The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-09-17


convention adjourned; was the author
OF the motion presented by Mr.. Call to
appoint provisional national commit
tee, which motion carried; and I was
present when the resolution was adopt
ed that, if Bryan should not accept the
POpulist nomination within thirty days,
Norton should be declared the nOmi-
nee Nobody proposed that Sewall
should withdraw. No such thing was
thought Of We were not troubling
ourselves about Sewau. We were
looking after our own nominees. Mr..
WatsOn's assumption is utterly ground
less. There was no such understand
ing as he claims. Bryan's telegram
was a fiat refusal to having such an un-
Outstanding, and no man knows that
better than Marion Butler, who is now
using Watson to help Buffers hitherto
allies-the Republicans.
IF any new ticket is to be put up in
Kansas, and it is to be an honest one,
it must be, not Bryan and Watson, but
Norton and Watson Bryan has no more
accepted a nomination upon the POpu-
list platform than has SeWan; and
Bryan, not Sewall, was the man the
middle of the road convention said,
should be supplanted.
Martyrs should be consistent or go
out of the martyr business. The new
ticket is not to bear Norton's name.
Why? Because, and only because, it is
well known that Kansas POpuhStS are
determined to vote for Bryan, and a
Norton ticket could not poll votes
enough to make it possible to execute
Watson's threat Of electing Mckinley.
For that is precisely what Watson
threatened He says if he is not made
vice president, certain southern states
will insure McKinley's election.
Every sane man knows that either
Bryan or Mckinley will be elected
president; that one of the two will re-
ceive the electoral vote of Kansas, and
that a new Watson electoral ticket
fO tai
is WatsOn'S programme, and a man
must be presumed to intend the neces-
sary consequences of his acts.
His attacks upon SeWau afford no
justification for his course. Watson
himself is not so radical a reformer
that he should attack another as q con-
sentative. But what ais Sewall? Wat
son says the Maine man is a banker q
railroad director, q. multitudinOuS mil
iOnaire and several other disreputable
things, and asks: When did it become
wrong to denOunce a bon6holder or a
natioal banker?' 1t was always wrong.
1 am sick of some objections to men.
Who was John Hampden, whose def
ance Of a naughty king made Cromwell
possible? Was he pOOr2 Who was La
fayette, who gave our fOrefatherS such
substantial aid against George III, and
sought to make his own country free?
Was Jefferson a tramp 2WaS not Wash
ingtOn the richest American of his
time? Were Sumner and Wendell Phil
lips pauperS2 Was not Ben Butler a
man OF means w as not refer cooper
a millionaire? Did not St. John of New
York lately surrender his position in a
bank rather than give up his princi-
pies? And SGckney-whose book has
done good work in the agitation for
government ownership of Railroads.&c.
not he a railroad PRESIDENT Altge1d is
rich, yet his Tadicalism is all wool and
several yards wide. IT, northumberland
ing his wealth, Sewall stands for the
cause of the people, he is entitled to all
the more credit.
ITO end it all, Watson's threat is
nothing less than this: That he will
turn over this country to the control of
all the curses of civilization; commits
sion avarice to use the federal army as
standing armies are used in COntinen-
tai Europe, and to intimidate the work
ing people and poor debtors until the
ballot shall be forever inefectual to
restore the government to the hands of
the plain people, and only a bloody civ
il war can dethrOne the American ariS-
tOcracy Of hard cash; and an attempt
to pay off our bonds and rid American
industry of a horde of perpetual ariS-
tOcratic interest pensioners will lead di-
rectly to foreign war, aided by a plu-
tOcratic rebellion at home, for a Nc
kinley congress would be certain to
make all our bonds payable in gold
alOne-au this Watson declares he will
do, in the name of POpulisms please
heaven, unless he shall be made second
ruler of the land.
Needless of the ceaseless wall of
misery with which the air around him
is resonant, needless of the agony of
widows and orphans of miners entomb-
ed by millionaire greed, needless. that
pauper graves fill with babes dead
simply because society does not care to
have them live, needless of the bowed
and broken farmer driven from his
home in old age by a monetary system,
only such men as Watson and his fol-
lowers can save from its doom. Watson
must be vice president, or the highways
may throng with tramping poverty de-
MED a chance to earn bread, and the
cry of hunger may be smothered in
death administered by federal guns.
What do I think of Watsons pro
gramme? I think if persisted in, it will
be the programme of a fiend."