In the late nineteenth century, the major national political parties avoided taking stands on controversial issues; voters' decisions were usually determined by their ethnic background, region of the country, religion, and stance on the Civil War. The largely ineffective presidents and congressional leaders of the era did little to distinguish themselves. Local politics, however, were somewhat more active: the cities saw the rise of the boss system, while the farm belt, suffering from low commodity prices, restrictive tariff and fiscal policies, foreign competition, drought, and perpetual boom-and-bust cycles, produced the Farmers Alliance, which finally roused national politics from its slumber. The Alliance joined forces with the Knights of Labor in 1892 to form the People's, or Populist, party. Their platform was sweeping, but the most prominent issue was silver. The Populists demanded free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ration of 16:1 to gold. Primarily over the silver issue, Republican William McKinley defeated Populist William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896. The election was significant not only because it decided the silver question, which turned out to be of little consequence anyway, but because McKinley ran a campaign with a national approach against Bryan's more parochial one that appealed to only certain groups.
