People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1895 — ITS STEADY GROWTH. [ARTICLE]

ITS STEADY GROWTH.

THE PRINCIPLES OF POPULISM ARE NOT EPHEMERAL. t The Principles It Advocates Are Firm Enough to Build Upon as Long as Humanity and Civilisation Exist.— * Figures Never Lie.

The great plutocratic newspapers are somewhat alarmed to see the steady increase given the Populist party by the official election returns. The Springfield (Mass.) Republican, a newspaper of national reputation, an independent supporter of Grover Cleveland, though republican in politics, makes the following comment: “This is a remarkable and in many ways a disturbing demonstration of radicalism. The Populist party was started in -a flush industrial period, and the fact that it has held on so long and grown no less slowly and steadily in bad times than in prosperous times is not the least significant features of its development. Were it based, upon elements of ephemeral strength merely we should probably by this time have seen either the collapse of the organization or a sudden bound to a higher level. That neither event has resulted would seem to offer proof of the existence of strong basic material. As a matter of fact the anti-slavery party,from the time it began to put a Presidential candidate in the field in 1844 down to the breaking up of the whig party in 1852, never exhibited u more persistent and growing strength than the People’s party has so far shown.” Radicalism always has a basis. And the Populist party has even a stronger basis than had the antislavery party. The slavery we oppose is that of a class of men to whom the nation owes its great progress in the development of wealth, Invention and all material growth. Opposition to wage and debt slavery are the cardinal principles ot the People's party. As a bssis it has the religion of Jesus Christ, the brotherhood of man and the foundation principle of Justice, equal rights to all and special privileges to none.

Every man in tfye People’s party has his feet firmly on the basic principles. It is not buoyed up like a balloon, with gas; nor is it a patty of sorehead politicians kicked out by the struggle of ambition from the old parties. The People's party has come to stay, because the principles it advocates are permanent—firm enough to build upon for the future as long as humanity and civilization exist That there was a reason for its birth luring flush times indicates very ’tuoagly that general injustice and not mere local discontent was the cause of the organization. The People's party is not an organization of malcontents, howling and rending itself in the dark. Its organization was due to broad comprehensive study of the principles of the government of the people, by the people snd for the people. When the nation and the moneyloan ers were prospering, all the people of the nation should have been prospering in proportion to the work they contributed to the general prosperity. That farmers and laborers were depressed while idlers spent the summer in Europe and the winter in dissipation, aroused the people to a study of the eternal principles of equity. The oppression has been felt worse luring the past two years, but the people were not made wild and fanatical. They had coolly reasoned out tho cause of the trouble and many of them hud prophesied the climax, They have reached the point in Veavon where they see that monopoly must be allowed to run its course for the present, while the people are being educated to take charge when the course of the money power has become inbearable to the whole nation. The great trusts are testing the principles of corporation, and when proven successful and all powerful the nation will find it necessary to assume functions that have been befon delegated to private individuals. The People’s party is looking coniAontly forward to the consummation of its every demand. Not party success, but a better national industrial system Is the object of this movement. :»< *