The Politics of Snake Oil
A scathing editorial comparing the Populist movement to medical quackery and the sensationalism of the era's 'wonder books.'
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The platform of the People's party is instinct with ignorance and bad logic. Free silver is a fraud; it proposes that the government give every seller of silver bullion a dollar that is legal tender for 100 cents in payment for about 64 cents worth of silver. The plausible explanation of the popular currency of social, political and financial nonsense is found by referring it to the same weakness of human nature that makes quacks in all callings—literature, law, or medicine—brilliantly successful in selling their worthless nostrums. The political quacks of the People's party practice upon the same principle: they see clearly that the public love the sensational, the incredible, the absurd, provided it is pressed upon their attention with skill. Donnelly, Bellamy and Weaver are all successful quacks with brains enough to exhume ancient errors and try to palm them off as new truths to wonder-loving folk.
“He is like a Chinese doctor who would solemnly prescribe a dose of shark's fins for inflammatory rheumatism, or eye of newt and toe of frog for typhoid fever.”
This editorial captures the fierce partisan hostility of the 1892 election, where Seattle's establishment media treated the populist People's Party with the same suspicion and dismissal often directed at fringe movements today. The language of 'quackery' echoes the way media outlets still label populist economic theories as mere snake oil.
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