Empire Theatre history: ‘Our Chauncey’ rallies voters

Glens Falls was “thronged with visitors” the day U.S. Sen. Chauncey Depew visited Glens Falls in 1900 to get out the vote for the Republican ticket.

Specials trains originating at Caldwell, now known as Lake George, Whitehall, Fort Edward and Saratoga Springs brought spectators, and others arrived early in the day, traveling from Warrensburg and “other points of interest,” according to undated Glens Falls Times and Messenger articles preserved in the Addison B. Colvin scrapbooks on file at The Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library.

The Glens Falls City Band circulated around downtown Glens Falls performing “enlivening music.”

“Glens Falls was in patriotic attire today,” the Times and Messenger reported. “Flags floated in the breeze, buildings were draped with the Stars and Stripes, and visitors wore the colors.”

Pictures of national and state GOP candidates were posted around downtown.

“Not in years has Glens Falls been so active with enthusiasm and not in years has this village (which became a city eight years later) entertained so many visitors.”

Factories and businesses closed for the day so employees could be part of the memorable occasion.

Depew led a delegation that arrived at Glens Falls at 1:30 p.m. on a Delaware and Hudson Railroad train pulled by Engine 372.

George A. Hydorn was the engineer and C. J. Downey the conductor.

Others in the delegation were E.R. Gundy and Seward Simons of Buffalo, and William A. Perdergast of Brooklyn.

Glens Falls businessman, publisher and Republican leader Addison B. Colvin accompanied the delegation on the train from New York City.

Meredith B. Little of Glens Falls and A.D. Wait of Fort Edward boarded the train at Fort Edward for the last stretch to Glens Falls.

“Our Chauncey” spoke to a capacity crowd at Empire Theatre on South Street, and made a second speech from the balcony at Crandall Free Library for those who could not get in to the theatre.

The first part of his main speech focused on disputing the platform of Democrat William Jennings Bryan, the challenger to incumbent Republican William McKinley.

“I have read every one of Bryan’s speeches and am doubtless the only man living who has done so,” Depew quipped.

It may have been less time consuming to have read every one of Bryan’s speeches than every one of his own.

Depew had an index of more than 1,500 after-dinner-addresses he had given at one time or another, The Granville Sentinel reported on Aug. 16, 1887.

The senator used marriage as a metaphor for GOP policies of McKinley’s first term.

“While in attendance recently at a joyous wedding of a young relative, the thought occurred to me of the happy results of the entire American family of the nuptials between sound money and prosperity four years ago,” he said. “The paramount question with us today is, ‘Shall that couple be divorced?’”

“The present campaign emphasizes the difference in practical life between a prophet (Bryan) whose predictions must stand the test of time and experience and the pledge of a party whose promises are based upon principals which have worked out in the past, the results which are guarantees for the future,” he said. “In other words, theory and experience are again, as in 1896, in hostile array.”

“The election of McKinley and Roosevelt will be for the best interest of every man, woman and child in the country,” he concluded.