Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1898 — CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION [ARTICLE]

CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION

That Is What the Gold Bugs aod Plutocrats Fear. They Know It Means Death to Syndicate*. Trusts, Corporations aud Monopolies Which Have Been Oppressing the People. It is an old aphorism “that men who think govern those who toil.” A “Cam. paign of Education” is a misnomer unless it sets men to thinking. Indeed, the highest function of education is to teach men to think. If it fails in that essential particular, we have men who accept what is told them as truth and who, however much they may boast of their independence, are, nevertheless, the hypnotized victims of cunning men Who use them to promote their schemes of aggrandizement. - The great mass of the people can have no interest in promoting the schemes of syndicates, trusts, corporations, monopolies or the millionaire class, who, operating in conjunction, constitute what is known as the “money power,” or the plutocracy of the country, which, representing 4 per cent of the population, has managed to secure at least two-thirds of the wealth of the country. And this 4 per cent of the population, by devising schemes, the result of thinking, are now dominating the financial policy of the republic. They constitute the brains and backbone of the gold standard aggregation of plutocrats and expect, by the influence they may be able to exert by the use of mouey in the campaign, to substitute duplicity, and all the arts of chicanery for education. These gold standard advocates propose to do the thinking for the masses of the people, and lead them, as white horses lead droves of mules, or as bell wethers lead flocks of sheep. They are destined to experience sad disappointments. The great body of the people are thinkers a .<mg lines which involve their welfare. The mind forces of the masses are now intensely active. The ohuck-a-luol methods of education, the tricks and enchantments of the gold standard wiz> ards will pot be accepted as argument i by the ruuk and file of the American voters; or as reasons why they.shouldabdicate these prerogatives to do thei.v own thinking on alt political questions, including the “free coinage” or th© “sound money” issues. It may be expected that the Republican speakers and the Republican press, daring the campaign will indulge in the usual amount of vulgar epithets, when referring to those who favor free coinage and uphold the silver dollar aa sound money. In 1896 the men who rallied to the standard of William Jennings Bryan, more than 0,500,000 ©f free men who would not bow down and worship the gold standard, as the slaves of old Nabuciiadnezzar worshiped his golden image, were denominated “age archists,” “communists,” “idiots,** "border ruffians,” “socialists,” "blankguards” and other equally argumentative epithets. It was the gold&ng method of education and will again be introduced, but with less avail. The people are now asking for facts, and they will ply the gold bugspeakors With questions which they will shrink from answering. One of the choice declarations of the goldbugs has been that to coin standasd silver dollars would drive gold ou t ©f the country, a condition which they depricated as a far reaching calamite. Weil, from 1878 we have coined 428,000,000 of standard silver dollars, all debtpaying, legal tender, sound money dollars, but gold did not, therefore, leave the couutry, inor was it ever show® that, owing to the coinage of silver dollars, any calamity, large or small, wu oueated; and if such a charge or any ether charge intimating that the coinage of standard silver dollars has been productive of a panic in business, commercial or industrial affairs, these who make th© charge will be required to point out when and where it occurred. This they will be unable to do. The people are thinking and bald assertion, vulgar .epithets and duplicity will be swept away before the onward march of thought which education, worthy of the name, will emancipate the people from their money power vassalage. The farmers, the working men, the producing classes of the republic have, to an extent which cannot occur again, been terrorized by the soothsayers and magicians of the money power—a favor- ’ it© prognostication being that the free coinage of silver would not only drive gold out of the country, but would, to the utter consternation of rich and poor alike, bring home from Europe the stocks and bonds held there for payment. Suppose this should be true, "What greater blessing,” queries a distinguished United States senator, “oould be bestowed upon this country than the giving to the nation and the people a sufficient amount of sound, irredeemable gold and silver coined money of our constitution to enable our people to transact all their business, develop all our resources and pay for and own all the obligations and debts of every kind of our government, states, municipalities and corporations and receive the interest and enjoy perfeot financial independence of all nations and all gold syndicates?” Bat thoughtful men will ask the goldbug coneocters of th© delusion relating to the return of securities held abroad, because of the triumph of free coinage in the United States, in what sort of money would the foreigners expect to be paid for their securities ? Manifestly in silver, the goldbug theory being that the gefld has already been driven out by silver. Thw mere statement of the proposition reduces it to a delusion that

bo thoughtful man will consider for on© minute, afed yet ttes senseless vagary has been injected time and again into the dieowwiou of the money question as one of the impending disasters whieh would befall the oopntry provided free coinage was to triumph and silver regain its rights at the mints to stand, as the constitution of the republic intended it should stand, as one of the metals out a t which standard, legal tender sound mSfeey dollars should be coined. Again, the people have heard that, already the limited coinage of the j standard silver dollar, the sound j ■elver dollar, the legal tender over dollar is embarrassing the govern* uent by requiring vaults of large di* nensioaa in which to store it. Th© aducatioaal knaves who resort to thi© trick laugh in their sleeves at the gullibility of those they impose upon. Up to 1896, as has been stated, 428,000,00# of standard silver dollars had bean coined, of this amount more than 875,000,000 are in circulation in the form o i silver certificates, leaving about 48,000,* GOO silver dollars in circulation, or about 67 cents per capita of population, or if the total amount, 423,000,000 were in circulation as coin, it would be only about $0 per capita of our population Tor if the total amount oonld be equally distributed to families of five persons, each family would have SBO. Along such lines the people are thinking and, as the campaign progresses, they will be heard resolutely demanding of the goldbng Republicans faot© instead of delusions manufactured by plutocratic spoilsmen to deceive men who do net think.