People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1895 — Whose Fault Was It? [ARTICLE]

Whose Fault Was It?

Where’s your prosperity? How are you going to vote next time? The government must be restored to the people. The “deadbeats" are still fighting the Income tax. Jerry Simpson is mentioned for governor of Kansas. Why not turn the whole thing over to the bankers? We must educate for after the storm, as well as agitate for its coming. The country was “redeemed” by thq republicans in gold standard men. Finance, Land and Transportation are the trinity of industrial salvation. Plutocracy seems determined to have the bonds paid either in gold or blood. Workingmen have no business in the militia. Let plutocracy do its own killing. More money without more justice to the common people won’t solve the problem. The leaders of both old parties are in rebellion against the government of the people.

The Populists in congress stand solidly united against the golden serpent on every occasion. The union of all the working people at the ballot box is the only union that can succeed. Populists in congress don’t vote to secure the Indorsement of old and New England bankers, A single signature with a stub pen will enslave a nation—and Grover Cleveland stands ready to sign. A labor saving machine that is not owned by the laborer himself, or the general public, is a labor starving machine. Boys, don’t let your congressmen remain in ignorance of the situation among the comon people. Write them every week. What Grover and the bankers want is a perpetual debt, a means of forcing producers to support idle and useless blood suckers. ' The difference between the world now and the condition of the elements! before the creation is that now it is all form —and still void. And now it cfevelops that Liliitokalani is an anarchistess—and probably Grover knew it all the time. This is a pretty “how are you.” The republican congress is pledged to the policy of Grover Cleveland, and the whole country will be pledged to Europe with gold bonds. Populist papers should not advertise, club with, or send in subscribers to plutocratic papers, at any price, daily weekly, monthly, or any other way. Let the millionaires handle their own killing machines. Workingmen should keep out, and be prepared to defend themselves in case of emergency.

Redeemed —yes; Kansas was redeemed, by electing a banker governor and sending a railroad attorney to the senate —Colorado was redeemed and sent Wolcott. Even Breckinridge was disgusted with President Cleveland’s financial bill and voted against it. But that only proves the bill worse, and won’t, save Breckinridge. Congress has voted a halt million dollars to lay a cable to Hawaii, qo that an anxious public in America can always have fresh news of how the rohber Spreckels Is treating his victims. It is intimated by the boss financiers that the syndicate which handles the last issue of bonds will clear six million dollars, on negotiating the sale alone. Wonder how much King Grover, gets. ■ In Nebraska, a few days since, a bank cashier attempted to go republican—that is to fail —but the inhabitants of the town in which he resided objected. He went to kingdom come, via. hemp.— Dawn. A Minnesota “roaster” by the name of Foster has “cornered” the egg market of the United States, and proposes to run the price up to 50 cents a dozen to city consumers. May he live on rot-’ ten eggs the balance of his life. Every patriotic hen in America should have a peck at his eyes.

Bob Ingersoll pops up and says “Populism is insanity”—and yet the sensational ass writes letters once in a while about the wrongs of the people that are thoroughly Populistic. The only sure thing about Bob is that ha prefers notoriety to a consistent course of seeking the truth. The professional tramp and the idle rich belong to the same class morally—one living in the filth of beggary, the other in the corruption of dissipation. If there is any difference, it is in favor of the tramp, who does not murder and Impoverish others in his selfish laziness as does the rich idler. King George and all his hired Hessians could not make our patriot forefathers pay 6 cents a pound tariff on tea to support the government, but W. W. Astor lives in Lunnon and draws $5,000,000 a year off the American people in the shape of taxes and they pay it and don’t say a word. Truly the lines of rich men have fallen in pleasant places in these modern days of asinine Americanism. —Coming Nation.

Vote the guns owt of plutocracy'; hands. Give the republicans a chance. Of course. The trouble with the democratic party is, it can’t be democratic. Another fool has been found in congress who says God made money. The democratic party has had its chance and now it has its record. The boss financiers are talking of calling another international farce. The idea of people petitioning, where they have a right to demand—absurd The gold standard don’t' appear to restore "parity,” “confidence” nor prosperity. The democratic party committed suicide —and, of course, the whisky trust busted. • Congress has turned it all over to Grover, and he will “soak” the country to Rothschild. That man Sovereign of the Knights of Labor is a fighter. Success to him and his followers. Let us abolish bank government, and institute government banking and a people’s government. The currency question can be made the leading issue without abandoning the Omaha platform.

He who says the greenback is not good money is not a good man, nor a good American citizen. a Why not issue some more bonds? Go deeper in debt and save our credit Where is the foolkiller? King Grover is despondent. His house of lords and sleight-of-hand performers refuse to perform. President Cleveland’s patriotism seems to be of the same brand as democratic prosperity—non est Government ownership of railways is foolish unless private ownership of government be first abolished. Wonder if Rothschild gold will stay in the treasury any longer than any other brand of the cowardly stuff. The present gang of rulers’iri - this country would have the national financial policy dictated by Rothschilds. Coxey’s plan is better than any or all of the currency plans proposed by the bankers and their tools in congress. Suppose that machines performed all the work and capitalists pocketed all the profits—then what would workmen do? When free silver men want to vote with a free silver party there is only one way to do it—that is to vote with the People’s party. All money held solely for speculative and lending purposes, is in enemy of and a constant drain on all the useful people of the nation. The enormous sum of 12,500,000,000 worth of personal property, owned by residents of the state of New York, annually escapes taxation.

The process of starvation always makes a man feel like fighting. It’s a dangerous thing to have thousands of men in a rich country in a fighting humor. You said you would give them a chance and if they did not do something you would never vote the ticket again. Were you lying or were you in earnest? If it is true, as the learned oracle of Yale College announces, that “the social classes owe each other nothing,” why not abolish the law and have a reign of "dog eat dog ” Just think of Bill McKinley making a speech in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln. That is just what he did at Albany, N. Y„ on Lincoln’s birthday, Feb.’ 12. What a mockery. The manufactures have met together at Cincinnati and organized for the express purpbse of fighting labor organizations, acording to their own statement. Laborers should prepare for defense. Tom Reed wants the republican nomination for President in 1896, and he has just put himself on record by voting for goli tooc’s. The Populists are in favor o’ lua uominarion and everlasting defeat. Duke Pullman seems to have a supreme contempt of court, notwithstanding the services it has rendered him in the evasion of justice. He refuses to appear as a witness and should be sentenced to jail. The Knights of Labor, notwithstanding their defeat in an attempt to enjoin the treasurer from issuing bonds, are still on deck, and have employed eminent legal talent to test the validity of bonds already issued.

Working men! let us ask you a question: Who beat you in the Brooklyn strike? Was it the militia or was it your own kind of people who took the places of tlje strikers? Think this out and then tell us you are not a set of. idiots. Why don’t you all get together and vote together? Don’t you know corporations will continue to be on top so long as the ranks of labor are divided? There is no better way to keep labor divided than on union and nonunion lines.—Denver Road.

The democratic party hu concluded to remain in business for a while yet. Hereafter it will do a sort of job-lot-racket-store business. A court is said to be the last resort. When the people, having passed a law, are denied justice in the courts we are on the brink of revolution. About the only good thing that congress did was the passage of the income tax, and now the Supreme court has spoiled the best part of that If Gen. Weaver and others are to say what is to be the platform and who the candidate of the People’s party, what is the use of holding any national convention. We haven’t heard of any Populists breaking their neck trying to get into the new silver party, but we know of several who have “cooked their goose” by advising it. The National Watchman publishes the constitution of the United States, but it’s no one plank affair. Perhaps that is the reason we see no editorial indorsement of it in the Watchman. The single plankers are hedging. They claim now that they don’t want the Omaha platform “broadened.” It’s funny how the people can bring the would-be bosses to time when they stick to the text. If the courts keep on showing up the defections (?) in the constitution as they have been doing there is a bare possibility that the people will rise up some day and overthrow both the constitution and the courts. The new silver party is ready to hitch on to either one of the two old parties that will give them free silver, and some people are foolish enough to want to turn the People’s party over to the new silver party.

Hector D. Lane, president of the Cotton Protective association, says he has no confidence in these third party movements —that they never accomplish anything. Mr. Lane seems to forget that it was a third party that licked the stuffin’ out of the slave oligarchy. You can send one hundred pounds of newspapers from New York to San Francisco by mail for one dollar; that is socialism. If you send it by express it will cost you ten dollars; that is “private enterprise” controlling a public utility. Is Joseph Sibley a Populist? If not, why are some pretended Populists booming him for President? Is it because he has a “bar’l?” Come gentlemen, “fess up.” Joseph Sibley has never made any professions of being a Populist. Then why should the People’s party suppport him? Cleveland’s salary as President, as well as the salaries of the judges of the Supreme court, are said to be exempt from the income tax. In fact, it is said, the Supreme court has made so many rents in the law by its late decision, that many persons will easily slip through the meshes. As other suits are pending and others will be brought to test the law, and the fact that the ultimate fate of the law tremble in the balance. Is it not a grand government that permits four or five men on the Supreme bench to over ride congress and the people?

In the argument of James B. Carter before the Supreme court of the United States in support of the income tax law he made the remarkable utterance that if this law of congress was not sustained it might precipitate a social revolution in this country. This utterance on this occasion is significant of several things—prominent among spread feeling of disrespect for or a which is the fact that it reflects a widelack of confidence in that august body called the Supreme court, and the fact that the audacity of the attorney who dared give utterance to what was, intended as a threat or intimidation of the court was not rebuked, shows the lack of dlgpity that once characterized that body, and that its present members share to some extent the feelings of the people in their opinions of themselves. The people are coming to look upon our present judicial system as altogether farcical. Take the legal tender decisions and the late decision of the Supreme court on the income tax law as samples. In less than one year the country was presented with two decisions upon the legal tender qualities of the greenback by the Supreme court of the United States—the first against and the latter sustaining the greenback as a legal tender. The income tax law during the war was sustained as entirely within the scope of the constitution, but in the late decision upon the new income tax law, it is torn in shreds and many provisions rejected on the grounds of being in conflict with the constitution. The late decision came from an evenly divided court. Justice Field rules against the whole law as unconstitutional, while Justice White sustains it as a whole. The court stood four to fourjustice Jackson’s health not permitting him to sit in the case. “When doctors disagree who shall decide?” is an old saying that will apply to our Supreme court.