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The second day of the convention saw the advantage pushed further: each Territory had its representation increased threefold; of contesting delegations those who represented the gold element in their respective States were unseated to make way for silverites; and Stephen M. White, one of the California senators, was made permanent chairman.
He will be read and honored centuries after the library building with its poet's corner has perished of old age. He is the poet of the people, and has more readers than any ten of those honored by the committee. If it is gold that has appreciated, as the silverites claim, aren't the farmers now getting two dollars a bushel for their wheat?
The evils of a silver currency are obvious to all here. Its value has changed three times in one day since we have been in the country. Business is seriously disturbed, and suffers from this cause, and it is to such a plight that our misled silverites at home would reduce us! SATURDAY, December 7. To-day we walked through the fish and vegetable markets.
We should stand before the world as willing and ready to violate the national honour, ignore our pledges and recklessly impair our credit. I don't think the resolution will pass the House, the Republican majority is too strong there, but I am afraid it will pass the Senate; although we are in the majority, a good many Republicans are Western men and Silverites.
The silverites were not inclined to insist upon their man, however, declaring that, if the platform contained the silver plank, they would carry their States for whatever candidate might be chosen. The old campaigner proved the stronger, and he was nominated with General James G. Field of Virginia for Vice-President.
Hanna was a stanch friend of the gold standard, but he was too clever to alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites by supporting the nomination of a man known to be an uncompromising advocate of gold. He chose a safer candidate, a man whose character he sincerely admired and whose opinions he might reasonably expect to sway his personal friend, Major William McKinley.
A secret organization, known as the Industrial League of the United States, in which the leaders were for the most part the prominent officials of the People's Party, afforded for a time through its lodges the machinery with which to control and organize the silverites of the West and the South.
The silverites in Congress were reenforced by representatives from new States in the far West, the admission of which had not been unconnected with political exigencies on the part of the Republican party. The advocates of the change were not strong enough to force through a free-silver bill, but they were able by skillful logrolling to bring about the passage of the Silver Purchase Act.
All were impressed with the significance of the decision they must make. Gone were the hopes of the past months; the Populist party would not sweep into its ranks all anti-monopolists and all silverites for one of the old parties had stolen its loudest thunder!
By the familiar practice of "log-rolling," the silverites prevented the passage of the McKinley tariff bill until the manufacturers of the East were willing to yield in part their objections to silver legislation. But both the tariff and the silver bill seemed to the angry farmers of the West mere bones thrown to the dog under the table.
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