The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-11-06
SIMPLE ADDITION.

SIMPLE ADDIIlONs
How many more lessons is it going
to take before political managers learn
the fact that we have been telling
them for a good many years, that
fusion does not fuse? We know Of no
fallacy more preposterous or more diff
ficult to kill than the notion that fusion
by political conventions will add to-
gether the popular vote which each
represents. This idea has been killed
a thousand times, and it springs to the
brightest life in narrow minds after
each demise with unfailing and disap-
pointing regularity Still the light
weights in political conventions bring
out their tabulations and show you
five votes on one side and five on an
other, insisting that, although these
votes represent utterly inharmonious
and opposing opinions, you can get on
a platform and nominate a single
candidate who will command the full
support Of the ten electors in ques-
ton. 1t never has happened, and never
will. But those who believe in it seem
to be practically insensible to demon
stration. The whole hope of carrying
the country for Mr.. Bryan this year
was built upon this quagmire of fusion.
Nothing could have been clearer than
that the very foundation stones would
not hold together for twenty-four
hours. Enough happened at the Chi
cago convention to show to men who
had not lost their heads that fusion
meant, not simple addition, but most
extraordinary division and subtraction.
With pretty nearly half the convention
in open revolt against planks that had
nomination, and with part of the Pop
ulist voters equally protestant against
things that had to be left In to hold
any Of the Democratic vote at all, the
fusion showed itself simply as a meth
Cd Of making sure that you would be
in minority. Yet all over the coun-
try people were hauling cut their old
almanacs, showing you the total Pop
vote for 1892 and 1894, and telling you
what a sure thing they had by just
tctting up the total. 1t was no use, ap-
parently, to tell them that the thing
had been tried innumerable times with
out success.
We had, in our own state, to go back
nc further than two years ago. The
sum Of the vote cast by the Peoples
party and the Democratic party in Min
nesota was substantially equal to the
Republican vote. Yet, in that very
year. a candidate for justice of the SUI
preme court, who received the unani-
nous Endorsement Of both those par
ties, and who might be expected to
realize fusion in his own person, be-
cause the voters in that case were not
asked to abandon their old organiza-
tons altogether, fell nearly 5000 votes
short Of getting a majority. One would
think that such a proof as that ought
to be sufficient. Yet the fusionists tried
the game over again with the same cid
unreasoning confidence. They are met
with a result so precisely similar that
it almost establishes rule whereby
we can cipher out fundamentally the
difference between the sum Of two par
ty votes separately and the strength of
those parties on a fusion platform.
Mr.. Mckinley carried Minnesota by
substantially the same majority that
was given two years ago to Judge Col
Inns, Of the supreme court. Fusion on
the state ticket Jared no better. The
great popularity of Mr.. Lind enabled
him to break the record as a vote
getter But the success of all the other
state candidates on the Republican
ticket emphasizes the individual quail
ported, but the fusion principle was re-
jected.
Everywhere it is the same. Wher-
ever parties were at all well balanced
fusion cost it's supporters enormously. 1t
would take 500 years, at the present rate
Of progress, for the fusion idea to get
even respectable standing in the larger
communities Of the East. 1t is evident
that 1t is a steady loser in the great
commonwealth of the middle West
Fusion on the outskirts and in new
communities, where public opinion is
still unsettled, as in the mountain
states, loses, rather than gains, with the
advance of political intelligence and