The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1891-05-28
THE PEOPLES PARTY.

IHE FEOFLES TAklf
The Alliance mountain labored and
brought forth ridiculous political
mouse in several chapters. If there
existed an excuse, to say nothing of
demand, for third political party the
thirteen hundred delegates who met at
Cincenati failed to grasp it. While little
was expected in the way of practical and
practicable results, far less was accom-
plished The convention itself was in no
sense national but decidedly sectional.
Kansas contributed one-fourth OF the
delegates, and the states of Ohio and
Indiana nearly as many each. New Eng.
land. the middle eastern states, and the
south were conspicuously absent. De
fcient rainfall in Kansas and Nebraska
and the political ambition of a halt dozen
Donnellys and PETERS are the active
causes which led up to the movement
and its character is what might have
been anticipated as emanating from such
influences Relief is sought in the i'm
practicable and the CONSPICUOUS advocates
of the third party scheme are those who
hope for preferment by reason Of their
ardent championship of what they know
to be impracticable and pernicious. Our
own Donnelly was one of the central
figures of that remarkable gathering,
and while no one need be surprised at
his advocacy of anything destructive,
his record of consistent Inconsistency
prepares one to expect him to lead IN
any movement where his leadership will
be misunderstanding perhaps that
which is calculated to upbuild and
strengthen the commonwealth or the
community. A consummate demagogue,
he uses his ready tongue to his own adj
vantage, but with phenomenal lack of
prescience, he is eyer allying himself with
every short lived political scheme. Either
that, or his advocacy of cause is fatal
to it for he rarely wins, and when he
does his victory is wondrously brief. But
in the peoples party our Donselly is not
the only Donnelly
the widest enthusiasm, and was throt-
tied at ITS birth by its sponsors who
named it. The term peoples party"
became synonymous with soreheadism.
Not unfrequently one or more candidates
suffer defeat in convention and he or they
flock off into a corner and evolve aticket
which is dubbed peoples" The title
deceives no one excepting those who
make it. So with the peoples party.
"We, the people of England" said the
three tailors Of Tooley street. eve are
the people," said the gentlemen from
Kansas, Nebraska and Mr.. Donnelly.
But its name is not its worst feature
bad as it is. It's platform is so mon
strous that were it enacted into law to-
morrow the nation would be bankrupt
within twelve months. The HERALD
believes tree coinage of silver-that 10
seyenty-cent silver into legal tender dol
lars-permicious enough, but that is
seventy per cent letter than the unlimit-
ed issue of paper promises-never-to pay
which it proposed to issue as legal tender
upon such security as may be offered at
the rate of two per cent per annum.
During the war there was urgent, even
vital, necessity tor extraordinary issue
of paper money insuficiently provided
with redemptive resources, and what
wds the result? Gold advanced to $2.S5
and for fifteen years remained out of
circulation. Imitation and speculation was
followed by tagnation and financial such
distress as the country may well pray may
never revisit it. Andyet this is the state
of affairs demanded by the CINCINNATI
platform. England, France, colonial
Rhode Island and more recently the
United States government itself have
furnished awful warnings which have no
sxeight upon such as constituted that
convention. If values could be created
by law there would be no occasion for
any nation TO be less than wealthy-and
if the nation, then every individual which
composes it. The idea is fallac:ous and
vet so plausible that it is not to be Won
dered at that the spacious arguments of
the designiug are accepted by the unthrif.
ty and unfortunate. Read the platform
printed elsewhere, and the man with
eintelligence will need no warning.
Free silver, free paper and free trade are
political freebooters.