Traditionally, candidates never ventured west of Chicago, concentrating their appearances in New York and New England and leaving the campaign in the sparsely settled trans-Mississippi to local politicians. This year both office-seekers used every device to reach the greatest number of voters. Dewey made a grand tour in his balloon-train; Lewis was featured in a series of short phonotos which were shown free. Dewey spoke several times daily to small groups; Lewis specialized in enormous weekly rallies followed by torchlight parades.
One of these Populist rallies was held in Union Square early in September; outgoing President George Norris spoke, and ex-President Norman Thomas, the only Populist to serve two terms since the beloved Bryan. Tyss indulgently gave me permission to leave the store a couple of hours before the meeting was to commence so I might get a place from which to see and hear all that was going on. Though he characterized all elections as meaningless exercises devised to befuddle, he had been active in this one in some mysterious and secretive way.
The square was already well filled when I arrived, with the more acrobatic members of the audience perched on the statues of LaFayette and Washington. Calliopes played patriotic airs, and a compressed air machine shot up puffs of smoke which momentarily spelled out the candidate’s name. Resigned to pantomime glimpses of what was going on, I moved around the outside edge of the crowd, thinking I might just as well leave altogether.
“Please don’t step on my foot so firmly. Or is that part of the Populist tradition?”
“Excuse me, Miss; I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
We were close enough to a light standard for me to see she was young and well-dressed, hardly the sort of girl to be found at a political meeting, few of which ever counted much of a feminine audience.
She rubbed her instep briefly. “It’s all right,” she conceded grudgingly. “Serves me right for being curious about the mob.”
She was plump and pretty, with a small, discontented mouth and pale hair worn long over her shoulders. “There’s not much to see from here,” I said; “unless youre enthusiastic enough to be satisfied with a bare look at the important people, perhaps you’d let me help you to the streetcar. For my clumsiness.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “I can manage by myself. But if you feel you owe me something for trampling me, maybe you’ll explain why anyone comes to these ridiculous gatherings.”
“Why ... to hear the speakers.”