The First Populist in Washington Says His Party Betrayed Him
George Schorr, who helped launch Washington's Populist movement, publicly disavows a county convention he says was captured by schemers and poolroom politicians.
The story, cleaned up
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George Schorr, of Spokane, editor of the Northport Tribune, was one of the first, if not the first, Populist in Washington. He was the first chairman of the first executive committee of the territory of Washington, appointed by the national committee at New York.
"But my observation convinces me," he says in the Northport Tribune, "that I have helped to build a tower of false hope. It is with a feeling of sadness that I see my fondest hopes vanish."
Mr. Schorr charges that the methods which triumphed in the county convention were all miserable. "We find," he continues, "that the intelligent leaders and the rural voters were run over by the poolroom politicians who assembled in the convention and scattered to the winds all that was good. The People's Party of this county trampled in the dust the very principles enunciated by its leaders in its initiative address, and by those who made it possible for that party ever to gain the strength it did, and nominated to offices of trust and responsibility men most of whom would never have been selected by a popular vote of the rank and file of the party. The only offices that can serve the purpose for which the party was organized are those on the non-partisan ticket. I shall vote for them as representing all there is left of the party in this county."
In his report of the convention Mr. Schorr avers that there were ten candidates for every office, and "they swapped and scrapped and schemed like the old parties."
“I have helped to build a tower of false hope.”
Third-party movements still rise on promises to displace entrenched machines, and still fracture over convention tactics and candidate quality. Schorr's 1894 lament is a reminder that insurgent movements often lose their founding reformers once the deal-making starts.
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