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
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