“These interviews show the state of mind among people who are enough in number to turn overwhelmingly a majority for either the Republican or the Democratic party. In them is ample evidence that the people whose votes defeated the Republican party are not dissatisfied with Republican administration of affairs. They do not charge that the McKinley bill, or that the financial or any other Republican policy is responsible for hard times, nor is there any testimony which can be taken as evidence that the ‘unbounded popularity’ of Grover Cleveland or the (by the Democrats so called) broad financial and economic policy of that party, has brought about this sweeping victory. A talk with the independent voter shows, first, that there exists among the smaller tradesmen, among those whose votes turn the tide toward victory or toward defeat, dissatisfaction because, as they claim, they are unable to compete with combinations of capital; they want decentralization of capital, and trusts prohibited by law and the law enforced.
“A condition of affairs exists, the dissatisfied tradesman claims, in which he cannot earn a living. The Republican party was in power, and had been, with the exception of four years, for a quarter of a century, and while it possibly may not be responsible for trusts and for the centralization of wealth and capital, yet the tradesmen says, ‘I cast my vote for Cleveland and Democracy to make an experiment, the result of which I am willing to take the consequences of.’
“The workingman was influenced to vote for Democracy more because he had been repeatedly told that all rich men and manufacturers are Republicans than for anything else. Capital, of late years, has been denounced so severely, and strikes, the cause of many of which are hard to determine, have of late been so frequent (fortunately for the Democratic party, because by these strikes Democratic speakers were able falsely to claim that they were caused by the attempt of the rich Republicans to crush the workingman, and because by the shortness of the campaign the Republicans were unable effectively to disprove these Democratic statements) that the Republican party, although its policy of protection was approved by the labor union leaders, has been in a measure handicapped.