The representative., 1900-04-19

An Open Letter to the Democratic Re.
form co Press Bureau, st. Paul.
In your reform (?) notes of recent
date sent abroad among Democratic
journals you make use of the following
statement:
Speaking of the Mid-Roaders, the
Sioux Falls Press announces that paid
agents of Hanna are due to make their
appearance in Minnesota providing for
Mid-Roaders to attend the Cincinnati
convention"
| We do not know whether these are
| your sentiments or not, but are led to
| presume from the manner in which you
! quote the above utterance that you
! agree with it's suppositions. Allow me
| to say in regard to this utterance that
! it is nothing less than malicious. con-
temptible falsehood, fit offspring of
the source from whence it eminated.
At no time in the history of our party
has fusion with the Republican party
been proposed, because the Republican
platform did not invite such fusion.
Our only danger was from fusion with
the rotten, effete wreck Of old time
Democracy, who had not the manliness
to come out boldly, as aid the Republi-
cans, in defense Of class legislation,
gold standard, etc. You have cowardly
lodged those issues in the past and now
ord %Lo
prophet, w. ]. Bryan, you seek to work
upon the prejudices of the people and
defeat the ends of justice by hosting the
Democratic party into power. The re-
forms we, as party, today advocate
were thus advocated before the Demo-
cratic party had covered up their politi-
cal prostitution with the cloak of
hypocrisy when they were yet fighting
sham battles over the tariff question,
attempting to divert the peoples atten-
tion from the vital and paramount issue
OF the day, while they with the Repub-
l1cans as co-agitators were robbing the
people OF their rights and devouring
their sustenance. When you saw the
Peoples party making rapid strides to-
ward success you sent your paid agents
among it's leaders, and with money and
promises of Office induced them to sell
out the party's hope of success to DEM
ocracy, through fusion with it's rotten
corpse. Your last political move con-
sisted in buying the last vestige of soul
possessed by our false leaders-Weaver,
Butler, Allen ct al-and turning the
meeting of the national committee at
Lincoln, Neb., into a Democratic in
dorsement convention, and because a
few (of those who could not be bought
or cOerced into line with your evil in
tentlons} to preserve our party auton-
omy and in the future secure reform.
Joined hands in faith and issued a call
for convention at Cincinnati, you seek
to cover them with the blackguardism |
OF which you are complete master.
And, pray, will you explain to an !
anxious and expectant people the tech
nical difference between control by M.
Hanna Co., or Dick Croker & Co..
when both occupy the same unenviable
position in the wallowing mire of politi-
cal corruption? Will you also explain
why Tammany and Bryan have become
so strangely reconciled, when the de-
sires and demands of each are inimical
to the other? Allow me to break in on
your few rational moments to whisper
to you that never will the Mid-Roaders
bow the knee to Hanna or his agents
That we treat them as we treat the
Democratic party-with the supremest
contempt their actions have merited,
When the ballots of next November
are counted it may be that Barker and
Oonnelly will be defeated, but we will
1t least possess the approval of clear
and the machinery of a no.
Die party to transmit to future genera
ions as the vehicle for the undoing of
he work of rotten Democracy. Allow
ne to further state that the souls of
Mid-Road Populists are not sold in
he shambles or traded for paltry
,ffice as the souls of the waroheelers
md political contortionists who form
he machinery Of Democracy are sold, |
Sor do we bow the knee to Tammany