ded power hardly second to that of the majority.
Bassett had introduced into state politics the bi-partisan alliance, a
device by virtue of which members of the assembly representing favored
interests cooperated, to the end that no legislation viciously directed
against railways, manufacturers, brewers and distillers should succeed
through the deplorable violence of reformers and radicals. Apparently
without realizing it, and clearly without caring greatly, Bassett was
thus doing much to destroy the party alignments that had in earlier
times nowhere else been so definitely marked as in Indiana. Partisan
editors of both camps were glad when the sessions closed, for it had
been no easy matter to defend or applaud the acts of either majority or
minority, so easily did Republicans and Democrats plot together at
neutral campfires. It had not been so in those early post-bellum years,
when Oliver Morton of the iron mace still hobbled on crutches. Harrison
and Hendricks had fought no straw men when they went forth to battle.
Harwood began to be conscious of these changes, which were wholly
irreconcilable with the political ideals he had imbibed from Sumner at
Yale. He had witnessed several political conventions of both parties
from the press table, and it was gradually dawning upon him that
politics is not readily expressed in academic terminology.

The silver lining of the Democratic cloud had not greatly disturbed
Morton Bassett. He had been a delegate to the national convention of
1896, but not conspicuous in its deliberations; and in the subsequent
turbulent campaign he had conducted himself with an admirable
discretion. He was a member of the state committee and the chairman was
said to be of his choosing. Bassett stood for party regularity and
deplored the action of those Democrats who held the schismatic national
convention at Indianapolis and nominated the Palmer and Buckner ticket
on a gold-standard platform. He had continued to reelect himself to the
senate without trouble, and waited for the political alchemists of his
party to change the silver back to gold. The tariff was, after all, the
main issue, Bassett held; but it was said that in his business
transactions during these vexed years he had stipulated gold payment in
his contracts. This was never proved; and if, as charged, he voted in
1896 for Republican presidential electors it did not greatly matter when
a considerable number of other Hoosier Democrats who, to