The omnipresent and omniscient newspaper reporter, as usual, solved the difficulty. His agnosticism applies to nothing except the word “fail.” And with him circumlocution and criminality are almost synonymous. It would never do to be ringing the changes on “an adherent to the People’s Party,” or “one affiliated with the People’s Party”; hence, it was not long before we began to see the word “Populist” used in verbal descriptions of what the cartoonist invariably depicted as a “one-gallus” man, armed with fork or rake, and blessed with a hirsute adornment truly Samsonian. Applied as a term of reproach, yet responding to the inexorable law which compels men to follow along the lines of least resistance, the word “Populist” came to stay. It stuck, just as the term “Methodist” did—or “Christian,” for that matter. From “Populist,” descriptive of the man, to “Populism,” designating his political belief, was an easy step—and now, after fifteen years of abuse, ridicule, vituperation and gross misrepresentation, the great middle class is just beginning to get a clearer view and to discover that Populism is the only logical answer to the question, “What shall we do to be saved from economic ruin?” Populism is neither Socialism nor anarchism. It is neither idealistic nor materialistic. It is neither collectivistic nor individualistic. It is essentially eclectic. It recognizes the good in all the schools of political and economic thought and attempts to eliminate the weak or bad—but refuses to be bound by any. Populism recognizes the fact that we must work with the world as it is now—and not as some Utopian dreamer conceives it ought to be. It recognizes the fact that private ownership of productive property is not only the rule all over the world—but also that the people like it. It recognizes the Socialists’ “economic determinism”—that man’s economic needs usually dominate when they clash with his ideals—yet is not unmindful of the fact that all progress is the result of ideals forcing a change in the environment. Were it not so, man would still be an arboreal ape, chattering aloft in some palm tree. Populism recognizes that man is a social animal, yet combats Socialism for subordinating the individual to the collectivity, and combats anarchy for subordinating the collectivity to the individual. It is the golden mean between these extremes. Although Populism lays no claim to being either a “science” or a “philosophy,” yet it has the only definite program of any party today before the American people. It has a yard-stick by which all things may be measured, whether they be burlap, fustian, woolen, silk or some new weave of spider-web. This yard-stick is— EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL, SPECIAL PRIVILEGES TO NONE. Every fair-minded man is willing to have his economic cloth measured by that yard-stick. Only avaricious rogues object.