“The true reason for the formation of the Alliance, or People’s party, in the North, West, and South, is not difficult to find. When the tide of immigration and settlement turned toward the great wheat and corn fields of Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, every natural condition was favorable to the growing of abundant crops, which brought the farmer a golden return for his labor. But beginning with 1884 the crops in many sections of the Northwest were failures. This unfavorable condition lasted until 1890, when a great demand for cereals from Europe, and enormous crops harvested in America, turned the flood of prosperity back again to the farmer, who had for six years suffered because of poor crops. During these years of hard times the farmer had encumbered himself with numerous and necessary debts, so that the profits of the prosperous years of 1890 and 1891, as well as those of this year, have gone in payment of accrued interest and the liquidation, in part, of a vast mortgage indebtedness. After having been obliged to stint himself for several years, it is but natural that when a chance presented itself he should desire to surfeit upon the plenty, rather than be obliged because of his indebtedness to pay out the first money which had come to him from several years of toil to those whom he owed. It is but natural, too, under such conditions, that he should have embraced a project which, as he understood it, was to lift the burden from his shoulders and put it upon the back of the Government, to make money ‘easy,’ and to render indebtedness not a hardship, but rather something which might be wiped out as easily as it could be incurred. THE DISCONTENT IN THE EAST. “The result in Wisconsin shows clearly that the wounds received in the battle over the Bennet law had not yet healed, and the agitation over the repeal of the Edwards law is the cause of Republican disaster in Illinois; but no such issues as perverted the minds of Republicans in the Northwest, and in Wisconsin and Illinois, were matters of controversy in the old line Republican States of Ohio and New Hampshire. “The political veteran who has battled in these States for many campaigns is puzzled where to seek the cause of such overwhelming disaster. To cry ‘boodle’ is to bring ridicule upon the party, but to give the McKinley bill as the only or main cause is to show only a superficial knowledge of the existing condition of affairs.