Chapter 20

THE GREAT PHILIPSBURG CONFERENCE

If ever you go to Philipsburg, which is in Wyoming, not far from the Montana line, you will hear the people proclaim the greatness of the town in which they live. You expect this sort of thing in the Far West, and you are prepared for it, but you will be surprised at the nature of the Philipsburg boast. Its proud inhabitants will not tell you that it is bound to be the largest city between the Missouri and the coast, they will not assert that since the horizon touches the earth at an equal distance on all sides of the town, it is, therefore, the natural centre of the world; but they will tell you stories of the Great Philipsburg Conference, and some of them will not be far from the truth.

Philipsburg is but a hamlet, fed by an irrigation ditch that leads the life-giving waters down from a distant mountain, and it has neither the beauty of nature nor that given by the hand of man, but the people will point importantly to the square wooden hotel of only two stories, and tell you that there occurred the great crisis in the most famous and picturesque Presidential campaign ever waged in the United States; they will even lead you to the very room in which the big talk occurred, and say, in lowered voices, that the furniture is exactly the same, and arranged just as it was on that momentous night when the history of the world might have been changed. In this room the people of Philipsburg have a reverential air, and there is cause for it.

The affair did not begin at Philipsburg--it merely had its climax there--but far away on the dusty plains of eastern Washington, where the wheat grows so tall, and it bubbled and seethed as the candidate and his party travelled eastward, stopping and speaking many times by the way. It was all about the tariff, a dry subject in itself, but, as tall oaks from little acorns grow, so a dry subject often can make interesting people do interesting things.

At the convention that nominated Mr. Grayson for the Presidency the subject of the tariff had been left somewhat vague in the platform, not from deliberate purpose, but merely through the drift of events; the question had not interested the people greatly in some time; other things connected with both the foreign and internal policy of the government, particularly the continued occupation of the Philippines and a projected new banking system, were more to the fore; but as the campaign proceeded certain events caused the tariff also to be brought into issue and to receive a large share of public attention.

Now, a clever man--above all, one as clever as Jimmy Grayson--could avoid giving a decided opinion upon this subject. It is party creed for a candidate to stand upon his platform, and, as the platform contained no tariff plank, he was not obliged to take any stand upon the tariff. Such a course would seem good politics, too, but Harley knew that Mr. Grayson favored a reduction of the