“A shoemaker in the town of Granville, Washington County, a good deal of a philosopher in his way, with plenty of good horse-sense showing in his rugged face, a man whose language was refined, and whose conversation showed him to be a reader as well as a reasoner, gave me the best exposition of the causes of the Republican defeat that I have yet heard anyone make. ‘I am a Republican,’ said he; ‘I always have been and I always shall be. I hoped the party would win, but yet when I talked with the people around this place, and in other towns which I sometimes visit, those people who do a great deal of thinking, and who vote as their reason, wrong or right, tells them to vote, I was mightily afraid the fight would go against us. I do not think very much of Anarchistic ideas, or of the theories of the Socialist, nor of the golden promises made by Weaver and the People’s party. No human being can ever make a paradise out of this world, and at no one time will everyone in it be satisfied and happy. This nation of ours has grown so rapidly, and there are so many foreigners here who have become citizens, and we print so many cheap and silly books, that I am not surprised that the Republican party was defeated. If a party of angels had made up the Government, the result would have been just the same. The same causes that led to Republican defeat in 1892 will overthrow the Democratic Government in 1896. Ever since the Greenback party was started, and ever since the Socialistic and the hundred other ’istic’ agitators have been telling the people how they are abused, how they are robbed, that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, everything has been in such an unsettled condition that I do not wonder at the result of the election. It could not have been otherwise.