People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — FROM WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

FROM WASHINGTON.

More money and less bonds. We have silver but must ask England if we can use it. OneJ thing at a time; the great question of the hour is ti nance. About the only supporters Cleveland's fiat wild-cat banking scheme has are Republicans. Senator Voorhees has returned to the advocacy of free silver. It is too late now, Daniel is a dead duck. Oe the present session of congress all we can say, and the best we can say of it is, that it it will adjourn March 4, 1895. The People’s party vote, at the late election was greater than the Republican vote that elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The five million men who failed to vote this year did just about as much for themselves and their country, election day as the seven million that did vote. A vote was taken in the’U. S. senate Wednesday on free-list-sugar bill for the purpose of allowing a few senators to change their records. There was no intention whatever to pass the bill. The Republicans are promising us a 40 -days’ session of our . state legislature this winter. If they do no better than the Democrats did the last legislature, the people will be quite willing to let them off with a2O days' session.

We commend the following from the Nonconformist to the thoughtful attention of our readers: The St. Louis conference, the call for which by Chairman; Taubeneck appears in this issue, will be a meeting of great moment to the new party. It is not too much to say that its proceedings may make or mar it The crisis is important. The coming conference will stand at the parting of the ways with power to point out the road that leads to victory and also.the one that leads the other way. ‘ ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,” says the great dramatist, “which, if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” The height of human wisdom is exhibite 1 in being able to recognize this tide and float with it to the desired haven. Such opportunities seldom come, but once, perhaps, in a lifetime. If lost they can never be regained. Our Washington correspondent semis interviews with leaders on the purport duties of this conference. They agree substantially as to its importance and as to the stand it should take. It becomes clearer and clearer every day that the bat- . tie is to be fought, and won or Jost, on the vital question of finance. The money question in irs entirety, unencumbered by issues, or diluted by, .inciful or emotional measures, 1 must he raised as a standard around which all persons ofj kindred views are invited to i tally. Th« appeal must be

made to business people, on a business question and in a business way. This is no time for chimerical experiments or visionary schemes. Already too much strength has been dissipated in that way. We are not on a trip to that city in the clouds built by the birds, which is so humorously described by the Athenian poet in satirizing the visionary castle-building-in-the-air tendencies of his country - men. We are dealing with the earth, earthy; with matters intensely practical, relating to this day, and not with the mythical to-morrow, which for some people never arrives except in imagination. On one issue and one issue alone can the forces be rallied for a battle royal. That issue is not to be sought but is already at hand. Shall we accept it or reject it? Shall we go about it like earnest men, bent on accomplishing something or shall we let the golden opportunity pass and waste our non-essentials The St. Louis conference is to decide this and it will be well for the people of the country if it decides it wisely.

The following is from the editor of the London Echo, while it is a little extravagant yet there is much of truth in it: The signs of the times indicate that before the sun rises on June 1, 1900, the great American nation will groan and writhe in an agony of revolution and the streets will be slippery with blood. A hundred drops of blood for each gem that flashes on the necks of the rich and pampered women, and ten drops of blood for each tear that has washed the face of the poor. Every election is carried by fraud and boodle. Politics is so rotton that it stinks;

Everybody knows it and no body cares. America is no longer a republic. It is a plutocracy. The President is merely the creation of the banks, or bank directors, railroad kings and coal barons, and it is the same with the governors of the states. The poor whine about their poverty and gnaw their crust of bread, but can always be counted on to vote for the rich and shoulder their muskets and lay down their lives in defense of the right of the rich to rob them. A nation such as this, in which one million plutocrats tyrannize over sixty millions of slaves, will either be overthrown by a foreign power or drowned in its own blood or die of gangrene. The various organizations neither think together, vote together, nor work together, and they have no money to buy votes, lawyers and judges. Soldiers and police shoot down laboring people and are cheered on in their bloody work by monopolistic editors, capitalists and the clergy. But the day will soon come when there will be a horrible dance to death, . lighted up by burning houses and the music of cries and groans and dynamite bombs.

Rich idlers amuse themselves at Newport and Tuxedo; poor workers toil ceaselessly in the darkness of the mine and the din of the mill. Young men and women dawdle over iced champagne and oyster patties; old men and women pick rotten food out of the garbage cans. Lap dogs are driven through Central Park to take the air; children die of over-work in filthy garrets. Piety in the white house “enduring” the fruits of bribery—infidelity in the tenement house enduring the punishment of uprightness. These are the signs of the times in America today—signs that point to calamities too dreadful to imagine, but which nothing can avert-.”

An Intercfttfnir Batch of News From the Capitol. From our Regular Correspondent. Washington, Dec. 7. 1894. The so-called Carlisle currency plan fell very flat on Congress. Something new was expected from the advance talk, but there is nothing new in the plan presented. The portion which refers to the enlargement of the circulation of national bank currency is practically the same as that which may be found in a bill introduced in the House several years ago by Representative Walker, a republican from Massachusets, and which was!

favorably considered by the committee on banking and currency, but was never acted upon by the House. The same idea was presented to a convention of bankers which met at Baltimore during the present year, and was endorsed by that convention; hence its designation as the ‘ 'Baltimore plan. ” That portion which recommends an exemption from taxation of the currency of such state banks as may choose to comply with certain regulations is believed to have been intended to weaken the silver men by drawing the southern men away from them, and if there was any probability of its be coming a law it might succeed. • • • The silver men in Congress were not pleased by the neglect of President Cleveland to even mention silver' in his message, except to sneer at it, in connection with the declaration attached to the act which repealed the purchasing clause of the Sherman silver law —that it is the policy of this government to maintain the parity between gold and silver. They propose, if possible, to give him a Roland for his Oliver, by passing a free coinage bill. Senator Voorhees, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, says that committee will report a free coinage bill very shortly. • • • The trouble about that bond issue has begun. In the Senate Mr. Peffer attacked it in a speech, and Representative Baily, of Texas, says his resolution, stating it to be the sense of Congress that bonds cannot be legally issued, except to maintain specie payments, will be taken up and passed at once. • • • There will be a very lively tight over the Nicaragua canal bill in the House, if its friends succeed, as now seems likely, in getting it up for consideration. Speaker Crisp’s opposition prevented its being taken up at the last session, but the friends of the bill now say that he has expressed a willingness for the committee on rules to name a date for its consideration. The democratic opponents of the bill have announced their determination to fillibuster should an attempt be made to force it to a vote. It is claimed that the bill will pass the House if a vote can be had, and a vote can be had if the committee on rules so wills and a majority of the House will support an order limiting debate. • • • “Silver dollar” Bland, chairman of the House committee on coinage, says it will be no fault of his if his bill for the free coinage of silver is not passed at this session, as it is his purpose to endeavor to persuade the committee to favorably report the bill, and he says, if he succeeds that the bill will be passed by a substantial majority. His success with the committee is regarded as doubtful, for the same reason that prevented the bill being reported at the last session—the belief of some of the members that nothing can be accomplished by reporting a bill that cannot become a law.

• • • The House committee on public lands has favorably reported a bill for opening to settlement and entry all lands included within the limits of any Indian reservation, or in the Indian Territory, the disposal of which has heretofore or may hereafter be authorized by agreement or treaty. The report on the bill says it will provide a general law applicable to Indian lands that could be used as fast as the Indian title is extinguished, taking the place of the slow process of special legislation for each reservation, and that it will in a great measure prevent a repetition of the scandalous frauds which have accompanied the method now in use. • • • A suit in equity was entered in the Supreme Court of the

District of Columbia this week that should interest all publishers who are doing business with the ‘-Press Claims C 0.,” of Washington. It is brought by J. L. Preston, publisher of a Kansas City paper, against John Wedderburn, manager of Kie “Press Claims Co.,’’and Wm. R. Hearst, of the “Examiner Claims Bureau,” for the cancellation of a contract, alleged to have been secured by misrepresentation, in which Preston agreed to purchase forty shares of stock in the “Press Claims C 0.,” to be paid for with advertising in his paper. Preston asks in addition to the cancellation of the contract that he be paid SB4O for advertising done. • • • Senator Berry, of Arkansas, introduced a bill providing for a territorial government for that portion of the Indian Territory occupied by the five civilized tribes. It abrogates all treaties made with those tribes, except those portions relating to land titles, and allots 160 acres of land to each member of those tribes and provides that the remainder shall be sold, and the proceeds turned over to the Indians, whose homesteads shall be free from taxation. • • • A sub committee of the House committee on labor has been holding conferences with U. S. Labor Commissioner Wright, to perfect the Springer bill providing for a National Board of Arbitration.