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Show THE WESTWARD TIDE OF EMPIRE. New York and Pennsylvania, In the main, dominated the St. Louis convention. It will not be so for a great many years. The middle west will very soon take its place as the peaceable dictator dic-tator of the United States. With every census the center of population is moved further and further fur-ther west; it will soon reach the Mississippi. When It does, even as the Father of Waters draws to itself all the streams from the Alleghanles to the Rocky mountains, so the people on its tributaries tribu-taries will, united, dictate what the government shall be and those into whcse direction the movement move-ment shall be placed, for surely the tide of empire em-pire is making its way west and twenty years nance the west coast will balance the hosts east of the Alleghanles and the men of the central valley val-ley will hold sway. And that will be good for all for those men will not have an Interest that would not suffer were any handicap placed upon either the efast cr the west. As It Is the extreme east is not yet emancipated from Its provenclalism; moreover It being the great financial center, ita financiers have an undue influence over national affairs. A sign of what is to be was seen when Mr. Bryan, ail alone, and backed only by the sentiment sen-timent of a few of those central states, compelled the eastern delegates to strike from the platform they had prepared, the clause committing the Democratic party to the exclusive gold standard. The first cry was: "Eliminate that and we cannot can-not carry New York." The answer was: "Eliminate that or take your chances among the free-thinking men of the west," and the west won. This all happened in a city which is just now celebrating the Louisiana purchase. Putting the two facts together, they are significant. A hundred years ago the east, generally, Including Mr. Jefferson's own state, looked with distrust upon the purchase of a great wilderness beyond the Mississippi. But the gathered splenders of the development of that wilderness are on exhibition, a palpable proof of the progress and the power of that cen tury jUst closed, and the people who are the rep iH resefitatlves of that progress and pewer, met the 9H men of the east, face to face, and on whatever H they offered a united front against, the east, won H the day. New England's voice was almost lost in E that convention, New England that has so often fl dictated national conventions; New York and HH Pennsylvania won their chief points, but oven H while doing it, the trutn was clear that their pow- er was passing, and that in a few years more all H the concessions that will be granted whl be what the great national center concedes to its wings. 1 |