his overnight trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh, Bryan 

 was called upon to speak many times. At South 

 Chicago, 



The lateness of the hour did not keep a big crowd 

 from gathering at One Hundredth Street. The crowd 

 had a brass band, and were prepared to give the heartiest 

 sort of a reception to the nominee, but the train moved 

 off just as he appeared on the platform. 

 At Valparaiso, Indiana, more than an hour later, 

 Bryan "made a hasty toilet, and went to the plat- 

 form, where he was again cheered."'^' The popu- 

 larity of his brief small-town appearances was em- 

 phasized by the apparent failure of his tedious and 

 learned acceptance oration at Madison Square 

 Garden, New York City, in the heart of the "enemy's 

 country." 



But as the campaign went on, its extraordinary pace 

 began to tell upon the candidate. His voice lost its 

 power for several days in New York State and Penn- 

 sylvania, and little wonder that it did. For example, 

 Bryan arrived at Erie, Pennsylvania, in the evening 

 after a full day of vigorous campaigning to find three 

 separate audiences waiting to hear him. He did not 

 disappoint his friends, although some may have had 

 difficulty in hearing his remarks, for "his voice was 

 somewhat hoarse, but otherwise he appeared to be in 

 good condition.'' '^' On many days of his trip, 

 Bryan spoke again and again, for twelve, fourteen, 

 even sixteen almost solid hours. "'^ A typical city 

 campaign began with the candidate's arrival at the 

 railroad depot, a reception or perhaps a meal which 

 might come before or after his address, his procession 

 to a park or a hall for the speech, and his hurried de- 

 parture to keep the next engagement for which he was 

 almost certain to be late. Late in September, the 

 candidate traveled from Bath, Maine, to New York 

 City, taking 24 hours for the journey, speaking at 

 many towns, and winding up his labors with huge 

 rallies at Paterson and Newark, New Jersey.'^* The 

 next night, while trying to attend a giant labor rally 

 in Union Square, New York City, Bryan collapsed. 

 Near the close of the campaign, he made some seventy 

 speeches in four days, with about 1,400 miles of travel, 

 in Michigan. He met such huge crowds that, at one 

 point, Mrs. Bryan was almost left behind because she 

 was caught in a jam of people as the train pulled out. 



There was no time for fresh thinking, or for an evalua- 

 tion of what had gone before with such a tight 

 schedule, and the speeches were essentially what they 

 had been for weeks.'"* During the last week of the 

 campaign, Bryan made a three-day whirlwind tour 

 of Chicago, then set out, following an indirect route, 

 to his home at Lincoln. On the day before the elec- 

 tion itself, as if to emphasize the character of his ex- 

 traordinary campaign, Bryan traveled 344 miles, 

 making many short speeches, for "the meetings were so 

 short that no extended argument was possible . . . ." '^^ 

 His last day of campaigning took the candidate 

 through some of the territory where he had first tried 

 his youthful skills — through the heart of Nebraska 

 where he had spoken and debated and gained sudden, 

 remarkable fame eight years earlier, where he had 

 developed and perfected the pattern of campaigning 

 which had contributed so much to bring him one of 

 the most coveted honors in national politics. The 

 New York Times seemed relieved as it summarized 

 Bryan's efforts: the "long and hardworking campaign" 

 is over, stated the paper; the candidate had taken only 

 four weeks off between July 1 3 and November 2 ; he 

 had spoken in 27 States ; he had probably made more 

 than 25 speeches in three or more days; he had 

 carried out an exhausting campaign and the newsmen 

 seemed to mirror his exhaustion."'" William Jennings 



161 Ibid., August 11, 1896, p. 3. 



162 Ibid., August 28, 1896, p. 6. 



163 Ibid., September 15, 1896, p. 3, containing a report of a 

 14-hour trip from St. Louis to Louisville. 



i6< Ibid., September 29, 1896, p. 3. 



"■■5 Ibid., October 18, 1896, p. 3. 



166 Bryan, The First Bailie, pp. 602-604. 



167 The New York Times, November 2, 1896, p. 1. There is a 

 striking similarity between Bryan's "whistle stop" campaign of 

 1896 and the national tour of President Harry S Truman in 

 1948. Bryan in 1896 and Truman in 1948 labored almost 

 single-handedly against overwhelming odds in their direct 

 appeals to the nation's voters. Bryan lost, Truman won, but 

 both candidates conducted intensive personal campaigns geared 

 to the level of the ordinary voters. It is interesting that both 

 of these presidential aspirants were midwesterners, and that 

 both were professional politicians, trained in the rough and 

 tumble school of politics. .Although their value systems differed 

 somewhat, and their messages were not alike, both men sensed 

 the effectiveness of personal campaigning. Truman unexpect- 

 edly captured important support from the rural Midwest by 

 using techniques similar to those used by Bryan more than 

 fifty years before. For accounts of Truman's campaign in 

 1948 see Harry S Truman, Memoirs: Years of Trial and 

 Hope (New York: Garden City, 1956), vol. 2, pp. 210-219; 

 Richard Rovere's reports on the campaign trains in the 

 New Yorker, October 9 and 16, 1948. A delightful running 

 account of the Truman "whistle stop" tour may be found in 

 Margaret Truman (with Margaret Cousins), Margaret Tru- 

 man's Own Slory: Souvenir (New York: McGraw, 1956), pp. 

 211-239. Miss Truman traveled with her father over most of 

 the campaign route, and has vivid recollections of the trip. 



74 



BULLETIN 24 1 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



