The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-08-22
IS TAKING H EASY
Chester Long Enjoying a Pic
mic This Year.
DIVISION OF OPPOSITION
Enables Him for the First
Time to Take Things Cool.

Especial Correspondence of the Eagle)
Greensburg, Kan, Aug 2O.-There is
one thing about the campaign in the
Seventh district this year that is very
noticeabEe-the ease with which Long is
enabled to make his canvass.
The hardest thing for a candidate to do
in a campaign is to conduct his canvass
ever with the feeling uppermost that
there is such opposition to him that he
must bend his every effort to win. He
is strung to such a tension that it is a
wonder he endures to the end. All his
combatfveness is aroused; he sees the fire
in the eyes of his opponents; he is over
conscious of their opposing spirit; he
rushes to the fray; he wins or loses, but
he is exhausted, mentally and physically,
after the battle is done.
Such, for eight years, in four of the
hardest-fought political campaigns ever
conducted in Kansas, has been the ex-
perience of Chester I. Long Such, in
the year Of our Lord 1900 is, not the case.
Long, for the first time in his political
history, is having an easy time of it,
and only he knows how we'll he deserves
it. What he has undergone in four cam
paigns would have staggered, if not
crushed, men not so big and strong, men
tally and physically as he is. But moth
ing succeeds like success, and he has sue
ceeded at last. He has battered the op-
position and been battered in return for
eight years, but his was theslast battle,
for the reasons above as for anything
else on earth. He has conquered the
spirit of the opposition, and instead of
fierce, bloodthirsty, eager opponents who
dared do anything, he now has crush
ed and divided opposition. And if the
ides of November brings eagles of vic
tory to perch on any Republicans ban
ner no one who is fair and just and wise
will blame them for settling on Longs
It is now everywhere apparent that the
old-time Populist party is going out Of
existence. Its downward career is in full
force at the present stage of the cam
paign. After this year there will be a
new alignment Populists will go to
either the Democratic or the Republican
party Populists have ceased to boast of
their party. They merely await the time
for the changing act to occur. Many of
them will welcome the change. They
realize, some bitterly, some otherwise,
how little has been done in their party
and how the process of gradual absorp-
ton has been going on, on the part of
the Democratic party. 1t has come that
even Democrats hold places on the differ
ent Populist committees; they reach here
and there, with varying degrees of bold
ness to control the machinery of the
Populist party until now, as even Brei-
denthaI says, so do all knowing Populists
realize that after this year there will be
but one party opposed to the Republican
party, and of course that means the
Democratic party, as it is the only OPP
position. party that has a national or
ganization. This condition is partially
responsible for the crushed feeling on the
part of the opposition to Long this year,
and this is one reason why he is finding
it easier to conduct his campaign, now
that he is into it, than he even dared
hope before.