Grave Americans in the Eastern States and in London continue
to doubt whether this outburst of Socialist feeling can be formidable, but we give elsewhere what seem to us serious reasons for doubting their conclusion. The West rules the Union, and the distress and anxiety in the West are wholly unprecedented. The farmers, crushed by a system of Protection which protects everything but produce, now find their incomes reduced one-half by the fall in prices, and are in fact much worse ofE than small English land- owners in Essex. They have sufficient rough food, but they have nothing else; they resent their position as a "servi- tude," and they attribute it with one voice to the "money- lenders," who, they say, reject both silver issues and paper issues for fear lest money should be plentiful. An immense State like Illinois, therefore, with the population of Scotland thirty years ago, resolutely supports Governor Altgeld, who now rules the Convention, and who, upon all subjects except freehold tenure, is a determined Socialist. Our readers have probably not forgotten the "Coxey March" which fizzled itself away into a huge pauper picnic, but which many observers in the
States thought a most ominous symptom of deep-seated dis- content. There are volcanic forces in the American Republic as in most European States, and though we have much con- fidence in American religions feeling and common-sense, we are by no means absolutely certain that an explosion is im- possible. The election of Mr. Bryan to the Presidency would mean a catastrophe of some kind.
