Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — DUE TO REPUBLICANS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DUE TO REPUBLICANS

HARRISON, NOT CLEVELAND, IS RESPONSIBLE. rhe Country la M«w Baaplnf the Bitter Fruit of the Policy Adopted by the Late Republican Administration —No Fixed Ratio Possible. Where the Blame Lies. The country Is now reaping the bitter fruit of the policy adopted by the Bepublican administration, as there has been no legislation or session of Congress since the inauguration of President Cleveland. The present depression in business is the legitimate result of the Sherman bill, the McKinley bill and the wasteful policy of the Harrison administration. Tne Sherman bill (which was expected to make money plenty) is now acknowledged to be such a failure, and so bad, so full of clanger to a sound financial condition, that nobody defends it. It is repudiated even by its father, who admits it ought to be repealed. The McKinley biu, with the rest of the Republican measures, inaugurated an era of wild speculation. High protection was to give success to any business venture. Men rushed into all sorts of schemes to get rich at a bound. Trusts were formed and multiplied, to sell watered stock, and to increase prices. Banks were started by men who wanted to borrow and not to lend. The tide of speculation was raised so high that prosperous men like McKinley and Ex-secretary Foster were swept into the current and ruined. The inevitable result of this wild craze is collapse and failures. The weak visionary concerns go to the wall and wind up. The strong find the market overstocked. Banks that made their loans to the speculators are compelled to stop. Excessive protection, inspiring the hope of excessive profits, always has, and always will, cause such a rush into protected business as to result in overproduction. The McKinley bill has a share with Sherman bill in bringing about the present disturbed condition of business in the country. It is not Cleveland that is responsible for this, but Harrison and the Republican administration. We can now see how much the country has lost by the election of President Harrison instead of Cleveland. With nerve enough to veto the McKinley bill and the Sherman bill, and any other mischievous measures, Cleveland would have saved the country from the disasters that a mistaken policy has brought upon it. We repeat, it is Harrison, not Cleveland, who is responsible.—New Age.

McKinley on the Sherman Act. The Sherman silver-purchase bill was passed by Congress In 1890. Soon after its passage Major McKinley came to Grand Rapids and addressed an immense Republican meeting in Hartman’s Hall. In the course of his speech he eulogized the action of the Republican majority in Congress. One of the reasons which he urged as the occasion for eulogy was the passage of the Sherman law. He did not claim that it was a compromise or anything of the kind. He made no apologies for it. He gloried in it as a great and noble act of a Republican Congress. He said:

What have we done? We have passed the silver bill—the best silver bill that wae ever pat upon our statute books. What does It do? It utilises every ounoe, every pennyweight of the silver produot of the United States. The Government buys 4,500,000 ounces every thirty days, and issues its Treasury notes lor that sum, and makes them redeemable In gold or silver, and makes them reoeelvable for debts, public and private, absolutely a legal tender that puts in circulation a little more than two millions every thirty days, and In addition to what is pnt In circulation under the old law, the two millions of coinage a month. Then we have made this silver as good as gold, and silver to-day Is nearer on an equality with gold than it has been for eighteen years; and why shouldn't they be aide by side in the business of this great country? Grover Cleveland's administration discounted silver from the moment of Its Inauguration to the conclusion of his term; aye, he commenced discounting It before he was Inaugurated and wrote a letter to several Representatives In Congress demanding a suspension of the coinage of two millions of money, and said If It was not done It would produce financial disaster. It was not done, and we bad no financial disaster. We said In onr platform of 1888 that gold and silver mnst be used as money. We made that pledge good, for gold and silver are together, side by Bide, self-reliant, each distinct in Individuality, bnt like onto each other as those who love. The extract is given without comment. It needs no comments. It is the expression of the views of the great Republican leader on one of the national questions of greatest import today.

Big Pension Leak. Every candid mind must approve and applaud the work that Commissioner Lochren is doing in revising and, purging the pension rolls. He is granting every new pension for which a just oialm is made out. He is suspending no pension allowable under the law. He is simply stopping the payment of millions of Government money to men who are not entitled under the law to receive it. The suspensions include two classes of cases—viz., those in which the allowance has b3en secured by direct fraud, and those in which, without fraud on the pensioner’s part, the allowance has been made contrary to law. There were 250 cases discovered in Virginia, 250 in lowa, and about 1,000 in New Mexico in which pensions had been secured by plain fraud and false swearing, for men who had never been in the service at all. To strike these from the rolls was as manifestly a duty as to stop any other form of stealing. But the other class of cases is much the larger. Investigation shows that about one hundred thousand pensions were improperly granted under Raum’s extraordinary order No. 164, which flagrantly perverted the plain intent of the law;. These pensions take about $11,500,000 a year out of the Treasury. The Commissioner is as much bound to suspend such pensions as he would be to stop the payment of salaries in his office of persons not employed there.

No Fixed Ratio Possible. The Sherman act should be repealed unconditionally and without delay. It is time to abandon the experiment of legislating against the laws of nature. The attempt to maintain a fixed ratio between the values of gold and silver by act of Congress is merely a new edition of the Pope’s bull against the comet. The national faith is virtually pledged to redeem all varieties of paper currency in gold, and the apprehension arising from the possibility of any other course is sufficient of itself to arrest the operations of finance throughout the country. This apprehension can be removed only by an explicit and frank adoption of the single gold standard. If the present gold reserve is inadequate for that purpose, a sufficient addition should be made by the sale of gold bond s. Better increase the national debt than wipe out enormous values and destroy business from Maine to California.—Harry Pratt Judeon, Professor in the Chicago University, in Review of Reviews. Garfield on Pensions. As Gen. Garfield pointed out twenty years ago, the number of pensioners ought to diminish as the war grew more remote, and the expenditures on

this Recount 'steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be unwarrantably extravagant.” This is what actually happens where any pension system is economically administered. The State of Georgia some years ago began paying moderate allowances to crippled ex-Confederates and to the needy widows of men who served in the Southern Army. Ten years ago there were 1,000 men who drew SIOO a year for the loss of a limb or for total disability. Now there are only 773 pensioners under this head, li our pension legislation had not been so unwarrantably extravagant, the number of Union soldiers on the roll would be now much smaller than in Garfield’s day, instead of larger by hundreds of thousands—New York Evening Post. The President Wields His Club.

less Longa, More Brain. This is a good time for the “friends of silver" to give their lungs a vacation and to place the fray matter of their brains on duty. Their gray matter will observe that it is not the “gold bugs” or the “bloated bondholders" of Wall street who are petitioning Congress to repeal the Sherman act and to return to a sound currency. In fact, these rich speculators are enjoying immensely the prospect of cheap silver They hope their allies, the silverites, may be successful in preventing the repeal of the Sherman law for many months, and that business will fluctuate from hot to cold several times during each month Of tampering with our currency. They have the capital, and can buy low and sell high, by taking advantage of the husiness necessities of the country. After one or two years of this work, or when all of the available easn is squeezed out of. industry, they will be willing to desist for awhile to allow the -country to recuperate. They would then pray for another cheap money scare. While industry is suffering and business houses and banks are tumbling, because of the money stringency, big fortunes are being doubled in Wall street. But little has been learned as yet of what has -occurred. It has, however, leaked out that Mr. Addison Cammack has made $1,500,000 during the past three months, and that the profits of A. J. Weil & Co. since June 11 aggregate $2,000,000. Bigger speculators are probably making bigger "profits.'" The present fear of cheap money will cost honest industry and labor hundreds of millions of dollars. It will be extracted by aid for the rich speculators. Mere charities and almshouses for the poor, more steam yachts and foreign -castles for the rich. “To him that hath it shall be given, and from him that hath not it shall be taken away, even that which he hath;” but never more rapidly than when our currency system Is -being juggled with in the interest of silver-mine owners, who use the mortgaged farmer and the poor laborer as their tools. When these same farmers and laborers awaken and realize what they have done they will feel like kicking themselves into the great big sea. —B. W. Holt.

A Moral Panic. The key to the situation is obviously the Sherman silver law, the prompt repeal of which is urgently demanded by the logic of the situation. In previous financial disturbances in this country relief has always been obtainable from the borrowing of foreign capital, which was invariably ready to come over here on good security and good interest so long as there was no question as to what an American dollar meant or would mean for a twelvemonth. This time that resource is hardly available to any extent. The collateral we offer is good enough, and the rate of interest eminently satisfactory, but Europe shakes its head and deolines to be tempted by any rate of interest so long as there is any question as to whether we are going to be a gold dollar or a silver dollar country. This lack of confidence abroad very seriously aggravates the lack of confidence at home, hence the statement above that the silver bill is the key to the situation. Without discussing the merits of the silver controversy, tt is plain that our first duty and interest is to restore confidence abroad. This is a peculiarly “moral panic.” Ail our resources are intact, and there is neither plague nor famine within our borders. Confidence is all that is lacking, and the return of that means the return of prosperity. Repeal the silver bill without quibble or delay, and the upward movement toward normal conditions will begin on the instant. There should be no uncertain sound to the President's forthcoming message to Congress. After that is done, which alone can set us right in our own eyes and in those of the world, there will be opporportunity for careful deliberation upon any further financial legislation that may be needed.—Dry Goods Economist.

Gold Bugrs. “ ‘Gold-bugs’ may be bad enough,” remarks the Indianapolis News, “though we confess we never saw saw a gold-bug and do not know what a gold-Dug is, but patriotic men will be quite likely to prefer them to seces-' sionists and traitors, who would hang John Sherman, march through blood to a silver throne, and wreck the country which they profess to love, just to make a market for Western silver at double its actual value. If this convention may be taken as one of the first fruiti of free silver, it affords only one additional reason why the movement should not succeed. Gov. Waite is a very valuable ally of tho goldbugs.”—New York Post. Gov. McKinley is busily engaged in explaining why the wicked Democrats are to blame because his high tariff on wool and wheat has not kept up the price of these articles. A Professional Maxim for Lawyers.—Whatever you do, do it with your might. Many a member of the profession has made his fortune by working with a will. The superior man is slow in his words and earnest in his conduct.—Confucius.