The depression of 1893,which lasted much of the decade, altered the geography of American politics. President Cleveland's defense of the gold standard fractured the Democrats. In the congressional election of 1894, Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress and increased their delegation in the House by 100 votes. This defeat prompted Democrats from the West and South to reach out to the Populists in 1896; the Democratic party then adopted a platform that endorsed the free coinage of silver, and nominated William Jennings Bryan, a proponent of silver currency, for president.
The Republicans nominated William McKinley, whose endorsement of the gold standard, though ambiguously worded, ensured that the election of 1896 would be the most sharply defined since the Civil War.
On election day, Bryan won in the South, the Plains states, and the Rocky Mountain region. But McKinley carried the East;
200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0
1865 1869 1873 1877 1881 1885 1889 1893 Wheat and Cotton Prices and Consumer Price Indexes, 1865-1896 Farm prices fell by about 50 percent after the Civil War; the Consumer Price Index declined, too, though less precipitously.
The Midwest, including even Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota;and the Pacific Coast states of Oregon and California.
The sharp sectional division marked the failure of the Populist effort to unite northern and southern farmers and also the triumph of the industrial part of the country over the agricultural. Business and financial interests voted solidly for the Republicans, fearing that a Bryan victory would bring economic chaos. When one Nebraska landowner tried to float a mortgage during the campaign, a loan company official wrote to him: "If McKinley is elected, we think we will be in the market, but we do not care to make any investments while there is an uncertainty as to what kind of money a person will be paid back in."
Other social and economic interests were far from being united. Many thousands of farmers voted for McKinley, as his success in states such as North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota proved. In the farm areas north of the Ohio and east of the Missouri Rivers, the agricultural depression was not severe, and farm radicalism was almost nonexistent.
A preponderance of the labor vote also went to the Republicans. In part this resulted from the tremendous pressures that many industrialists applied to their workers. "Men,"one manufacturer announced,"vote as you please, but if Bryan is elected...the whistle will not blow Wednesday morning."Some companies placed orders for materials subject to cancellation if the Democrats won. Yet coercion was not a major factor, for McKinley was highly regarded in labor circles. While governor of Ohio, he had advocated the arbitration of industrial disputes and backed a law fining employers who refused to permit workers to join unions. He had invariably based his advocacy of high tariffs on the argument that American wage levels would be depressed if foreign goods could enter the country untaxed. The Republicans carried nearly all the large cities, and in closely contested states such as Illinois and Ohio this made the difference between victory and defeat.
World History
