A week after the elections General Weaver announced that the Populists
had succeeded far beyond their expectations. "The Republican party," he
asserted, "is as dead as the Whig party was after the Scott campaign
of 1852, and from this time forward will diminish in every State of
the Union and cannot make another campaign.... The Populist will now
commence a vigorous campaign and will push the work of organization and
education in every county in the Union." There were those, however, who
believed that the new party had made a great mistake in having anything
to do with either of the old parties, that fusion, particularly of the
sort which resulted in combination tickets, was a compromise with the
enemy, and that more votes had been lost than won by the process. This
feeling found characteristic expression in an editorial in a Minnesota
paper:

Take an audience of republican voters in a schoolhouse where a county
fusion has taken place--or the press is full of the electoral deal--and
the audience will applaud the sentiments of the speaker--but they wont
vote a mongrel or democratic ticket! A wet blanket has been thrown!

"Oh," says someone, "but the democratic party is a party of reform!"
Well, my friend, you better go down south and talk that to the peoples
party where they have been robbed of their franchises by fraud and
outrage!

Ah, and there the peoples party fused the republicans!!!

Oh whitewash! Where is thy lime-kiln, that we may swab off the dark
blemishes of the hour!! Aye, and on the whited wall, draw thee a picture
of power and beauty Cleveland, for instance, thanking the peoples
party for all the favors gratuitously granted by our mongrel saints in
speckled linen and green surtouts.

As time gave perspective, however, the opinion grew that 1892 had
yielded all that could possibly have been hoped. The lessons of the
campaign may have been hard, but they had been learned, and, withal, a
stinging barb had been thrust into the side of the Republican party,
the organization which, in the minds of most crusaders, was principally
responsible for the creation and nurture of their ills. It was generally
determined that in the next campaign Populism should stand upon its own
feet; Democratic and Republican votes should be won by conversion of
individuals to the cause rather than by hybrid amalgamation of parties
and preelection agreements for dividing the spoils. But it was just
this fusion which blinded t