unregulated, ignorant, prejudiced. pathetically honest and enthusiastic crank."

The second term for Grover Cleveland was a disaster but not necessarily his fault. The nation and the world went into a severe depression comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. America was changing and the political parties were changing with it. In 1896 the Republican Party would finally reach out to the blue-collar workers. The campaign was all about currency standards and precious metal - gold clashing with silver - and the sparks were about to fly.

The CANDIDATES in 1896.

REPUBLICAN: WILLIAM McKINLEY.

The fifty-three-year-old McKinley - of the starched shirt, double-breasted coat, red carnation, and mainstream American Methodism - had a long political record as a congressman and then governor of Ohio. He was smart, dependable, and upstnding. It you were a certain class of American, you felt reassured just by looking at the guy. His campaign was run by Mark Hanna, a powerfully astute political operator who pioneered many of the techniques used in modern cmpaigning.

DEMOCRAT: WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.

Bryan was only 36 years old, the youngest man ever to receive a major party's nomination for president. He was known as "The Great Commoner" - a Nebraska native, evangelical Christian, and passionate speaker. He traveled 18,000 miles by train giving up to 36 speeches a day on behalf of a new currency standard and the down-trodden farmers. He ate six meals a day to keep up his strength and enjoyed relaxing rubdowns with gin, leading many people he met to believe he was a drunk.

The CAMPAIGN in 1896.

McKinley and Hanna (the Karl Rove of his day) remembered the lesson of Benjamin Harrison's presidential campaign in 1888. Harrison had promised so many favors to the eastern Republican Party bosses to get elected, he could hardly accomplish anything once he arrived in the White House. So McKinley and Hanna told the party bosses to go to hell. In a time of deep depression, the ordinary people were sick of party fat cats. They supported McKinley as the candidate against what was even then being called the machine - the grinding apparatus of party corruption.

Bryan advocated an expanded supply of money and silver coinage to alleviate the woes of working people. Bryan argued that "tight money" - money in which each dollar was backed by its equivalent in gold - was keeping farmers and those deeply in debt from being able to make a decent living, while the bankers who controlled the gold wallowed like Scrooges in chambers of wealth. In his famous speech at the convention he said, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

The Republican media attacked Bryan and showed no mercy. Here are some quotes from 1896 Republican newspapers:
- "Bryan is a wretched, rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rottenness."
- "We can compare Bryan to the leaders of the
terror of France in mental and moral attitude."
- "Bryan's followers are hideous and repulsive vipers."
- "Bryan would be a madman in the White House."
- One doctor said in the NY Times, "I don't think Bryan is ordinally crazy...But I should like to examine him as a degenerate."

Mark Hanna had a great strategy. While Bryan was traveling all over the country Hanna had McKinley stay at home in Canton, Ohio. He had people come and visit him and had front-porch meeings with them. With the railroad tycoons behind McKinley they offered free rides to Canton and then these voters would submit questions the night before the meeting and McKinley would respond the next day in short, carefully scripted speeches. With most newspapers supporting McKinley it made for good press all over the U.S.
Millions of McKinley leaflets, buttons, and billboards were made. Hanna even had 1400 speakers ready to go into Democratic strongholds to give speeches boasting that McKinley was the man with the "Full Dinner Pail' and "The Advance Agent of Prosperity."

Bryan and the Democrats simply could not compete with Republican money. They attacked Hanna as "the most vicious, carnal, and unrelenting oppressor..in existence." The even said he was capable of murder to achieve his ends.

As is almost always the story in American politics, MONEY TALKED. Bryan's campaign money chest was anything but robust. From two different sources I've read different estimates of his campaign money. One source said he had $50,000 and the other source said he had less than a million. But they both agreed that McKinley had between $3,000,000 to $3,500,000 in which to wage his campaign. In any case it was no contest on who had the most money. Guess who the winner was.

The WINNER was WILLIAM McKINLEY and he became the 25th president of the U.S.

McKinley got 7,112,138 popular and 271 electoral.

Bryan got 6,508,172 popular and 176 electoral.

McKinley had managed the stupendous feat of keeping the upper middle class in his corner and garnering the votes of urban blue-collar workers, who would now form the core of the revised
Republican Party.

Bryan had polled well in the West. Bryan's brand of Populist politics would change the Democratic Party forever. Bryan called the 1896 election the "first" battle. He knew he would be back.