t a plump, simple issue would reach
the average voter's comprehension, and compel him to a simple "yes" or
"no" that might blast his hopes, destroy this happy equilibrium of
voting parties, and the trade of politics might actually go out of
fashion. Pricked by his fears of all real issues, he becomes a genius
in inventing handy apparent ones that are usually glittering
nothings--impalpable shadows about which he can talk so learnedly by
the life-time, and say nothing and mean nothing. So rapidly has this
expert developed in our land of politics that one man shouts, "I am
for tweedle-dum" and the other answers defiantly back, "I am for
tweedle-dee," and the "campaign of education" is on, the jockeys
mounted, the race begins, and as the cloud of dust rises, "the greasy
caps" fill the air. "Spotted Free Trade" is ridden by the "Old Flag";
"Revenue Only" by the "Screaming Eagle," and the excited voter stakes
his future hopes on "Flag" or "Eagle," most probably as did his father
before him.

It seems this is the wretched outcome of the hundred years of American
education in politics--making of every man not only a sovereign, but a
possible candidate for President. What is it all but a roaring farce?
If we could forget that this is real government coupled with all the
pains and penalties which are the heritage of ignorance, and not mere
child's play, then even serious intelligence might smile though
commiserating the follies of grown men. Have we finally reached the
condition tending toward national political dementia, or is there no
meaning whatever attached any longer to the name of statesman?

Let us look a little further into the absurdities over which American
statesmen are so vehemently wrangling. Our government assumes the old
time function of all governments to make and regulate the currency or
money for the transaction of business--a mere convenience for the
measure of values in buying and selling--in another way a thing
performing functions similar to the yard-stick in measuring, and the
great statesmen are wrangling over the problem of what particular
material that convenience shall be made. And our nation, through
Congress and the President, is ever tinkering, changing, altering, and
reversing regulations concerning this "value measurer"--this
convenient representative of property, and the basis of all commerce,
gold, silver, copper, nickel, and paper to-day, and on this basis
contracts and multitudinous transac