The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-08-07
THE yANlsHEn AP.A.

Intolerance should get out the pub
lie crier and send him ringing his bell
up and own the land telling the people
that her latest child, her youngest. the
darling of her old heart and the staff
of her declining age, is lost For. in
the tumult and storm, while the foun-
dations of parties were breaking up
and crumbling, the babe of bigotry
has wandered off into the gloom and
is lost. When last seen and heard OF
1t was building presidential mud pies
down in Washington and must have
been enticed away by that artful and
malevolent Hanna while the attention
of its doting parents was engaged in
making arrangements for nurse 1t
will be readily recognized by it's scowl-
ing face, its whining voice and it's per-
petual sniffle, and the finder will be
literally rewarded on returning it to
its bereaved and disconsolate parents
But, badinage aside, the A. p A has
vanished. 1t lived fully as long as
was expected, and much longer
than it should have. Gaseous in It's
nature, it obeyed the laws of it's being
and, escaping confinement in the
breakup of political organizations, it
escaped to offend for a while the sense
OF smell and then to be dissipated in
thin air. 1t came, as such parties and
organizations always come, in a period
of change, when the pressure of great
political movements was taken off;
when new ideas were forcing their
way among men, deranging organiza-
tons, unsettling mems party relations
and breaking ground for a fresh seed
ing. Then it is that the men with
isms find their opportunity. Then the
crank, the agitator, the dreamer, get
their hearings. Then men are pecul-
iarly susceptible to their schemes.
The new always finds the mass unpre-
pared to test it. On all the lines of
thought connected with their former
politics they are educated by a long
process of teaching and training, but
when they are thrown out of the beat
en- track, they are easily led by any
thing that appeals to their fears. their
prejudices or their imaginations. The
more sophistical the proposition the
more likely to draw crowds. The more
the bauble glitters the more certain
1t is to be accepted as a pure Jewel.
The more baseless and senseless the
cry of danger the more sure it is to be
heard.
The educational process begins anew.
Its length depends on the nature of
the lesson. Some are speedily learned,
as has been that taught by the A. p.
AS. It was predestined to a short
career, mischievous while 1t lasted.
but happily brief in it's bad. activity.
Ii blew into flame the embers of an In
tolerant bigotry that had been waning
before the expanding humanitarianism
OF the race. It reached back into an
era OF common hatred, narrowness,
persecution, intolerance, and dragged
its baleful spirit into an age and dav
OF wider thought, truer views of lib
crafty, humanity and tolerance. and
sought to vitalize it afresh : But the
light of the nineteenth century was
too bright for the plant that f1ourished
in the darkness of the fourteenth.
The alarums it sounded caused a fear
that quickly subsidized as reason re-
asserted control. Larger matters,
wider ideas, greater interests, dwarfed
it. Questions relating to today re-
Iuseo TO give way to one centuries old.
Let alone, it skunk into the obscuritv
whence it came. Apaism has vanished.