People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1895 — BLACKMAILING SCHEME. [ARTICLE]

BLACKMAILING SCHEME.

Atlant* Constitution on th* ClevelandMorgan Pe*L We presume that the cuckoos who, against their own convictions, may feel themselves compelled to defend 'Mr. Cleveland’s gdld ' bond scheme, will claim that if the scheme had been indorsed by congress, it would have resulted in a saving to the people of. >16,000,000 during the next thirty years. The answer to this is that the whole scheme, in its intention and conception, was in the nature of a blackmailing operation in the interest Of the element that is growing rich out of the increased purchasing power that the single gold standard is conferring on the money they are hoarding. The representatives of the people refused to permit their constituents to be blackmailed,- and that is the end of the matter so far as this congress is concerned. The alternative proposed to congress by Mr. Cleveland may be very simply stated. In effect he said: "You gentlemen seem to be opposed to the sin- ■ gle gold standard. Very well. If you ' don’t accept it for thirty years I propose to levy an additional tax of >16,600,000 on the people that they would ! not have to pay if you would accept gold monometalism for.thirty years.” i, That was the ultimatum, and if congress had accepted it, that body would have gone down to history as the most infamous assembly of representatives that ever pretended to represent the people. To save >16,000,000 in the course of thirty years, the people’s representatives were asked to indorse a scheme that would have tied the country to gold monometalism. The country has already lost untold billions by the operations of this system, and while >16,000,000 might have been saved by the blackmailing conditions proposed to congress, the people would have lost billions in the further shrinkage of values and prices and in the general depression of business occasioned by making gold the only unit of account and measure of value. —Atlanta Constitution.