People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1896 — Page 5
AN ENORMOUS LOSS.
AN EXPERIENCED MINER OF MONTANA WRITES A LETTER. Mr. Joseph K. Clark In a Letter to General Paul Van Dervoort Gives Some Valuable Reasons Why Silver Should Be Remonetized. feutte, Mont., Dec. 18,1895. Hon. Paul Van Dervoort, Omaha, Neb. Dear Sir: Agreeable to promise I send you a few of the material facts relative to the silver question, and Which I trust may throw a little more light on the great problem of the day — a problem with which many, of the eastern people are not familiar. In 1893, when the price of silver dropped to 59 cents per ounce, the deep ■liver mines of Montana, and in fact all mining states and territories, had sufficient ore reserves opened up and exposed to last from one to two years. The great drop in silver, with its attendant general financial crash in 1893, ■o discouraged the silver producers that development work on the large mines came to a standstill, and only the reserve bodies of ore were taken out and treated. These reserves have been completely exhausted up to date, and no profit accrued to the owners. I will cite you to the Alice, Moulton and Lexington, which were numbered among the largest silver producing mines of the world, and fifty other mines in Butte alone, whose machinery is now lying idle. There are in this, the greatest mining camp on earth, a few leasers working some of the best properties, and making only a bare living. In Philipsburg, Granite county, the Bimetallic and Granite Mountain, two mines which have paid several millions of dollars in dividends, are now closed down on account of the low price of silver.
} The Elkhorn, in Jefferson county, which has been a divident paying bonanza for fifteen years, recently published to the world the fact that it must succumb to the inevitable—that their great ore bodies were exhausted. Look carefully over the mining field, and see if you can find one rich producing silver mine. The bonanzas, which held such' conspicuous places in the mining world, are things of the past. Today but one is left —the Ontario, of Utah, and that is being worked at a small profit only. It is true that there are left a few silver urines from which the rich bodies of ore have not been all taken out. These, however, will soon become exhausted, if steadily worked. When and Where have any large silver mines been found of late years? The Molly Gibson, located in Colorado, is the only one, and like the Alice, Moulton and Lexington, it is lying idle today. I mention, these facts as evidence that silver mines are not being sought after or prospected for, because they may not be found, and would not pay if discovered. When one is found, in the search for copper, the claim is recorded, represented, and left idle in hopes that some day in the near future silver will reach a paying basis. There are, no doubt, very many small silver leads yet undiscovered, and had silver not been demonetized, there would be today at least three thousand of them, in the states and territories, working steadily. These three thousand mines would give employment to fifty thousand men. Look carefully now for the result of the labor and product of these fifty thousand miners. These men, kept steadily at work, would fcause, indirectly, the employment of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 workmen in the east, simply because to open and develop three thousand mines, vast amounts of machinery would be required, and the army of men engaged in these mines would have to be fed and clothed. To produce the machinery, clothing and food, would require the services of a ten times greater number of men. Again, the product of the mines would increase the number of I wage earners who manufacture works of art —every article for which silver is used.
Remonetize silver, and at least onehalf million men in the east who are now idle will have employment, and I firmly believe the number would be twice one-half million. At the same ' time there would be an increase in wages, for when the west is prosperous high wages ,are always paid, and high wages mean a more generous distribution of money. TSe gold bugs say we “are making an overproduction of that “it can be produced for 25 cents per ounce with profit.” Let us look at this matter intelligently. When we take into consideration the immense number of men who have been engaged in prospecting for silver mines; the hundreds of “niinlS” which do and never have produced; the millions of dollars expended in the erection of buildings, purchase and planting of machinery on properties which have never returned a penny of profit, or even returned the original investment, and with these expenditures made an honest comparison, it will be plainly seen that the gold bug estimate of 25 cents per ounce for cost of production loses its honesty of statement, and appears only as a ridiculous assertion, made with deliberate intention to falsify. I will illustrate with indisputable figures how rapidly the silver production is falling off, and more particularly with the price at or near 67 cents per 'ounce. In 1891 the production was $75,416,500. , In 1882 the production amounted to >74,989,90Q. In 1894 it dropped to 49,500,000 ounces. For 1895 tjihe actual production will not exceed 33,000.000 ounces.
At this rate of decrease the produetion in 1896 will be less that 25,000,000 ounces. Every laborer, artisan, mechanic, farmer, merchant and professional man in these United States should give this subject his earnest thought that his mind may more easily grasp the monetary situation- with a realizing sense of its importance. With our mines idle this decrease will continue until, in a very few years, silver will only be known as a by-product with copper and gold, and will not exceed, all told, over 15,000,000 ounces. The demand for silver to be used in art and manufacture may possibly act in a certain degree as a stimulus to silver mining industry.- Without a demand of this nature it will require the entire amount of the by-product to supply the art trade only. With low prices where is the world’s supply to come from? America will have no silver to sell. This country and Mexico have produced over onehalf the silver in the world at this time. Mexico is using the greater part of all the silver she produces, and we can readily see how th£t country makes herself prosperous by so doing. She pays all her help with silver at a ratio of 16 to 1, and sells her products, aside from silver, in gold countries, receiving payment in gold. Such manner of transacting business makes silver countries prosperous, while gold countries deteriorate commercially and financially. Many of the politicians of today are coupling silver with tariff. While I am for tariff, I am for silver first, as being a paramount issue. Japan and China are both silver countries. They can as easily make or manufacture any needed article as can the United States. With monometallism, Japan and China are given 75 per cent advantage to start with. The difference between gold and silver at present gives them 50 per cent advantage, while the difference in price of labor in other countries and ours is over 25 per cent; hence 75 per cent is a small estimate. With their cheap labor to contend with, how are we to shut out their wares and products? Can we raise the tariff high enough to do so?
This is one of the gravest’ questions we have to contend with. Shall we allow the gold bugs of England and the United States to reduce our free-born laboring classes to a 16vel with the Mongolian or enslaved coolies of Asiatic countries? Emphatically, No! But how prevent it? The simplest thing imaginable. Throw political affiliations aside; ignore all party ties on this important issue, and vote for the presidential candidate who is known to favor the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1. Take John Sherman from 1873 to the present time for example, with Grover Cleveland and John G. Carlisle as auxiliaries, and see where they, with their monometallist proclivities and teachings, and administrative acts, have placed us. In the mining states and territories we see deserted towns, idle machinery, desolate houses, poverty, starvation, misery, misery, misery, and a terrible increase in the crime which follows and is the outcome of want and suffering. Railroads, too, are mostly in the hands of receivers, and trains are running short-handed with crews working at pitifully low wages. Farmers are in a still worse condition. For all they sell they receive less than the cost of production, and apparently do not khow the cause. A few days since .1 met a farmer in Omaha, Neb. He told me corn in the country was worth but 12% cents per bushel. That farmers were selling their hogs at so low a figure they had to do without meat at home. That they were compelled to do this to procure the necessaries more essential to life, and also to pay their taxes. I regret to learn that this state of affairs exists to a great extent in all the agricultural states. In some of the states farmers are burning corn because they have no money to buy coal, or they find corn so much cheaper, as fuel. I ask in all honesty, Are such things necessary in a land so naturally blessed as our own America? So rich in its millions of resouces?
Is there no remedy? I answer, Yes! By the ballot. At the coming presidential election vote for a candidate who is a pronounced silverite, who favors the free coinage of silver and gold at a ratio of 16 to 1, and who will not betray your confidence after his election. It will require several years to place us on the prosperous footing we enjoyed twenty years ago. There are but few in the east who realize the great importance of this silver question or understand it in its entirety; who appreciate the fact that we have but just passed through the greatest silver producing era the world has known for four thousand years. It is the third of its kind, and coveys a space of thirty-five years, or since the discovery of the famous Comstock in Nevada. . With most of the silver nearly worked out history is liable to repeat itself, and may not favor us with another such production for a thousand or even five thousand years. Allowing silver is remonetized at 16 to 1, the production will increase but slowly. The reason is that the greater number of old mines are worked out, and there is but little hopes of finding new ones of their past magnitude. People in the east, generally, have but little knowledge of the silver mines in the Rocky mountains; know nothing whatever of their workings; are ignorant of how silver is produced, where it comes from, how it there, or why it should beconhe exhausted. I have personally examined very many mines on the Pacific slope, and in the interior, and have reliable informa-
THE PEOPLE’S PILOT, RENSSELAER, IND., THURSDAY. JAN. 23. 189 S.
tion from other mines as to their present condition and wealth. I can say truthfully that the number of silver mines showing good ore below the 1,000 foot level will not equal the number of fingers on one's hands; and further, I may say that I am familiar with many mines throughout Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Colorado, which do not show good paying ore below the 600 or 700 foot levels. Copper mines are not referred to. They are different. The copper mines of Butte, for instance, improve with depth, and some of them are nearly or quite 1,700 feet deep. They produce, however, but little silver. Seven million ounces per annum will cover all the by-product from copper and lead in Montana at the present time. Silver produced in this way is very expensive, as it must necessarily go through several treatments before it gets into fine bars. With silver at a low figure it does not more than pay for treatment when it is produced with copper. I could give a thousand more reasons why this country should have free silver coinage at a ratio of 16 to 1, but my letter has grown longer than I at first intended it should be. The things mentioned are matters of history, some of them unwritten, it is true, but nevertheless truths that will remain with us forever. With every wish for your success in the great cause you have so nobly es-_ poused, I have the honor to be, very truly yeors,
ENGLAND'S POLICY.
The Terror of the World —The Centralization of Wealth. Philadelphia American: No engine proved so mighty, no instrument so powerful and unfailing, in the transference of property from the producing to the money lending classes, and the consequent centralization of wealth in | the hands o the few, as the single gold standard. Having discarded silver and gained control over the gold money of the world, the creditor classes the producing classes absolutely at their mercy, for, by displacing sili ver, the demand for gold has been doubled, and continues to increase as trade and population grow. And with this increase and increasing demand, gold has and must continue to rise in value, resulting in a shrinkage in the value of the property of the producers, and an increase in the burden of all debtors in a like ratio. No one ever perceived this more clearly than Samuel Lloyd, Who rose to the head of one of London’s greatest banking firms, a firm afterward merged into the London and Westminster bank —the recognized chief of the moneyed interests during,the second quarter of the century, the author of the bank restriction act of 1844 —a .man who influenced the policy of England, we might safely add of the world, more than any other man in his time. Lloyd’s first great aim was to limit the issue of the bank of England and thus rigidly limit the currency of England to" the gold available for money. This was accomplished by thg bank act of 1844, which required that the bank of England hold pound for pound in gold in its vaults against every pound of paper outstanding in excess of £14,000,000. Thus securing an inelastic currency that could not be increased in obedience to the increased demands of trade, save by addition to the stock of gold, Lloyd felt that he had placed the debtor classes prostrate at the feet of their creditors. The legal tender money being insufficient to carry on the trade, and being absolutely fixed, he saw that payment was only made possible to their debtors when the creditors saw fit to loan them the means. It followed that when the creditor classes chose to contract loans, payment be- j came impossible, and they thus -had it ' in their power to forfeit the property of their debtors. Lloyd reasoned that with expanding trade, and a currency fixed absolutely by the quantity of gold in. the country, money must rise in value as the demand thrown upon it by growing population and expanding trade increased, for he deemed it impossible that the production of gold would be such as to make possible an increase in the quan- ' tity of gold in use as money as fast as population and trade grew. He perceived that as gold became more and more valuable it would become more "i and more difficult for debtors to pay ; their debts, and saw that debtors thus becoming more and more dependent on loans of the creditor class to enable them to meet payment of interest and principal, debtor would be forced — whenever the creditor classes systematically contracted loans —to surrender their property on such terms as creditors might dictate.
He foresaw that under such contraction prices would fall to a lower level than in other nations, that then gold would flow into England, and that this influx would increase the quantity of money and raise prices, to the great benefit of the creditor class, who could sell the property of the debtors during the panic, at an advance. The property of one class of debtors having once been forfeited and then sold at an advance to a new set of hopeful producers, the wheels of contraction could again be put in motion, another panic precipitated, and another set of debtors shorn of their property. , ' Fortunately for the producing classes of the world, the great discoveries of gold in California and Australia upset Lloyd’s plans. For a time attempts at contraction miscarried and the world prospered. But while the contractionists failed in their effort to demonetize gold in 1850-’55, the succeeded in de monetizing silver 20 years later, and now we see Samuel Lloyd's policy being put in force, with the result that the few are being enriched at the expense of the many.
JOSEPH K. CLARK.
THE LATEST GOLD PLOT.
Only a “■***• Play" to Secure Mora Bonds and Taxes. The final move in the latest gold plot has been made. The president’s third message represents the danger that “threatens” us of losing an adequate gold reserve and requests that congress do not adjourn until it shall have passed remedial financial legislation. Mr. Cleveland desires to fasten more firmly upon this country the rule of gold monometallism. His motive in this determination need not be speculated upon in this discussion. The friends of free silver, however, see a double nieaning in each step which the president has taken since congress met. His general message was Mr. Cleveland’s first card. He pointed out that financial legislation was needed. He referred to the alleged absurdity of the silver craze, dismissing the claims of free coinage without argument. All his talk was of gold, and his message was plainly a suggestion for another bond issue. , For some Inscrutable reason Mr. Carlisle’s supplement tb the president’s message was delayed. Was this a play for effect? Mr. Carlise came out boldly and said what Mr. Cleveland had hinted. Bonds, bonds, gold and bonds was the burden of his song. Then the “war message” was sprung. The hallowed shade of Monroe was called up and set to the ignoble task of tail-twisting for political effect. The ever-ready patriotism of the American people was roused, perhaps to a point upon which Mr. Cleveland had not calculated. There was much “war talk” and securities in Wall street took a great slump under the hammer of Lombard stret. The Rothschilds conferred with other barons of London in one of those ostensibly “secret” meetings. Immediately the representatives in Wall street of British money lenders announced their intentions of withdrawing several millions of gold from the treasury. On the gold basis things looked a little squally. While the country was in the throes of excitement, and those who fall down before the gold fetich were anxiously watching the fading reserve, came the president’s third message advocating prompt action by congress to maintain the gold reserve. Close upon its heels followed the Inspired story that a deep, dark British plot has been hatched to rob us of our credit through the reduction of our much-talked-of reserve. Then it was given out from the cabinet that the president favors the issuance of a billioh dollars of gold bonds. England could never drain such a reserve as that —never! nevUr! She could not, but the burden of a colossal debt would have been fastened on us. Will congress respond to the Groverian command? Not if the vote in the senate on the coinage resolution and the sentiments of senators be any indication. There is a remedy and the senate has seen it and consented to examine it. It is the free coinage of gold and silver. The passage of a free coinage law by the United States would create more real consternation in England than a declaration of war. —St. Louis Chronicle.
A Great Scheme.
Cleveland promised the Rothschild gang of speculators that he Would prove to them that the American people were the most obedient and most devoted lot of slaves that ever lived. • That American securities based on the life aifd the blood of American citizens were the best investments in the world. That one little word would fire the American heart with every inspiration of patriotic honor and that he could make fools of ten milliUn American voters with a message just prepared on purpose to depress the values of American securities and at the same time give additional evidence of their value to investors. The result has been all that he promised —all that any one could ask. There" is no longer any doubt that the average American would rejoice at the opportunity to starve while helping to pay the interest on bonds and mortgages held by British speculators. It was a grand scheme to create a panic and depress prices by alarming the small holders while those who understood the trick were assured of the value of these securities and took them all in at low figures. Cleveland, under the pretense of an official patriotic act, made not less than $300,000,000 in one week for the worst enemies to America that there are on earth. —Express. *
Political Freedom.
In the United States senate, March 4, 1881, in reply to the attack made by Senator Hill, of Georgia, on Senator Mahone, of Virginia, because Mahone had "left the Democratic party,” United States Senator John A. Logan said: “I was a Democrat once, tbo, and I had a right to ehapge my opinions, and I did change them. The man who will not change his opinions when he is honestly convinced that he was in error is a man who is not entitled to the reepect of men;” and then, turning to Senator Hill, he added: "If a man happens to differ with you, tyranny of political opinion in your section of the country is such that you undertake to lash him upon the world and try to expose him to the gaze of the public as a man unfaithful to his trust. We have no such tyranny of opinion in the country where I live; and it will be better for your section when such notions are 'driven to the shades and retired from the action of your people.” Yet, in the face of these brave words, a Kansas Republican legislature changed the name of St. John county to Logan, for the sole reason that ex-Gov-ernor St. John had “left the party.”— Agitator
CASUALTIES.
The east-bound mail train on the Louisville, Evansville and St Louis Railroad, which left St Louis at 8.25 a. m. Sunday and was due to arrive at Louisville at 5:40 p. m„ was wrecked at Gray’s switch, fourteen miles west of Huntingsburg, Ind. The fireman was killed. While five men were working on a tower of the new Methodist church at Kokomo, Ind., the scaffold broke, giving them a fal of forty feet. Joseph McGowan, William Spurgeon and Earl Chase were badly crushed and may die. An Illinois Central passenger train ran into an open switch at Mud Lake, seven miles east of Springfield, 111. The engine and baggage car were thrown off the track and turned over. The engine was badly damaged and the baggage car is a tptal wreck. The engineer and firemen were badly hurt. John Carroll, a boy employed in Lozier’s bicycle factory at Toronto, Ont., fell into a vat of boiling water and was scalded to death. John Chasteen, 65 years old, a native of Scots county, was run down by a passenger train near Jeffersonville,lnd., and killed instantly. The little daughter of Mrs. Clara Meyers, of Toledo, Ohio, fell from a cab at Wabash, Ind., and was run over. She may not recover.
FOREIGN.
The czar is said to have teld Prince Von Radolin that he entirely concurred in the views and aims of Emperor William, who was taking the lead against England’s arrogance, and added that the German emperor could firmly rely on his support and the support of the states friendly to Russia —namely, France and the United States. Spain, It Is said, made a proposition to Great Britain to buy the island of Cuba. Lord Salisbury, it Is Intimated, acocrdlng to Cuban authority, sounded the United States on the subject, and the reply was President Cleveland’s vigorous enunciation of the Monroe doctrine. General Baratiori, In command of Italian forces in Abyssinia, telegraphs to the government that the Italians have repulsed several fresh attacks by the Shoans on Makeleh, the losses being slight. Gen. Gomez has re-entered Havana Province from Plnar del Rio. He encountered a Spanish force under Suarez Valdez Sunday three miles from Batabano, and a desperate fight followed. It is believed in London that there is some truth in the rumors that Great Britain has purchased Delagoa Bay from Portugal. A decree has been gazetted at Paris prohibiting the export from France or the French colonies of warlike munitions intended for the island of Cuba. Twenty-two members of the Reform committee, including Col. Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes, Sir Drummond Dunbar, Mr. Lionel Phillips, and Dr. Sauer, were arrested at Johannesburg on the charge of high treason and conveyed under escort to Pretoria. It is semi-officially stated at London that no such movement of British forces toward the boundary in the disputed 1 territory in Venezuela, as indicated in the dispatches from Caracas, via New York, has Men contemplated by Great Britain, and that no addition has been made to the small force of police which has been stationed for some time past in the Uruan district.
CRIME.
An incendiary fire Sunday destroyed a business block at Crawford, Neb., and caused a loss of $70,000. The Crawford Commercial was among the losers. A high wind prevailed. Ex-City Treasurer Henry Bolin of Omaha occupies a cell at the county jail with no prospect of giving bond. He is charged with embezzlement. He says he does not know what became of the money. He has not got a dollar. One hundred and fifteen thousand dollars of the city cash has disappeared and there is nothing to show where the bulk of it went. Patrick Morris, a white railroad hand, and his colored wife were lynched oy a mob near New Orleans. They lived in a flat boat near the Westwego wharf of the Texas Pacific Railroad, a few miles above the city on the opposite side of the river. Patrolman Michael Sammon of tne Seventh Precinct Police Station at Buffalo shot his sergeant, Timothy Charles Cantlin, at the foot of Van Renselaer street, the latter dying at the Emergency Hospital. At Inland, Q. T„ the sheriff of Woods county, with a posse, had a fight with a band of horse thieves. Jeff Cogtes, the leader, was shot dead and three others of the band were badly wounded. One man of the sheriff’s posse was seriously wounded. Dillon Cotton, colored, has been held to the grand jury by Justice McKane of East St. Louis on the charge of murdering Professor C. H. Thompson on Dec. 27. Stanhope Royster, the slayer of E. W. McFarland at Boone,lowa, has waived examination and been admitted to bail. His bond was fixed at $5,000, which was furnished by his neighbors, and he is at large. He will probably be tried at once. Tn the United Spates court, at Springfield, 111., William O’Connor pleaded guilty to a charge of passing counterfeit coin, and was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. Prosecutor W. D. Scanlan, of Elwood, Ind., has decided to withdraw the indictment against George Crull, charged with complicity in the William Foust murder. Governor Altgeld has issued a proclamation offering a reward of S2OO for the arrest and conviction of Charles H. Smith, and an unknown man called "Al,” who are wanted at Milton, Dupage county for the murder of Edward Ot't.
THE BANKERS WIN.
ANOTHER BATCH OF BONDS THROWN TO THE WOLVES. I : The Conspiracy, Unchecked by a Republican Congress, Adds Another Burden on Unborn Generations —Populists Must Take Advantage Now. “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," and some evils are sufficient for many days to come. It has been quite evident for some time that another bond issue would become necessary. This time it is to be 1100,000,000. The conspirators are growing bolder. A Washington dispatch dated December 28, 1895, says: “Plates have been prepared at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for the new issue of bonds. They provide for 4 per cent coupon thirty-year bonds. The amount of the issue for which arrangements have been made to print 1a 1100,000,000. The president has poned the order for the printing in the hope that probable action by Congress would stay the drain of the gold reserve. Arrangements have been made practically with Morgan, Drexel and others to take the bulk of the bonds if it shall turn out that heavy withdrawals of gold necessitates prompt action. If there shall appear to be no great haste the government will advertise the issue. The president has done all that is preliminary to an issue of bonds. He is anxious to wait a little longer, if possible, and see if the senate will not give some sign of favorable action. The finance committee of the senate will meet on Tuesday, and will have the tariff and the bond bills passed by the house under consideration. The president does not wish to issue the bonds until after that meeting if he can help it.
“A very close watch is being kept on the New York money market. It was the Impression at the treasury department today that the issue of bonds could not be delayed longer than Monday. Indeed, there were rumors current at the department all day that the call for blds would be given out today. At the White House conference yesterday the idea of trying to make this a popular loan was discussed. The conclusion was reached that it would not be feasible at this time for two reasons. One is that thjp gold will be needed in a hurry. The other is that if the bonds were sold in small amounts the buyers would go to the sub-treasuries with greenbacks and draw out gold to pay for them. In this way the government would lose almost as much gold as it would gain. The members of th* syndicate hold large quantities of gold which they have been collecting, and if the bonds are sold to them they will turn this into the treasury, thereby adding the price of the bonds to the stock already there.” Of course “the members of the syndicate hold large quantities of gold,” and anybody with sense enough to pound sand In a rat hole knows that they have it for the express purpose of raiding the treasury and forcing the issue of bonds. There is no law compelling the secretary of the treasury to pay out gold for the treasury notes presented there. The payment of such notes in silver would stop the raid on the treasury. There is not state in the union where, if a man is sued for one thousand dollars, the debtor may not discharge the whole of the debt by the payment in silver dollars. And the creditor has no choice in the matter. It is for the debtor to determine whether it is more pay In silver dollars, gold or greenbacks. This is the law in the case which is applicable to all matters between individuals. The secretary has no right, by law or implication, to say that the creditor may demand gold if he chooses to do so. It is this very decision that has caused the present financial muddle. It is an absolute surrender of government control of the currency to a gang of greedy bank conspirators. “The syndicates are ready to take the bonds.” Of course they are. And the treacherous, truckling, traitorous jackasses we have in Washington are ready to turn them over to this gang of thieves who seek to cover up their treachery under the name of syndicate. Syndicate is only the devil’s name for a gang of cowardly robbers. But we’ll come to the last straw after a while and then somebody will have to answer for this betrayal of the people’s liberties.
He Knows!
Every man knows enough about the money question to know that money as regards the people, Is scarce and hard to get. He knows also that prices are low. He knows as well, that money was made scarce by suspending the coinage of silver. He knows also that the men who create wealth don’t get it. He knows that a system that makes millionaires on the one hand and paupers on the other is radically wrong. He knows that it has been sung into his ears that the bankers know all about the currency and ought to be 16ft alone in managing it. He knows he has voted to sustain that proposition. He knows that the result is, the banker got rich while he got poor. He knows that he has been told that “trusts are private affairs,” with which the law has no business to interfere. He knows that the same trusts have raised the prices of the necessities of life and robbed the people. He knows that both old parties, one of which he has been voting for, has been fostering these trusts and the banks. He knows that he has been acting a “gol darned” fool. Direct legislation would lodge the power in the hands of the people, and me st of the political corruption in our legislatures would be rooted out.
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