The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-11-13
THE RECENT ELECTION.

THE RECENT ELECTION.
WHAT 1T MEANS-WHAT ITS RESULTS
WILL BE.
At every election, of late years, the
old party papers suppress all reports
of the Populist vote, and then howl
1.-The Peoples Party is Deadv' And
every time it dies it grows stronger.
This year we have increased our
vote everywhere, Notwithstanding the
fact that both the old parties have bee q
masquerading in our garments. In
the South the Democrats swear by the
Populist platform and free silver,
and in the mountain states and the
West the Republicans do the same
thing. We read that the Democrats
carried Mississippi ION a free-silver
platform, ''and the Republicans did the
same thing in Nebraska. In Ken
lucky both parties were at the same
time bi-metallists and mono-metal-
lists. The poor Populists are con-
fused. They find it hard to vote
against their old party when it is
preaching their distinctive doctri ne.
They feel like Job Scroggins, the car
ter, when he woke up in his cart, very
drunk, to find his horse stolen. Said
he: "Be l Job Scroggins, or be l not?
If be Job Scroggins 1 have lost a
horse; and if beant Job Scroggins 1
have found cart" And so our
brethren in the South and West.
scratch their heads and say:-"A a
Populist or am l not? II am a Pop
ulist have got an awful lot of con-
verts; and if I cannot agree with the
enemy, who are whooping it up for
free-silver, where do belong?"
But all these fogs will disappear
next year. The national conventions
will have to fish or cut bait" They
will have to be either fish. flesh or
good red-herring. If they go in on
the side of the gold-bugs, as is highly
probable, they will lose the greater
part of the voters they have been
feeding so recklessly on free-silver
pabulum. Paul's advice to be call
things to lall men, that you may win
some" is good politics up to certain
point. Prior to 1860 the Wing and
Democratic parties played that game
with the slavery question; but there
came time when the people would
stand subterfugeS no longer and the
Wing party was wiped out, as the
Democracy have just been, and died
ho 6nof1, Tho nf
cent conflict is that the Democratic
party has ceased to be a national or
ganiZation. It's eastern and western
ends are not agreed upon single po-
litical principle. tariff, silver or any
thing else. 1t is two parties in one,
tied together by the tails,lik the Kill
kenny cats; and there will be some
dreadful scratching when they are
hung over line in the national con-
vention next year. Heretofore the
divergent elements of the party have
been held together by the hope of sue
cess;-but that hope is now crushed
forever, and the fragments will fly
apart by an irresistible centrifugal
force.
There can be only two parties in
this country:-one representing Thos.
Jefferson and the other Alexander
Hamilton;-one representing the
rights of man and the other the ri ghts
of capital;-on representing a for
ward movement to higher levels of
progress aDd liberty; the other SYM
bolizing a retrograde movement to-
wards darkness and despotism. The
past and the future stand face to
face, and all temporary expedients
that come between them will be
ground to powder.
The Republican party have won the
elephant, and the Quest ion is how to
feed him? The menagrie will open in
about three weeks, and the stencil
and the roar will be dreadful. They
must agree upon some policy and what
shall it be? All! There's the rub.
They must produce good times to
satisfy the people, and, at the same
time sustain bad policies that will
satisfy Plutocracy. And that which
will satisfy Plutocracy will not satisfy
the people. And in the meantime,
like the closing in OF an artic winter,
settles down upon the world the dea d.
ly effects of cutting in two the metal
lie money of mankind and throwing
one-half of it away
The Democracy has been destroyed
trying to unity its forces on this ques-
tion. The same doom awaits the Re-
publicans. They will be caught be-
tween the upper and neither mill
stones of Plutocracy and Prosperity.
The Populists can afford to stand
still and look on and laugh when
their fear cOmeth."