Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1894 — Populism’s Exit. [ARTICLE]

Populism’s Exit.

St. Louis Star-Sayings: The decline and fall of Populism is a chapter in the Nation’s recent political history the materials for which are coming in very rapidly. Alabama and Arkansas have furnished their quota and Colorado and Kansas, judged by contemporaneous reports, are not far behind. From all the strongholds comes the welcome intelligence that the average voter has repented of the fury with which he erstwhile pursued the false gods of the be whiskered Peffer, the blatant Lewelling, the yelling Lease, the bloody Waite, and all that peculiar aggregation of political nondescripts who followed in their wake.

In other words, the men who partake of politics have convalesced from this epidemic of measles that attacked the Western and Southern commonwealths, and all signs indicate that in the staid Eastern communities the quarantine against the spread of the distemper has been effectual. Under ordinary conditions the rise Of a new party would have been hailed with some show of pleasure by the increasing number of malcontents among Republicans as well as Democrats, but Populism, as espoused by those herein mentioned, quickly made the impression that consistent meihbership was equivalent to political insanity, and after the first impact of the movement its force was soon spent. Now come the season when the composition of its funeral dirges is due. Out of the chaos it sought to create rises the sober sense of the two great parties, and to the extent with which the Democracy has flirted with the movement now dying out it will be judged, along with other causes for judgment, in November.