resy, were convinced that bimetallism offered a safe and
sound solution of the currency problem. For the sake of added votes the
inflationists were ready to waive any preference as to the form in which
the cheap money should be issued. Before the actual formation of the
People's Party, the farmers' organizations had set out to capture
votes by advocating free silver. After the election of 1892 free silver
captured the Populist organization.

Heartened by the large vote of 1892 the Populist leaders prepared to
drive the wedge further into the old parties and even hoped to send
their candidates through the breach to Congress and the presidency.
A secret organization, known as the Industrial League of the United
States, in which the leaders were for the most part the prominent
officials of the People's Party, afforded for a time through its lodges
the machinery with which to control and organize the silverites of the
West and the South.

The most notable triumph of 1898 was the selection of Judge William V.
Allen, by the Democrats and Independents of Nebraska, to represent that
State in the United States Senate. Born in Ohio, in a house which had
been a station on the "underground railroad" to assist escaping negroes,
Allen at ten years of age had gone with his family to Iowa. After
one unsuccessful attempt, he enlisted in the Union Army at the age of
fifteen and served from 1862 to the end of the War. When peace came, he
resumed his schooling, attended college, studied law, and in 1869 was
admitted to the bar. In 1884 he went to Madison County, Nebraska, where
seven years later he was elected district judge by the Populists. Reared
in a family which had been Republican, he himself had supported this
party until the campaign of 1890. "I have always," said he, "looked upon
a political party simply as a means to an end. I think a party should be
held no more sacred than a man's shoes or garments, and that whenever it
fails to subserve the purposes of good government a man should abandon
it as cheerfully as he dispenses with his wornout clothes." As Senator,
Allen attracted attention not only by his powers of physical endurance
as attested by a fifteen-hour speech in opposition to the bill for
the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act, but also by his integrity of
character. "If Populism can produce men of Senator Allen's mold," was
the comment of one Eastern review, "and then lift them into positions
of the highest responsibili