William Jennings Bryan was a Nebraska newspaper editor and former U.S. representative when he was asked to make one of the platform speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1896. At the time, the United States was in the midst of a deep economic depression, and most farmers and workers believed that the U.S. mint should issue both gold- and silver-backed dollars so that money would be in wider supply and more likely to be issued in loans to save their livelihoods. Economically, the idea was not wise. Yet it was widely accepted enough to lead to the foundation of a new political party, the Populist Party, many of whose causes were championed by Bryan’s newspaper.