he eyes of the old party leaders to the
significance of the Populist returns. Democrats, with a clear majority
of electoral votes, were not inclined to worry about local losses or
to value incidental gains; and Republicans felt that the menace of
the third party was much less portentous than it might have been as an
independent movement.

CHAPTER XI. THE SILVER ISSUE

A remarkable manifesto, dated February 22, 1895, summarized the
grievances of the Populists in these words:

"As early as 1865-66 a conspiracy was entered into between the gold
gamblers of Europe and America to accomplish the following purposes:
to fasten upon the people of the United States the burdens of perpetual
debt; to destroy the greenbacks which had safely brought us through the
perils of war; to strike down silver as a money metal; to deny to the
people the use of Federal paper and silver--the two independent sources
of money guaranteed by the Constitution; to fasten upon the country the
single gold standard of Britain, and to delegate to thousands of banking
corporations, organized for private gain, the sovereign control, for all
time, over the issue and volume of all supplemental paper currency."

Declaring that the "international gold ring" was summoning all its
powers to strike at the prosperity of the country, the authors of this
address called upon Populists to take up the gauntlet and meet "the
enemy upon his chosen field of battle," with the "aid and cooperation of
all persons who favor the immediate free coinage of silver at a ratio
of 16-1, the issue of all paper money by the Government without the
intervention of banks of issue, and who are opposed to the issue of
interest-bearing government bonds in the time of peace."

There was nothing new in this declaration of hostility to bank issues
and interest-bearing bonds, nor in this demand for government paper
money, for these prejudices and this predilection had given rise to the
"Ohio idea," by force of which George H. Pendleton had hoped to achieve
the presidency in 1868. These same notions had been the essence of the
platforms of the Greenback party in the late seventies; and they
had jostled government ownership of railroads for first place in
pronunciamentos of labor and agricultural organizations and of third
parties all during the eighties. Free silver, on the other hand,
although not ignored in the earlier period, did not attain foremost rank
among the demands of the dissa