Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1898 — CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION [ARTICLE]

CAMPAIGN OF EDUCATION

That Is What the Gold Bugs and Plutocrats Fear. They Know It Means Death to Syndicates, Trusts, Corporations and Monopolies Which Her* Been Oppressing the People. It is an old aphorism “that men who think govern those who toil.” A “Campaign of Education” is a misnomer unless it sets men to thinking. Indeed, the highest function of ednoation is to teach men to think. If it falls 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 canning men who use them to promote their schemes of aggrandizement. The great mass of the people can have no interest in promoting the schemea of syndicates, trusts, corporations, monopolies or the millionaire class, who, oper-’ ating 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 money 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 along lines which involve their welfare. The mind forces of the masses are now intensely active. The chuck-a-lnck methods of education, the tricks and enchantments of the gold standard wizards will not be accepted as arguments by the rank and file of the Amerioau voters; or as reasons why they should abdicate these prerogatives to do their own thinking on all political questions, including the “free coinage” or the “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 nphold the silver dollar as sound money. In 1896 the men who rallied to the standard of William Jennings Bryan, more than 6,500,000 of free men who would not bow down and worship the gold standard, as the slaves of old Nabnchadnezzar worshiped his golden image, were denominated “anarchists,” “commnnists,” “idiots,” “border ruffians,” “socialists," "blackguards” and other equally argumentative epithets. It was the goldbng 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 bugspeakers with questions which they will shrink from answering.

One of the choice declarations of the goldbngs has been that to coin standard silver dollars would drive gold out of the country, a condition which they depricated as a far reaching calamity. Well, from 1878 we have coined 423,000,000 of standard silver dollars, all debtpaying, legal tender, sound money dollars, bat gold did not, therefore, leave the country, nor was it ever shown that, owing to the coinage of silver dollars, any calamity, large or small, was created; and if such a charge or any other oharge intimating that the ooinage of standard Bilver dollars has been productive of a panic in business, commercial or industrial affairs, those who make the charge will be required to point ont 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 whioh cannot occur again, been terrorized by the soothsayers and magicians of the money power—a favorite prognostication being that the free coinage of silver would not only drive gold out of the country, but would, to the utter consternation of rioh and poor alike, bring home from Europe the stooks and bonds held there for payment Suppose this should be true, “what greater blessing,” queries a distinguished .United States senator, “could 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 perfect financial independence of nil nations and all gold syndicates?” Bat thonghtfnl men will ask the goldbug ooncocters of the 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 gold has already been driven out by silver. Tbe mere statement of the proposition reduoes it to a delusion that

no thoughtful man will consider for one minute, and yet this senseless vagary has been tnjeoted time snd again into the discussion of the money question as one of the impending disasters which would befall the country 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 of which standard, legal tender sound money dollars shoald be coined. Again, the people have heard that already the limited coinage of the standard silver dollar, the sound silver dollar, the legal tender silver dollar is embarrassing the government by requiring vaults of large dimensions in which to store it. The educational knaves who resort to this trick laugh in their sleeves at the gullibility of those they impose upon. Up to 1896, as has been stated, 438,000,000 of standard silver dollars had been coined, of this amount more than 375,000,000 are in circulation in the form of silver certificates, leaving about 48,000,000 silver dollars in circulation, or about 67 cents per capita of population, or if the total amoon,t, 428,000,000 were in circulation as co/n, it would be only about $6 per capita of our population or if the total amount could be equally distributed to families of five persons, each family wonld have S3O. Along such lines the people are thinking and, as the campaign progresses, they will be heard resolutely demanding of the goldbug Republicans facts instead of delusions manufactured by plutocratic spoilsmen to deceive men who do not think.

" I ' .7; constitute the “money power,” the plutocracy of the oonntry, a power that is soulless and heartless and in its greed as relentless as a hungry tiger in the jungle. And, strange to say, however paradoxical it may appear, this money power thrives on the calamines of the people, as wreckers thrive when the storms and the billows drive ships npon shoals and rocks. A fact that was brought into the boldest possible prominence when its managers bought government bonds with depreciated paper money,, the bonds costing them about 65 cents on the dollar, and then, byusing their influence over a Republican congress, made them payable in "coin,” gold or silver, and proceeded to collect principal and interest of the bonds in gold, and this has been going on for more than 80 years, until we have the astounding fact disclosed that on an in-terest-bearing debt of $^,321,311,918 in 1865 interest alone up to 1897 had been collected amounting to $2,511,169,065, or approximately $289,887,147 more than the total interest-bearing debt in 1865. It is this money power, this power that controls the wealth of the couutry, that advocates the gold standard policy and denounces all who advocate free coinage. These facts are stated that the friends of silver may have in full view the enemy that confronts them. It is as Bryan wonld say, the plutocracy at war with the producing classes—the men who create the wealth which, by infamous legislation, is poured into the coffers of the rich in a ceaseless tide. As an issne in the campaign row on, the friends of free coinage of bimetallism, the friends of the producing classes, may expect to have their leaders and their cause traduced by the advocates of the gold standard policy. A subsidized press will lend its energies to the nefarious work, but they will find the ranks of the free silver advocates compact and unbroken. They will find them shoulder to shoulder and Knee to knee, intrepid and nnfaltering, believing the welfare of the country depends upon achieving a victory by virtue of which silver shall regain its rights at the mints and place the option which the law confers upon the secretary of the treasury in the hands of a man who has not been corrupted by the money power, and who will give to silver its rightful station as a oath in all regards at the legal ratio, eqnal to gold.