People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1895 — FROM GEN. WEAVER. [ARTICLE]

FROM GEN. WEAVER.

bE SAYS A WORD OF PRAISE FOR OUR FIGHTERS. The Great Battle for Human Righta Is On —Six Months Heavy firing and Our Ranks Are Still Unbroken and Not a Man Lost. lowa Tribune: The reform forces should take courage. After twenty years of continuous seige we have forced the enemy to march out and accept battle and have drawn the fire of his heaviest guns. His weightiest projectiles have not penetrated or cracked a single plate in the reform armor. Cleveland, Carlisle, Sherman, Eckles, Allison, McLaughlin and a host of lesser lights have all speoken. Bankers’ and brokers’ conventions, boards of trade and gold standard literary bureaus have kept up a continual fusilade for a full half year, but they have failed to break our line or to bring down a single one of our banners. Their stale platitudes have all been caught and punctured like so many puff-balls. From a thousand platforms their sophistries have been riddled and riven and given to the four winds. There are hundreds of farmers and laboring men, thanks to the revival of economic learning during the past twenty years, who can answer and who have answered the ablest of these champions point for point and speech for speech. The speeches of Carlisle uttered years ago. and those of Allison and Sherman in days lang syne, have risen up like gibbering ghosts to fully answer and give the lie to all these apostate statesmen are saying at the present time. In faot there are two Carlisles, two Allisons and two John Shermans —those of former years, strong, agile defenders of the weak and the oppressed, and the fallen, crouching, sycophantic apologists of to-day, who, to further a bad cause, are now masquerading under names once made great by services rendered in their better days in behalf of the people. They are now sowing to the wind, and are certain to reap a cyclone of popular indignation. The insincerity of the leading advocates of the gold standard is apparent upon the face of everything they say. It is plain that they are depending upon two things for victory—the money power of their backers and the terrors of the party lash. By the former they control the machinery of the heretofore dominant parties, and through it they wield the power of life and death over the debt-ridden, homeless and helpless people. The latter empowers them to visit the slightest assertion of personal independence with the terrors of the political blacklist, petty boycotts, persecutions and business ostracism. The writer has studied with care all the speeches delivered of late by the champions of the gold standard. Their utter hollowness and lack of breadth, candor, depth and grasp must be apparent to all candid readers. They bear a central trade mark as though made to order in some gold standard sweatshop and sent out to b» committed and

declaimed before the people. They one and all ignore and leave out of the discussion the following important factors:

The glaring inadequacy of the present scale of wages, the ruinously low range of agricultural prices and the baleful effects of such conditions upon the life, morals and safety of society. The fact that fifty-two per cent of the families in the United States are homeless, and that at the present rate of wages and opportunity for employment they will never be able to buy back their lost Inheritance.

The vast army of the unemployed who are kept in enforced idleness as a reserve force for plutocracy to fall back upon in case of strikes and lockouts, and as a kind of blazing hell of torture into which those now employed may expect to be plunged if they are not obedient, docile and contented. The fact that the aggregate Indebtedness of the people reaches, at a conservative estimate, $30,000,000,000, with an average interest rate of 7 per cant, mostly payable quarterly and half yearly, which involves an annua) interest charge of over $2,000,000,000. That this interest charge alone amounts to more than double the sum of money in actual circulation among the people. That it is shown by extra census bulletin No. 71 that the annua) interest charge on real estate mortgage indebtedness alone reaches, in round numbers, the startling sum of $400,000.000, which is nearly one-half of the total sum of money in actual circulation. That federal taxes alone eat up annually over $400,000,000 more.

The relation which these vast sums bear to our volume of money, and the fact that prompt payment of interest and taxes is always exacted, and that this money returns but slowly through sluggish channels to the people. The amount of ready money nyssary to enable the railroads, which are but a single arm of our commerce, to do a spot cash business and to keep their systems in successful operation; and that this money passes at once, as through a conduit, to eastern money centers and that the profits resulting from its use largely stay there.

, The production of the precious metals as compared with their increased consumption, growth of population and increase of business. The fact that modern facilities for inter-communication between all parts of our vast country call for an immense increase of circulating medium as compared with the sluggish, plodding days of the covered wagon and the stage coach. There is not one of these gold standard champions who would be willing to give, or ever has given, to the public an honest and impartial statement of the amount of circulating medium at the close of the war, as stated by Secretaries McCullough and Fessenden, nor as subsequently frankly told by ex-Comptroller Knox. Ttfey ignore the important truth ■that the circulation of our currency at that time was confined to less than 25,000,000 people residing in the northern states. They close their eyes to the fact that our money-using population is now 70.-

000,000, which shows an Increase of 180 per cent in such population since the bugles of the two armies called us to peace, and that in point of fact nqt one dollar has been provided»for this vast addition of 45,000,000 souls.

They shut their eyes to the effect of a plentiful currency as compared with a restricted volume of money as plainly set forth in the history of England during her 25 years of Napoleonic wars and in that of the United States during our late war. These mighty witnesses condemn them and they stubbornly refuse to hear either. All these important considerations are cast aside as unworthy their exalted notice, and the people are exhorted to stand by “sound money” and warned to shun the “cheap dollar,” the “flfty-cent dollar,” the “dishonest dollar,” and they are exhorted to stand up resolutely and shield us from the inevitable “silver dump” which is certain to engulf us all if our mints should again be opened to unrestricted coinage.

They solemnly asseverate that it is their holy desire that the “poor man’s dollar shall be as good as the rich man’s dollar” which impels them to fight silver to the death. Such impudence would make the devil blush like a girl of 16. When were these tricksters ever in favor of making the poor man’s dollar equal to the rich man’s? Are.they not the self-same conspirators who, despite the protest of Thaddeus Stevens, stabbed the greenback In war times for the very purpose of forcing the poor soldier to take a depreciated dollar while they reserved the right to demand a gold dollar for themselves of double value? Are they not the very self-same men, reinforced by a younger horde of like feather, whom Secretary Fessenden denounced as a band of treasonable conspirators and called for their punishment as common felons?

When silver was partially restored by the Bland-Allison act did not these same fellows clamor for an exception clause which enables them to discard the poor man’s dollar by stipulation? Did they not duplicate these outrageous discriminations in the laws which authorized the silver certificate and the Sherman notes? And do not these sharks force borrowers every day and everywhere to contract to pay in gold, thus discarding one-half of our metal money? Four times have they procured the insertion of exception clauses in our currency laws—clauses which in effect give us two characters of money—one for the rich and another for the poor. Out upon such hypocrisy! The people should fairly hoot these brazen blatherskites from their presence. Men with such records are incapable of fairly and honestly discussing any question. In later communications we shall state the real issue before the country and notice specifically some of the gold-bug contentions. J. B. WEAVER.

The fact the People’s party is the only one the gold-bugs, trusts, corporations and combines are fighting is evidence that it is the only party that can be relied upon to prt down those evils.