The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 15, 1918, Page 9

~favored with railroa . conventions were, farmer delegates .-geveral terms ‘in:congress, was-a dis- ~ Th did not control the state, and did not elect their congressmen. ey BRYAN’S PARTY SNUBS HIM AND HE LOOKS FOR ALLIES Bryan’s sudden leap into congress was as bitter a pill to the “regular” or “Cleveland” or “gold” Democrats, as it was ‘to the Republicans. -They didn’t like his financidal notions. Bryan had short comfort in his own party. They organized against him. He came up for renomination again in 1892, but it was like pulling eye teeth to handle that convention. The Nebraska Democratic state plat- form was out and out for the gold standard and bitterly against Bryan’s plank. He made a plucky fight in the convention for “free silver” all the same and when the platform was reported by the . committee he brought in a brief - platform with just one plank in- it— “free silver”—and brought it in as a minor- ity report. It was po- litely kicked out and Bryan was in the fight with a divided party. He got the renomination in the congressional con- vention all right, but when the votes were counted this second time he had a greatly reduced following and he went back to congress only by “fhe skin of his teeth,” while the Populists were gaining. By 1892 the Alliance had become a full-fledged “People’s In- dependent” or Populist party and it had a full state, congressional and legislative ticket in the field. That was the great year in Nebraska poli- tics, the high tide of farmers’ independent po- litical action and it is full of intense interest, as recounted by men of ripe judgment and keen in- sight who took part in it. Somewhere in the Mississippi valley was the logical place to hold the Populist national convention, and Omaha was the lucky city. The Nebraska state delegation to this Populist national ‘convention was made up of 24 farmers, only three editors and three lawyers, a fact that was proudly commented on in contrast with the Republican state delegation to the Re- publican national convention, that was made up of seven lawyers and six bankers and only one farmer. Plainly this new.party was a farmers’ party. > ENEMIES PLAN AN EMPTY HOUSE FOR “POPS” There was a big scramble for convention seats as there always is and Populists to this day assert that business interests in Omaha tried to get a corner on the tickets with the intention. of thus keeping them out of use and having a convention with an empty house. But the ruse was discovered and the house was jammed at every session. A. E. Sheldon of Lincoln, now secretary of the _state historical society and custodian of the leg- ; islative reference library, delegate. \ “It was a wonderful sight to see that convention,” said he. “Too poor to pay railroad fares, and not being ({ pgsses as all the ‘delegates to the other two party was a drove for miles by team, bringing their families. From Nebraska, Iowa and’ Kansas farmers traveled over- land to be there. Many came from as far away as Texas, having to spend several weeks on the trip there and ¥ back. ' They put a little feed in the wagon, took a.little flour,.bacon and coffee and came as the first settlers went West. They traveled hundreds of miles, and .by the time the conven- tion met on July 4, there were hun- dreds of such teams encircling Omaha. “Almost every one was for James! B. Weaver of Iowa as our.candidate for president. Ggneral Weaver had been in the forefront of the people’s fight for many years. He had served this Gresham affair. 7 tinguished Unitéh general, a brilliant and fiery orator, and was plainly the only man .of national prominence whom the Alliance membership could look to to lead it in a great national campaign. But a big party of Gresham boomers came down from Chicago with a boom for Gresham for presi- dent, and they were active, very skillfully handled, and played their game well.” Here, let us digress a moment just to understand Walter Q. Gresham was a prominent man in his time. He was an Indiana Republican, had been secretary of the treasury and postmaster general in President Arthur’s cabinet and had an ambition to become president. What claim he had to pick off the ripe fruit of a good nomination that was plainly coming to Gen- eral Weaver ‘as the only great farmers’ leader, is Church Buttes, near Pine Ridge in northwestern Nebraska, showing a typical, picturesque landscape and indicating how some of the land is valuable only for grazing purposes. This nonproducing character of much of Nebraska’s area has had an important part in the state’s economic and political history. not quite clear, and it is still wrapped up in the mystery of a party quarrel that is of no particular consequence now. But this can be said, that Ben- jamin Harrison was the Republican/ candidate. Gresham was at that time a federal judge, and while an active group was boosting for him at the Omaha convention, he was sitting back in judicial isolation, camouflaging to the public that he didn’t want the nomination. THEY LAUNCH THE BOOM FOR “FARMER” GRESHAM The International Encyclopedia says that Gresham could have ‘had the nomination at.the hands of the Omaha convention, but declined to accept it. He declined in much the same way that Judge Hughes for a time declined to accept a nomination-in 1916, only he played a wiser game than Judge Hughes and didn’t give up a bird in the hand for one in the bush. How even encyclo- pedias can make mistakes is shown by what really happened, and here let us pick up the thread of Mr. Sheldon’s narative: = ~ ‘Without trees, except along certain g'treams and in" isolated groves, Nebraska is now struggling with the shifting sand hills to convert them into pine forests. ese are pines growing i'n_.the‘ government nursery at Halsey, Neb. PAGE NINE | A “The Gresham boomers were active throughout the first day and had managed to stir up consider- able talk favorable to their candidate. On Sunday, the second day of the convention, we held memorial exercises in a big theater in Omaha in memory of General L. L. Polk, president of the National Farm- ers’ alliance, whose death had occurred a short time before. During a pause in the exercises one of the Gresham boomers rushed out on the stage from behind the wings, and waving a yellow West- ern Union telegraph blank in his. hand shouted and gesticulated to the audience for attention. When silence was attained he held up the telegraph blank as though reading from it and said some- thing like this: ‘Judge Gresham will accept the nomination of this convention if it comes to him unanimously.” Throughout their fight for Gresham his supporters had hith- erto declined to state positively whether Gres- ham would accept, and it was partly through fear that he might not ac- cept and mizht leave us ‘holding . the sack’ that his boom was dragging. This then was their answer. He would ac- cept if nominated unani- mously. “Instantly some one down in the audience started a shout for Gres- ham, others took it up, and in a few minutes the demonstration had grown to tremendous propor- tions, such as so often sweep conventions off their feet. Some of us were sitting back rather smiling and waiting for the noise™ to subside, when a figure in white stepped onto the stage. It was Mrs. Mary Eliza- beth Lease of Kansas, one of the great Populist leaders, and she was in- stantly recognized. She too held a telegraph blank in her hand, and waved it and appeared to be speaking. “She had waited until the demonstration was sub- siding, and her appearance was the signal for silence. Stepping to the front of the platform but without looking towards the paper she held in her hand, she said: © “‘I too have a message for this convention. I “can tell you that Benjamin Harrison will not de- cline the nomination of this convention if it comes to him unanimously.’ She went back to her seat. For a moment there was a deathlike silence—and then.there was pandemonium. The audience saw the point. Gresham’s boom was dead and General Weaver was nominated the next day without any opposition.” : This circumstance is strikingly similar to the “lady in white” episode at tlre Democratic conven- tion in Chicago four years later. If the latter one had succeeded Mr. Bryan would not have become the peerless leader that year, and again the cur- rent of -history might have been different. Horace E. Boies of Iowa, the only Democrat who had broken into office there since the Civil war, was a popular candidate. He was wanted to swing Iowa from her Republican moorings inte the Democratic channel. Big delega- tions were at Chicago working for Boies and he was getting a good share of the votes on every ballot. Then one day the “lady in white” arose in the gallery, and began waving a flag swaying slowly back and forth anc shouting in a rythmical tone, “Boies Boies, Boies.” Others took it up, the gallery tool it-up, then those down below, and ther a group of men rushed up to whext - the young woman stood waving the flag as in a trance, carried here dowr to the main floor, and forming a pro cession they marched around anc around ' the big coliseum while “the crowd stood on chairs, shouted, threw . up hats and handkerchiefs—and Brya: came near losing his chance to leac the forces of progress. But the dem onstration did not turn into a stam pede. - It failed as did the one a Omaha when politicians tried to stam pede ' the farmers inte abandonin; *their own' logical candidate for a dis \