HE DEMOCRATIC convention for 1893 was held at Lincoln October 4th. Euclid Martin, chairman of the state committee, named T. J. Mahoney for temporary chairman, and he appointed Carroll S. Montgomery as temporary secretary. The temporary organization was made permanent. Under the very vigorous management of Tobias Castor, Nebraska member of the national democratic committee, the convention was composed of a compact majority of Cleveland, or gold, democrats. But William J. Bryan, then possessing unbounded faith in his personal influence, made almost as spectacular a fight to gain control as he made in the famous convention of 1892. He began the struggle by moving that Joseph E. Ong of Fillmore county be substituted for Mahoney as chairman, urging that Judge Ong represented principles directly antagonistic to those of Mahoney. The motion was lost by a vote of 390 to 106. Mr. Mahoney's speech to the convention was in a conciliatory strain and expressed a personally friendly feeling toward Bryan. On a second test of strength, the motion by Bryan was defeated, 335 to 146. A motion by Falloon of Richardson county, that Bryan be made a member of the resolutions committee, on behalf of free silver, was defeated by 373 to 122. Constantine J. Smythe, Edward P. Smith, and C. V. Gallagher of Omaha, protested against the solid unit vote of the 103 delegates from Omaha, but without avail.
   Bryan closed the unequal controversy in a notably impassioned and defiant speech. "If I am right," he said, "and so help me God, I believe I am, it matters not whether you endorse me or not. If I am right, I am right, and time will tell if I am right. If you represent the democratic party in saying you are for the gold standard of Wall street, I want to tell you that if the democratic party ratifies your action, I will go out and serve my party and my God under some other name than as a democrat. The democratic party was founded by Thomas Jefferson as the party of the masses. For twenty years the democratic party has denounced the demonetization of silver. If you want to get down on your knees and apologize for what you have said you will go without me." The clarion tone of the keynote "right" as it rang emphasized from Bryan's lips will never be forgotten by his hearers. Though Bryan's impassioned proclamation that the free silver dogma was right and the gold standard wrong and that time would prove it, was dramatically fine and effective, yet, considering that within a few years "the gold standard of Wall street" was adopted, not only in this country, but throughout the civilized world, it but illustrated the remark of Froude -- extravagant, of course, as most epigram is -- that "great orators have always been proved wrong."
   The republican state convention was held at Lincoln October 5th. It was called to order by Addison V. Cady, chairman of the state committee, and George H. Thummel of Hall county was temporary and permanent chairman. On the first formal ballot Samuel Maxwell received the highest number of votes cast for candidates for judge of the supreme court -- 380 out of a total of 927. He ran no higher than this on subsequent ballots. T. O. C. Harrison of Hall county was nominated on the fourth formal ballot with 664 votes. Monroe L. Hayward, Joseph E. Cobbey, Elisha A. Calkins, Othman A. Abbott, J. F. Frick, and Manoah B. Reese

developed some strength during the balloting. Benjamin S. Baker of Douglas county was chairman of the committee on resolutions, which denounced the democratic House of Representatives for repealing federal election laws; favored the coinage of both gold and silver as standard money, under such legislation as would maintain parity of values; denounced the independent party for attempting to array the West and South against the North and East; denounced Hoke Smith, secretary of the interior, for cutting off pensions of disabled soldiers.
   The people's independent convention was held in Lincoln September 5th, and William A. Poynter of Boone county was temporary chairman, and Walter F. Dale of Harlan, permanent chairman. Silas A. Holcomb of Custer was nominated for judge of the supreme court on the first formal ballot. John F. Ragan of Adams and J. E. Bush of Gage were his leading competitors. Samuel Maxwell received 19 votes on the informal ballot. E. L. Heath of Sherman county, and A. A. Monroe of Douglas, were nominated for regents of the State University. Professor W. A. Jones of Adams county was chairman of the committee on resolutions which reaffirmed the national platform adopted at Omaha, July 4, 1892; called on Congress. to pass a law "for the free coinage of silver with that of gold with a ratio of 16 to 1"; denounced republican and democratic leaders "who are attempting to demonetize silver, thereby placing the business of the country on a gold basis"; commended McKeighan and Kern, populist members of Congress, for opposing the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman silver act; declared that railroad, telegraph, and telephone lines should be owned and controlled by the government; denounced political organizations, secret or open, based on religious prejudice; alleged that while republicans claimed that the state was free from debt, there were warrants outstanding in the sum of $700,000 drawing interest at seven per cent; denounced state officers for approving the bond of Charles W. Mosher, president of the failed Capital National Bank, in such form that the state was swindled out of $236,000; demanded the enforcement of the Newberry freight law and the prosecution of those under indictment for asylum and penitentiary steals.
   At the ensuing elections the candidates for the office of judge of the supreme court received votes as follows: T. O. C. Harrison, republican, 72,032; Silas A. Holcomb, people's independent, 65,666; Frank Irvine, gold democrat, 37,545; Ada M. Bittenbender, prohibition, 6,357. The republican candidates for regents of the State University were, of course, elected.
   The republican convention for 1894 was held at Omaha August 22d; it was called to order by Bradner D. Slaughter, chairman of the state committee, who named Captain C. E. Adams of Nuckolls county for temporary chairman; and the temporary organization was made permanent. On the informal ballot for a candidate for the governorship, Thomas J. Majors of Nemaha county received 493 1/2 votes and John H. MacColl of Dawson, 434 1/2. The sixty votes of Lancaster went to Majors and the 108 of Douglas to MacColl; and in a general way the support of the respective candidates was divided by the North Platte and South Platte line. Lorenzo Crounse of Washington county received a complimentary vote of 32, and Addison E. Cady of Howard, 6. The first formal ballot stood, 552 1/2 for Majors and 401 1/2 for MacColl. Both of the leading candidates represented the reactionary and so-called railroad element -- Burlington and Union Pacific respectively; and neither was available, because there was a real uprising in the party against the old order, which the wheel horses, with obtuse obstinacy, failed to recognize, playing bravado instead of level judgment. This reckless reactionism was manifested by the nomination of Majors against the well-known and old-standing hostility and opposition of the domineering, but also progressive antimonopoly editor of the Bee. Anticipating this theatrical gauntlet throwing, Mr. Rosewater had prepared a bomb -- a letter resigning his membership in the republican national committee -- which he

defiantly threw into the convention. The scathing arraignment contained in this letter was incessantly pressed by the relentless Bee and echoed by the opposition press throughout the campaign.
   The long undisturbed exercise of power by men singly or in parties surely induces mental and moral obtuseness or atrophy. And so republican leaders could not read the plain lesson of the defeat of "Tom" Majors, but the next time blindly bucked the line with "Jack" MacColl -- not perceiving that these gentlemen of the old school had had their day in Nebraska. In each instance they put these staled players into the power of the repudiated Rosewater who, perforce, proceeded to put them out of the game. These were the last of the old line plunges but one -- the disastrous success behind Dietrich in 1900.
   The people's independent convention was held at Grand Island August 24th. William L. Greene of Buffalo county, the most silvery tongued of all the populists of Nebraska, was temporary and permanent chairman. Silas A. Holcomb of Custer county was nominated for the office of governor on the first ballot, receiving 437 1/2 votes to 294 1/2 for James N. Gaffin of Saunders county. The resolutions endorsed the Omaha national platform; they demanded the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1; municipal ownership of public works; liberal pensions for soldiers and sailors; national laws for the encouragement of irrigation; compulsory arbitration of labor disputes; a new maximum freight rate law or enforcement of the existing law; the immediate relief of sufferers from the drouth; and they denounced as treason the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman silver act. The convention was large and confident. The committee on credentials reported that 747 of the entire list of 751 delegates were actually present.
   The democratic convention for 1894 was held in Omaha September 26th and was called to order by Euclid Martin, chairman of the state committee, who named Matt Miller of Butler county for temporary chairman. W. S. Shoemaker of Douglas county, moved to substitute Edward P. Smith of that county. Miller, thereupon, said that he had been sent to the convention instructed for 16 to 1 free silver and Robert A. Batty of Adams county was in the same predicament. Miller withdrew and Smith was elected chairman, unanimously. Even the conservative Samuel W. Wolbach of Hall county yielded to the bewitching panacea and corrected a statement by William H. Thompson that he, Wolbach, was against 16 to 1. Thompson, who for a time assumed a conservative attitude toward the money question, was now for Bryan's radical régime. Willis D. Oldham of Buffalo was permanent chairman of the convention. William J. Bryan was nominated unanimously for United States senator, and a resolution for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the consent of any nation on earth, and declarations for a tariff for revenue only, the election of United States senators by the people, and a constitutional convention to ratify the amendment, were adopted. Upon the nomination of Holcomb, about fifty delegates bolted from the convention, assembled in another hall and elected Dan W. Cooke of Gage county, chairman. Among the bolters were George P. Marvin, editor of the Democrat at Beatrice, George W. West of Polk county, Judge James C. Crawford of Cuming, Deforest P. Rolfe of Otoe, John A. McShane and Euclid Martin of Douglas, and John D. Carson of Fillmore. The bolters nominated John A. McShane for governor; John D. Carson for lieutenant-governor; Deforest P. Rolfe of Otoe, for secretary of state; Otto Bauman of Cuming, for auditor; Luke Bridenthal of Gage, for treasurer; John H. Ames of Lancaster, for attorney-general; Jacob Bigler of Chase, for commissioner of public lands and buildings; and Milton Doolittle of Holt, for superintendent of public instruction. McShane declined the nomination for governor and Phelps D. Sturdevant of Fillmore was substituted and Rodney E. Dunphy of Seward was substituted for Carson. The platform endorsed the administration of President Cleveland and approved the national platform of

1892, especially the money plank and Cleveland's interpretation of it.
   There were two principal reasons why Bryan overcame the majority of the last year against him and came into full power. The convention of 1893 was composed largely of expectant aspirants to federal offices under the new democratic administration; and while the few who in the meantime had been chosen remained loyal to their ostensible principles, the easy or natural tendency of the time to flock to the silver standard was stimulated, in the case of the many who were left, by disappointment or revenge. The second powerful factor which worked to Bryan's advantage was the increasing hard times. Free silver was a siren note to sing to people in those pinching conditions, and, falling from his silvery tongue, was to the many irresistibly seductive. On the 28th of August, 1894, the World-Herald made the important announcement that from September 1st William J. Bryan would be its editor-in-chief. Mr. Gilbert M. Hitchcock made the statement that the general management of the paper would continue in his hands, but that "its editorial policy will be mapped out by Mr. Bryan from time to time along the line of his well known political convictions." This event insured the permanency of the fusion policy of the democratic party.
   The campaign was desperately fought on both sides. As we have seen in the foregoing pages, fusion of the democrats with insurgent republicans had often been attempted but without successful results. This year, however, for the first time, these diverse elements had a leader in William J. Bryan peculiarly adapted to getting and holding them together and especially for making the most of the misdoings and misfortunes of the party in power. Persistent bad crops, for which it was not responsible, could be played against it more effectually, even, than the persistent bad administration for which it was responsible. The majority had been so long and so successfully taught that general economic prosperity, so natural and inevitable that the worst government seemed inconsequential, were due to the party which had continually been in power, that it was quite consistently held responsible for the pinching adversity. And then the republicans had been so long accustomed to political success under vicious corporation leadership and government that they were very slow to comprehend or care for the ominously increasing demands for reform.
   Majors, the republican candidate for governor, was emphatically a politician of the school which naturally arose and flourished after the Civil war -- a blend of the "old soldier" and the railroad servant. His army record had been good in the South and on the Plains in the Indian war of 1864; he was a good neighbor, with a large local following; and throughout the state one of "the boys." But the Bee on the republican side and the democratic and populist press on the other side so aggressively exposed his now misfit virtues that his respectable opponent, whose merits were mainly negative, was victorious by a vote of 97,815 to 94,113 for his putatively popular antagonist.
   William J. Bryan made a campaign for a vote of preference for the office of United States senator; but John M. Thurston, his republican opponent, refused to enter the contest in that manner. Bryan received 80,472 votes, Thurston 1,866, and C. E. Bentley, the prohibitionist candidate, 25,594. The opposition candidates for seats in the lower house of Congress received heavy support, but only one of the six, Omer M. Kem of the sixth district, was elected. Though fusion had been successfully accomplished for the head of the state ticket, it failed in detail, as illustrated by the disorderly factionism in the second, third, and fourth Congress districts, which insured, if it was not wholly responsible for republican success.
   The legislature promptly restored the sugar bounty which its predecessor had repealed. The revived act provided for a bounty of five-eighths of a cent a pound for sugar manufactured from beets, sorghum, or other sugar yielding canes grown in Nebraska, on condition that the product should contain ninety per cent crystallized sugar and that the manufacturer should have paid as much as $5 a

ton to the producer for them. Three-eighths of a cent additional was yielded to factories established after the passage of the act. Republicans were more obtuse than the populists in thus persistently pressing this gratuity upon the despotic, insatiable, and faithless sugar trust -- or else they were incorrigible. The attorney-general, state auditor, and state treasurer were constituted a state banking board with power to appoint a secretary at $1,500 a year. The legislature appropriated $50,000 for the relief of persons who were in want on account of dry weather and hot winds, the existing commission of nine members to control the distribution of this fund. The sum of $200,000 was appropriated for supplying seed and food for teams during the spring of 1895. Another act authorized the county boards of the several counties to issue bonds for an amount not exceeding $50,000 for seed and food for teams. Still another authorized county boards to use surplus general funds and county bridge and road funds for the same purpose. Another act authorized the loaning of sinking funds and other surplus funds of counties and townships for supplying seed and food for teams, for which notes should be taken running not less than twelve months nor longer then twenty-four, with annual interest at the rate of seven per cent, one per cent of which should go to the county treasurer for the expense of transacting the business. County commissioners were also authorized to use any surplus in any precinct bond fund for seed and feed for teams. The sugar bounty bill was vetoed by Governor Holcomb and passed over the veto by a vote of sixty-eight to twenty-three in the house and twenty-five to five in the senate. Those voting nay in the senate were Bauer, Campbell, Dale, Sprecher, Stewart, all populists; but two populists voted aye. In the house five democrats and eighteen populists voted nay and none of either party aye. As might have been expected in the reactionary political conditions, there was no constructive or progressive legislation in this session.
   Encouraged by their success of 1895, but unwisely forgetting their reverses of the years before, the republicans nominated for the head of their ticket, John H. MacColl of Dawson county, widely reputed as a railroad man of the old school and substantially a replica of the Majors nomination of 1894. The populists and regular democrats renominated Governor Holcomb and the handful of gold democrats, with fatuous persistency, nominated Robert S. Bibb of Gage county. The Omaha Bee again opposed the republican candidate and threw its influence in favor of Holcomb, who was elected by a vote of 116,415 against 94,723 for MacColl, 3,557 for Bibb, 5,060 for Joel Warner, prohibitionist, and 913 for Richard A. Hawley, nationalist. In the congressional contests the fusionists came back overwhelmingly. There was formal fusion of democrats and independents in all the districts, and the republican candidates were successful in only two of them. In the first district Strode was reëlected over Jefferson H. Broady by a slender margin of 17,356 to 17,113; and in the second district, Mercer also was reëlected, receiving 14,861 votes to 13,286 for Edward R. Duffle; in the third district Samuel Maxwell defeated Ross L. Hammond by 23,487 to 18,633; in the fourth, William F. Stark defeated Eugene J. Hainer by 20,515 to 18,844; in the fifth, Roderick D. Sutherland defeated William E. Andrews by 18,332 to 15,621; in the sixth, William L. Greene defeated Addison E. Cady by 19,378 to 14,841. On the average the all-round ability of the republican and fusionist candidates was nearly equal, but the republicans had the advantage of measurably greater stability. All the other fusion candidates of the state ticket were elected by majorities somewhat less than Governor Holcomb's lead.
   The seventeenth legislature met in the fifthteenth (sic) regular session, January 5, 1897, and finally adjourned April 9th, the seventy-fourth day. The senate comprised seventeen independents, seven democrats, seven republicans and two silver republicans; the house, forty-nine independents, twenty-eight republicans, twenty-one democrats and two silver republicans. Frank T. Ransom, silver republican, of Douglas county, was elected temporary

president of the senate and James N. Gaffin, independent, of Saunders county, was elected speaker of the house, receiving 68 votes against 29 for George L. Rouse, republican, of Hall county. Frank D. Eager, independent, was elected chief clerk. There were scandalous charges of bribery at the Douglas county elections, and, after an investigation, John Jeffcoat, democrat, was seated in the senate in place of J. H. Evans, republican, by a vote of 17 to 13. There were ineffectual attempts by this legislature to get hold of the key to the coming reform revolution by passing a law prohibiting the issue and use of free railroad passes. House roll 40, a sweeping prohibition; house roll 336, which applied only to officeholders; house roll 418, applying to delegates to political conventions, were all indefinitely postponed. A bill limiting passenger fare on railroads to two cents a mile (H. R. 419) met the same fate. The most notable measure of the session was an act providing for the regulation of stock yards and fixing the charges thereof. This tardy victory was proof and product of the improvement of this legislature over its predecessors, both as to mind and morals; for theretofore all measures of this kind had been defeated by fair means or foul. But in the gauntlet of the court it was turned into a barren victory. Judge Smith McPherson, of the southern district of Iowa, presiding in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Nebraska, decided that the act was invalid on account of its defective title. At the election of 1897, John J. Sullivan, fusionist, defeated Alfred M. Post, republican, both of Platte county, for judge of the supreme court by a vote of 102,828 to 89,009. Charles W. Kaley and John N. Dryden, republican candidates for the office of regent of the University, were defeated by E. Von Forell and George F. Kenower, fusionists. In 1898 the republicans of Nebraska for the first time declared definitively in favor of the modern money standard: "We are in favor of the maintenance of the present gold standard and unalterably opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver." This declaration was timely, because it contributed toward reassuring and calming the skeptical and unsettled state of the public mind. Such an avowal, made two years, or one year, before, in the full of the perturbation, would have had more moral merit, because it would have cost something -- courage and perhaps temporary disadvantage. Only the new craft challenges the gale with full sail. The republican party had then so long fed on power that its only thought was to trim to conserve it. In this emergency, whatever merit lay in merely being good ballast, it deserved. A few years later Attila Roosevelt, scourge of standpatism, perceived that the ballast stage was counted as the past, and led on again with sails.
   William H. Thompson, chairman of the resolutions committee of the democratic convention of the same year, fatuously declared that the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 ought to be kept for the paramount issue of 1900. In the same convention, Constantine J. Smythe, attorney-general, said in a speech that Judge Charles L. Hall of the district court of Lancaster county, where Eugene Moore, state auditor, had been prosecuted on the charge of converting to his own use insurance fees to the amount of $23,208.05, said he was guilty; that Judge Cornish of the same court, also said Moore was guilty; and that Judge Sullivan of the supreme court, said he was guilty; but the other two judges, Norval and Harrison, said that be was not guilty and two were stronger than one. Moore agreed to certain facts before Judge Albert J. Cornish, of the district court of Lancaster county, who thereupon found him guilty and sentenced him to the state penitentiary for a term of eight years. On appeal, the judgment of Judge Cornish was reversed by the supreme court on the technical ground that Moore had not the legal authority to collect the insurance fees for the misappropriation of which he had been convicted. The court held that the insurance companies, by mistake, paid the fees to the auditor when they should have been paid to the treasurer. This was not the first case in which official embezzlers had escaped justice through sheer technicality of the supreme court. Such lapses of justice are now boldly

characterized by the press and the public in general. Judge Sullivan, in his dissenting opinion, cited a case tried before Judge David J. Brewer -- afterwards a judge of the United States Supreme Court -- in which he shattered a similar defence by apparently common sense logic. "But we hold that when one assumes to act as agent for another, he may not, when challenged for those acts, deny his agency; that he is estopped, not merely as against his assumed principal, but also as against the state; that one who is agent enough to receive money is agent enough to be punished for embezzling it." The state also brought a civil suit in the district court of Lancaster county to recover those fees from Moore. The case was tried before Judge Charles L. Hall and judgment was rendered against Moore, but the supreme court reversed it an the same ground as that on which it had reversed the criminal case.
   In 1898 William A. Poynter, fusionist, was elected governor over Monroe L. Hayward, republican, by a vote of 95,703 to 92,982, and the rest of the fusion candidates for state offices were elected by majorities about the same as Poynter's majority. Republicans carried the first and second congressional districts and the fusionists the other four.
   The republicans came back into power in the legislature of 1899, having twenty-one members of the senate against twelve fusionists, and fifty-two members of the house against forty-eight fusionists; two of them, however, were unseated during the session. Adolph R. Talbot of Lancaster county was temporary president of the senate and Paul H. Clark of Lancaster, speaker of the house. Hayward was rewarded for his sacrifice in the campaign of 1898 by election for United States senator, but died before taking his seat. The choice of Hayward was simply a republican recourse to respectability in lieu of, or as a sop to reform, which the party was not yet prepared directly to endorse. Hayward had been a competent and thrifty business lawyer with a dignified leaning toward politics, but lacking real equipment for statesmanship and the instinct and the impulse for reform which are now essential to the acceptable statesman. While he was not notoriously and essentially a railroad attorney, like Thurston, for example, yet he was regarded as the local attorney, with the implication of next friend, of the Burlington company. Indeed, it would have been difficult to find, at that time, a virile politician who was not a railroad politician. Hayward had never evinced sympathy with reform aspirations. He was, therefore, as much out of joint with the times as Dietrich and Millard.
   Governor Holcomb, in his farewell message, said that Nebraska had furnished for the war with Spain three regiments of infantry of maximum strength -- 1,326 men -- and one troop of cavalry. He drew rather a lugubrious picture of the western part of the state on account of the successive years of drouth. His financial statement showed that at the beginning of 1894 there were funding bonds outstanding to the amount of $449,267.35; grasshopper relief bonds, $100,000; general fund warrants, $577,825.75. At the close of 1896 there was $468,267.35 in bonds; $1,936,273.47 in warrants, a total of $2,404,540.82. In November, 1898, there was $153,267.35 in bonds and $1,571,684.01 in warrants, a total of $2,724,951.36. This condition showed shameful mismanagement and violation of the constitution.
   The legislature of 1899 amended the noncompulsory primary election law; passed the first corrupt practices act; created a food commission under the fiction imposed by the inadequate constitution constituting the governor the commissioner but authorizing him to appoint a deputy to do the work at a salary of $1,500 a year; established a soldiers' and sailors' home at Milford and appropriated $2,000 for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers of the First regiment, Nebraska infantry, in the Philippine Islands, and a like sum for the Third regiment then in Cuba.

   In a fierce struggle for control of the delegation from Lancaster county to the republican state convention of 1900 David E. Thompson successfully opposed most of the leaders of the party in Lincoln, including Charles H. Gere, editor of the State Journal, Allen W. Field,

Frank M. Hall, Genio M. Lambertson, Robert E. Moore, and Charles O. Whedon. The county convention passed a resolution favoring Thompson as a candidate for United States senator. The sudden and forceful advent of Mr. Thompson into politics and his starting of the Lincoln Daily Star -- in 1902 -- had the salutary effect of driving the Journal from its nearly lifelong standpatism into measureable (sic) progression; a very timely change for the Journal, withal, inasmuch as it was borne to greater prosperity on the incoming tide of republican insurgency while the Star was left on the flats of receded standpatism.
   At the presidential election of 1900, electors for William McKinley, republican, carried the state against those for William. J. Bryan, democrat, by a majority of about 8,000. The prohibition candidates received about 3,600 votes; the middle-road populists, about 1,100, and the socialists about 800. Governor Poynter was defeated as a candidate to succeed himself by Charles H. Dietrich of Adams county, by a vote of 113,018, to 113,879; John S. Robinson of the third congressional district, William L. Stark of the fourth, Ashton C. Shallenberger of the fifth, and William Neville of the sixth, all fusionists, were elected members of the federal House of Representatives; Elmer J. Burkett and David H. Mercer, republicans, were elected in the first and second districts.
   In the senate of the legislature of 1901 there were nineteen republicans, twelve fusionists, and two democrats; in the house of representatives, fifty-three republicans, thirty-four fusionists, ten democrats and three populists. The acts of this session were prolific of boards and commissions. The exciting episode or more accurately, the principal business of the session, was the election of Governor Charles H. Dietrich, and Joseph H. Millard of Omaha for United States senators. The contest continued from January 15th to March 28th, inclusive, the election occurring on the fifty-fourth ballot, the successful candidates receiving all of the seventy republican votes. David E. Thompson of Lancaster county, afterward ambassador from the United States to Mexico, was apparently the most formidable candidate through the greater part of the contest. March 20th, his vote rose from a range of about 36 to 56, after an alleged caucus. he reached his highest vote, 59 -- six short of success -- March 22d and March 26th, and withdrew March 28th. Though unable to gain the prize himself, he had strength enough to dictate the election of the two successful candidates. William V. Allen, incumbent, started in with 57 votes, as a candidate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Hayward; and W. H. Thompson, candidate for the full term, received 58 votes. On the second ballot, Gilbert M. Hitchcock had 57 votes, Allen 57. Allen received a high vote all through the contest but his highest was the same as Thompson's -- 59 -- lacking six of election. On the last ballot Allen had 59 votes. W. H. Thompson, 52, Hitchcock, S. Edward Rosewater received from 14 to 16 votes most of the time; and from the forty-seventh to the fifty-third ballots from 29 to 32, the last being his highest number. Dietrich was chosen for Hayward's unexpired term.
   It was strenuously alleged that David E. Thompson at a critical time during the contest made a bargain with the fusionists for enough votes to secure his election. The alleged formal agreement to that end was published in the newspapers, and many affidavits and less formal assertions were made by members of the legislature that they knew that the signature of Mr. Thompson to the compact was genuine. While this alleged agreement did violence to the code of party fealty then in vogue, yet such of the concessions as were not innocuous and therefore inconsequential were creditably progressive. The two new senators were entirely antipathetic to the reform spirit which had at last filtered through the bourbonism which had encrusted the state since its beginning.
   During the year 1901 both of the old parties began to comprehend that the demand for reform legislation and especially for the abolition of railroad passes was in earnest if not in a revolutionary temper. In the democratic convention of that year the resolutions committee refused to report a declaration against