The Story of a Suppressed Populist Newspaper

BY THOMAS H. TIBBLES People’s Party Candidate for Vice-President

AT one time there were fifteen hundred weekly papers advocating the principles of the Omaha platform. Some of them had large plants, some only a few cases of type and a Washington press, but all were actuated by one purpose—to make conditions easier for those who toiled on farms, in shops, factories, mines and mills. Among those still fighting up to the first of April of this year was the Nebraska Independent. Many such papers were crushed by various devices, chief among which was that the great advertisers of the land, all being allied with Wall Street, refused to give them any business. Numerous instances could be cited where Populist papers were refused advertisements given to plutocratic papers not having one-tenth the circulation, and paid for at a higher rate than the proprietors of the Populist papers would have taken. In the files of the Nebraska Independent may be found scores of letters from advertising agents, who had been solicited for business, saying: “If you will make your paper an exclusively agricultural journal we will be glad to give you a good line of business, but we cannot patronize it as long as it advocates Populism.” Every reform editor has had the same experience.

Thirteen years ago the agricultural papers everywhere were publishing articles defending Populist principles. Then all at once such articles were seen in their pages no more, and immediately the papers were flooded with high-priced advertising. The religious press was caught in the same trap. It is strange that the devout readers of those papers never once had their suspicions aroused when they saw so many display advertisements of trusts, banks and promotion schemes in their modest little religious journals. Notwithstanding all such schemes, the Nebraska Independent lived and its circulation gradually extended into every state and territory. It became evident that to get rid of it other tactics would have to be employed. To destroy the paper was not the objective. It was to destroy the People’s Party. With the Independent in hostile hands the political fortifications built up by it in Nebraska and other states would be deserted and the Bryan, Belmont, Sheehan and Tom Taggart Democratic Party could walk in and take possession.

The main battle was fought in the Populist state convention August 10, 1904. The proposition to force a fusion with the Democrats under the lead of the most disreputable end of Wall Street, fresh from its victory in St. Louis, on the face of it was most absurd. But the doing of absurd things never ruffles the placid countenance of Mr. Bryan. The idea that there could be any real opposition to his imperial will in Nebraska, aside from the Republican Party, never seemed to enter his mind. Heretofore when Mr. Bryan entered a Democratic or Populist convention, the Fusion Populists and Democrats immediately bowed and worshiped. The only thing that convention had to do was to find out what Mr. Bryan wished and then proceed to do it with all possible haste. It became evident that this convention would have to be handled differently. Mr. Bryan all the winter, spring and summer had been denouncing Judge Parker as a “dishonest candidate, running on a dishonest platform,” and then he had come home from St. Louis, sat down at his desk and the first words that he wrote were: “I shall vote for Parker and Davis.” The Populists remembered how for eight years he had been coming to their conventions, and in his sweet and winning way telling them how noble they were to put principle above party and vote for men of another party if they thought they could advance reform by so doing. Many of them, who had always supported Mr. Bryan since he first appeared on the battlefields of politics, thought that the time had come when he should practice what he preached. Mr. Bryan realized that there was trouble ahead, but it was thought if the Nebraska Independent would support the Bryan plan that a fusion legislature could be elected that would send Mr. Bryan to the United States Senate.

The editor of the Independent was obstreperous. He had had enough of fusion with a party half of which was more disreputably plutocratic than the Republican Party, and whose “irrevocable” rules were so rigid that they required a man, upon a vote of a convention, to come out boldly before the people and advocate a policy he had denounced by pen and voice for eight years. All sorts of schemes were devised to bring this obstreperous editor into subjection to the imperial will of Mr. Bryan. The first was to send all the leading men of the state, from the Chief Justice down, to use persuasion. That failed. Then Mr. Bryan’s personal daily organ in the state tried a new deal. It poured out on Mr. Tibbles the most fulsome flattery day after day. It said if he would only say “fusion” every Populist in the state would obey his command. When all that failed Mr. Bryan came himself. The proposition that he made was that a fusion electoral ticket be put in the field composed of four Populists and four Democrats, Mr. Bryan saying that, “in the event of their election, each party could count the full vote as its own.” The proposition was instantly rejected. Others followed. Mr. Bryan came to the Independent editorial-room four different times, using all his eloquence and persuasive powers to get the editor to consent to and advocate a fusion with a party that had nominated Parker, and whose campaign was put into the hands of the most disreputable gang that ever sought Wall Street favor.

Mr. Bryan gave orders that everything visible, clear to the political horizon, and other things invisible lying behind the floating clouds, should be offered to the Populist convention providing that the Populists would fuse. The battle was fought out on the convention floor. Many Democrats had secured seats as delegates. One Democrat came over from his own convention and answered to the call of Thurston County in the Populist convention which had no delegates present, and voted the fifteen votes that county was entitled to every time for fusion. Out of the hell-broth brewed in that all-night session there floated upon the fusion scum Bryan, Belmont, Sheehan, Tom Taggart and, remember this last name, George W. Berge.

Nearly the whole state ticket was given to the Populists—only three unimportant offices being conceded to the Democrats, and Berge—George Washington Berge—captured the prize infamy, the fusion nomination for Governor. Bryan would allow no other name to be mentioned in the Democratic convention, although there were two or three Democrats there who had spent time and much money during the previous eight years fighting Bryan’s battles for him, and who had expressed a desire to receive a complimentary vote for that office. When Bryan speaks the Nebraska Democrat turns pale.

The Independent was still a thorn in the side of these fusionists. The editor openly declared that he never would vote for or support a Belmont-Bryan-Parker Democrat. Then it was that fusion itch for office and Bryan diplomacy joined forces to destroy the Independent. The plutocratic Republican attacks upon it had been of no avail, and week after week it had proclaimed the doctrines of the People’s Party for ten years. In an open fight against awful odds it had fought battle after battle, sometimes victorious and sometimes defeated, but it fought on. It took fusion treason, it took the work of men who constantly proclaimed themselves Populists, who insisted upon attending Populist conventions while their sole aim was to destroy the People’s Party, to do what all the hosts of plutocracy had failed to do.

As soon as the vote for fusion had been announced in the convention as prevailing, more than half the delegates present—whole counties had been voted for fusion when only one or two delegates were in the city—rose and left. The next morning they hired a hall and discussed the proposition of putting a straight Populist ticket in the field, but when it was remembered that the fusionists had the legal organization and the ticket would have to go on the ballot under some other name than People’s Party the project was abandoned. The result was that 20,000 Populists voted the Republican ticket, 30,000 stayed at home and refused to vote, and a little over 20,000 voted the Populist national ticket. The Senate of the Nebraska Legislature was solidly Republican; the House had only nine fusionists in it. Mr. Bryan saw to it that they all cast their votes for a straight Democrat for United States Senator. All that was necessary to get the fusionists to do that, both those who called themselves Democrats and those who called themselves Populists, was for them to imagine that they heard a far-off rumble that sounded like the voice of Bryan saying: “Vote for a Democrat.”

When the conventions were over and the campaign committees appointed, the fusionists found that it was a difficult thing to make a campaign in Nebraska. Something must be done to get the Independent to fight the battle for them, but the Independent still declared that it would not support a Parker Democrat. Then, sad to relate, the editor of the Independent got taken in himself.

The chairman of the Democratic State Committee, a brother-in-law to Bryan, came to Mr. Tibbles declaring that he represented Mr. Bryan and was speaking in Bryan’s name, and made the following proposition:

If Mr. Tibbles would spend most of his time out of the state during the campaign, and let the Independent support the fusion ticket, all of whose nominees except three were Populists, Mr. Bryan on his part would agree to go to Arizona or Colorado and get sick. He would continue to keep sick until the close of the campaign, so sick that he would not be able to make any political speeches at all. An exception was made in regard to Indiana. It was said that Mr. Bryan had promised to make three speeches in Indiana in support of his old personal friend who was running for Governor in that state, but it was further stipulated that these three speeches should not be political speeches, but repetitions of Mr. Bryan’s lecture on “Ideals.”

Mr. Bryan went to Arizona and sent home a letter saying that he was worse and would not be able to deliver any political speeches during the campaign. That letter was printed in the Lincoln daily papers and was shown to Mr. Tibbles as proof that Mr. Bryan was keeping his contract.

The chairman of the Democratic State Committee went to New York, saw Parker, Sheehan, Belmont, Tom Taggart and the rest of the band of financial and political pirates. He came home with money for campaign expenses. Then Mr. Bryan hired a special train and started out speech-making in Nebraska and in other states. The surprising rapidity with which his lung healed has never been equaled in all the history of medicine. But when the votes were counted it was learned that wherever Mr. Bryan spoke, whether from the rear end of his car, on a platform by the railway side, or in theatre or hall, a tidal wave of Republican votes followed him, although he pleaded with his Democratic hearers to be “regular.” Hundreds of thousands of Democrats listened to this man, who for eight years had been denouncing Wall Street and all its ways, and was now consorting with the most disreputable part of Wall Street, urging them to vote to keep it in power. Humiliated, sad at heart, their idol carrying the banner of the enemy, in the enemy’s ranks, they turned their backs in scorn upon Mr. Bryan, went to the polls and voted the Republican ticket. If they were to have Wall Street and plutocracy, they wanted the old, genuine article, not “something just as good.” The fusionists declared that wherever Watson or Tibbles spoke they made votes for Roosevelt. They did not make one Roosevelt vote where Bryan made a thousand.

Mr. Berge—George Washington Berge—received a large vote for Governor. That was because Mickey, the Republican, who was running for re-election, was cordially hated by the whole Republican Party. Thirty thousand Republicans voted for Berge, and then he was defeated. But Berge is a fusionist. He wants office, and especially the office of Governor of Nebraska.

It seemed necessary, if Mr. Bryan was to prove his undying love for the Democratic Party, to convince all Eastern Democrats that he would forever prove “regular” no matter who was nominated or what the platform was, and it seemed to the fusionists, if they were to have any of the spoils of victory when the national Government was captured, that the People’s Party must be destroyed. It must never hold another state or national convention. They all agreed that the party had done a wonderful work for the nation, that its principles were being everywhere adopted, but it must be crucified, officially pronounced dead and buried, and the first step toward that object was the destruction of the Nebraska Independent.

Mr. Berge is a lawyer. He never has had a day’s experience in a newspaper office. He announced that he would start a paper in Lincoln in opposition to the Independent. Then a proposition was made to the proprietor of the Independent to sell out. A very large price was offered. When the proprietor faced these facts he began to get discouraged. He had grown up in Lincoln. He had associated with these fusionists for years. The fight which he saw in the near future with these men was an unpleasant thing to contemplate. The cost of running a great newspaper plant is large. When it was known that the home advertising would in part be lost, and also a large share of the job work, the moment the editor defied Bryan and the fusionists, the outlook was gloomy. To those whom the Independent had always fought in the city and state were to be added hundreds of others who had passed as friends. And the proprietor became discouraged.

It is somewhat discouraging to go to a convention ostensibly composed of men of your own party and see the most active members of it engaged in a scheme to destroy your party. These have been the conditions in every Populist convention in the state of Nebraska since 1890. The only thing that prevented the party from being destroyed sooner was the Nebraska Independent. The fusionists became more and more convinced of that fact, and the scheme was invented to publish a paper in opposition in the same city, which, while claiming to be Populistic, would work for the destruction of the party. Credit for the invention belongs to George Washington Berge. The hope was entertained that when the People’s Party was destroyed all the Populists would go into the Democratic Party, and George Washington Berge would be Governor and W. J. Bryan United States Senator.

The proprietor of the Independent was bound in the contract transferring to George Washington Berge the title to the paper, not to engage in the business of publishing a reform paper for five years, but the fusionists found that it would be impossible to put any shackles on the editor. He intends to fight on. Just as all the world is beginning to accept Populist principles he does not propose to sheathe his sword and stand by, a passive spectator. The greatest battle of the age is to be fought. He “is going up against” that crowd again.

The columns of the Independent have been an open forum for any man who thought he had something that would benefit humanity. In the columns of the paper he could always voice his sentiments. Besides that, it has been a journal of economics, sociology, philosophy, ethics, finance, single tax, land, Government and all the decent news. Now it has gone into the hands of an ordinary Western lawyer who never read a standard work of authority on any one of these subjects. It is to be a personal organ after the fashion of the one that W. J. Bryan publishes in the same town. W. J. Bryan is the most accomplished orator of the day. He has personal acquaintances in every state and territory. Millions have met and shaken hands with him. George W. Berge has some acquaintances outside of Lancaster County, Nebraska, and besides that, Berge is a Populist engaged in destroying the Populist Party. These are his elements of success.

The Populists of the different states and territories who have been readers of the Independent will in the near future have a place to express their views and read discussions of the great problems that are pressing for solution. We will be heard. For years not a great daily would print a line in defense of the fundamental principles of Populism. Now magazines are making fortunes for their proprietors who have admitted some of these principles to their pages. Some of these magazines have a greater circulation than was ever known before anywhere in the world for monthly periodical literature. The People’s Party is not dead. The Nebraska Independent will rise from its ashes stronger and better than ever before. The vilest, rottenest, worst smelling spot in all the preserves of plutocracy is that place where the fusionist roams, seeking to destroy the organization that gave him the only opportunities of his life.