Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1908 — WORST THE WORLD HAS WITNESSED [ARTICLE]

WORST THE WORLD HAS WITNESSED

And It Came Under the High Protective Tariff and Republican Control In Every Branch of the Federal GovernJ ment. In a public addrest£ Mr. Shaw, recently Secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Roosevelt, said: “The stringency of 1907 is generally conceded to have been the severest the world has ever witnessed.” How consoling It Is to read in the republican platform this glowing sentence: “A Republican tariff has always been followed by business prosperity.” • • • Mr. Aldrich, In his speech on the Aldrich Currency bill in the Senate of the United States only last winter, said: “Mr. President, financial crisis from which the country has Just emerged, which culminated in a serious panic in October, was the most acute and destructive in Its immediate consequences of any that has occurred In the history of the country. Nothing but the heroic measures taken by the representatives of the great business and financial institutions of the country acting in co-operation with the Secretary of the Treasury, prevented a total collapse, of private credit and a disastrous destruction of all values. The country was saved by the narrowest possible margin from an overwhelming catastrophe, whose blighting effect would have been felt in every household.” • • • On Februray 11, 1908, ift. Shaw, in a speech he made in Michigan, said: “Over 300,000 freight cars are standing on the tracks, 30,000 locomotives white leaded and out of commission, one-fourth of the population of several large cities idle, and for the first time under a Republican administration, free soup houses in every industrial center; the price of farm produce naturally and materially depreciated, furnish an object lesson which ought to produce a measure of sobermindedness on the part of the American people.”

From the public press is taken the following news item coming from Pittsburg, Pa., Feb. 8, 1908; “The cry of the unemployed daily grows more distressed in Pittsburg. There are 15,000 men idle, and the spectre of the dreaded soup houses again makes its appearance. The first soup house will be opened by the Salvation Army Monday morning, and unless there is a radical and prompt change for the better, more places of this kind will be in demand before many days have elapsed. The situation is not really alarming, but it is bad enough. Soup houses have been the dread of the business men and civic leaders, and every effort has been made to avoid them,”

Here is the following news item from Chicago, dated Feb. 11, 1908: “Chicago, Feb. 11, 1908. Never in the history of the ‘Chicago Relief and Aid Society’ has there been such a demand for assistance as at the present time, is the claim of Superintendent Kingsly, who is in charge of the distribution of funds by the business men’s relief committee, which has just raised between $25,000 and $30,000 for needy families. Never in the history of the society have we had so many appeals based entirely on the lack of employment.”

Not long ago Mr. Dalzell, who writes the tariff tax, recently as dictated by the men who put up the money to pay the expenses of republican campaigns, told us: “We do not read our tariff lessons out of books. We read them by the blazing light of open furance doors, amid the noise of industrial activities and In the sweat our brows that we coin into wealth, and God help the man or party that would put out these fires, still the music of that noise, and send the workmen home to a foodless and hungry household. “It was under republican rule that this mnsic was stilled, that the fires were put out. and that soup houses had to provide for the foodless and hungry.” No longer can any Republican ever fool the people by claiming that “a republican tariff has always been followed by business prosperity.” The time has come —the hour has ■truck —for a change. Thousands of Republicans take their positions and will vote for Bryan In November.