The Fading Power of the People's Party
A skeptical report on the state convention of the Populists in Spokane, suggesting the once-mighty movement is now a mere shell.
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 populist state convention met in Spokane Monday of last week, and after the usual amount of wrangling named the delegates who are to attend the demo-populist convention at Sioux Falls. As the political gathering of a party which looks eagerly toward the initiative and referendum, the Spokane affair was not a great success. There was not much of an attempt made to listen to the voice of the people. It appears to have been something of a cut-and-dried arrangement, largely under the hypnotic influence of one 'Farmer' Todd. Out of the mighty populistic army that swept grasshopper-like over this fair state a few years ago, there were just sixteen men present in Spokane to give living proof to the decadence of calamity. Nearly two-thirds of the counties in the state were unrepresented, and the self-constituted delegates on the ground had everything their own way, just as they had planned. The trust did not approve of this old-fashioned method of selecting delegates, and took upon itself the responsibility of saying who should shout for Bryan in South Dakota on May 9.
“Out of the mighty populistic army that swept grasshopper-like over this fair state a few years ago, there were just sixteen men present in Spokane to give living proof to the decadence of calamity.”
This reflects the volatile landscape of late 19th-century third-party politics in Washington, where agrarian populism rose and fell rapidly. The rhetoric mirrors modern political cynicism regarding 'grassroots' movements that are perceived to be controlled by elite party insiders.
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