Populist Bryan saw the newspaper as a stage for his political ambitions

By David Hendee | World-Herald staff writer

William Jennings Bryan — three-time presidential candidate, prairie Populist, key figure in the birth of the 20th century Democratic Party and member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame — is a footnote figure in the history of The World-Herald.

Bryan was editor of The World-Herald from 1894 to 1896, a period on the eve of his first presidential campaign.

A native of Illinois, Bryan was the son of a Baptist lawyer father and Methodist mother, who educated him at home until he was 12.

As a fledgling lawyer, he stopped in Lincoln in 1887 to see his friend and fellow lawyer Adolphus Talbot. Bryan left convinced that Nebraska — the fastest-growing state during the 1880s — offered better prospects for a lawyer and aspiring politician than Illinois.

He moved to Lincoln and three years later won election to Congress as a Democrat from the 1st District, which then included Omaha.

Farmers at the time were squeezed by low grain prices and high railroad rates. Saddled with spiraling debt, they were forming an independent reform party, the Populists. The party’s platform was government ownership of railroads, election of senators by the electorate instead of state legislatures and an end to the currency deflation that magnified their debt.

Bryan came to share Populist viewpoints, and Gilbert Hitchcock’s World-Herald was an early Bryan supporter.

In 1894, Bryan campaigned for the U.S. Senate. Bryan hoped to bypass state legislators and win public support. But campaigning was expensive, and he needed a job to supplement his $2,500 congressional salary.

Hitchcock suggested to Bryan that he become editor-in-chief of The World–Herald as a base from which to pursue his political ambitions. Bryan purchased $9,600 worth of stock in the company and became editor Sept. 1, 1894.

He spent more time campaigning for himself and for other Democratic-Populist candidates than as editor. Hitchcock freed Bryan from much of his daily work so he could write editorials and articles from afar while campaigning, with The World-Herald paying his expenses.

Bryan lost the Senate race but in 1896 won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

The 36-year-old Bryan resigned from his position at the newspaper, and Hitchcock informed readers that Bryan’s “work as editor has been finished.”

The World-Herald strongly supported Bryan’s 1896 presidential bid and two others in 1900 and 1908, but he never reached the White House.

His influence continued at The World-Herald, however, as evidenced by its editorial-page call for the United States to get out of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War and to give the Filipinos complete and immediate freedom.

Bryan led the Democratic Party for 16 years after his 1896 presidential nomination. No politician led the party longer. He was the first Nebraskan and the youngest person to run for the presidency as the nominee of a major party.

Bryan saw himself as a crusader seeking to rescue common people from what he believed was the oppression and immorality of big business and industry. Besides the election of senators by the people, he promoted an income tax, votes for women, bank deposit insurance and the initiative and referendum.

He often reduced complex issues to simple questions of right and wrong. He could gauge the aspirations of people and express them so listeners understood.

He was President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state until resigning in 1915, convinced that Wilson’s policy toward Germany would lead the United States into war.

In 1906 Bryan donated 10 acres of land along Antelope Creek for the establishment of Antelope Park in Lincoln. In 1922, he deeded his mansion and farm to the Methodist Church for a hospital, now BryanLGH Medical Center East in Lincoln. The mansion still stands at 50th and Sumner Streets.