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Updated: June 24, 2025
Vote!" the reiterated announcement of the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations that the conferees could not agree, the perpetual nagging of two Democrats and one Populist, the long trying intervals of debate on matters irrelevant to the great question torturing every mind, during which there was much confusion on the floor: the Senators talked constantly in groups except when the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations brought in his amended bill; all this had made up a day trying to the stoutest nerves, and more than one person had fainted and been carried from the galleries.
Now it was for these delegates to decide whether they would put their organization behind the Democratic nominee with a substantial prospect of victory, or preserve intact the identity of the Populist party, split the silver vote, and deliver over the election to a gold Republican.
Populist sympathizers now besieged the assembly chamber, immuring the luckless Republicans and incidentally a few women who had come in as members of the suffrage lobby and were now getting more of political equality than they had anticipated.
Cleveland the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden was converted from a Democrat into a Populist, falling into the arms of Mr. Bryan, whose domination proved as baleful in one way as Mr. Cleveland's had been in another, the final result shipwreck, with the extinguishment of all but the label. Mr. Bryan was a young man of notable gifts of speech and boundless self-assertion.
His following was composed of the lowly, who were duped by his phrases, and of criminals, who knew his bent; and they followed him into any party whither he found it convenient to go, Republican, Democratic, or Populist. The charter of Minneapolis gave the mayor considerable appointing power. He was virtually the dictator of the Police Department.
Although most of the members of the convention were ready to cooperate with the Democrats, there was a very strong feeling that something should be done, if possible, to preserve the identity of the Populist party and to safeguard its future. An active minority, moreover, was opposed to any sort of fusion or cooperation.
In 1908 the Populist vote fell to 29,000; in 1912 the party gave up the ghost in a thinly-attended convention which neither made nominations of its own nor endorsed any other candidate. In Congress the forces of Populism dwindled rapidly, from the 27 members of 1897 to but 10 in 1899, and none at all in 1903.
Indeed, the sectional differences in both parties, and the unexpected strength of the Populist movement caused no little anxiety among the political leaders. And finally, the volume and character of the currency was still undetermined. The Democrats had divided on the question.
Farmers are usually conservative in politics and intensely loyal to party; but the Populist movement indicates the tendency to extremes when the old allegiance is left behind. Old methods of farming may be found alongside ill-considered attempts to raise new crops or to utilize untried machines.
In this year, 1896, also, for the first time since 1860, Southern men, the one a Confederate general, and the other a Populist editor, were to be nominated for possible chief magistracy. Mr. Coffin, with prescience, had already seen that the war issues, grand as they were, had melted away into even vaster national questions.
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