ABSTRACT
The federal government in 1900 spent considerably less money than New York State did in 1950. Two or three examples may illustrate how incidental was the role of the government in business affairs. William McKinley took a different view of the functions of the federal government. The general haziness of the public mind was due in large part to the fact that not many Americans had learned to think of economic affairs–industry, technology, trade, commerce–as matters of general concern to them as citizens. In 1900 the United States government included many men who might aptly, if not quite idiomatically, have been described as lackeys of Wall Street. William Jennings Bryan based his 1900 campaign chiefly on the issue of anti-imperialism, arguing that the islands which had fallen into American hands as a result of the Spanish War should be delivered to their inhabitants.
