People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1894 — Shifted. [ARTICLE]

Shifted.

Every Republican cur of high or low degree, be he pencil pusher or campaign yawper, is now striving to make the people believe the panic was caused by threatened tariff reduction. What short sighted liars they are. Do they imagine that we have forgotten that less than a year ago, John Sherman, New York Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Inter-Ocean, Dunn and Bradstreet, with all the small fry of the press and rostrum charged the panic to the silver purchasing clause of the Sherman law. Have they forgotten that they roasted the Senate for its dilatory tactics, how they charged it with keeping off the business boom that was ready and waiting to come as soon as the threat ened “slump to silver” was out of the way; how they promised that the outflow of gold would cease; how six hundred millions of gold in hiding was waiting for the repeal measure; how it would “come out of hiding, rush into the channels of trade;’’ how prices would rise, how the wheels of industry would start, every idle spindle would whirl, and ail would be employed ai good wages. The tariff as a cause was not mentioned. The

whole cause as then charged by Republicans was the “threatened slum*) to the silver standard.” The purchasing clause of the Sherman law was repealed, gold didn’t come out of its hiding, gold still went abroad, the wheels of industry remained deadlocked, the spindles didn’t turn, labor was not employed, trade didn’t revive, bankruptcies continued, the tramp continued to tramp, and every prediction failed just as the Populists said they wourd fail. ' The campaign of 1894 is now on and the Democrats must bear the blame for all the ills the country is suffering, so these monstrous liars of high and low degree forgetting all they said a year ago about the cause of the panic, now charge it to the scare about tariff reduction. If the panic was caused by the “threatened slump to silver” in 1893. it couldn’t be caused by a tariff scare in 1894. When did you lie about the cause of the panic, last year or this? It was not caused by the Sherman law last .year, nor by the tariff this year, but was a world-wide conspiiacy of the money power of the world, and made possible by the rascally legislation of the Republican party for the past thirty years. All the loss, bankruptcies, misery and crime caused by the panic in 1893 and 1894, are primarily chargeable to the Republican party and policy. When the people entrusted the Democrats with power and they failed in applying corrective measures, then the responsibility became theirs, and to-day both parties stand condemned aud wholly unw’orthy of the confidence of the American people. We have no faith or sympathy for Democratic leaders, nor are we an apologist for Democratic treachery and hypocracy, but we do insist that when a man or a party makes a record, that man and that party should be made to stand by that record. The Republicans made a specific charge last year that all know now is false, and we submit that they have no right now to claim a different cause and ask people to believe it merely because they say so.

Two years ago the people turned down and out the w’hole Republican outfit, because they would not respond to the wishes of the voters. The Democratic party was given .control only to prove as miserable failures as the Republicans) Take the Democratic house with its one hundred majority, fresh from the people, pledged to certain policies, see the miserable, cringing, cowardly scoundrels, bull-dozed, brow-beaten and

bribed with patronage till all their principles vanished, kicked and cuffed by the senate as so many puppies till they make a complete surrender. After all wax lost and the opportunity to retrieve was forever lost, the house was seized by a virtuous spasm or remorse or the dread thought of facing a betrayed and angry constituency; whereupon it made haste to pass such bills as it ought to have passed when it first assembled, and after passing them should have stood by them and thrown the whole responsibility of legislative failure on the president and senate. They know the passage of those bills now will amount to nothing. Yet, they pass them with the sole purpose of deceiving the people. W r hy, when they return home they will say, “Why, yes, of course we passed bills for free coal, iron ore, lumber, sugar and free coinage, but those rascally senators killed our bills. Do these betrayers of the people, these sell-outs, and enemies of right think they can deceive the people and get back to Washington to inflict further injury upon an almost ruined people? We trust the people are too wise for that.