William McKinley

E

Election of 1896

An economic crisis called the panic of 1893, coming as it did with a Democratic president in office, made the Republicans optimistic about winning the presidency in 1896. In the congressional elections of 1894, McKinley made 371 speeches throughout the nation and was widely seen as man who could restore prosperity.

Hanna left his private business to devote full time to McKinley’s candidacy. He did his work well, and on the first ballot (vote) at the Republican National Convention in 1896, McKinley was nominated for the presidency. Garret A. Hobart of New Jersey received the nomination for vice president.

The reaction of the Eastern industrialists and financiers to McKinley’s nomination was not overly enthusiastic. Used to controlling the candidates of both major parties, they were confident that the Democrats would nominate a stronger supporter of the gold standard.

E

1

Nomination of Bryan

For three decades farmers in the South and West had been dissatisfied with bankers’ and industrialists’ domination of the federal government. The gold standard had forced prices and wages down. Manufactured goods, favored by high tariffs and corporate practices that restricted competition, fell only slightly, but farm commodity prices declined sharply. This meant that farming communities had less money to buy the manufactured goods for which prices had not fallen.

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In the early 1890s the farmers’ revolt came to a head. The Populist Party made great strides throughout the West with a platform of extensive social and economic reforms that would, they argued, curb the power of the wealthy and benefit agriculture. The Populists also attempted to forge an alliance with the more radical labor unions and thus threatened to become a potent third force, following the Democrats and the Republicans, in American politics.

The most important demand of the Populists, as well as of Western Democrats and Republicans, was the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the legal ratio of 16 to 1 with gold. In 1896 the silverites gained control of the Democratic convention and, largely on the strength of his famous “cross of gold” speech, William Jennings Bryan, a 36-year-old orator, journalist, and former United States congressman from Nebraska, was nominated for the presidency. Later in the year the Populists also nominated Bryan, who proceeded to tour the country making fiery speeches for free silver and against wealth, privilege, and business control of the government.

E

2

The Front Porch Campaign

Alarmed by Bryan’s attack on wealth and privilege, and urged on by Hanna, big businesses rallied in support of McKinley, contributing the unprecedented sum of $3.5 million to the Republican campaign. The money was put to good use. The country was flooded with McKinley campaign pamphlets and posters, and Republican speakers toured the nation to argue against bimetallism and to portray Bryan’s crusade for social justice as a rebellion of fanatics who would destroy the government. To reinforce these arguments, factory managers warned their workers that a victory for Bryan would mean depression and loss of their jobs.

Refusing to compete with Bryan’s around-the-country campaign, McKinley stayed at home, receiving delegates from all over the country and issuing such statements as “Good money never made times hard.” The image of the honest, upright Major McKinley contrasted favorably with that of Bryan, who was challenging many of the American businesses’ most sacred beliefs. Sweeping all the large industrial states, McKinley won the election by 271 electoral votes to Bryan’s 176. He also won the popular vote by 602,555 votes out of 13,620,659 votes cast. The election also had an effect far beyond the naming of a president. It set up coalitions of interests and political alliances that lasted for the next 16 years. The Republicans held the presidency until Democrat Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913.

IV

President of the United States

When McKinley entered Washington, D.C., for his inauguration, he was a handsome, vigorous man of 54 years. With him was his wife, who, despite her poor health, took part in many of the social activities at the White House.

McKinley devoted much of his inaugural address to foreign affairs. “We want no wars of conquest,” he said. “We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.” His original Cabinet, his group of advisers and department heads, consisted of businessmen and aged politicians. But the appointment of the writer and diplomat John M. Hay as secretary of state in 1898 and New York district attorney Elihu Root as secretary of war in 1899 gave stature to his administration and greatly aided its conduct of foreign and internal affairs. Many of McKinley’s detractors believed that Hanna, who was now a United States senator, would be the real power in the administration. However, McKinley, though often vacillating, proved to be his own man and exercised strong control over his advisers.

A

Return of Prosperity

McKinley’s election victory gave the business world renewed confidence, and in 1897 prosperity returned, taking much of the steam out of the demands for economic reform. That year, McKinley pushed the Dingley Tariff Act through Congress, which levied even higher duties than had his own tariff of 1890. The Dingley Tariff also recognized the increasing importance of world trade to large U.S. industries. It allowed the president to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with other countries, under which the two countries would agree to lower tariffs on specific goods that they traded with each other.

The demand for silver money also decreased because the discovery of gold in the Yukon Territories, Canada, near the Alaskan border, increased the amount of money in circulation. In addition, agricultural prices rose. In 1900 Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, which placed the United States on a single gold standard, with only a few protests from the bimetallists in the West. The United States remained on the gold standard until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program in 1933. Because McKinley openly represented large business interests, he sponsored no reform legislation and ignored existing laws such as the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act, which were designed to regulate big business.

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