Election season, 19th-century style [audio 1st 6min]

Over the course of 100 days in the fall of 1896, William Jennings Bryan gave more than 500 speeches. He was the Democratic nominee, and his presidential campaign was so broke that he took his message directly to just about every Midwestern town with a train station and a soapbox. Several million people showed up. While Bryan thrilled crowds with his charisma and his rousing speechifying, William McKinley relied on a well-funded, highly-skilled network of political operatives and entrenched party loyalists. Then he just sat back and let the machine work for him. Welcome to the world of pre-modern presidential campaigns -- a time when, if you wanted to know what William McKinley or James Garfield or Benjamin Harrison thought about trade policy or international affairs, you could literally get some friends together, knock on the candidate's front door and ask him. But he wasn't going to come to you.