The Portland daily press., 1892-06-25
PENNoYER-wEAvER-cLovEE.

- WY P1o1k1411ChU 1lch OClOlO Uu0 CUIl-
vention, if not active in it, will be Gov
ernor Sylvester Pennoyer, of Oregon,
who was reelected in 1890 by majority
of 10000, though the state is Republican.
He is spoken of as the new party's can
didate for president, for though elected
governor as a Democrat, he is now in
full sympathy with the third party men.
Still another active spirit will be ex-
Senator Charles Henry Van Wyck, of
Nebraska. His career has been singu-
larly picturesque. Born in Poughkeep-
sic, N. Y, in 1924, he entered congress
in 1859 and left it for the army. He
came out breyet brigadier, was again
elected to congress, removed to Nebraska
in 1874 and became United States sena-
tor in 1881. He made fierce onslaught
on the railroads, was denied re-elec-
ton in consequence and, as further
consequence, has no love for big corpo-
rations.
Numerically, however, these will be
swallowed up by an army Of new, OF COM
paratively new recruits, such as Senators
Kyle, of South Dakota, and PETER, of
Kansas; Congressman Winn and Wat
son, of Georgia; Jerry Simpson, B. H.
Clover, John Davis and William Baker,
of Kansas; Kittel Halverson, of Mime
sofa, and William Arthur McKeighan,
of the second Nebraska district, whose
phenomenal majority in 1890 astonished
the country and convinced the old poll
ticians that the people had ''taken the
bit in their teeth" And now the all
absorbing question is, Was the vote of
1880 mere 'tspurt," or, as our English
friends say, ''beastly fuke," or did it
indicate a permanent strength?
1t is common and cheap and easy
explanation to say the Peoples party is
''the successor of the old Greenback
party" but this is only part of the
truth. The greenback has evidently
come to stay, and the national banks, as
Senator Sherman recently pointed out,
must soon be wound up by the payment
of the bonds, but the whole field of CAP
ital and labor, the concentration of
wealth and increase of poverty, and es-
pecially the great puzzle known as the
depression of agriculture" lies open to
the new party. The alternating move
ments of new parties since the war pre-
sent a curious study, each leaving some
thing to the next
In all the seventytwo years of the ma
tons existence before the war there
were not as many strikes and labor riots
as in two months of the single year Of
1877, and though many labor organiza.
tons were formed, there was no general
political party based on them. It is ques-
toned also if there were in the United
States in 1860 score of millionaires;
now there are 1,100 in New York city
alone, and believed to be 5000 in the
nation. New parties were therefore in
>evitable as soon as the war issues were
settled, and the first to affect local cleo
tions was probably the Eight Hour
league. In 1866 this and kindred or
CARNATIONS grew into party, and on
Aug. 20 the first national labor con-
gress met in Baltimore.
In 1870 the Labor party affected cleo
lions considerably in many places, and
soon after the famous Changers rose
rapidly to great Importance. The panic
of 1878 resulted in tremendous politi-
cal revolution-the change of votes be-
tween 1879 and 1874 amounted to nearly
1,l00, OO0-and soon after the raging ele-
ments of discomfort found expression in
the Greenback party. Its first distinc-