The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-04-20
The Net Results.

q UMMING them up, the years JEFF
~ ferson dinners, which reached
their conclusion with last nights
demonstration in New York have
brought two facts into clear light.
First, nothing but swift and quite
improbable revulsion in current opinion
can prevent the adoption of fair-and-
square free-coinage plank at next
years national convention of the
democratic party. In the second place
manifestly, this countryis soon to wit
ness earnest, concerted and intelli-
gently-guided effort in opposition to
the trusts.
The idea of drawing out popular ex-
pressions. by the banquet process, in
regard to democracy's future relations
to the silver question originated with
New York democrats who have in re-
cent months declared against silver and
VINO undertook to feel the popular pulse
in respect to some new issue This pro-
gramme eliminated in the ten-dollar
dinner. The projectors af that feast
probably had no idea that their plan
would entail last Saturday nights one
dollar demonstration or last nights
impressive rally in the name of work.
ingmen.
In all candor. there can be no ques-
ton as to the relative influence car
ried by the Croker banquet and the
Bryan demonstration of Saturday. BY
great odds the net gain must be con-
fessed to be with the Bryan affair
when it comes to getting close to the
good will of the men who do the bulk
of the voting. The dinners have served
to stimulate the discussion of the silver
question; they have made it plain, be-
yond all successful disputng, that they
are wrong who have been flattering
themselves that free coinage is a dead
issue. 1t is more likely than ever to be
Bryan next year; it is sure to be silver
as the democratic platforms essential
plank. If that issue needed an impetus
it has been given, and it came through
an agency which New York's anti
silver democrats brought into exercise.
The dinner of last night brought to
process, several other issues, but that
affair has its significance in the fast
that in the metropolis of this country,
an element that grows in strength is
looking to Bryan for leadership.
AS for the trusts, to which reference
has just been made as the second issue
that is rapidly assuming shape, it is
a I,-
republican authority, that the present
administration sees trouble coming,
Two newspapers in Chicago that are
supposed through the personality of
Editor kOhlsaat, to be close to the
presidential ear, have lately attracted
attention by their prudent approaches
toward the discussion of trusts. The
Chicago Times Herald remarks that
leading democrats ARE credited with
the intention to make a down with the
trusts battle cry next year." and the
kohsaat press has already reached the
point where it ventures to remark, in
a singerly way, that in some of their
forms the trusts really are wrong and
ought to be regulated. For that mat
ter. the Cleveland Leader, which is
supposed to talk directly for the
Hanna Mckinley coterie, goes much
farther: it declares that all trusts are
bad and that they all must be put
down.
Probably the Cleveland organ has
overdone the thing a little. Likely it
is that the Chicago newspaper we have
quoted, speaking more closely by the
card, will prepare its public for the
general classification into good trusts
and bad trusts and thus fix up another
straddle for Mr.. McKinley's use next
year. Meanwhile, as we have re-
marked, the net result of Jefferson
banquet demonstration is. first, a re-
viVal for silver and, secondly, a
marked impetus to the discussion of
the trusts. And, the pace having been
set, we are likely to have the popular
banquet feature as prominent in next
years contest as the log cabin was in
the William Henry Harrison campaign
OF as the rail fence and the wide
aWakeS' We're i'll Lincoln's two cleo
tiuM years.