The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-11-30
THE FUTURE OF SILVER.
A LessOn for Cheap Money Advocates
in tho Late Elec-
tiOns.


There is no mistaking the significance
of the fall election in its relation to the
democratic party as national organi-
cation which will not participate in an
other general election for congressman
and legislative or state officers general
" until the presidential battle of 1900.
The results of the voting tend greatly
to strengthen, consolidate and enforce
the power of the radical free silver
element, predominant in Chicago in
1896. and now certain to be in control
at the national convention of 1900.
Briefly summarized, the results in the
south were more decisively favorable to
democratic candidates than any similar
elections have been since populism
threatened democratic local supremacy
in many southern states. The popu-
lists are again voting the democratic
ticket, and the price of their continued
alliance is adhesion to the radical prin-
ciples enunciated in the presidential
election in the Chicago platform-the
crime of '96.
In those of the eastern states in which
a serious effort has been made, as in
Connecticut. to attract the honest
money candidates to the party whose
allegiance they foreswore two years
ago, it has failed utterly. In the states
in which the policy of evasion of ma
tional issues has been followed, New
York, New Jersey and Maryland, there
has been no gain in consequence. In
Massachusetts, and Illinois, where the
Bryan democracy reiterated its pur.
poses as declared at Chicago, its candl-
dates did better than they did
ayear ago. In the far west, in Colorado
Utah and Idaho, what measure of sue.
cess the democratic candidatesattained
was due chiefly to the aid of silver re.
publicans; and it does not appear from
the returns from any state that the sill.
verites, whether democrats, populists
or republicans, have any mistrust of the
sincerity of the democratic organiza.
tion in its temporary muf1ed advocacy
of radical policies, or that the honest.
money voters of the country, demo.
Gratis, republicans or independents
there are no honest-money populists-
had, or have, a particle of confidence
in the professions made by some dem
ocratic orators of their disavowal oi
silverite predictions and purposes.
The effect of the elections has been
briefly, to tighten party lines with ever
greater firmness than was the case two
years ago. The national democrats
so called, have been eliminated entirely
They now vote the republican ticket Of
they vote the democratic ticket. Tht
middle-of-the-road populists, and ther,
were nearly 250,000 of them in 1896, ar,
again in the fold of the fusionists. II
the south, the southwest and in tn,
mountain states, the populists ant
democrats preponderate; in the east
ern, middle, middle western and Pacif,
states, the republican party is the part.
of the majority. There are no visible
recruits to the democratic standard Il
be secured by abandonment of the prin
ciples to which the party, as nationa
organization, is committed; there i
the certainty of serious and positiv'
losses in any attempted abandonment
of the issues of two years ago.
Unquestionably, the present eco
nomic conditions, as well as the polit
ical relations of the two parties towar'
each other, the prestige of republican
victory, and the demoralization of tn
opposing forces, make almost hopeles
for the democracy the renewal of tn
battle of two years ago; but, be the out
look propitious or discouraging, tn
lesson of the late election is unmistak
ably clear: The democratic party /
committed irrevocably to the issues O
1S96.-N. Y. Sun.