by their legislators. U'Ren was enthusiastic; the whole alliance was. With these tools, the people could really govern themselves. And that is what these people wanted; they were Populists.
We of the East despised the "Pops"; but their movement was to the reform movement of to-day what the "extreme" Abolitionists of New England were to the great movement that produced Lincoln and the Republican party. U'Ren became a Populist. But that party was to him—what the Republican party is to him now; what any party must be to any man who has in mind the good, not of an organization, but of a people—a means to an end, an instrument, a political tool. The "Pops" were sincere people who wanted to change things for the better. There was a use for them, and U'Ren, who saw it, joined them and soon was secretary of the Populist State Committee.
And when, as secretary of the Populists, he had worked the initiative and referendum plank into their platform, he went forth as secretary of a Direct Legislation League to the conventions of the other parties. And he lobbied initiative and referendum planks into the platforms of all of them, excepting only the Prohibitionists, who, like the Socialists, "won't play"
