Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — A DECAYING PARTY. [ARTICLE]

A DECAYING PARTY.

The disorganisation of the people’! party in the west appears to be complete. In Kansas, the stronghold of ‘populism,* the quarrel among the leaders is so intense and bitter that there is no hope of reconciliation, and all but the piofessional politicians are rapidly abandoning the cause, ” says the Sunday Times. “The career of the people’s party has been r emarkable, and its memory will linger for years after it has joined the balance of -a country’s broken idols. It sprang up in a night, as it were, and acquired so much sudden power that it sent representatives and senators to Washington and dominated for a time the destinies of two or three states. Its fall has been as rapid as its rise, and to-day its adherents could scarcely elect a road supervisor where two years ago they could have dictated as they pleased. The creed of the party is visionary and some of its demands revolutionary, but the farmers, believing themselves the victims of oppression and corporate greed, welcomed it as a possible avenue to emancipation. Their eyes have been opened and their dreams dispelled, however, and they returned to their cornfields satisfied that the El Dorado is a long way off. And the party of which they made a towering and stately edifice is now a crumblidg ruin.” Even that radical but reasonable republican paper, the Wai saw Indianian thus observes: “There is no need of all this. There is just as much money as ever, and if people would go along and pay up their debts, there would be no cause for this alarm.— Everything is prosperous. There is enough to eat, and enough towear, general good health, unusual enterprise, and good prospects for all kinds of fruit and grain crops. So, don’t act foolish. Pay a little ci what you owe, and let the other fellow pay a little on what he owes you. If times are hard, yo .help to make them so by your grumbling and whining. [There is enough to feed the world, and more coming. Brace up and be a man and don't fret yourself and everybody else to death.”