Why It Happened

Why was democracy so signally overthrown in the nation last Tuesday ? Could the defeat and rout have been prevented ? These are questions which naturally suggest themselves to many inquiring minds at this time. It was expected, of course, that the trend of the northj ern elections would be toward the republicans, but even they did not anticípate the utter rout of the democracy. One of the prime causes, no doubt, was the great panic and industrial depression of last year, resulting in so far as governmental policy was responsible, from pernicious republican legislation and extravagance, but which that party, relying upon the credulity of the masses and their disposition to charge all the ills from which they may be temporariiy suffering to the party in power, placed upon the democracy. Unquestionably, the panic would have occurred just the same had Harrison been elected in 1892 instead of Cleveland, it was inevitable. However, this does not account wholly for the manifest desire for revenge exhibited by the people. The failure of the democracy to use the opportunities given it in accordance with its pledges to the people was responsible for this. Two years ago the party received the command from the people, specific and unraistakable, to reform the tariff. Whether this mandate was the result of the "campaign of educaton," or the emotion of fear matters not, it was the will of th people and should have been promptly and boldly carried out Had congress been called in extra session early in 1893, while the en thusiasm of victory was still on and before the blight of the panic had taken posession of the people and the protective tariff robbers had poisoned their minds with falsehoods as to the cause of the depression, the commands of the people as expressed in the elections of '90 and '92 would have been far more influential with that body. As it was when congress got round to take up the tariff question a year and a half after the election, much of the spirit which brought about the victory had become dormant and members of congress were enabled to hide their treachery to the people's cause behind the plea of changed conditions. The long wrangle over the repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman act disgusted many, and when to this was added the nauseating squabble over the tariff to the detriment of every business interest, and the final partial surrender to the protectionist log rollers in the senate, whereby the people were compelled to accept a compromise which was not what fhey demanded, the measure of their discontent was full, and they were ready to rebuke their unfaithfulservants. Had the tariff bill been passed several months earlier, there is little doubt but that the business interests of the country would have revived, and the advantages of the new tariff would have become so apparent before election as to have produced a very different result. As it is the republicans have again been given control of congress, not because of any rejuvenated merit of their own, or because they constitute a majority of the people, but because the democrats failed, through party divisions and jealousies, to faithfully and fully carry out the mandate of the people. The republican principie of taxing the whole people for the upbuilding of the few is again in the ascendant, not because those who condemned it so emphatically in 1890 and 1892 have changed their minds as to its injustice, but because the party of reform has failed to do all that was expected of it. But great as is the republican victory, it will be largely barren of results, for the two years to corae at least. In theVneantime the measure of reform which the democrats did give the country will have so demonstrated its advantage to the whole people ihat the calamity howlers will have no leg to stand on and the people will have no desire to continue the party of monopolies and trusts in power. The democratie party should take hope, therefore, and learning wisdom from experience, drive out the traitors from its own ranks, and be prepared two years henee to take its proper place in the politics of the republic as the guardián of the rights of the whole people.