Col. Patrick Henry Winston Bolts the Populists — and the P-I Pounces

The letter of Col. Patrick Henry Winston, published in our Saturday's issue, announcing that he had left the Populist party forever, is another stroke of unconscious humor. It comes at a welcome moment. The strike is over; business is dull; the weather is hot, and so this effort of unconscious humor on the part of Col. Patrick Henry Winston comes at a welcome moment, since it is the funniest letter he has ever written, although apparently written in one of the most serious moments of his mercurial life.

Col. Winston has absolutely declined an invitation to speak for the Populist party at a 'picnic' at Elberton, August 23 and 24. That Col. Winston should decline an invitation to 'address his fellow citizens' at any time or place is unexpected intelligence to those who have known him hitherto. Had he been asked to bend his plump and pleasing form to the work of 'striker' or helper to a blacksmith on a hot summer day nobody would have been surprised at his declination; for bending over an anvil is not the kind of 'skilled labor' in the performance of which Col. Winston shines. But as a jaw talker Col. Winston is without peer in the political parties of this state, and he has never hitherto refused an invitation to ply his vocation. He does so now most unexpectedly, and his reasons recited for his refusal to hear himself talk do not seem to be very coherent.

His first reason is that he can no longer affiliate with a party that 'officially allies itself with an attempt to precipitate civil war'; his second reason is that he is a lawyer and that the People's party at North Yakima declared that men of 'his profession were a dangerous element and not to be trusted.' In other words, Col. Winston thinks the Populist party is an anarchistic outfit and that it is a party of bigotry and ignorance in declaring that lawyers were a dangerous element and not to be trusted.

The amusing part of all this is that Col. Winston knew all this before he went to the North Yakima convention just as well as he does today. Ever since the Populist party was organized it has not hesitated to declare its sympathy for anarchy. In 1892 it extended the right hand of fellowship to the Homestead anarchists, and the Populist candidate for governor of Washington in 1892 in a public letter declared his sympathy for the ferocious anarchist strikers at Coeur d'Alene, and the Populist state convention passed a resolution pledging not only 'sympathy' but 'pecuniary aid' to these ferocious dynamiters. Col. Winston knew this in 1892, and denounced it from the Republican stump, so it is no new discovery on his part that the Populist party here and elsewhere has never lost a chance to officially declare its sympathy with ferocious anarchism and acts of civil war. President Cleveland was obliged to send the Federal troops to put down these Coeur d'Alene anarchists, while the Populists of Washington declared their official sympathy for them, accompanied with pledges of financial aid.

Col. Winston went to North Yakima knowing full well that it was a convention of an anarchistic party; a 'go-as-you-please' party, who have never in this state or elsewhere hesitated to defy the law and to express sympathy with industrial riot and incendiarism. It was with riot and rebellion at Homestead and Coeur d'Alene; it was with riot and rebellion at Chicago in 1894. Col. Winston knew all this in 1892, denounced it, and yet he pretends today in 1894 to have suddenly discovered that the Populist party is the party of anarchism and rebellion against law and order. This pretence on the part of Col. Winston is a bit of unconscious humor, exceedingly mirth-provoking in its solemnity; whatever is new in this letter of Col. Winston's is not true; and whatever is true is not new.

His second point, that the Populist party at North Yakima declared lawyers 'a dangerous element and not to be trusted,' is another bit of unconscious humor, for the Populist party has always denounced lawyers, and one faction of this party, the Farmers' Alliance, in its public resolutions has denounced lawyers as unworthy of and ineligible to public office that was a public trust. This is very old nonsense. In Shakespeare's play of 'Henry the Sixth,' Jack Cade leads a mob of anarchists and communists. After Cade's first victory, one of his followers says to Cade, 'The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers,' and Cade answers, 'Sir, that I mean to do'; so this modern Populism is nothing but old times that Shakespeare has kept up in his famous description of Jack Cade's rebellion.

In our judgment Col. Winston became a Populist, not because he was a man without a country, but because he was a man without a party that had anything in its gift that he wanted or could get.