FOR the moment at least, this is not the most frightening election that America’s pro-business establishment has faced. “The Triumph of William McKinley”, a new book by Karl Rove, the campaign strategist who helped George W. Bush to victory in two presidential elections, makes a good case that for captains of industry, Wall Street bosses and Republican leaders, the contest of 1896 felt more perilous. The country was in grim shape then, deep in an economic slump. Hundreds of banks had failed. Armies of jobless men roamed the land. Business owners slept in their shops, guns in hand. Farmers faced ruinous debts.
Amid such misery arose a populist Democrat of prodigious talents: William Jennings Bryan. This young Nebraskan, who had served two terms in Congress, loathed the bankers of Wall Street, calling “agitation” the “only means” to change the “vicious system of finance”—a system that he vowed to “destroy”. In 1896 a speech to the Democratic National Convention propelled him to the presidential nomination. A blast at tycoons who “corner the money of the world”, Bryan’s address ended with a call to issue dollars unbacked by...Continue reading
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