The United States began with a system that used both gold and silver as currency and to back paper money. Following the brief use of paper money that was not redeemable in either of these metals during the Civil War, the United States returned to gold and silver after the war. This changed during the Panic of 1893, an economic depression caused by many forces. A major culprit was the collapse of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and the following stock market crash. The value of gold plummeted, banks closed, and unemployment numbers climbed. Under President Grover Cleveland, Congress deauthorized silver money. Many silver mines closed, leaving the miners out of work as well.

When Bryan gave his “Cross of Gold” speech, the platform he ran on was an attempted remedy to this crisis. He believed the United States should return silver coinage to common use and expand the sources of metal that could be used to back its currency. Doing so would result in inflation as the money supply grew faster than the economy. He and other proponents of the idea saw this as a way to correct the deflation seen in the prior few years. This would ease the growing burden of debt placed on rural farming populations by the depression.