ABSTRACT
Rising prices, profits and incomes enabled President William McKinley and the Republicans to pass the Gold Standard Act and deliver a decisive defeat to William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats in 1900. Ironically, the prosperity that helped Republicans build a national electoral majority made party harmony on financial issues difficult to sustain. The country was in the midst of a fundamental economic shift. An era of low interest rates, deflation, falling farm prices and extensive investment in land and equipment was coming to an end and was giving way to a 20 year period of high interest rates, rising farm prices, inflation, intensive investment and corporate consolidations. As the economy expanded and “tight money” replaced low interest rates, the nation's industrial, commercial and agricultural interests bid for limited financial resources. By the time that an assassin's bullet catapulted Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901, the National Banking System was under increasing pressure to meet the growing demands of competing interests.
