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Show BRYAN'S DESPERATION. He Is Getting Ready to Charge Corruption and Intimidation, THE ONLY PLACE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE INTIMIDATION PREVAILS PRE-VAILS IS IN BRYAN'S SOLID SOUTH. THE AUSTRALIAN BALLOT IN THE NORTH AND WEST SECURES THE VOTER FROM CORRUPTION, COR-RUPTION, AND BRIBERY IS USELESS. The most obtuse of Bryan's dupes must see by this time that their candidate candi-date has given up all hope of deluding the country into electing him this year. Ia his speech in Salem, Illinois, he made this fact plain. "If the election v ere held to-day," he declared, "there is no doubt we would have a majority in the electoral college and the popular vote. But the Republican managers are now collecting from the monopolies a large campaign fund. They will buy every vote that can be bought. They will coerce every vote that can be coerced. co-erced. They will intimidate every laboring la-boring man Mho can be intimidated. They will bribe every election judge that can be bribed. They will corrupt every count that can be corrupted." Newspaper readers will see that this I hysterical lamentation by Bryan over his lost and discredited cause has a familiar sound. ' Just after the election elec-tion in 1P00 ho charged his defeat to several things. These were bribery, intimidation, and what he called the ignorant foreign vote. According to his tirade at that time, which is repeated re-peated now, four weeks before voting, in anticipation of his more crushing defeat de-feat this year, all of the employes in the great industries who were not intimidated in-timidated by their employers were bribed. Immense sums of money, so lie charged, were spent to coax or force the workingmen of the country into voting for their own interest, and doing the very thing that every intelligent worker would naturally do without any outside pressure. Then the foreigners, foreign-ers, according to Bryan, did not understand under-stand American issues, and therefore voted the Republican ticket and for lOtlc dollars, instead of supporting him and declaring for 50c dollars. At the present moment he is not assailing the foreign vote. He is, iu fact, doing his best to attract it, but the moment the election is over the old assault of 1S0O will oe repeated. The corruption, aud intimidation cry is heard already. The atack on the Gorman, Scandinavian, Irish and other elements of the natural-izeu natural-izeu Americans will come immediately after the returns are in which proclaim Bryan's defeat. One very plain fact shows the folly that is in this intimidation and corruption corrup-tion cry. Almost every state in the Union has the Australian ballot, or some modification of it. This device abolishes all incitement to either intimidation in-timidation or corruption by making both of them useless. Nobody is in the voting booth except the voter. He can vote f:r anybody he pleases without with-out any fear of anybody else. The alleged al-leged briber or coercer has not the slightest influence over' his course when he gets into, the voter's stall to prepare his ballot. Therefore, as the imagined corrupter and intimidntor have not the slightest assurance that their wiles will accomplish anything, all temptation to v.c. their arts vanishes, van-ishes, j here is neither corruption nor intimidation of the sort that Bryan charges. In his section of the country, coun-try, the far South, there is intimidation, in which Bryanites prevent Republicans Republi-cans from going to the polls, but in none of iw northern or western states is there anything of that sort. Bryan is a little later than most of his party leaders in prasning the fact that his cause is lost. He sees ruin now, bovr-ever, bovr-ever, to himself and his party, and he is proclaiming this truth with a hysteria hys-teria which is embarrassing to his followers. |