People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1896 — An Injunction is Possible. [ARTICLE]

An Injunction is Possible.

American people amount to about forty-five bil--1 ions of dollars. Us this debt less than ten per

♦ln the spring of 1895 the gold propaganda sent out from New York a number of distinguished advocates to teach the people how business is reviving, how the financial question is solved, how silver is dead, and in particular how easy and admirable has been the change from the bimetallic basis of currency to gold monometallism. In this interest Mr. Chauncey M. Depew appeared at Detroit and delivered an oration in which it were hard to say whether the wit were more stale or the facts more false. He showed that it was easy for the American people to extricate themselves from debt by the standard of gold, for the reason that the public and private indebtedness of the people is only fourteen billions of dollars. One might regard this statement as being interested and excogitated from the prejudice of the orator, but for the suspicion that he may have obtained his figures from Upton’s financial statistics in the Census of 1890! cent is held abroad. Most of the foreign holding is in Great Britain. Yet by the bond of this ten per cent the United States has become an appenage of Great Britain. The independence which we thought we had achieved a hundred and twenty years ago and which we supposed we had confirmed fourscore years ago has been reconverted into a miserable dependency which might suggest to a pessimist that it would have been better never to break with our good mother at all!

The present aspect of the world is that of one centralized power, haeing its seat in London, with outlying dependencies. India with nearly four hundred millions is one dependency;.Australia with four millions is another dependency; Canada with six millions is a third; the United States with seventy millions is a fourth; the states of the Latin Union are the fifth. Germany and Russia are flattered with the belief that they are members of the league; but as a matter of fact they are only Carabaceres and Lebrun in consulate. The First Consul—and the only one of auy importance—has his headquarters in the Bank of England. It is now only a question how the robbers who have despoiled mankind in the two civilized continents by means of the Bond and the Dollar are going to get off with their swag. They must have a little time and opportunity. In order to secure these, they cajole the nations with pleasing delusions and faucies. One of these fancies is impending universal war. War is an exciting circumstance, and the prospect of war serves to distract the attention of peoples from the wrongs which they have suffered. The rumor of worldwide war is the substance of the daily news. People read it and believe it; Sh.ylock is in ecstasies over the success of his ruse, and if he thought he could sell more bonds he would plunge all nations into a bloody and exterminating conflict. Another one of the illusions is the fictitious discovery of gold. The propaganda having its headquarters in London and its American branch in William Street, New York, has been engaged during the year 1895 in the dissemination of the news of gold discoveries in all parisof the world.

*Of this propaganda the London Bankers' Magazine is the principal organ. Its last article on the subject before the publication of the present number of the Arena is “A Flood of Gold Coining." According to this disinterested organ the danger at present is not a scarcity of gold, but the peril that the commercial and industrial world will soon be overwhelmed with an avalanche of that metal. All the mines of the world are spouting streams of jt. It is doubtful whether coinage can absorb the output; there is cause for alarm lest the fall in the precious stuff shall make it necessary for “the business interests of the world" to place rigorous limits on its coinage. “To-day," says the magazine, “it is not a scramble for gold, but a coming glut of gold, that gives cause for anxiety The golden stream has but just started to flow in on us, and the full force of its rising tide is yet far bff. Year by year it will swell in volume, as the mining mania which is being let loose in every part of the world becomes more and more prolific. The world's production of gold has almost doubled itself within the short period of seven years. Recent progress is nothing compared wiih what has been predicted for the next few years. Strangely enough, the article then goes on to show that a large part of “the golden flood" is derived from tailings! “In some cases," says the article, "as much as a fourth of the gross income is derived from tailings.” Miraculous is that while the out pouring flood of gold from all the world is about to deluge the commarce and industries of mankind and entail a depreciated dollar, the miners of South Africa even in the Randt. are represented as toiling with cyanide among the tailings to get "a fourth of the gross income. • As matter of fact, this article in the Bankers' Magazine was written for American consumption. It was intended to be copied, as it has been copied, by the metropolitan press, and thence diffused to all American newspapers gratis for their encouragement! The chairman of the countycommittee is thus enabled just before the fall elections to tell Lis followers that a flood of gold is coming!

South Africa is teeming with gold; the mountains of South America are founded on gold, and the outcroppings of it are seen in many parts; the Australian hills are made of gold; California is nothing but gold; the Alaskan mines are also rich in gold; the very sea-bottom on several coasis reaching out for leagues is a mire of gold; new discoveries are made in Colorado and Arizona and New Mexico and Georgia. Added finds are heralded with every mail. Soon it will be that gold shall be a drug in the streets; it shall be heaped in crates, from which the passerby may help himself and his friends. The price of gold will thus be brought down, and We, the Manageri of the Enterprise, will have to adopt strenuous measures to prevent the overcoinage of gold as money. Strange that all this ineffable lying should be propagated by the press and be believed by an intelligent people! Another pleasing fancy of the Goldites is the great and prosperous revival of business. Why, here is a marvellous paradox. Business, according to the great disinterested organs of public opinion, revives and does not revive! Manufac-

tures flourish again and do nob flourish again! Enterprise once more goes forward with abound, and enterprise does not bound forward at all, but remains inert and dead! The farmer with his fat lean kine rejoices and weeps! The collapsed bins of ten thousands farmyards are bursting with high low wheat! The gold organ performs this paradox for the reason that it must. According to the organ, the adoption of the Wilson Bill in 1893, in place of the wartariff schedule that had been aggravated to an inflamation by the McKinley Law, prostrated all enterprises, ruined all industries; and neither can the one revive nor the other ever flourish again, until the flamboyant protective scheme shall be restored. Therefore, saith the capitalistic press, business does not flourish again until the wrong shall be righted, after the next presidential election.

But on the other hand, crieth the organ, the adoption of the single gold standard instead of the bimetallic standard of the constitution has restored confidence, and with the restoration of confidence, behold how business revives! All enterprises rise from the dust; all manufactures rekindle their fires and pour forth their treasures. Hence business, in the same act and bj the same token, both revives and does not revive! The proclamation of prosperity and of industrial despair goes forth from the same gold organ on the same day! The fact that the alleged ruin of American industry by the passage of the Wilson Bill and the alleged revival of all American industries by the coincident passage of the Gold Bill of 1893 do not consist seems not at all to trouble advocates and owners of the honest dollar! All this furnishes instruction for the people and amusement for the few whose understandings cannot be darkened with the lying obfuscations of a goldite newspaper.

A final method for the confirmation of the crimes that have been committed against the whole industrial and commercial world is the possession by the Gold Trust of the political organizations in every country where such organizations exist. In America the political parties differ from one another only in the degree of their subserviency to the money power. It always comes to this in the last stage of partisan degeneration. The political parties to-day fawn around the money power just as they fawned around the knees of the slave oligarchy in the ante-bellum days. Our parties also differ a little in their dread of the plutocratic bludgeon. For if we offend plutocracy, who shall pay our bills and load our caissons with the munitions of war? The elections held in the United States for several years have had no other significance than a blind attempt of the disorganized and confused people to punish the authors of their distresses, first one and then the other. The people are still groping in this manner. They are apparently afraid to rise in political insurrection against their masters. They follow their local leaders and the monitions of apolitical press that seems to have gone over almost wholly to the enemy. Ido not know a great newspaper that in its tone is heartily friendly to the common people. The local leaders in politics follow the great leaders, and they the greater, until we arrive at the supreme management and that, in both the dominant parties, is identical in intent and character. An attempt is made to create fictitious issues, bpon which to induce the people to divide and agitate. One boss says, Lo, here; and another boss says, Lo, there.* Now it

*The creed of the Rev. Hosea Biglow is no longer satire, but history'. That creed, victorious alike over liberty and law has become incarnate in the political boss, whose faith and that of his prototype are one: “I du believe thet I should give Wut’s his'n unto Caesar, Fer it’s by him I move an' live, Frum him my bread an' cheese air; I du believe thet all o' me Doth bear his superscription,— Will, conscience, honor, honesty, An’ things o' thet description." For "Cmsar" read Shylock.

is the revival of the tariff question; now it is the mythical Monroe doctrine; now it is the annexation of Hawaii or Cuba; now it is Venezuela, now it is Armenia; now it is this, and now it is that, in the expectation that the people may be deluded therewith and lose sight of the fundamental question of their wrongs, until what time they shall be completely bound and translated out of the character of freemen. How much further this malevolent and ruinous work can be carried on before the end come no man may well foretell. The winter snows whiten the landscape. A measure of forced activity has been produced in the business world. After the horrors of three years’ prostration, the haggard workman returns downhearted to his tasks. A crippled tenant husks thb corn in a field that was his own. He is an old soldier! The farmer and the mechanic labor on in hope deferred that a better day is coming. Whether it will come depends upon the people themselves. In one of the inspired passions of the French Revolution, the democrats made a statue like a titan, and set it up near where the Bastile had stood. They called it Le Peuple Hercule. It was the People Hercules. It represented the great ideal in its strength and majesty. Whenever the spirit 6f such an ideal shall repossess our American citizenship, the end will come, and the wrongs which the people have suffered by the Bond and the Dollar will he righted.

The people of Jasper county should look carefully into the statutory provision for injunction referred to on page 1. The intent of the whole law is that the people shall be consulted and their wishes respected in the matter, not only of the advisability of building a new court house, but especially as regards the plans and specifications. The - action of the board is in notorious violation of the wishes of nine-tenths of the voters of this county. It is idle to claim that a necessity exists for a new structure, and to build now is certainly prejudicial to the public interest, and these commissioners are certainly vuilty of pa'pable disregard of nflicial duty, and would fall under the decision of the supreme court cited above in Mr. Thompson’s article.

If the tax-payers of Jasper county do not want this burden of debt to hang like a night pall over their prosperity and future development for twenty or thirty or fifty years, now is the time to act. The period of argument and protestation is past, you must go down in your pockets and from your private purse provide the meansto conduct a legal battle for vour rights, and do it now or forever hold your peace. The men you have to deal with, for reasons best known to themselves. are determined to place the biggest bonded debt upon you that the most liberal construction of the law will allow. They selected an architect to examine the old court house, and he instantly discovered that it was unsafe, insecure, dangerous; and singularly enough this same architect has been awarded the contract to draft the plans. Nor Is that all this same architect will be consulted in the awarding of the building contract. It is already openly acknowledged by local builders that it will be foolish for any one to I make a bid on the job unless he stands in with the architect. It would have appeared much better to the public if the board had selected another than the architect who so conveniently condemned the old building for them.' The taxes falling due this spring are heavier than last year, in some townships very much higher; the appraisement of property in the county has been raised to nearly nine millions of dollars, but the rate of taxation instead of being lower is higher. The higher the assessed valuation of the county the more bonds can be issued, and it need surprise no one if the legislature is asked to grant a special privilege to enable the board of Jasper county to issue more bonds than the present legal limit, to enable them to complete their “modern structure.” What will you do tax-payers? The best legal talent is the cheapest in matters of this kind. It but awaits your commands to put a stop to the plans of the autocratic triumvirate that is trampling rough shod upon you in utter contempt of the source of the mighty power vested in them. We say triumvirate for not a sylable has the commissioner from Carpenter let fall from his lips in disapproval of this monstrous scheme, and he a resident of a township that can muster but seven voteis in favor of the scheme.

Guss Phillips is at home for a few days. Rev. August Seibert of St. Joseph College will spend the summer in Rome. Don’t miss the last number of the Rensselaer Lecture Club's course on Monday March 2. J. Arthur Loining, reader and monologist will appear before the Rensselaer Lecture Club at the opera house, Monday, March 2. Next Monday promises to be the most interesting county convention the republicans have ever held here. The fire department was called out Saturday morning by the burning of a wood house on the premises of William McCord. No serious damage was done. Robert Randle made a flying business trip to Racine Monday, leaving Rensselaer at 4:45 a. m. and returning at 11:45 p. m. Alfred Thompson continues to grow steadily w-eaker. His condition is considered very serious. Dry hickory wood for sale at farmers’ prices in 14 or 16 inch lengths. Two blocks east of court house. Anson Stewart. Mrs. I. A. Glazebrook returned home Monday from a six weeks visit with her mother who has been quite ill at her home in Putnamville this state. Interesting revival meetings at the M. E. Church every night. Mr. Wilkinson, evangelist, is conducting the services. A praise arid song service will be held at the court house next Sunday evening at seven o’clock. All are cordially invited.-