Bryan’s problems went beyond the heat. The populist vision of a republic of small freeholders had little to offer the mass of metropolitan wage-laborers in the mid-1890s. German and Jewish socialists and anarchists were put off by the populists’ evangelical convictions and prohibitionist culture. Unionists like Gompers reasoned that the farmers were themselves employers of wage-labor and so unworthy of support. Tammany did endorse the national ticket and turned out such (largely Irish working-class) support as Bryan got. Gold Democrats of course bolted the party; even Pulitzer’s World refused
...more
