men spoke to hundreds of thousands of people from their chosen venues. Bryan's nomination divided the party. The dissidents nominated their own ticket; the split in the vote would contribute to Bryan's defeat. However, Bryan did gain the support of the Populists, as well as a convention of Silver Republicans. Bryan spoke on silver throughout the campaign; he rarely addressed other issues. Bryan won the South and most of the West, but McKinley's victories in the more populous Northeast and Midwest carried him to the presidency. The Democratic candidate failed to gain a majority of the labor vote; McKinley won in working-class areas as well as wealthy precincts. Although McKinley outpolled him by 600,000 votes, Bryan received more votes than any previous presidential candidate. After McKinley's inauguration in March 1897, increases in gold availability from new discoveries and improved refining methods led to a considerable increase in the money supply. Even so, in 1900, Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, formally placing the United States on that standard. Although Bryan ran again on a silver platform in the 1900 presidential election, the issue failed to produce the same resonance with the voters. McKinley won more easily than in 1896, making inroads in the silver West. Legacy Bryan's speech is considered one of the most powerful political addresses in American history. Stanley Jones, however, suggested that even if Bryan had never delivered it, he would still have been nominated. Jones deemed the Democrats likely to nominate a candidate who would appeal to the Populist Party, and Bryan had been elected to Congress with Populist support. According to rhetorical historian William Harpine in his study of the rhetoric of the 1896 campaign, "Bryan's speech cast a net for the true believers, but only for the true believers." Harpine suggested that, "by appealing in such an uncompromising way to the agrarian elements and to the West, Bryan neglected the national audience who would vote in the November election". Bryan's emphasis on agrarian issues, both in his speech and in his candidacy, may have helped cement voting patterns which kept the Democrats largely out of power until the 1930s. Writer Edgar Lee Masters called the speech, "the beginning of a changed America." Bryan's words gave rise to later economic and political philosophies, including Huey Long's 1930s Share Our Wealth program, with its trigger phrase, "Every Man a King" inspired by Bryan's speech. Author and