“You say that this question was settled at the last presidential election. Yes, Grover Cleveland had a majority of one hundred thousand votes of the American people. If there is anything in the signs of the times, they indicate that that majority will be greatly increased in the near future. I want you to pass your bill and go with it out West; take it with hair, hide, and wool all over it, and discuss it there; I want you to meet the people whom you have ‘not hesitated’ to tax from 1 to 200 per cent on the necessaries of life. “Mr. Chairman, we promise our friends that we will examine their bill. It needs discussion, and will get whatever we are permitted to give it; and then when we have done that you will pass it, and when you leave this House and Senate with this enormous load of guilt upon your heads and appear before the great tribunal for trial, may ‘the Lord have mercy upon your souls.’” This was in May of 1890. The bill became a law in October. In the interval, wise Republicans like John Sherman and James G. Blaine were doing their utmost to prepare for the passage of the “Hell Gate,” which Colonel Mills had prophesied and the roar of which became louder with each week’s approach to the fall elections. While his party granted the duties which bolstered the trusts, Mr. Sherman hurried through his bill making trusts a crime. While his party raised higher the wall which shut trade both in and out, Mr. Blaine worked for free trade between ourselves and our neighbors on the American hemisphere. But these were palliatives, not cures, and sensible people recognized their character. The storm was on the party almost as the measure went through. In the Congress which passed the McKinley Bill, the Republicans and Democrats stood 166 to 159. In the House of Representatives elected a little over a month after the passage of the McKinley Bill the proportion was 88 to 236: they had lost 78 votes. No such avalanche as overwhelmed the party in the fall of 1890 is loosened by one cause. It is always a number, but in this case it was a number of which the prohibitive duty and the political methods it had required to force it through Congress was the centre and strength. The other causes were kindred in their nature. The overthrow of the party at bottom was a plain revolt against the political immorality, the intellectual humbug, and the unholy greed which had produced the bill. At the heart of the Democratic victory was the inspiration of a real cause. The defeat of ’88 had left the party determined rather than cast down. They knew they were fighting for a right principle. Their joy in the conflict grew rather than diminished as the months passed.