People's voice. [volume] (Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas) 1890-1917, 1897-07-01

native settlers of these states. but the
element coming from the Southern
states was stronger in Kansas than
in Nebraska. Both these states have
an exceptionally large proportion of
native whites, as compared with their
neighbOrs among the prairie states.
Kansas, for example, has a percentage
OF persons of foreign parentage to
total population of about twenty-six,
while Nebraska has about forty-two.
Iowa fOrty-three, South Dakota sixty.
Wisconsin seventy-three, Minnesota
Seventy-fve, and North Dakota
seventy-niue. There is significance
in the fact that, with the exception
of Iowa, these prairie states, the
colonies Of the old Northwest, gave
Bryan votes in the last election in the
ratio of their proportion of persons Of
native parentage. North Dakota,
with the heaviest foreign element,
was carried for Mckinley, while South
Dakota. with a much smaller foreign
vote, went for Bryan. Kansas and
Nebraska rank with Ohio in their
native percentage, and they were the
center Of prairie Pcpulism. Ofcourse,
there were other important local
economic and political explanations
for this ratio, but it seems to have a
basis Of real meaning. Certain it is
that the leaders Of the silver
movement came from the native
element furnished by the old North
west.
Looking at the silver movement
more largely, we find that in the
tfty-fOurth congress Ole was born in
Kansas, and the rest in Indiana,
Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia and Maine. All of the
Nebraska delegation in the house
came from the old Northwest or from
Iowa. The biographies of the two
representatives from the state of
Washington tell an interesting story.
These men came as children to the
pine woods of Wisconsin, took up
public lands and worked On the farm
and in the pinerieS. One passed on
to a homestead in Nebraska before
settling in Washington. Thus they
kept one stage ahead of the social
transformations of the West. This
is the usual training of the western
politicians. If the reader would see
apicture OF the representative Kansas
POpulist, let him examine the family
portraits Of the Ohio farmer 10 the
middle Of this century.
In a word, the POpulist is the
American farmer who has kept in
advance of the economic and social
transformations Jhdt have overtaken
those. who remained behind. In the
days when the Northwest was still in
the gristle, she sent her sons into the
newer West to continue the views Of
life and the policies of the half-front-
Ter area they had left. While, doubt
less, investigation into the ancestry
OF the POpulists and silver men who
came to the prairies from the old
Northwest would show some pro-
portion of Southern origin. yet the
center Of discomfort seems TO have
been among the men of the New
England and Western New York
current. If New England looks with
care at these men, she may recognize
in them the familiar lineaments Of
the embattled farmers who fired the
shot heard round the world. The
continuous advance Of this pioneer
stock from New England has pre-
served for us the Older type Of the
pioneer OF frontier New England. l
do not overlook the powerful trans.
forming influences of the wilderness
operating on this stock ever since it
left the earlier frontierfarms to follow
up the valleys OF Western Connecticut,
Massachusetts aud Vermont, into
Western New York. into Ohio. into