People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1896 — Debt and Bond Blessings. [ARTICLE]

Debt and Bond Blessings.

To tlie Editor of the People’s Pilot. I want to speak my piece about the court house. I am not surprised at the action of our worthy commissioners, they are republicans; their effort to put the tax payers of the county under an interest bearing debt of a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand dollars is in perfect harmony with the policy of their party, and if the honorable board were democrats I could truthfully say the same thing. For years both the old parties have manifested much interest in the developmentof the ‘bond industry,” as John Clark Ridpath calls it. They have been running national, state and county government regardless of cost to the people; spending morey as though it were water, and when they cannot find it in the treasury they get it by putting more intorest bearing bonds upon the tax payers; by this method they have developed the most wonderful industry ever known to any civilization; they have made tens of thousands of millionaires and ixiillions of tenants slaves and paupers; they have largely increased bankruptcy, suicide and murder, and still seem intent on carrying out the same policy.

I am neither a democrat nor a republican, but if I had helped to elect men upon such platforms and pledged to such a policy I would not turn and kick them for carrying it out. They tell us that debt and bonds are blessings; they may be so to those who own them and collect them, but certainly not to those who have them to pay. They believe in bonds, they advocate bonds, big bonds and little bonds, long bonds and short bonds, but always interest bearing bonds, with principal and interest payable in gold. They believe also in carrying an idle hundred million in the treasury; they believe in national banks based upon bonds; they believe also in trusts, syndicates and corporations; these are some of the luxuries we have received at their hands and are now enjoyirig the benefits of. I think that all interest bearing debt ought to be avoided as much as possible by all who expect to succeed financially. Henry Ward Beecher once said that “in terest eats as fast when a man is asleep as when he is awake."” At the present time I think we can get along better with the old court house than we could with the new one and the hungry bonds feeding upon us. All bonds, banks, syndicates, trusts and corporations are always hungry and always eating (they are created for that purpose) and the faster they eat the more they are worth to their owners and holders; they feed upon the labor and legitimate industries of the country and in proportion to their increase does labor fade and perish. Give

us sound money and plenty of it and we will build the court house without bonds. Spmesay there is nothing that improves a county like public improvements; if this be a fact why not turn all over to the commissioners and give the county a big boom. I list my property honestly and have so far succeeded in getting my tax paid, but have frequently been compelled property for less than it cost me to get the money. I don’t believe in bonds, and the time to protest is election day and the place the ballot box. Tax Payer.