Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-10-07
BREEDING SECTIONALISM
WHO ARE THE BREEDERS AND IN
WHAT SECTIONS IS ITFOUNDq
"a Petty Lawyer from a Petty Town I'm q
Remote Granger State"


Presidential contest should manifest
itself, but that there is tendency and
that 1T asserts itself with increasing
strength from campaign to campaign
admits of no question. The Republic
as again dividing in interest and senti-
ment as it was divided before the war
pr the rebellion, only now it is the west
and south .yainst the east, instead of
the south against the north. The east
wonders at this hostility, complains of
IT plaiutively when it threatens seri-
ously TO hurt, and SCOTS at il humor-
ously when no immediate peril is APP
parent. But in neither state of mind
does it occur to the east that it is in
any measure to blame. Advanced as
the people of the Atlantic are in civil
ization, they are not yet so far adj
yanced rs TO be able to see themselves
from the point of view of the west and
south-at least, not many of them
That they should appear to others
conceited, selfish, greedy, ignorant and
brutal in their arrogance is unthink-
able.
This presidential struggle, whatever
its outcome at the polls may be, is GER
tain to deepen the sectional feeling,
aud for this not the west and south,
but the east, will be mainly response
Die. If the west and south shall elect
RrVan without ho Of he -
states, there will be room for magma
nimlty in their exultation. Shot Id
Mckinley get in. there will be among
millions OF American citizens an inten-
sifcation of belief that there must
hereafter be common cause made
against region which has most of the
wealth of the country and the self-es-
TEEN and exclusive devotion to self
interest that generally accompany OPP
ulence.
The gold press of the east as IA whole
is now cxhausting its energies sowing
dragons teeth. Its appeal is made
directly to sectional prejudice. What
was to have been the campaign of
calm discussion of the financial prob
lem has become a riot of disgraceful
abuse. The eastern Republican as
sumption is that the east is too superior
n the wisdom of craftsmanship to
waste argument on the inferior hordes
of the south and west Mr.. Bryan is
from the west. Therefore he is, to
quote the language of leading Re-
publican organ, "A petty lawyer from
u petty town in remote granger
state" He addresses his cOuntrymen
daily, giving reasons for the faith that
is in him, and putting his cause with
the good temper and courtesy of gen
tleman. In another eastern daily we
axe told he is merely grotesque pro-
duction of semi-barbarous region an
Tdvanturer. demagogue, a socialist,
an anarchist, a scoundrel preaching
Reputation and dishonor. His fol-
lowers, the Democratic party of the
United States and the great masses on
whom party ties rest lightly and who
hold that not the money but the citi-
zenship of the Republic should possess
the government, are insolently scream
ed at as Il horde of brainless, character
less zealots. bent. for the most part. on
evading the payment of their honest
debts
1t cannot be but that this sustained
hurricane of contemptuous reviling
should leave track of hatred behind
it. The men OF the west and south be-
lieve themselves to be quite as capa BILE
as the men of the east 10 form a iudg-
ment on what policies arc best for the
country, as honest i'll their intentions
and not subject to the suasion of self
interest in arriving at their political
opinions. Not only do they object to
being berated as ignoramuses, villains
and fools BY follow citizens whose
license to lecture is seif-bestowed; but
that they should return eastern in
suits in kind is inevitable.
No political contest within a gener-
alton has sunk to so low plane as
this one. The Eatenswill Gazette
has been revived and dominates our
journalism. Mark Hanna, political
agent for trusts syndicates and the en-
tire privileged class who is deluging
the land with corrupting money, has
made himself managing editor of the
press of his Carty. Debate has been
abandoned for abuse, and the prevail
ing argument in support of the gold
standard is to call the protagonists of
bimetallism and just money hard
names. A spirit has been raised
which is not the spirit of sane Ameri-
can politics, but war. Scctionalism,
the worst curse that can affiict the re-
public, is being sedulOusly cultivated
and by the very men who are rcadiest
to declaim against it, when sectional
Sun does not promise to benefit them.
1t is vile campaign, and those who
have deliberately made it vile for the
purpose of electing Mckinley. the rep
resentative of the scheme for giving us
Il government of money for money,
should be smitten at the polls by every
American who desires the perpetuity
of Republican institution and the pre-
servation of the Union which once be-
fore WINS all lint VyreelSad on tho ,,ool-S