Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1878 — ADDRESS [ARTICLE]

ADDRESS

Of tbe State Executive Committee of tbe National Party ot Illinois. To the National Greenback and Labor Party of Illinois : The Executive Committee of the National Greenback and Labor party of Illinois, to whom has been committed the conduct of the pending campaign, deem it proper to submit to you a brief statement of the present condition and prospects of the party in the State and nation, together with some suggestions for the future conducting of tho campaign in this State. It is natural, if not inevitable, in the formation and growth of a new party, gathering its converts and recruits from all existing parties, that differences of opinion should exist, and that it should take time to become acquainted with each other, to harmonize and consolidate, and be able to work under the new banner and the new leadership. That, as iB the case with an unorganized army of citizen volunteers, a few campaigns must be lost before we are able to utilize our full strength, is inThat our rapidly-evolving party would have to contend with these incidental difficulties, drawbacks and misfortunes, not only in Illinois, but elsewhere, was to have been expected. The growth of the Republican party was afflicted with everything we had to encounter in the line of divisions and defeats. It passed through every discouragement incident of development, from infancy to power, which we are now experiencing. It died finally, many times, according to the estimate of its enemies. A great many prescriptions and panaceas were exhausted to effect its* everlasting quietus. But it would not, and did not die, or consent to be quieted until it had done its appointed work ; since which time, no earthly power can prevent its dying, as fate has so decreed. We must expect to be assailed by all possible enemies, avowed and disavowed. We must expect to be prescribed for, to be reported dead, to be betrayed by pretended friends, to be disgraced by rogues, demagogues, and political schemers from the old parties ; to be postered by fools, blood-suckers, and babbliDg idiots. Every man who has had experience of men and affairs, and especially of the rise and growth of political parties in this country, expects all these Usings. We have had, and still have, tho usual run of these afflictions, and expect to have them in the future. But from these we have nothing to fear. Our real danger will come when in the near future we shall have become the dominant national party. Then the demagogues, political scoundrels and conspirators will flock to our ranks. Attorneys and agents of the European bondholders, corporate monopolists, contractors, bankers, jobbers and rings of all sorts, like the present Republican Secretary of the Treasury, will come over to us in shoals, in regiments and battalions. From these hypocritical and unprincipled enemies of the republic, and only these, have we reason to apprehend real danger. Such .men have destroyed both of the old parties. It is for us to guard our organization against these demagogues, aud we cannot begin too soon. In the past we have had real differences of opinion upon fundamental principles. This was inevitable. Happily such differences have nearly disappeared. One poiDtof difference whs upon the interconvertible bonds as a basis of a paper currency. We now agree that no bond is necessary. We demand that there shall be no more bonds issued to suck up the earnings of labor for the benefit of those who “ toil not, neither do they spin.” We are in favor of a currency resting upon the credit of all the people. We agree that such a basis for a paper currency is better than individual »>rvrpnra.i« nrsiiit TSnnds rest on the credit of the people alone ; why should not the currency ? But bonds draw interest, and are exempt from taxation ! Greenbacks rest upon the credit of the people alone, and do not draw interest, and are not exempt from taxation ! This is the reason why bondholders and Shylocks prefer bonds as a basis for greenbacks. This is the reason why bankers prefer national-bank currency to greenbacks. Nobody distrusts the credit of the people when that credit pays interest. The National Greenback and Labor party now agree unanimously in preferring a currency independent of bonds, because this would avoid interest and secure equal taxation. We further agree that all bonds should be paid as soon as possible, the interest stopped, and the exemption of bonds from taxation repealed. That no more bonds should be issued. We befieve that the bonds and bond currency under control of Shylocks are the chief instrumentalities for absorbing the surplus earnings of labor by the idle; of fixing the value of products and raising and depressing the markets in the interest of money jobbers and monopolists who produce nothing. To the end that the currency may not be thus used, we propose that, under the constitution, the Congress shall provide for its control in the interest and for the use of the people, without a basis of interest bonds, and without exemption from taxation. Upon these principles we are a unit, or nearly so, throughout the nation. We are charged with being Communists and agrarians. Communists are defined, by those who make the charge, as men who favor a division of property without regard to ownership or who earned it. Property ought to belong to those who earn it, who produce it. If these definitions are correct, John Sherman, who now stands for the Republican party, and who constitutes the residuum or sugaring off of that party, and August Belmont, who stands for the Demooratic party, are the great leaders of the European Commune in this country, and their followers and adherents are the Communists. They represent individuals, corporations and classes, in Europe and America, who bave absorbed most of the" wealth of two continents, but who never earned a dollar ; who have obtained possession of the real estate and personal property of the world by practical Communism and agrarianism ; by fraudulent and forcible distribution of property to themselves, which has been earned by the working masses.

The means employed have been standing armies, hereditary land titles, exemptions from taxation, royal grants, titles of nobility, monopolies in trade, monopolies in manufacturing, governmental subsidies, untaxed interestbearing bonds, control of the circulating medium, usury, corrupt legislation, chartered monopolies and privileges, unequal and unjust exemptions from taxation, and debt. If there are two Communists in this country who are dangerous, men who, above others, deserve to be hung, or shot, as traitors and enemies of the republic, there can be no doubt bnt John Sherman and August Belmont are the two men whe should first hang. If there are any German, French, or English Communists in Europe who are enemies of human society and of man, they are the representatives of the bouse of Rothschild, ostensibly engaged in banking in London, Paris, and Berlin, and not the poor, working, half-starved masses of men and women whose earnings are taken by force or fraud and distributed to these financial kings by the hundreds of millions annually, although they have never earned and are not entitled to a dollar.

The money power and the political power of the world, united in unholy conspiracy, have been engaged for centuries in robbing the producers of wealth, and distributing it under the blood-red flag of Communism, to the luxurious idlers and titled aristocrats, who never earned and are not rightfully entitled to a cent. These are the men and classes who are dangerous to society, and to civilization, and not their poor victims, who have been robbed and enslaved. These blood-sucking and bloodletting Communists are not confined to Europe; they are organizing in this country: they are represented by the men named above, and by many others; they control the finances of this country; they issue untaxed duoing bonds; have brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy by robber taxation, and to the borders of revolution by their iniquities; they have plundered the people by taxation, which amounts almost to confiscation. The cry of Communism against the National Greenback and Labor party is the cry of stop thief by the thief himself. All the wealth of the world has been earned by those who have done the labor of the world. This is self-evident. It is also quite as apparent that the laborers of the world have owned and enjoyed but very little of the wealth or property of the world. This wealth has been unjustly and forcibly taken from the working classes by the only dangerous and practical Communists, the idle and scheming classes that have always been a curse and terror to the race. There has been in our ranks some confusion as to names. Happily this confusion no longer exists. The name “National Greenback and Labor party” has now been almost universally adopted, and seems to be generally the favorite

name with the people. In Texas, Missouri, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Indiana, lowa, Illinois, New York and Maine and other States the name National Greenback and Labor party seems to have been adopted. There has been some distrust of the Toledo Convention. It has been charged that it was an attempt to set a back fire by the Manhattan Club of New York city, which is presided over by the Mephistopheles of American politics, who presides over that club. If this attempt was made it failed. The men comprising the Toledo Convention, with few exceptions, can never be captured or permanently used to defeat their own principles. There is no danger from this quarter of any injury to our oause, either from foes without, or dupes within our ranks. As to the aharge that the party is a secret organization nothing more need be said than that it is utterly baseless. We may have men in our ranks who belong to secret societies, as what party lias not but, this is no ooncern of the party. We have no occasion to meddle with any man’s individual affairs. He has a right to be a Mason, an Odd Fellow, a Son of Temperance, or a Nationalist, if he likes. As a party, we want his vote, but do not wish to inquire into his religion or social relations. The bugaboo that we are a secret organization, like the oharge of Communism, exists only in distorted vision of our enemies. The oppressors of the laboring men are williDg to resort to any means of destroying all attempts on their part to organize for self-protection. No slander is too base to circulate for such an object All workmgmen are “Internationals” or “Communists” when workingmen begin to work for themselves and cease to work for the capitalists exclusively. Let workiDgmen be true to themselves, be faithful to tne National Greenback and Labor party, and these puerile slanders can do them •o harm. The organization of the party in the State of Illinois is the immediate work of your committee. To this end let clubs be organized in every township, ward, and school district of the State, without delay. The Chairman of the Executive Committee will furnish constitutions and directions for organizing on application. If charters are desired application oan be made to Mr. M. M. Pomeroy, Chicago ; S. M. Smith, Kewaunee, 111., or D. B. Sturgeon, Toledo, Ohio, as applicants prefer. Mr. Pomeroy has up to this date issued charters for about 476 clubs in Illinois and over 6,500 in the United States. It is for each club to decide for itself how it will organize and what charter it will have. We recognize no close communion ; but all must be allowed the largest liberty. We must concede honest motives to all, and encourage all to get to the front in their own way; but to get there and begin to make their influence felt as soon as possible. If a man is a good National Greenback and Labor man this is enough, no matter how he became so ; what his previous condition of servitude may have been ; or what sort of uniform he wears, providing he gets to the polls in time, and votes the National Greenback and Labor ticket. No matter in what school he was educated, providing his lesson has been well learned. The hard times still continue. The financial condition of the country is known to all—it can be felt, but not described. Property continues to shrink ; contraction, by the destruction of greenbacks, is still going on; the expansion of the bonded debt through the thieving Syndicate still continues ; taxation, direct and indirect, is increasing ; bankruptcies are multiplying ; the working classes are rapidly growing poorer, and the idle rich are growing richer ; the Republican party has shaped financial legislation for sixteen years, and ii to be held responsible for the result. It remains, in vie wof the ruin it has wrought, wholly indifferent to the distress of the country, and has proposed no measure for relief. A reckless strife for office prevails. Congress is absorbed in jobbery and incipient revolutionary schemes, without ap apparent thought or care for the sore distress of the people. The present, as well as tluj pruct/diug rvdmitxi'-ivlktioijj icpiOOCUtu ike interests of foreign capitalists, instead of the people, to whom it is responsible, and whose interests it is bound by oath and honor to serve. The republic seems to be drifting rapidly on to revolution and ruin. If the nation is to be saved, it must be by the patriotic labors of the National Greenback Labor party, and by its rapid advance to the control of the Government. Such a work as lies before us ougt.t to inspire every patriot to the most unselfish and energetic efforts. Your committee proposes to do its full duty, and expects every National Greenback and Labor man in the State to do his duty in the pending campaign, to the end that the State ticket nominated at Springfield may be triumphantly elected, and the party, in the State and nation, established in power; the conspirators at the head of affairs deposed ; the nation restored to prosperity, and the republic saved from the impending dangers which so seriously threaten its integrity. There is everything to encourage us in this State. The people have been thoroughly aroused to the condition of affairs. The Democratic party have been compelled to counterfeit eur platform and principles. It is divided hopelessly—one end hard-money, the other greenbacks—with an impassable gulf between the irreconcilable divisions of the party. Tne Republicans are substantially in the same fix. They will be compelled, as at their last State Convention, to counterfeit our platform, but tho counterfeit will not pass for the genuine coin, as it did then. They are likely to be forced to adopt our candidates, as well as our principles, or suffer defeat. The leaders begin to tremble, and to cast about for some shift by which success may be snatched from impending disaster. In this condition of political parties, the course of every wise man is clear, namely, join our party and help the cause that deserves success. Stand upon the genuine, and not upon the counterfeit, platform. Remember that the Democratic and Republican pretensions to greenback and labor principles are insincere and hypocritical. Their platforms in all the Eastern States are sincerely hard money and untaxed interest bonds; in the West, insincerely greenbacks and payment of bonds. Every honest man will scorn such insincerity and act with the National Greenback and Labor party, which is sincere, and which deserves success, and, appealing to the people with rectitude and confidence, will achieve success. A. J. Gboveb, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Greenback and Labor party of Illinois.