148 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



who attended the meetings, great and small, all 

 over the country. One unique feature of the 

 Populist campaign on the Pacific coast was the sing- 

 ing of James G. Clark's People s Battle-Hymn, and 

 other songs expressing the hope and fears of labor 

 in the field and factory. Everywhere it was the 

 policy of the new party to enlist the assistance of 

 the weaker of the old parties. In the South, the 

 Populists, as a rule, arrayed themselves with the 

 Republicans against the old Democracy. This pro- 

 voked every device of ridicule, class prejudice, and 

 scorn, which the dominant party could bring to 

 bear to dissuade former Democrats from voting 

 the People's ticket. One Louisiana paper uttered 

 this warning : 



Oily-tongued orators, in many cases the paid agents 

 of the Republican party, have for months been circu- 

 lating among the unsophisticated and more credulous 

 classes, preaching their heresies and teaching the peo- 

 ple that if Weaver is elected president, money may be 

 had for the asking, transportation on the railroad 

 trains will be practically free, the laboring man will be 

 transferred from his present position and placed upon a 

 throne of power, while lakes filled with molasses, whose 

 shores are fringed with buckwheat cakes, and islands of 

 Jersey butter rising here and there above the surface, 

 will be a concomitant of every farm. The " forty-acres- 

 and-a-mule" promises of the reconstruction era pale 



