The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1892-08-07
A NEEDED

Every delegate who attended the re-
gent national convention IN Chicago
warmly approved the resolution offered
by the Hon. Patrick A. Collins Of Massa'
chusetts, that the next national commit
tee, in making preparations for the con.
vention Of 1896, should provide accom-
modations only for the delegates, al.
%ternates, the press and the national
committee, and an audience of compar-
atiyely small size. We are glad to see
that thoughtful men of both parties
favor this idea. The Hon. Andrew D.
White, who has just been appointed
minister to Russia, in an open letter to
Mr.. Collins congratulates him on the
step he has taken. Monster conven-
tions, as Mr.. White shows, are a thing
of recent origin. He holds that it is
e%minently proper there should be a body
of spectators equal in size possibly to
the entire body of delegates, a%lternates,
officials and representatives of the press,
and it should be made a rule that the
tickets for the spectators seats be dis
tributed to the various delegations in
fair proportion, thus preventing any
local or individual interest from pack
ing the galleries. 1t should be a body
of spectators not so large as to tyran-
nize over the convention, and it should
be not local but national" Mr.. White
points out how under the present sys-
tern it not unfrequently happens that a
delegate who does not please the CALLER
les, no matter how important his state
ment or argument may be to his con-
stituency or to the country, is howled
down by the local mob. Such states
men as Jefferson, john Quincy Adams,
Chase and Seward, he says, would have
been virtually silenced and shut out by
one of our latter-day convention mobs.
OF the conventions of his W party MIR.
White says:
Three times in my life l have been a del
egate to a national republican couv ention.
The first two of these were held in halls of
moderate size, and were deliberatiye bod
les; the third, a few years since, was held in
a vast hall, in which the spectators ont
numbered the delegates more than ten tn
one. The convention proper Numbered
less than a thousand; the spectators were
understood to number from twelve to four
teen thousand. and that assemblape was
not. and could not be. in any true sense. .
deliberative body.
Anything like real deliberation was aim
ply impossible. In order to transform th.+
national convention into local mems oaria
the local managers had made the hall in
which it met so large that president and
members could rarely, if ever, be fnl,v
heard, and so tlimsy that wind against ito
sides or rain upon its roof made even tho
"~fog-horns' of the party inaudible.
Nor was this the worst. The conventio,
was at all times practically at the merov of
the mob of spectators, n at some times in
its actual control. In some cases this con-
troll was merely farcical. For instance. at
the very moment when the most thought
full Judgment WAS required this audience of
.siRht-seers amused itself by what was
called ''enthusiasm.' but what was really
on the part of large numbers, Mysteries.
I saw very many men and women in the
galleries utterly beside themselves, iump.
ing mp n down and shrieking the name
OF the first candidate who happened to be
named. and shortly afterward l saw MANY
OF the same people again in Mysteries,
jumping as before and shrieking the name
Of an opposing candidate.
But at other times this mob rule BY the
galleries was not merely farcical; ii was
vicious. Motions and speeches of real i'm
portsnos which eminent members Of the