People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1894 — A PILOT NEEDED. [ARTICLE]

A PILOT NEEDED.

One Who I« Level He*ded and Patriotic, and Who Is Able to Pilot the Old Ship of State from the Dangerous Breakers Upon Which She Is Drifting. No sooner was the seigniorage bill passed, and while the people of the country were congratulating themselves that at least one step had been taken in the direction of increasing the currency of the country on a safe basis, than we learned that leading commercial bodies of the east were combining to protest against the signature of the bill by President Cleveland. Petitions asking the president to withhold his signature from the bill were forwarded to Washington from fifty prominent bankers, from the New York chamber of commerce and from the Philadelphia board of trade. A resolution was introduced in the house for the investigation of reports that members of the house committee on coinage had given assurance to President Cleveland that if the Bland seigniorage bill- was signed no free coinage bill would be reported. It is not at all encouraging, to citizens who are neither “goldites” nor “silverites, "but who simply desire to see a satisfactory solution of the vexed financial problem in the interest of the country at large—it is not, we say, encouraging to patriotic citizens to notice the frequent cropping out in the financial centers of the east of a persistent effort to defeat, by fair means or foul, and at any cost, the effort which is being made to mitigate the prevailing financial stringency by increasing the present volume of currency on a safe basis. It is evident, from this action of the leading commercial and financial bodies of the east, that these people are not merely opposed to the wild and questionable plans of the silver men, but they are opposed to any movement that would insure reasonable recognition of the white metal. In fact, we are forced to the conclusion that these people would like to see the finances of the country brought to a strictly gold basis, and silver degraded to a merely commercial metal. It is diffleult to interpret the actions of eastern financial leaders and their servants in congress in any other manner.

This is the more to be regretted as it makes the possibility of arriving at a satisfactory settlement of our present troubles much more difficult These respected bankers and bondholders of New York and Bos on and Philadelphia are, in one sense, as dangerous to this country at the present time as are such cranks as Coxey, who proposes to lead an army of men to Washington, to demand, among other things, that the government coin an unlimited quantity of silver or paper and call it money. The country appears to be suffering just now from an epidemic of extremes—extreme views on the part of those who have much and crave for more, and other extreme views on the part of those who because they have nothing are jealous of the rich. As we have before observed, this country is at present in sore need of a few patriotic, level headed statesmen, who will take charge of the ship of state and pilot her out of the dangerous breakers toward which she is at present drifting.—Los Angeles Times.