Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-11-15
IDEA OF AN EXPERT
A Census Office Special Ex-
plains the Late "Slump."
A MILLION sTAY-AT-HOME VOTERS,

And All Republicans, He Says, Did the
Business-Some Statistical Reasons for
His Hindsfght-ClevelandW Will Not Call
an Extra Session, Says the New York
Sun-Single Takers Inclined to Think
They VIII BE Very Positive Quantity
in the Next Congress.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15.-The latest expla-
nation of the election is given by Mr.. Fred
9. Waite, the special expert of the census
bureau in charge Of the statistics of true
wealth. He says the election went the
way it did because 100000 Republican
farmers staid at home ON Nov. 8. All
the other surprises of the election seem to
him to have been but the following out of
natural laws well established by statistics.
In paper prepared for delivery before
Johns Hopkins university he says: 1.-THE
decrease in the per cent. Of our population
engaged in farming from 1850 to 1880 was
exceedingly small. You may ask how
then could the per cent. of our population
in cities have increased from 1915 to 22.6
per cent? 1 answer, because the percentage
of our population in villages decreased
from 33 to 25 per cent
The Exodus from the Farms.
"During the eighties Observation-Disclosures in
this uniformity of increase in the popula-
tion and wealth engaged in the various in
dustries In 1900 miles of counties on both
sides Of the Mississippi south of st. Paul,
every county, save for a stretch of twenty
miles, shows an absolute decrease during
the eighties in the farming population. 1t
is not only so in almost every county east
of the Mississippi but also in thS>Sounties
containing the major part of the popula-
tion westward to the Pacific With this
exodus of young people from the farms, the
money and the wealth has been piled up in
the cities. In the north central states
which contain one-third of the wealth OF
this continent, the increase in the value OF
urban real estate has been six times as
great as that of the farms, which has ac
tually failed to increase as fast as the mort
gage Indebtedness upon them.
Points to Party Reorganization.
as it any wonder that this election mean.
more than the defeat of one partys Their,
is nothing surprising to statistician il
the Cleveland victory, except that it ha
been cut down by the new methods of bal
loting. The Republican farmers have no
| become Democrats. In the northwest the,
voted largely as Populists. but in the cen
| trail and eastern states they voted agains
| all three parties The fact that a million
| Republican farmers stayed at home ant
| took care of their own business, togethe
with the magnitude of the Populist vote
was the one alarming feature of the elec
ton. The stay-at-honfe voters who decid
nearly all doubtful! elections seem to be al
| most as numerous as in 1852 or in 1877
From 1876 down to the present, as well a
during the corresponding period from 1SS
the Democrats carried every other pres
| Dental election, and yet never failed of be
| ing beaten in the intervening election, an
they carried every off election except th
one during the Mexican war, which wa
| close.
Encouragement for Populists.
Although there was no third party il
1852 strong enough to get an electosA vote
yet because of the dissatisfaction wit
the Whig party as shown by the unusuall
! large stay-at-home vote the Peoples or RI
publican party was the natural result
| The Populists have already elected twenty
six electors, and the tremendous stay-a
home vote in every state shows that thing
are ripe for reorganization of partie
The only question is whether great mind
will step to the front and lead the REQ
ganization or whether it will be left to t,
political kickers and ignorant men wit
socialistic inclinations.'