People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1895 — NOTES AND COMMENTS. [ARTICLE]

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Grover Cleveland nor his friends will be ever be able to drive from the minds of many of the people the suspicion that he and Mr. Carlisle shared in the profits of the bond syndicate that bought the last issue of bonds at 104% and Immediately resold them at 116% to 119. The very broad hints thrown out in the papers all over the country that the president and his secretary shared in this deal are not to be mistaken as touching popular sentiment in this matter. * * • Notwithstanding the cotton planters of the country produced, picked, and marketed 1,471,518,924 more pounds of cotton in 1894 than they did in 1892 the crop of last fell short over $45,000,000 of the crop of 1892. The wheat raisers lost $136,000,000 in 1894 over the crop of 1892. There has been a corresponding loss in all other products, the aggregate amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. It is astonishing to contemplate the patience and forbearance of the American people. * * * Judging by the tone of the republican press it is quite apparent that the republican leaders are not losing any sleep over the fact that they will not have a majority in the next senate. As that party has no intention of doing anything to relieve the people, but is as fully committed to the interests of plutocracy as the democrats are, they are really pleased that the senate is under control of a Populist minority, as that will serve as an excuse for not doing anything and enable them to come up with the old excuse used by the democrats for so many years:* ‘We can do nothing because the senate and president are against us.”

V* In 1892 the Populists elected 346 members to the several state legislatures and in 1894 they elected 615, besides nearly doubling the aggregate vote throughout the country. Look around you and count the men in your circle of acquaintances who have left the Pedpie’s party since the election last fall and then count those you know have joined the new party, or swear they will never again vote an oldparty ticket. Strike the difference and see if Populism is dying. ♦ ♦ ♦ J. A. Hamilton, conductor dh the Atlantic & Pacific railway, went out on the strike last year. Since that time he has traveled over the entire west, but everywhere he found the dread blacklist ahead of him. When he was successful in getting work it was only for a day or two until he was identified as a striker and then he would be dismissed. As a last resort he wrote his old trainmaster a few days ago and received a letter in reply saying he could not promise anything to a man who had taken part in the strike of the A. R. U. On receipt of this letter Hamilton put a ball through his head at the American house In Denver, where he had registered. The record of suicides last year was 4,911, of which nearly one-half were caused by despondency. The dally papers report a half dozen to a dozen In almost every issue and in the most of cases “out of work,” “out of money,” or “financial troubles” are assigned as the causes. What a fearful record for our boasted Christian civilization!

* * * The Associated Press dispatches reported the Populist members of the legislature as favoring a single-plank, or silver, platform. This report is false. Eight of the twelve are for the Omaha platform, three favor a single plank, while one will go with the majority. There is nothing surer than the fact, as lately shown in the thousands of letters appearing in our reform papers from all over the country, that nine-teen-twentieths of the rank and file of the people’s party are bitterly opposed to any changes in the Omaha platform, and most emphatic are the declarations against the adoption of a single plank, or silver, platform, alone. Our people are in no mood for temporizing or resorting to doubtful expedients. We are building not for a day, but for all time and on a sure foundation, and the people are not only building, but are bossing the structure. • • • The Rev. John A. B. Wilson of New York spent a night on the streets of that great city recently and says 10,000 men walk the streets to keep from freezing, and their condition was more horrible than tongue or pen can picture. Can anything else be expected where the Astors, Vanderbilts, Goulds, and other multi-millionaires are squandering millions annually on poodle dogs, purchasing foreign titles, building yachts, toading to royalty, airing their linen in divorce courts, and lavishing their wealth upon their mistresses? As long as the foolish people vote with the millionaires they must expect the army of tramps to increase and the greed and avarice of these wealthy drones to grow rather than diminish. • • « From Maine to California, from the Dakotas to Georgia and Texas— -from

ail over the countfy—the cry goes up: "Stick to the Omaha platform!” Ah, that is the shout from freemen —from men and women with the courage of their convictions! No temporizing, no compromises, but straight ahead! It is this Spartan courage and heroic devotion to principle that is characterizing this the grandest reform of the ages. * * » The Oklahoma legislature has passed a law prohibiting fusion of political parties. As the simon-pure Populist needs no law of that kind it will strike hard at the old parties. That law was evidently the bonception of a Populist brain as a means of heading, off the marriage of the republican and democratic parties in that territory. Talmage, Sam Jones, and no other preacher of any note has uttered a word of condemnation of the Sunday session the day before the final adjournment of the Fifty-third congress. Congress was not only in session all day, but a number of member took the occasion to "wind up” by getting uproariously drunk, several members being so far gone that they had to be removed from the floor of tne house. This ending was characteristic of that congress that will go down in history as the most infamous in the history of the country up to this time.