the fallacy of Douglas' argument, he had asked a question which his party pleaded with him to pass by, assuring him that it would lose him the election. In every step of this six years he had been disinterested, calm, unyielding, and courageous. He knew he was right, and could afford to wait. The result is not doubtful,' he told his friends. We shall not fail-if we stand firm. We shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later the victory is sure to come.'

Although Douglas' friends were wild with delight at the clever way in which he had escaped Lincoln's trap, it turned out in the long run that Lincoln was right; in 1860 the Democratic convention at Charleston refused to nominate Douglas for the Presidency because of this utterance.

Lincoln lost the Senatorship, but gained the Presidency by this great campaign. It was the first work which brought him before the whole nation. His friends became aware through it that he was a great man, and the distinctly eastern people awoke to the fact of a new star having risen in the West.

“It had been a long road he had traveled to make himself a national figure. Twenty-eight years before he had deliberately entered politics. He had been beaten, but had persisted; he had succeeded and failed; he had abandoned the struggle and returned to his profession. His outraged sense of justice had driven him back, and for six years he had traveled up and down Illinois trying to prove to men that slavery extension was wrong. It was by no one speech, by no one argument that he had wrought. Every day his ceaseless study and pondering gave him new matter, and every speech he made was fresh. He could not repeat an old speech, he said, because the subject enlarged and widened so in his mind as he went on that it was easier to make a new one than an old one.' He had never yielded in his campaign to tricks of elocution-never played on emotions. He had been so strong in his convictions of the right of his case that his speeches had been arguments pure and simple. Their elegance was that of a demonstration in Euclid. They persuaded because they proved. He had never for a moment counted personal ambition before the cause. To insure an ardent opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in the United States Senate he had at one time given up his chance for the Senatorship. To show

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE "SOLID SOUTH." PROPOS of the changing attitude of the South toward national politics, as shown in the present campaign, Mr. B. J. Ramage discusses the dissolution of the "Solid South as a phenomenon

in that leading Southern quarterly the Sewanee Review. After a rapid survey of social and political conditions below Mason and Dixon's Line since the close of the Civil War, Mr. Ramage describes the present situation in the Southern States in the following paragraph:

Taking the whole of the South together, the good and the bad portions of that section, it would perhaps not be very far from the mark to say that the country people are more like the old-fashioned Southerners than the townspeople, while the latter more nearly approach the people of the North. In the towns, moreover, one finds the people more alert than those of the country, on the whole better informed, less prejudiced against the negro, and more inclined to break with the past. On the other hand, there is perhaps in the country a kindlier feeling toward strangers, more hospitality, a greater tendency toward mutual aid, and, all things considered, more conservatism. Briefly, therefore, there now exist in the southern states-and for the first time in a number of years-those elements which have entered into the formation of political parties ever since the rise of representative government."

SOME THINGS THAT THE SOUTH HAS LEARNED.

Mr. Ramage concludes that the outlook for a new era in Southern politics is at present very bright. 'Free government is, of course, impossible under a system which checks the growth of political parties; and this lesson the South has learned by bitter experience. Statemanship, moreover, cannot exist as long as the activity of publicists is confined to inventing schemes by which to deprive the ignorant black man of his vote without at the same time taking the electoral franchise from the ignorant white man, if such a policy is considered as really desirable at all. Greater diversity of interest necessarily creates differences of opinion. This tendency has been already indicated. The rivalries of contending parties, moreover, will call forth the negro vote to an even greater extent than is now being done; and the black man will be protected more effectively than by any application of external force.

Negro domination is as impossible as negro slavery: both belong to an irrevocable past. To many voters of the South, both white and black, the ideas of the Democratic party will always appeal strongly, and this, of course, is fortunate, for so long as that party remains true to the principles proclaimed by its intelligent leaders in the past and in the present the country will be safe in its hands. On the other hand, there is a growing body of voters at the South who have reached the conclusion that the Republican party more nearly represents their views than does the other organization; that much of the suffering the South underwent during the period of reconstruction had its origin some distance this side of the city of Washington, and that if the brave men who fought out the war have learned to forget it, it is certainly neither brave nor honorable for those who took no part in that struggle to prolong its bitter memories. Sentiments like these are rapidly coming to the front throughout the southern states, and have been doing so for years. The break-up of theSolid South' is of course a great gain to both parties. It was always a pretty heavy burden for the Democrats to carry, while the Republicans had just cause to complain of a state of things which dishonestly deprived them of strength that properly belonged to them. Of course the growing number of independent voters will make their influence more and more felt. Like many others of all shades of opinion, they are weary of seeing their section cutting so sorry a figure in national politics, and have resolved to do their best to put an end to a system which enables the 'Solid South' to be pledged in advance to any candidate or platform a party may choose to offer the voters of the United States. Loving their section and country as they do, many Southern voters, moreover, denounce the implied assertion that the South is a feudatory and they themselves serfs, and thousands of these, therefore, will in November next support the Republican ticket and rally around the flag of the nation by voting for its honor as gladly as they would fight for it."

other two, and proceeds to specify the grounds of his original allegations. Our readers, however, will be less concerned with Dr. White's opinions of the leaders at Chicago and their supposed resemblance to the revolutionists of France than with Dr. White's practical suggestions to his fellow Republicans and to gold Democrats as to the conduct of the campaign. These are as follows:

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'First, common sense and courage. Leading men in both the old parties, who preserve their reason and patriotism, should in this great crisis sink their differences and unite in the support of Mr. McKinley, the only candidate whom it is possible to elect who resists a revolutionary panic and crash; who would promote the interests and respect the rights of both labor and capital; who would uphold honesty, justice, individual and national honor. Democrats to-day should emulate the example of the war Democrats of the Civil War period. Republicans to-day should emulate the example of the Republicans of that time, by welcoming patriotic Democrats now as Republicans welcomed John Brough, Stanton, Dix, Dickinson, Sickles, Alvord, and many like them then.

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And just here is another difference between the struggle against the old revolution and the new, which may well encourage us. An eminent Frenchman once said to me: 'What I like best in your country is to see your men of opposing parties meeting on friendly terms, and in emergencies making common cause. In France men always adhere fanatically to their own party and will have nothing to do with men of the other.' The Frenchman's insight was good, and never was this more evident than now, when great numbers of men, who have formed the bone and sinew of the Democratic party, may be relied upon to support the only Presidential candidate who has any hope of election on a platform of honesty, honor and prosperity.

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'Second, if the Republicans in the former crisis elected John Brough, a war Democrat, as Governor of Ohio, and John A. Dix and Thomas G. Alvord, war Democrats, as Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of New York, and if they welcomed Edwin M. Stanton and other war Democrats to places in the Cabinet, why should not Republicans henceforth gladly welcome to similar positions such sound-money Democrats as shall boldly come out on the side of the country in this crisis?

"Third, as to nominations for Congress. Between a fifty-cent Republican and a dollar Democrat, Republicans should certainly choose the latter. Fourth, as to the tariff question. Mr. McKinley represents more than any other man in this generation, to the working men of this country and to the world at large, the policy of developing our industries by duties laid for that purpose; but, on the other hand, the Democratic doctrine was, for many years, and those the most successful period of the party, a tariff for revenue with incidental protection. The difference between these two doctrines

seems a difference rather in degree than in kind; rather metaphysical than real. It is practically a diffculty easily bridged by good sense and good will. Let it be understood that while Mr. McKinley stands for the development of American industry, whatever tariff is hereafter established shall be the result of calm inquiry by experts, with the idea of establishing a policy which fair men of both parties, after this crisis is over, may maintain as a finality; let sound men of both parties thus unite in giving our industries not merely an impulse but a stability which they have never yet had, and we shall enter, as I fully believe, into a period of prosperity more solid and enduring than any we have ever known; a period in which the ravings of the financial schemers and fanatics will be lost among the shouts of the onward marching army of industry.

"What are to-day the causes of our worst troubles? They are mainly two. First, want of stability in our industrial policy; second, want of stability in our financial policy. This double want of stability depresses both labor and capital. In such a union as this which I advocate; with no doctrinairism on either side, but a recognition by the old Democracy of the fact that the nation must have more revenue, and that we may well obtain it in such a way as incidentally to stimulate industry; and a determination on the Republican side that whatever changes are made in the tariff shall be made for the purpose of securing adequate revenue, and at the same time developing and strengthening industries which really need support, and these alone;-honestly, faithfully, without concessions to any individuals or corporations whatever, beyond what the industrial development of the country really needs;-such a union of Democracy with Republicanism would prove to be, not merely a settlement of our present difficulties, but a bulwark against future anarchy and communism.”

"If the gold men are sincere in calling for coinage by international agreement they have practically conceded the justice of our cause. They concede that unrestricted coinage of silver is essential to our welfare. There is nothing left of the contention except the question of who shall authorize the mints to be opened. The gold men want to arbitrate the matter before the crowned heads. We want to follow the example of our fathers and proceed as an independent nation and manage our own affairs. We throw ourselves upon the good sense and patriotism of the American people. They appeal to the foes of free government.

"Our adversaries tell us that if we succeed we shall be inundated with cheap silver from every nation under heaven, gold will leave our shores, and we shall be ruined. But the writer is pained to know that neither the silver standard people nor the double standard folk can spare their silver for shipment to this country. If they ship it hither what will they use at home? They have but a trifling per capita circulation now, and nearly a billion of these people have no gold at all. The writer once saw that dire calamity, the departure of gold, overtake this country. During four years of war and fourteen years of succeeding peace gold refused to circulate and was kept for sale. Boys were born during this suspension of specie payments and reached military age. They grew to be handsome, stalwart, respectable young fellows without ever seeing a coin dollar. The people cared but little for specie. The greenback met every want and the people were fully employed, prosperous, and happy. All our troubles have come upon us since we closed the mints against silver, adopted the policy of contraction, and started on our insane hunt for gold. Conditions will continue to grow more and more deplorable until we have the wisdom to call a halt, about face, and retrace our steps."

The Argument for Gold.

Professor Sumner disposes of the different claims for silver in the following trenchant sentences:

"If the project is to give us silver dollars, which will be raised to gold value, then the project is a useless one for any interest except that of the silver miner. If the project is to do any good to the debtors, it must mean that the silver dollar is wanted because it is worth only half as much as a gold one, and is not expected to rise much, if any. The silver advocates cannot be allowed to argue that their scheme is not repudiation because it will raise silver to the coinage ratio (which is about the only rag of bimetallism which they have borrowed), and then argue that it will raise prices and halve debts because it will not raise the silver dollar."

On the side of the gold standard he names several positive advantages:

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The great advantage of the single gold standard is that it furnishes a simple and exact standard for transactions. It satisfies the requirement of exactness in the standard of measurement which is just as important here as in physics. The greater the transactions of civilized nations the finer the shades of difference which become decisive. Hence this class of transactions is only possible where exactness of measurement is possible. All the great transactions are credit transactions. The great function of money in such transactions is as a standard of reference for the definition of the essential terms of the transaction. In the modern world this function of money transcends all others. Coinage changes, the wear of coins, the degree of accuracy in the workmanship of a mint, the minutest facilities or obsta

cles in the usages of banks and mints in a given country, enter into the exchange transactions of that country with every other.

It is the study of these facts which teaches us the great importance of the highest exactitude, simplicity, and directness in the standard coinage, which is the ultimate unit of measurement for everything else. A country which exports its chief staple products is especially the one which needs to eliminate every element of uncertainty or fluctuation and to make its inoney as accurate and stable as possible. Of course all this applies with the greatest force to the single standard. There is not an argument for bimetallism which is not good for trimetallism or ten-metallism. The world has come up through a long struggle with inferior and confused coins, the history of which is as tragical as any history of war or pestilence, to a single commodity as standard money. The device for securing it is not yet a century old. To abandon it is simply to travel back on the road by which we have come.

"It is another and very great advantage of the single gold standard that it stimulates the development of credit institutions. This is one of the reasons why the outcry that there is not gold enough is destitute of importance. The gold standard makes possible the institutions and devices by which money is economized and it leads to their development. The English sovereign has become a world's money. Wherever in the world there is doubt about the local currency, parties to a contract escape from their difficulties by specifying sovereigns. The security and certainty of this coin have given solid support for all transactions of credit, all over the earth, which are normally made in terms of that coin, and have enabled Englishmen to create institutions of credit embracing the globe, and economizing capital to the utmost, from the unshakable security of the terms of the contracts."

I

ARE THE FARMERS POPULISTS?

IN the North American Review for September, Mr. John M. Stahl attempts to answer a question in which nearly everybody, these days, is deeply interested-" Are the Farmers Populists?"

Mr. Stahl shows, contrary to a popular impression, that unsound money theories have never found favor with the farmers of the country. He also denies that Populism has been more than tolerated in the greatest agricultural States of the Union. The Populist party, he says, has made a respectable showing only in the towns and cities, Chicago furnishing more than half the Populist vote of Illinois.

"Why, then, attribute it to the farmer? To do so, stamps one as either pitifully incompetent and shallow in his observations and judgments, or wilfully dishonest. Instead of being what they are so often pictured to be, the farmers are the most sensible, substantial, and patriotic element of our popu

lation, and have never failed to uphold by their votes or their lives the honor and glory of the nation. Instead of receiving recognition and praise from those whose enterprises they have saved from dis aster, their action has been persistently falsified and they have been paid only with vilifications and taunts and ridicule of their occupation and their personal appearance from those whose interests they have defended. Maligned and abused and ridiculed, they have kept the faith. In all the history of our country, no other class has shown by its votes such a sublime devotion to principle as have the Republican farmers!"

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Farmers understand the interdependence of industries. They know that any policy, whether it relates to the tariff or the currency, that reduces the output of factories and the business of merchants, must lessen the purchasing capacity for farm products; that any measure that banks furnace fires and lowers the wages of workingmen must lower the prices of beef and wheat and wool. As a shrewd business man as well as patriot, the farmer would have every spindle hum, a merry fire at every forge, and every workman's pail well filled. He agrees with the silver monometallist that our great need is more money in circulation, but he believes that to get more money in circulation we must have, not more activity at our mints so much as increased production of our factories under a protective tariff and more confidence in our financial integrity. There is as much money in circulation in the country to-day as there was in the years immediately preceding 1893-years of unexampled prosperity-save the gold called across the sea by the fear of foreigners that we will reach a silver basis and the gold hoarded at home because of the same fear in this country. The money still exists, but it is not circulating as the life blood of trade because unwise tariff legislation has stricken down American industry and created distrust, and because those who have much of our money fear that if they pay it out for stocks or bonds, or loan it to manufacturers or merchants or investors, they may have to receive in payment scarcely more than one-half of its value. What we need to get more money into circulation is not so much more money coined as a greater demand for money to pay wages and the restoration of confidence in the money that we have."

Have the Farmers Been Prosperous? In the Banker's Magazine (New York), Henry Loomis Nelson affirms that "while there has been suffering in certain States and in certain parts of the country, the general history of agriculture has been one of prosperity, checked only by occasional excursions into the regions of financial fallacies. Freight charges have been reduced more than onehalf; public debts are less than they were twenty years ago; taxes per capita are also less, and there is every reason to expect abundant prosperity for the immediate future if Mr. Bryan and the silver

cause are overhwelmingly defeated at the coming election."

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Mr. Nelson further argues that the cheapness of manufactured articles brought about by modern inventions, so far from being the curse that it is often represented to be, is really a blessing to the farmer. 'It is a new doctrine that cheap clothes, cheap tools, cheap fuel and cheap food are a curse to the consumers. It is one of the most preposterous of all preposterous arguments advanced in behalf of the free coinage of silver. But such has been the growth of the demand for food that agricultural products, while cheaper than they were in 1860 and a little more than one-third of the price that prevailed in 1865, were a little dearer in 1895 than they were in 1840. In 1840 the average price of agricul tural products was 87.3, on the basis of the index figure of 100 in 1860, and in 1895 the price was 97.1, an increase of nearly 10. But in that same period and on that same basis, clothes fell from 100.7 to 81.1, fuel from 395.8 to 91, implements from 123.5 to 74.9, house furnishings from 116.4 to 70.1.

"The increase of the price of the farmers' product during the period of inflation from '60 to '65 did not equal the increase of the prices of the commodities that he was obliged to buy. The same story would doubtless be repeated if we followed the advice of the free silver men and again adopted a depreciated currency, and added a fluctuating standard of value. Under the gold standard the price of food was maintained while the price of the commodities that the farmer must have was greatly reduced. The disastrous fall in prices did not come until the silver agitation assumed an importance which excited the alarm of the commercial world, and seemed to indicate that the United States was about to become a silver monometallic country."

against which a holy war is to be proclaimed by all the bona fide producers, with the tramps and demagogues at their head. Possibly not a single orator who helped to draw this fancy picture and to pile lurid colors on it has ever seen Lombard Street, or read a plain account of its actual business. If they had to spend a day in it, they might be surprised to find that it is not paved with gold and that there is less show of metallic money in it than in Chicago itself. It might astonish them further to discover that its favored monopoly is the very freest of free trade; that its alleged tyranny over the silverusing countries is in the nature of things an utter impossibility, and that its blood sucking propensities are restrained by a glut of money which makes lenders there thankful to earn as much interest in a year as they would get in a month, or even in a week, in the Western States.

WHAT LOMBARD STREET ACTUALLY DOES. "The real Lombard Street deals in money of all kinds and qualities; not gold money alone, or silver money, or paper, but any form of monetary material. It deals honestly all round, and, by so doing, it has become the monetary centre of the world. It undertakes to convert at sight the currency of any country into that of any other country. In the process it uses very little gold, and can turn over millions sterling with less handling of coin than takes place every day in a second-rate Californian city. Gold as such has little to do with the prosperity or the power of Lombard Street. Silver might have served equally well if it had been adhered to with equal persistence and had its market value been as jealously safeguarded. It was not the yellow metal, but the standard and its strict maintenance that possessed the magical virtue.

ITS ATTITUDE AS TO CURRENCY.

"In the real Lombard Street the precious metals are secondary factors. Its fundamental and disinctive basis is credit-scientific credit, the most highly organized that the world has ever seen, the most widely ramified and the most skillfully operated. This is the secret of Lombard Street's influence. Might it not be advisable for the Wild West, before rais. ing the standard of revolt against it, to try and understand it? Are the Western men perfectly sure that it has been their enemy and oppressor, and that they would be much happier without it? Secondly. can they release themselves from it by political declamation? And if they could, are they thereby to get rid of all their troubles-mortgages, debts, bad markets and hard times?

"In the Wild West they talk glibly of extinguishing Lombard Street, but to all other civilized nations that would be an inconceivable misfortune. Lombard Street is the financial clearing house of the world-not because of its gold standard, but because of its world-wide commercial and financial relations. It is a vast telephone exchange for mone