History of Nebraska - Chapter 31



Page 634

CHAPTER XXXI 
THE POPULIST PROBATION -- RETURN OF THE REPUBLICAN PRODIGAL -- HIS 
CONVERSION TO POPULISM -- A PERIOD OF PARTY ROTATION

   THE 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

Page 635

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

Page 636

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 regime. 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

Page 637

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

Page 638

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 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

Page 639

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

Page 640

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,

Page 641

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 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

Page 642

the use of railroad passes by officeholders, offerred by Edgar Howard of 
Platte county, but when he included newspaper passes the bobtail 
concession to reform was accepted.

   The republicans dodged this issue but righteously faced another more 
pressing. Joseph S. Bartley, state treasurer, 1893-1897, embezzled $555,
790.66 of the state funds, for which he was sentenced to twenty years in 
the penitentiary and a fine of $303,768.90. Ezra P. Savage, lieutenant-
governor, having succeeded Governor Dietrich when he became United States 
senator, paroled Bartley for sixty days. The republican state convention, 
August 28, 1901, by a vote of 998 to 165, demanded the recall of the 
parole which would have expired September 13th. Savage contended in the 
convention that Bartley, if let alone, would restore the amount for whose 
loss he was responsible, estimated at $325,000; and Charles 0. Whedon 
pleaded, in palliation, that when Bartley went out of office he left to 
his successor $1,042,000 and added large sums afterward, some on the day 
of his arrest. The convention hissed the delegates from Lancaster county 
when they voted against the resolution. Edward Rosewater and Addison E. 
Cady spoke strongly for it. Nevertheless, on the 21st of the following 
December, Savage commuted Bartley's sentence to five years, seven months, 
and eight days, thereby stirring up hot public indignation. There was and 
remains strong suspicion that over thirty thousand dollars was spent to 
procure this pardon. It is circumstantially related that Governor Poynter 
was corruptly approached for the same purpose. Governor Mickey declared in 
his annual message of 1907 that, "the people were robbed of this immense 
sum which had been exacted from them, to run the government, in times of 
financial distress." The liability of Bartley's bondsmen and others 
involved in his transactions was safely lost in the mazes of the court.

   The easy sailing for the republicans continued in 1904. Governor Mickey 
was reëlected governor, receiving 111,711 votes to 102,568 cast for George 
W. Berge, fusionist. The republican convention this year made an 
initiative step toward the voluntary submission of the choice of United 
States senators to the people, which was formally adopted by the so-called 
Oregon pledge law enacted by the legislature of 1909. Mr. Burkett's 
election was unanimously recommended by the convention of the year in 
question. This was the high tide year of republicanism. The opposition 
could not claim a single member of the senate elected that year, and in 
the house there were ninety-one republican members to nine fusionists. Of 
the forlorn band of fusionists two came from Richardson county, one from 
Platte, two from Butler, one from Polk, one from Holt, one from Custer and 
Logan. W. H. Jennings of Thayer was temporary president of the senate and 
George L. Rouse of Hall, speaker of the house. Theretofore conservative if 
not reactionist, the old party was fast catching the revolutionary reform 
spirit from President Roosevelt; and for the first time, in Nebraska, it 
set about resolutely to pass vital reform legislation, or to try to do so; 
but effective regeneration could not be assimilated at a single sitting, 
and so the real work was postponed to the following session of 1907. In 
their convention -- September 14, 1905 -- republicans declared in favor of 
primary elections for all public offices and that, "We believe that the 
giving of free transportation upon railways is detrimental to the 
interests of the people and recommend that a law be enacted by the 
legislature of this state to prohibit it." George L. Sheldon's positive 
stand for those reform measures brought him the governorship the next 
year. The democrats, at their convention, September 20th, also first 
definitively committed themselves to the vital reform measures. They 
declared in favor of a general primary election system, of the initiative 
and referendum, and demanded that members of the legislature and judges 
must give up all railroad passes. Judge William G. Hastings, whom the 
convention nominated for judge of the supreme court, introduced a 
resolution demanding the passing of a law making it a criminal offense to 
give or accept free transportation except in case of bona fide employees 
and genuine cases of charity, and it passed with one negative vote -- that 
of Glo-

Page 643

ver of Hamilton county, who thought the inhibition an infringement on 
individual rights. This declaration -- Mr. Bryan's contribution -- was 
passed without dissent: "We denounce the acceptance of the Rockefeller 
gift by the regents of the university, and demand the withdrawal and the 
return to Mr. Rockefeller of any money that may have been received from 
him." But public opinion remained too sordid to appreciate or appraise the 
moral value of this sentiment. The money -- $66,000 -- was accepted and 
the building stands as a monument to the still lurking Machiavellianism of 
public moral sentiment, namely, that the end justifies the means. Perhaps 
the University, in its great need for better housing, has been a material 
gainer by accepting this gift from funds which the people, owners and 
sponsors of the institution, hotly declared had been taken from them by 
the most piratical and unlawful methods. The least that can be said about 
this bewildering puzzle in ethics is that thousands of the staunchest 
friends and enforced supporters of the University have been stung to the 
quick by this, as it seems to them, venal lapse from common moral 
principle and will go on believing that the University is a loser by such 
methods in both the material and spiritual aspect.

   There were only fifty delegates from twenty-three counties in the 
populist convention this year, and the democrats conceded them only one 
candidate -- for regent -- upon the state ticket. Charles B. Letton, 
republican, was elected judge of the supreme court over his fusion 
competitor, William G. Hastings, by a vote of 96,167 to 72,949, and the 
two republican candidates for regent of the University were elected by 
approximately the same majority.

   The contrast between what was said and what was not said by the 
republican convention of 1904 and its declarations of the next year are 
comical if taken seriously at all. In 1904 the vital state questions were 
not referred to, while the convention sorrowed over the loss of "another 
gifted and beloved leader, Senator Marcus A. Hanna"; and it recommended 
John L. Webster, who continues to pride himself on his arch-standpatism, 
as a candidate for vice president. A florid puff for the insurgent 
President Roosevelt added variety to the peculiar mixture. The culmination 
and positive expression of anti-pass sentiment in 1905 precipitated an 
epidemic of reform hysteria among the politicians. The more susceptible of 
the state officials vied with one another, not only in giving up the until 
now cherished tokens of railroad favor but in doing it in the most 
ostentatious manner. Those of us who had witnessed the periodical 
religious revivals in our earlier country settlements were struck with the 
similarity of the emotional manifestation. In the height of the excitement 
in those revival meetings, women would not infrequently tear brooches from 
their breasts. and rings from their ears and disdainfully throw them upon 
the floor -- usually, however, to be restored on the restoration of normal 
temper. But the sacrifices of the religious neophytes were at least 
sincere.

   The new awakening naturally culminated -- at a convention held in 
Lincoln, August 22, 1906 -- in the nomination by the republicans of George 
L. Sheldon of Cass county, for governor on the second ballot, the several 
standpat aspirants receiving but slender support. The declarations of the 
platform were consistent with the well known views of the candidate and 
were direct and unequivocal. They censured the Burlington & Missouri and 
Union Pacific railroads for having refused to accept the valuation of 
their property by the state board of equalization; demanded that the next 
legislature should enact a direct primary law for the nomination of all 
state, county, and district officers, including United States senators and 
members of the lower house of the federal Congress, favoring in the 
meantime the nomination of United States senators by state conventions; 
demanded an amendment of the federal constitution providing for the 
popular election of United States senators; demanded the passage of a 
stringent anti-pass law by the next legislature; favored and approved the 
proposed amendment for an elective railroad commission and declared that 
if it should not be adopted at the

Page 644

election the legislature must pass laws to give the state the same 
advantages as Congress had already given the nation under the "railroad 
rate bill"; declared in favor of the taxation of railroad property within 
cities and villages the same as other property for municipal purposes; and 
favored the passage of an equitable compensation act for employees of 
corporations. The convention praised the fight by state officers against 
conspiring trusts -- the net result of which was to promote Attorney-
General Norris Brown to a United States senatorship.

   The dramatic feature of this convention was the appearance and defeat 
of Edward Rosewater for the United States senatorship to which he had long 
aspired. On the first ballot the vote was 401 for Norris Brown of Buffalo; 
273 1/2 for Rosewater. The remaining 153 1/2 were divided among four other 
candidates, 46 1/2 going to Joseph H. Millard, the outgoing senator. Brown 
was nominated on the sixth ballot with 433 votes against 291Y2 for 
Rosewater. Mr. Rosewater's highest vote was 306 1/2 -- on the fifth 
ballot. The whilom doughty editor's speech at the close of the contest 
impressed the listeners as a premonitory farewell. He died suddenly in the 
Bee building August 30th, but a week and a day after the curtain had been 
drawn in the convention over his political aspirations. Mr. Rosewater may 
fairly be called the Joseph Pulitzer of Nebraska journalism, though the 
New Yorker was distinguished by genius in his profession where the 
Nebraskan was limited to great talent. They were alike in the 
characteristics of independence, progressiveness, and relentless pursuit 
of their journalistic quarry, to slight extent respecters of persons. 
While the Bee did very effective constructive work in the building of 
Nebraska, its most important field of influence, perhaps, was unhorsing 
political grafters and exposing administrative corruption and other 
abuses. To have established a dominant newspaper, such as the Bee, upon 
original and persistent insurgency, anticipated full thirty years, was a 
great achievement.

   The democratic convention nominated Ashton C. Shallenberger of Harlan 
county for governor upon the first ballot, George W. Berge of Lancaster 
county being his principal competitor. The resolutions adopted by the 
convention promised that if the democrats should get into power they would 
enact a stringent anti-pass law; taunted republicans upon their neglect to 
enforce the law of 1897 which in effect prohibited the issue of railroad 
passes to officeholders and delegates to conventions; denounced the last 
republican legislature for defeating the anti-pass law; and declared 
themselves in favor of enacting a maximum two-cent passenger bill.

   The discriminating public, however, was inclined to look backwards a 
few years to the neglect of the fusionists themselves, when they were in 
power, to keep their positive and implied pledges for reform. Now that the 
republicans had manifested complete conversion to a progressive program, 
they reaped the advantage of their normal majority in the state. Sheldon, 
for governor, received 97,858 votes to 84,885 cast for Ashton C. 
Shallenberger, democrat, who was the nominee of the people's independent 
party as well as of his own. Harry T. Sutton, prohibitionist, received 5,
106 votes, and Elisha Taylor, socialist, 2,999. The preferential vote for 
candidates for the United States senatorship was taken in earnest this 
year, Norris Brown, republican, receiving 98,374 votes to 83,851 for 
William H. Thompson, his democratic opponent. The republican candidates 
for member of Congress were successful in five of the six districts; 
Gilbert M. Hitchcock of the second district being the only successful 
fusion aspirant. Ernest M. Pollard was elected in the first district, J. 
F. Boyd in the third, Edmund H. Hinshaw in the fourth, George W. Norris in 
the fifth, and Moses P. Kinkaid in the sixth. The proposed amendment 
providing for an elective railway commission was carried by the 
overwhelming vote of 147,472 to 8,896, and three republican railroad 
commissioners were chosen at the same election.

   The republican candidates for membership of the legislature were also 
overwhelmingly successful. The senate contained twenty-eight republicans, 
three people's independent

Page 645

and two democrats; the house, sixty-nine republicans, twenty-six people's 
independent and five democrats. The legislature kept the platform pledges 
of the party with remarkable fidelity. Among the progressive laws which it 
enacted are a railroad employers' liability act; a general primary 
election law; an act revising the pure food law; an anti-lobbying law; a 
sweeping anti-pass law; a law fixing two cents as the maximum rate for 
passenger travel; a law providing for the issue of railroad mileage books 
and a terminal railroad taxation law. This unique body in its reform 
enthusiasm kept the pledge of the democrats also in the passage of the 
most radical, if not the most important measure of the session, the two-
cent rate bill.

   The liquor question, which had been almost dormant, politically, for 
many years, was probably precipitated by an act prohibiting brewers from 
holding any interest in saloons. It passed the senate by a vote of 25 to 4 
and the house by 67 to 21. The two-cent passenger rate bill passed the 
house without opposition, receiving 90 affirmative votes, and the senate 
by 27 to 4. Burns of Lancaster county, Glover of Custer, Gould of Greeley, 
and Hanna of Cherry, all republicans, were the four opponents of this 
measure. A bill was also passed making a flat reduction of fifteen per 
cent in freight rates. Both the passenger and freight enactments are still 
in force although their validity is being tested in the courts.

   The first general primary election in the state was held September 3, 
1907. At this election Manoah B. Reese, republican, of Lancaster county, 
was nominated for judge of the supreme court, receiving 30,111 votes 
against 22,757 cast for his competitor, Samuel H. Sedgwick of York county. 
George L. Loomis of Dodge county received the democratic and people's 
independent nomination for the judgeship. The republicans elected their 
ticket, which included, also, a railroad commissioner and two regents of 
the University. Judge Reese received 102,387 votes; Judge Loomis, 77,981. 
Under the new primary act state conventions of the several parties were 
authorized to be held in Lincoln, on the fourth Tuesday of September of 
each year, for the purpose of adopting platforms and for conducting the 
business of the party organizations. These conventions were first held 
September 24, 1907. The democratic convention of 1908 for choosing 
delegates to the national convention instructed the delegates to vote for 
the nomination of William J. Bryan for president; and the people's 
independent convention was a side-show in this respect. The republican 
convention was friendly to the nomination of Taft but the delegates were 
not instructed. At the election of 1908 there was a friendly feeling 
toward the candidacy of Mr. Bryan and he carried the state, receiving a 
very complimentary majority. The maximum vote for democratic electors was 
131,099; for republican electors, 126,997. The highest vote for a 
prohibition candidate was 5,179; for a socialist candidate, 3,524.

   Three influences contributed to the election of Shallenberger over 
Sheldon and by a larger majority than that received by Mr. Bryan, The 
state ticket was the beneficiary of the friendliness toward the home 
candidate for the presidency; Governor Shallenberger was an exceedingly 
virile and taking campaigner, greatly excelling his competitor in this 
respect; and the liquor interests apparently favored somewhat the 
democratic state ticket. Shallenberger received 132,960 votes against 125,
976 for Sheldon; and W. H. Cowgill, democrat, was elected railroad 
commissioner over J. A. Williams, the republican incumbent; John A. 
Maguire, democratic candidate for member of Congress in the first 
district, defeated Ernest M. Pollard, the republican incumbent; Gilbert 
Al. Hitchcock, democrat, was reëlected in the second district; James F. 
Latta, democrat, was elected in the third district, The republican 
candidates were successful in the other three districts, though in the 
fourth district, C. F. Gilbert, democrat, was defeated by Hinshaw, the 
republican incumbent, by the narrow margin of 21,819 to 22,674 and F. W. 
Ashton was defeated by George W. Norris in the fifth district by the still 
narrower margin of 20,627 to 20,649.The two amend-

Page 646

ments to the constitution increasing the number of judges of the supreme 
court from three to seven and their salaries from $2,500 to, $4,500; and 
enlarging the field for the investment of state educational funds so as to 
include registered school district bonds of this state and "such other 
securities as the legislature may from time to time direct," were both 
adopted -- the first by 214,218 to 16,271; the second by 213,000 to 14,
395. The democrats also controlled the legislature; having nineteen 
members of the senate against thirteen republicans and one people's 
independent, and sixty-five members of the house against thirty-one 
republicans, two people's independents, and two fusionists. Though the 
republicans apparently left the democrats nothing to conquer in the world 
of reform they discovered and appropriated several important measures. The 
twenty-third legislature met in the thirty-first session, the twenty-first 
regular session, January 5, 1909, and finally adjourned April 1st of that 
year-the sixty-fifth day. George W. Tibbets, democrat, of Adams county, 
was elected temporary president of the senate, and Charles W. Pool, 
democrat, of Johnson county, speaker of the house.

   The most notable enactment of the session was that requiring all 
saloons in the state to be closed from eight o'clock in the evening until 
seven in the morning. This was the first amendment of great importance to 
the Slocumb license law, which had been in force ever since 1881; and it 
broke like a thunderbolt upon the saloon interests. It grew out of a 
comparatively unimportant and innocent bill (S. F. 283), introduced by 
Senator Wiltse, republican, which merely required the closing of saloons 
on primary election days.

   Other notable enactments of the session were a bank guaranty law, 
patterned after that which had become notorious in Oklahoma; a corporation 
occupation tax; an amendment of the closed primary law permitting voters 
to receive and cast ballots at the primary elections without requiring 
from them any declaration as to their party affiliations, past, present, 
or future, commonly known as the open primary; a fire commission, a 
supplement to fire insurance; a law providing that judicial and 
educational officers should be elected without any partisan distinction, 
Unfortunately the supreme court found it necessary to annul this very 
desirable measure because of a technical defect in its form. As has 
already been shown, the people had found the way to virtually choose 
United States senators by their own popular vote, but this legislature put 
the new departure into better form by passing what is known as the Oregon 
pledge law, which permits candidates at the primaries for membership in 
the legislature to pledge the public that in case they shall be elected 
they will vote for that candidate for the United States senatorship who 
receives the highest vote for that office at the general election next 
preceding the election by the legislature.

   In the campaign of 1910 all normal calculations were upset by the 
injection of the prohibition question and the invasion of the democratic 
ticket by large numbers of republicans, through the opportunity offered by 
the open primary law which had been passed at the late session of the 
legislature. While Governor Shallenberger had incurred the bitter 
hostility of the extreme liquor interests by signing the eight o'clock 
closing law and, naturally, in the circumstances, had not recouped from 
the strong partisans of prohibition or county option, yet his 
administration had been so virile and his personality in general so 
taking, that his renomination and reëlection were generally conceded by 
politicians. But the aggressive pro-saloon republicans, to the number of 
about 15,000, voted for James C. Dahlman, the democratic mayor of Omaha, 
and he was nominated over Shallenberger by the narrow margin of 27,591 to 
27,287. If the governor had stood firmly on his well-known opposition to 
county option, he would have been renominated. His announcement to the 
democratic convention that he would sign a county option bill, if one 
should be passed, was bad politics as well as bad statesmanship. Chester 
H. Aldrich, a radical partisan of county option, was nominated by the 
republicans. At the same primary Elmer J. Burkett was nominated by the 
republicans to succeed

Page 647

himself as United States senator, and Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Douglas 
county, was nominated by the democrats.

   The conventions of the democratic and republican parties for 1910, held 
according to the primary election law on the 26th of July, were unusually 
exciting, the temporary perturbation of the democrats amounting to 
turbulence. Their convention was held at Grand Island, and W. J. Bryan 
started the trouble by an aggressive advocacy of a county option plank as 
follows: "We favor county option as the best method of dealing with the 
liquor question." The extreme or Dahlman element offered the following 
plank: "We favor local option as now provided by law but are opposed to 
county option." The Bryan plank was rejected by the overwhelming vote of 
647 to 198 and the Dahlman plank by 638 to 202. The plank proposed by the 
majority of the resolutions committee was adopted without division: "We 
oppose county option and making any other plan of dealing with the liquor 
traffic a question of party creed. We favor strict enforcement of the 
present law, and any change therein should be made only by direct vote. We 
do not believe that good government and good morals are best subserved by 
dividing the people into hostile camps on strictly moral questions." This 
was a palpable evasion of a question upon which the public mind had 
sharply divided, and it was verbose at that. A plank endorsing the eight 
o'clock closing law was adopted by a vote of 710 to 163. Bryan invited 
another defeat by seeking to amend a motion by Gilbert M. Hitchcock 
providing that amendments to the platform should only be considered 
through the media of majority or minority reports. The proposed amendment 
was defeated by 465 to 394. This was the first defeat that Mr. Bryan had 
suffered in a democratic convention in Nebraska since his spectacular 
fight against the gold democrats in the convention of 1893.

   Republicans saw in wooing the increasing prohibition sentiment the only 
opportunity of defeating Governor Shallenberger, whose renomination was 
expected as a matter of course; and so at their convention, held in 
Lincoln, they adopted a county option plank. The minority of the 
resolutions committee, led by John L. Webster of Omaha, sought to evade 
the issue by declaring that a question within the purview of the police 
power had no place in a political platform, but the flat declaration for 
county option was preferred to this compromise by a vote of 558 to 276. 
This convention was thoroughly insurgent in spirit and action. Even the 
long scorned "populistic" initiative and referendum, though rejected by 
the resolutions committee, was taken up by the convention and adopted by 
the decisive vote of 524 to 289. A resolution offered from the floor by 
Congressman George W. Norris, denouncing Cannonism and approving the 
insurgent movement in and out of Congress, was also carried by a decisive 
majority. Thus democrats and republicans vied with one another in 
espousing radically progressive measures while each party was sharply 
divided on the prohibition question.

   There was much bad logic wasted in both conventions in attempting to 
differentiate prohibition, which for the time was called county option, as 
a moral question. Mr. Bryan, especially, emphasized this contention in a 
specious declaration that the question being moral was therefore one of 
right or wrong and therefore he must be for prohibition because that was 
right and nobody could afford to be wrong. Many thoughtful and 
disinterested people regard the question of license or prohibition as one 
of expediency to be decided upon one's best judgment as to which plan 
would more satisfactorily deal with the admitted evils of the liquor 
traffice [sic]. The oppression of the trusts and of the beneficiaries of 
the tariff is no less immoral than the evils growing out of the liquor 
traffic; and, by a like facile assumption that they are moral issues, 
they, too, might be taken out of their proper arena of politics.

   Mr. Bryan declared that "The people of Lincoln are so well pleased with 
having closed its saloons that they will not be terrified into opening 
them again by threats of the removal of the state capital." Nevertheless,

Page 648

within a few months, the people of Lincoln, confronted by a removalist 
legislature, were so terrified at the menace, that the procurement of 
liquor was facilitated to the uttermost, and on the very heels of the 
terror -- which abated only with final adjournment of the legislature -- 
they voted saloons in again by a decisive majority.

   The result of the election indicated a preponderance of public opinion 
in the state against prohibition -- particularly spreading prohibition 
through the medium of county option in contradistinction to the usual plan 
of municipal option. The attitude of James C. Dahlman toward the liquor 
question was so fantastically unmoral as to make him an unavailable 
candidate, and his defeat was therefore inevitable. Aldrich, republican 
county optionist, received 123,070 votes; Dahlman, 107,760. The rest of 
the republican state ticket was also elected, though by much smaller 
majorities than that of Aldrich. Charles W. Pool, democratic candidate for 
secretary of state, for example, received 111,137 votes against 111,229 
cast for his competitor, Addison Wait. Gilbert M. Hitchcock, democratic 
candidate for United States senator, received 122,517 votes against 102,
861 cast for Burkett, republican. The democrats gained both houses of the 
legislature, having fifty-four members of the house to forty-five 
republicans and one people's independent; and nineteen senators against 
fourteen republican. The republicans, in the circumstances, had everything 
to gain, temporarily, and nothing to lose by risking their chances upon 
the throw of the prohibition die. Mr. Bryan won nothing in the contest 
except the defeat of Dahlman, his long time friend and party lieutenant; 
and since there was no increasing menace of the saloon interests, while on 
the contrary they had received in the shape of the eight o'clock closing 
law in the very last legislature, their most damaging blow since the 
passage of the Slocumb law in 1881, there was no plausible call for a 
sudden or radical change of attitude toward them. It seems that Mr. 
Bryan's sudden hostility may be attributed to complex impulses: to a 
mistake in local political diagnosis; to resentment against the liquor 
interests which he thought had opposed his candidacy in 1908 and whom he 
hoped, by a virtual alliance with the republicans, to punish by the 
infliction of county option -- near prohibition; and to a feeling that his 
relations toward the democratic party would now permit him to pursue a 
natural temperamental bent or predilection.

   Mr. Bryan is, preëminently, an evangelist. His greatest work, in the 
political, and the more extended sociological field, has been done in the 
role of an exhorter of the religiously moral type. It is likely, 
therefore, that he has long felt that the saloon as an institution is 
fundamentally a wrong which ought to be outlawed as a matter of course. So 
long as he was the titular leader, or strove to be the real leader of a 
great national party, it would have been disastrous, alike to himself and 
the party, for him to espouse prohibition. So long as that relationship 
endured true statesmanship forbade such a course on his part. Had his 
personal bent become paramount in 1910, as against party leadership, or 
did he believe that national party success lay in prohibition? While for 
many years Dahlman had been very useful to Bryan, his own influence and 
patronage had given this favorite the principal basis for his political 
distinction and the prestige which put him into the important office of 
mayor of Omaha. Republican enthusiasm for the paramount "moral" issue of 
county option was so rushing and so gushing that it spent its force within 
a single year, and by discreetly dropping it the backslid converts were 
able to win a normal victory at the election of 1911.

   The twenty-fourth legislature met in the thirty-second session -- the 
twenty-second regular session -- January 3, 1911, and finally adjourned 
April 6th of that year -- the sixty-seventh day. The house of 
representatives comprised fifty-five democrats and populists and forty-
five republicans. Only one member, Frank Dolezal of Saunders county, 
registered as "people's independent," but seven registered as democrats 
and independents -- a distinction now without an appreciable difference. 
There were forty-seven "admitted" democrats in that body. John Kuhl, 
democrat, of Pierce county, was speaker. The sen-

Page 649

ate comprised nineteen democrats and fourteen republicans. John H. 
Morehead of Richardson county, democrat, was temporary president.

   In point of economy the public is a great gainer by the present method 
of virtually choosing United States senators at the polls, leaving to the 
legislature the formal constitutional duty of ratifying the popular 
choice. In the senate all of the democrats and all of the republicans but 
one voted for Gilbert M. Hitchcock according to the decsion of the people 
at the general election of 1910. In the house the vote was not so nearly 
unanimous, though Hitchcock received 87 votes to 10 cast for Elmer J. 
Burkett, his republican opponent at the election. Two questions, the one 
largely growing out of the other, excited and kept up a lively interest 
during this session until they were settled. A county option license bill 
(H. R. 392) was defeated in the house by a vote of 50 to 48 -- not a 
constitutional majority. The fifty affirmative votes were cast by forty 
republicans and ten democrats; the forty-eight negative votes by forty-two 
democrats, one people's independent, five republicans. A similar bill 
introduced in the senate (S. F. 118) was defeated by the close vote of 16 
to 17. Of the sixteen senators voting aye thirteen were republican and 
three were democrats. All those voting nay were democrats except one -- 
Bartling, of Otoe county.

   The great activity of republican leaders in Lancaster county in favor 
of county option, coupled with the fact that Lincoln had voted to abolish 
saloons, aroused the hostility throughout the state of the positive 
partisans of the saloons, and the people of various localities took 
advantage of this animosity to build up a formidable sentiment in favor of 
removing the capital from Lincoln. A bill (H. R. 246) providing for the 
removal of the capital was ordered to be engrossed for third reading in 
committee of the whole, but it failed of final passage in the house by a 
vote of 38 to 58. Another bill of the same nature (H. R. 382) was amended 
in the committee of the whole so as to provide that any city or village 
might become an aspirant for the capital at an election to remove it, 
under regulations prescribed by the bill. This change defeated the scheme 
of the removalists whose hope was based upon first carrying a simple 
proposition to remove the capital, thus excluding Lincoln from the 
resulting contest between the aspirants. A motion to not concur in the 
report of the committee of the whole was defeated by a vote of 18 to 58. 
The bill was abandoned at this stage, thus ending what in the earlier part 
of the session appeared to be a formidable movement.

   This legislature was also fairly entitled to be called progressive, as 
shown by a considerable number of enactments along lines of modern growth. 
After a long contest stock yards were placed under the control of the 
state railway commission with power to regulate the service and charges of 
all kinds, a notable advance along the line of corporation control. A bill 
was passed authorizing all cities with a population of 5,000 or upwards to 
adopt the commission plan of government. The form prescribed is similar to 
the so-called Des Moines plan. This plan is not the best of its class, but 
a proposed amendment to the constitution permitting municipalities with a 
population of 5,000 to make their own charters will give a proper 
opportunity for the adoption of the most approved forms. One of the most 
important acts of the session was the passage of a joint resolution 
submitting an amendment to the constitution giving the people power to 
enact laws directly and to reject objectionable acts of the legislature. 
The rules under which the power may be invoked are calculated to check the 
excessive and inconsiderate use of the initiative and referendum which has 
resulted in other states where the principle has been adopted.

   In the election of 1910 Chester H. Aldrich was elected governor over 
James Dahlman. Mr. Aldrich had been a member of the famous legislative 
session of 1907 and identified with many reform measures, but the 
democrats had a majority in both houses of the legislature of 1911. Mr. 
Aldrich was therefore restrained from placing a progressive republican 
program before the people. However, the session was distinguished by two

Page 650

bills in particular; one, as mentioned on the preceding page, placed the 
stockyards under the control of the railway commission. This was largely 
due to the fine brand of generalship displayed by Senator J. A. Ollis of 
Valley county. The senate was closely divided on the "wet" and "dry" 
issue; Senator Ollis, with two or three "dry" democratic colleagues, 
joined the "dry" republicans and succeeded in gaining some control in the 
senate. The second measure of unusual importance was a one-mill levy for 
the extension of the University which, through a period of successful 
years, had outgrown its quarters and progressive extension became 
important. The question of the removal of the University from the city to 
the farm campus was submitted to the people through a referendum and lost.

   In the campaign of 1912 the republican party was badly shattered by the 
stand of Theodore Roosevelt against the regular party nominee of the 
Chicago convention. Mr. Roosevelt had been instrumental in securing the 
election of William Howard Taft to the presidency, but on account of his 
conservatism turned against him for reëelection [sic]. When the national 
convention renominated Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt withdrew from the 
convention and formed the progressive or "Bull Moose" party. Mr. 
Roosevelt, by securing the nomination by the new party for the presidency, 
compassed the defeat of the republican party.

   In the state election of 1912 Mr. Aldrich was defeated for reëlection 
by John H. Morehead, who succeeded in holding his place through two 
elections. When Mr. Morehead became a candidate he announced himself as a 
one-term governor, but his leadership was so acceptable to his party that 
he was induced to run for a second term. There was much talk of a third 
term, but it did not materialize.

   In the campaign of 1914 the split in the republican ranks made easy 
work for the democrats. Mr. R. Beecher Howell of Omaha was nominated for 
governor on the republican ticket, and Mr. Morehead on the democratic. The 
democrats elected their entire ticket with two exceptions. Mr. Fred 
Beckman (republican) succeeded himself as land commissioner, and Mr. A. O. 
Thomas (republican) was elected state superintendent of public instruction.

   The state election of 1916 was influenced in large part by the national 
issues and partly by the submission of the amendment to the constitution 
prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicants within the state. The 
democratic party, under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, accepted the 
progressive attitude and championed the peace policy. In the initial 
campaign, the democratic party within the state was torn asunder, but was 
able to recover. This trouble came about through the espousal of the 
temperance issue by the Bryan following. Mr. Bryan had resigned from the 
cabinet under President Wilson and had become a free lance. He immediately 
took up the crusade for a "dry" Nebraska and his brother, Charles Bryan, 
became a candidate for governor on the democratic ticket, accepting 
prohibition as a plank of his platform. The republicans nominated Abraham 
L. Sutton of Omaha for governor. Mr. Bryan lost in the primaries to Keith 
Neville. The democrats elected their entire ticket by majorities ranging 
from 1,300 for state superintendent to 41,000 for president. The 
constitutional amendment carried by a majority of 30,000.

   The chief interest of the legislature of 1917 centered about the making 
of a "bone dry" law to enforce the provisions of the constitutional 
amendment. There is no doubt that the legislature came in with good 
intentions, but it was up to the liquor interests to make their last 
stand. The house of representatives passed the measure in good form, 
perhaps strengthened by national legislation, but the senate could not see 
its way clear to pass. the measure until the close of the prolonged 
session. This session was marked by the number of farmers who were seated. 
Much progressive legislation was attempted and some excellent laws were 
enacted. Among the measures deserving special notice are the "bone dry" 
law, a limited suffrage law, state hail insurance, a law for the 
redistricting of the county for school purposes, and a law placing state 
and county superintendents on a non-partisan basis. The term of county 
superintendents was extended from two years to four years.