CHAPTER X. 



THE POLITICAL REBELLION IN KANSAS. 



BY HON. JERRY SIMPSON, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM THE SEVENTH DISTRICT 



OF KANSAS. 



IN the campaign of the fall of 1 890, in Kansas, a new party sprang 

 into power, which gained strength with a rapidity never before equalled. 

 What was the cause that produced this sudden rebellion against the 

 Republican party ? What was the cause of the uprising of the farmers, 

 and what is the remedy for the evils of which they complain? All 

 these are questions pressing for answers ; in fact, they must be answered 

 correctly, and the remedy be applied, if this government is to continue 

 to be a free government by the people. It is not always safe, perhaps, 

 to trust a sick man to diagnose his own case ; neither can you trust to 

 quacks who profess to cure all ills to which flesh is heir with one quack 

 remedy. 



We seem to have once again entered one of those periods in which 

 nations have been confronted with these same questions : like the riddle 

 of the Sphynx, not to answer was to be destroyed. Never before in the 

 history of the world were there such momentous questions ; never 

 before in the history of the world was the welfare of the human race so 

 bound up in the solving of these problems. We must now and here 

 settle whether or not we are capable of self government. We must 

 grapple with, and master, this monster which has eaten up the substance 

 of the producers of wealth in every land. The voters of Kansas are the 

 best representatives of the agricultural class of a half-dozen of the best 

 agricultural States in the Union ; they have come West to better their 

 condition ; they are a part of that great throng which is always pressing 

 ahead into new countries, trying to escape the oppression of the men 

 who live off their labor ; but they find that in Kansas, as in other States, 

 it is impossible to get from under the load which is continually being 

 shifted upon their shoulders, and which grows heavier from year to year. 

 They have found that, in the last twenty-five years, the country, under 

 the control of the great Republican party, has passed into the hands of 

 the money power, the capitalists of the country, who have doubled the 

 oppression of the agricultural classes. Having cried in vain for relief 

 through the Republican and Democratic parties, they are at last driven 

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