What was the Gold Standard in William Jennings Bryan v. William McKinley?

Question

- that gold was only standard to redeem paper money. What does this mean?

Thank You.

Answer 1

Once upon a time, each paper dollar represented a certain amount of gold owned by the U.S. government. That was called the gold standard. Theoretically, people could go to a bank with a paper dollar and the bank would trade it for a stated amount of gold.

http://economics.about.com/cs/money/a/gold_standard.htm