When Bradley stepped forward, he was very pale.
"Friends and fellow-citizens," he began, after the applause had ended, "I can't find words to express my feeling for the great honor you have done me. I thank the citizens of Rock River for their aid, but I want to say--I'm going to run this campaign in the farmers' interest, because the interests of this county and of this State are agricultural, and whatever hurts the farmer hurts every other man in the State. There is no war between the town and the country. The war is between the people and the monopolist wherever he is, whether he is in the country or in the town. It is not true that the interests of the town dweller and of the farmer are necessarily antagonistic; the cause of the people is the same everywhere. It's like the condition of affairs between England and Ireland. People say that Ireland is fighting England--fighting the English people, but that is not the fact. The antagonism is between the Irish people and the English landlord. So the fight in America is the people against the special privileges enjoyed by a few. It's because these few generally live in towns that we _seem_ to be fighting the towns.
"As the Judge said, we've settled the liquor question in this State; it won't come up again unless office seekers drag it up. It has been our State issue--that and the railroads; and now that is settled, we can turn our attention to the finishing up of the railway problem and to the discussion of the tariff."
"And the money!" shouted some one; "abolish the national banks!"
Bradley hesitated a little. "No, we can't do that, but we can destroy any special privilege they hold. But the first thing that stares us in the face is the war tariff that is eating us up. I'm going to state just what I think in this campaign, and you can vote for me or not. It is sheer robbery to continue a tariff that was laid at a time when we needed enormous revenue. See the surplus piling up in the public vault. You say it's better to have a surplus than a deficit. Yes, but I'd rather have the surplus in the pockets of the people. This taxing the people to death, in order to have a surplus to expend in senseless appropriations, is poor policy."