On the other side are the farmers, laborers, merchants,
and all others who produce wealth and bear the bur-
dens of taxation. The one represents the wealthy and
powerful classes who want the control of the Govern-
ment to plunder the people. The other represents the
people, contending for equality before the law, and the
rights of man. Between these two there is no middle
ground.
When the smoke of battle cleared away the elec-
tion returns of 1896 showed that McKinley had
received 600,000 more popular votes than Bryan
and would have 271 electoral votes to 176 for the
Democrat-Populist candidate. West of the Mis-
sissippi River the cohorts of Bryan captured the
electoral vote in every State except California,


THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 191


Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, and Oregon. The
South continued its Democratic solidity, except
that West Virginia and Kentucky went to McKin-
ley. All the electoral votes of the region east of
the Mississippi and north of Mason’s and Dixon’s
line were Republican. The old Northwest, to-
gether with Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota,
. aregion which had been the principal theater of the
Granger movement a generation before, now joined
forces with the conservative and industrial East to
defeat a combination of the South with the newer
agrarian and mining frontiers of the West.
