The Saint Paul globe., 1897-02-08
THE AGE LINE IN POLITICS.

tSLSSu
THE AGE LINE IN POLITICS.
Judge Tourgee Is a Republican of the
strictest of the sects into which that
organization is slowly disintegrating.
When that .party's stock In trade was
sectionalism he contributed his quota
of fuel to firing the Northern heart in
his Fools Errand, by One of Them"
and since has taken an active part in
it's campaigns. Lloyd Brice's Study in
Campaign Audiences" in the North
American Review, moves Judge Tourgee
to narrating, in the Inter Ocean, his
observations in the last campaign.
There were three conditions that struck
him, the cool reception given the typi-
cal stumper, with his buffoonery, his
stories verging as closely on coarse
ness as he dared; the disapproval' Of
denunciation of opponents, and the DIFF
ferent material of the Republican and
Democratic audiences in regard to age.
SThese changes are not so recent as
the last campaign. They began when
President Cleveland, ten years ago,
! gave his party and the voters some
thing more serious to think about in
the national policy than the bloody
shirt, rebel brigadiers or Southern out
RACES. Speakers in the campaign of 80
noted it, One who had been in demand
for a number Of years in the North
west, who believed that the way to
win votes was to tickle the voters
with side-splitters and go no further
into argument than unstinted laudation
of the grand old party and contempt
uous illusions to the Democrats, COM
planned that year that he could not
understand his Minnesota audiences; he
couldn't get hold of them; couldn't
warm them up, and wondered if he
were not losing his grip" breaking
down, playing out. He could not real
iZe that it was his audiences, not him
self, who had changed. Democratic
speakers reported more attentive audi
ences than they had ever had, with
questioning evidently intended to get
information and not merely to annoy
or trip the speaker. The constant ap-
| peal to the state committee was for
speakers who understood this new
question of the tariff and could in
struct; 1--WE don't want any other kind"
the local committeeman would write.
Nor is the difference in the ages of
= %I,D TI,Io
a feature peculiar to the campaign of
'96, although it may have been more
marked. While on his tour he says he
attended several Democratic meetings
in different states and never before had
he seen audiences with so great pro-
portion Of young men in them as
he saw in those meetings, nor had
| he ever before noted the preponder-
ance of gray heads and boards in Re
publican audiences that he saw last
year. He found his observations con-
firmed by those Of other Republican
speakers to whom he mentioned his
own, and he concludes that the bulk
! of the Republican vote was born before
! 1850 and of the Democratic vote since
1870. From this he draws the conclu-
sion that the death rate will be larger
! in the former party, and that the &C
cessions in the next four years will be
to the latter. The same cause that
changed the temper Of political audi
ences, the injection into the campaign
Of a serious question with a moral ba-
sis, inevitably changed the audiences
gauged by ages. Questions involving
human rights find less response from
minds in which age has ossified preju-
dice into conviction, while they find
younger minds open and responsive to
them.
The campaign Of 1896 was rb excep-
ton for, back of the politicians arti-
flee for a union Of discordant elements
for immediate effect, was the feeling
that the Democratic party, regardless
of its platform, stood for hostility to
commercial and industrial influences
that the mass believed were making for
their own advantage at the cost of
common right. Even the money ques-
ton was artfully draped to conform to
this impression, and the sense of right.
the resistance to encroaching wrong,
was what drew to Democratic meet
ings the younger men among the vot-
ers. Misled and mistaken, as we be-
lieve they were, still it was the evidence
Of the power of appeals to such mo-
tives that gives encouragement to hope
in these days Of gloom that, when De-
mocracy shall espouse only the really
right and oppose only the actually
wrong, it will win to it the ever increas
ing young while it will retain those who
could not share in it's mistakes last
year.
STILL AT 1T.
When once the maggot Of financial
heresy has found it's way into any