Plate, William McKinley, 1900

Tin plates and trays were common campaign items in the early twentieth century. This one promoted incumbent president William McKinley and his new running mate, New York governor Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican nominees in 1900. (McKinley’s first vice president, Garret Hobart, had died in office in 1899.) McKinley and Roosevelt defeated Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan and his running mate former vice president Adlai Stevenson. 1900 was the second consecutive election Bryan lost to McKinley and the first year Eugene V. Debs ran for president, this time on the Social Democratic Party ticket with vice presidential nominee Job Harriman.