This week the prohibitionists placed the...

This week the prohibitionists placed their ticket in the field. The tickets are all in the field now, "You pays your mor.ey and takes yourchoice." Let the dance proceed. The feature of greatest interest in the recent elections in Tennessee and Alabama is the fact that the regular democratie nominees were opposed by a fusión of all the opposition forces. Returns from both states indícate, however, that the democrats have carried them with the usual majorities. The prohibitionists, in state convention, denounced Gov. Rich for stopping his investigation of constitutional amendment frauds before he had examined into the "alleged" defeat of the prohibition amendment. Why should he iavestigate that fraud? There would have been no glory for John T. resulting therefrom. Just four years ago in an elabórate set speech against the McKinley bill, Senator Gorman oceupied two days with giving in full his reasons for claiming that iron should be placed on the free list; and ris;ht good reasons they were. His change of heart was never known, even to himself, until he became mixed up with "the senators from Havemeyer. " - Free Press. Some of the week-kneed democrats of the house took it upon themselves to cali a caucus of the democratie representatives for last Wednesday for the purpose, it is alleged, of instructing the house conferees to acceept the Gorman tariff bill. It did not take long, however, when the caucus came together to discover that the sentiment was strongly in opposition to the object for which it had been called, and after listening to vigorous speeches by Chairman Wilson and Speaker Crisp those who were for showing the "white flag" were made ashamed of themselves and they "came off" without a struggle. The result is encouragement for the friends of genuine tariff reform. The issue at Washington that overshadows all others continúes to be this: Shall the trusts or the people rule? Can this country secure any legislation to which the great monopolies object? It is the sugar trust that blocks the way. It was the sugar trust, as Senator Caffery avowed inhis speech, and not the sugar-growers, that dictated the sugar schedule in the senate bill, as it dictated it in the McKinley bill. It is the sugar trust's agents in the senate - Gorman, Brice, Smith and Quay- who say that no bill shall pass that is not satisfactory to the trust. If this law-made monopoly, fattened on bounties wrung from the people, can dictate terms to congress, it is virtually the ruler of the country. What one trust has done other trusts may do. This is a government of laws, not of men; and if a trust can, through the power of its money, make the laws, it cares not which party elects the men. Before an issue like this all questions of party policy or economie expedieney sink out of sight. It is an issue involving the integrity of the republic. Upon such an issue the house cannot surrender, the