People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1895 — IN A PREDICAMENT. [ARTICLE]

IN A PREDICAMENT.

GOLD USED TO PAY CURRENT EXPENSES. While in Enormous Surplus of Other Money Lay in the Treasury—The Gold Reserve Myth Exploded —Bondholders on Top. Although the administration obtained by the sale of bonds during last year $117,380,282 for the alleged purpose of redeeming greenbacks and treasury notes, yet Mr. Carlisle is now forced to admit officially that with the exception of $12,378,451 every dollar of that gold was used to pay the current expenses of the government. The exact amount of gold used for meeting current expenses was $105,002,143. The report of the treasurer further shows that on July 1, 1894, the unexpended balances of appropriations aggregated $78,291,105, and the total amount available for expenditures on that date was $364,616,414, making the total available appropriation on July 1, 1894, $442,907,520. The expenditures during the six months ended December 31, 1894, amounted to $168,952,480, leaving an unexpended balance on January 1, 1895, Of $255,955,039. You see the bonds were issued to keep up the gold reserve. Wonder why the proceeds were used for current expenses. The republicans like Reed, say because of lack of revenue. Somebody has surely lied. With $250,000,000 of surplus in the treasury; it is strange that the goldworshiping administration should have allowed the sacred gold reserve to be spent for anything else except to maintain the parity of gold and silver. Funny government, anyway, that mortgages the country to buy gold to pay current expenses when it already has a surplus that it can't appropriate fast enough to keep it from crowding the vaults. This is an awful condition that so much money should get piled up in the way of the policy of the administration to issue $500,000,000 of bonds. This is a predicament. Why don’t Congress get a hustle on itself and appropriate money to buymore guns? Clear the deck —get this base money out of the way, so that the President can store up the gold he is buying. Money must not be allowed to accumulate when all the money lenders of the world are clamoring for a chance to lend us gold on fifty-year bonds. They must be accommodated, or they will bust —and great will be the bust thereof. The parity of gold and silver must be preserved if we have to buy all the gold in the world to do It.

Just as soon as we get all the gold, then the money lenders will restore ail- . ver and we can buy that at the same price. We must save the money lenders. If we don’t Grover won’t get his pay from Mr. Rothschilds. Here’s all this confounded money piled up here, and when the people see it, they are liable ' to kick us off the continent for borrow- i ing more. We must appropriate or perish. The gold reserve was a good scheme — but now we’re in a pretty mess of bugs. The papers have been prying Into the private affairs of the government, and found that we had plenty of money all the time. The bondholders are losing , confidence and some of Iftiem are getting scared. They have awful dreams at night of dynamite and wet elm clubs and hemp, and “death to interest bearing bonds.” The President now has a hundred policemen to guard his palace, and he gets letters every day from workingmen asking where they can find a job. He actually waked up right In the middle of the night one time lately and wondered what the people were kicking about. He is prosperous isn’t that what they elected him for? Even the fossilized old mummy show in the Senate is startled to think that the people should want to know what the government is doing.

INTRICACIES OF BANKING. Convert the EXpert Bank Officials Into Bonded Government Employes. In the course of an editorial on “The Government and Banking,’* ’ Harper’s Weekly says: ’ “Long experience has demonstrated that, with few exceptions, the politicians who are sent to Congress or who become members of the cabinet are not capable of mastering the intricacies of the banking business.” ■ Something occult about the banking business, isn’t there? Ordinary mortals can’t comprehend this idea of getting in debt for thousands of dollars, and then drawing interest on your debts while you priy none on What you owet This bdsiness’of cornering money and compelling people to pay you a big rate for the loan oh your credit or your promissory notes, is indeed a puzzle. Yes, it is a very peculiar and “intricate” business —almost as hard to understand as three-card monte or the shell game. As politicians and representatives of the people are incapable of comprehending it, the only safe course is to give the bankers the power to frame our currency law's. As they are now, the money power is able to control about everything; but there may be some points in w’hich the bankers could improve these laws, and make it easier to rake in the fruits of others’ labor. How nice if the common people could only be made to believe such stuff — that finance is a matter utterly beyond their comprehension, and it would be safer for them to try to legislate on the Udes and the law of gravitation than

to tamper with the currency. Wouldn’t the fellows on the inside who underitand all the “intricacies” of getting something for nothing by hocus-pocus-ing the money supply have a picnic? If money were something the people could take or let alone; if the law didn't make it a legal tender and compel them to pay their debts in it; if it wasn’t the only means by which they can conveniently and economically effect the exchanges of their products, then it might be safe to pass the subject by as too intricate for ordinary mortals. But, as it is largely by means of their manipulation of the money supply that the few are able to rob the many of the fruits of their toil, it behooves every man to study the money questions and understand all the devious and “intricate” methods by which wealth uses money to oppress and defraud labor. And about the first question to ask these masters of the “intricacies” of banking is: Why should one man’s debt circulate as money and draw interest rather than another’s? — Star and Kansan.

Bread and “Hell Juice.” The “sub-treasury” plan of the Farmer’s Alliance has received the ! scorn and ridicule of every politician. ; and cross-roads demagogue in the Unit■ed States. It provided that the farmers might have the privilege of storing ' their grain and farm produce in a government warehouse and borrow money on the warehouse receipt; and thus hold their grain until a fair price could be obtained for it. This was “lunacy.” But hold. After it is sold at less than cost of production, ana the farmer sent home to freeze, and lose his home un- ■ der a mortgage foreclosure, his crop ' gets into the hands of the whisky I trust. Ninety million bushels annuali >y are used in this way, enough to load i 250,000 freight cars and making one continuous railway train over 1,580 miles long.! And after this) crop is turned into hell-juice to poison men with and turn the world into a pandemonium of crime and woe, the government lets the whisky trust store its said hell juice in a government warehouse, and take care of it for the trust for nine years, allowing the hell juice to go untaxed all that time until it gets good and hellish! And there isn’t a little crawfish newspaper in Arkansas, or any other state, but upholds this abomination, and would no more dare to attack it than they would any other great infamy that is practiced by political scoundrels. —Fruit Farm, Rogers, Ark.

Hope and Despair. Let a whirl of mania forestall the final outlet of the whirl of evolution, and the insurrectionary explosion may flash across the continent, from seaboard to seaboard, between the rise and set of the sun. Then the rule of the prudent wise of the multitude is lost in the reign of terror. Mania, the Infernal goddess, whose hand brandishes the torch, may show by it the road to the guillotine. For the last quarter of a century we have filldd up the land with the discontented myriads of the old world; they came expecting freedom, but have found new servitudes; they came, led on by hope; they sit down brooding and sullen with despair; the skies do not brighten to them, they darken and darken on. Social nationalism and the kindred preparatory movements, by instilling hope and patience into the oppressed masses, hold in suppression the explosive forces; but these forces are approaching terribly near the surface; the limits of the safety line are very nearly overpassed.— The New Republic.

What Fools These Laborers Be. A few days ago 100,000 laborers paraded the streets of the City of Mexico, with banners and music, demanding to be led against Guatemala. There is a dispute between Mexico and Guatemala about a piece of swamp which probably isn’t worth 10 cents per acre, and whose ownership could easily be settled by resurvey or arbitration. It has never done the laborers of either country any good, and never will. Yet these 100,000 Mexican laborers parade the streets, clamoring for war! Is it any wonder that tyrants, in so many shapes, rule the people when we see that the people themselves are such fools? The kings quarrel, and the people do the fighting—that’s the history of mankind. Here we are pretending to be civilized. Almost 1,900 years of Christ and his gospel of peace have been our teachers, and yet we turn out, 100,000 strong, with banners flying, drums beating* and . horns tooting—demanding to b< led against bayonets and bullets to settle the boundary line of a wretched wilderness of swamp! No wonder our masters despise us—Tom Watson.

How Wo Soar. Six years ago this month August Belmont stood in the sawdust of Madison Square Garden and awarded ribbons to stump tailed fox terriers. At that time his fame rested on the .ownership of the champion brace of the gamy breed which was the height.of canine vogue. As bench show Judge and president of the American Kennel club he gradually acquired, national reputation. To-day he designates to the United States government the terms upon which gold by the hundredweight shall be furnished for feiieemihg currency notes He negotiates with a president and a secretary of the treasury in secret upon; the fate of a nation’s contracts. That is the beauty of a free country. You can’t tell when the man you esteem beneath your serious notice will have a big slice of the country standing in his name.—St. Louis Republic. The constitution says: “Congress shall l ave power to borrow money on the ere at oi the Unit'-! States.’’ w arise? the question how King Grover and Lotd Cadis 9 acquired that power.