People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1895 — THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE [ARTICLE]

THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE

Why, of Courie They Are All Honorable Men. Another forlorn lot of democratic fossils has met in Washington city in a “Free Silver Convention.” God help ns! If there is anything that is enough to make a buzzard sick at this latter-day, it is a democratic free silver convention! Never was so sick and tired of anything in my life! The Washington convention was just like all the others—an infinite welter of aimeless imbecility. Yes, old man Harris from Tennessee was there —old man Isham G. Then there was Senator Jones of Arkansas, who was the putative father of the tariff bill which even Cleveland was ashamed to sign. Then there was ex-Senator Pat Walsh, who has been fighting silver for so many years, and who only turns ,u its favor now when the help of all hands is necessary to holjl the dear old democratic humbug together. And Livingston was there. We add this statement as final an 1 conclusive evidence that the convention never intended to be anything else than a sham, a subterfuge, a snare and a fraud. Else Livingston wouldn’t have been there. Dan Voorhees of Indiana sent a letter of regret to the Washington free silver convention. Sorry he couldn’t be there—was Daniel. Would have been pleased, had circumstances favored, to have brought his tears along and mingled them with the pearly drops from the patriotic eyes of such free silver mourners as Isham G. Harris, Pat Walsh, and Lon Livingston. As Dan Voorhees was the senatorial henchman who at Cleveland’s nod (accompanied with a savory mess of political patronage) reversed the principles of a lifetime, and led the fight which closed the mints to silver, his presence at the Washington convention would have been highly ornamental—not to say gaudy. Had Guiteau been pall-bearer to Garfield, Booth to Lincoln, Arnold to Washington, or Judas to Christ, the effect could hardly have been more striking than the presence of Dan Voorhees at a free silver convention. The fact that the free silver “leaders" expected the co-operation of a man like Voorhees—an assassin, whose knife is yet dripping with the blood of slain bimetallism—is of itself a significant proof that the free silver leaders of both the old parties are merely playing a huge confidence game on the people. —People’s Party Paper.