People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1896 — WAYLAND'S WAILS. [ARTICLE]

WAYLAND'S WAILS.

Paragraph* Clipped from “Appeal to Reason.*' The most disreputable, scoundrelly occupation that man can be engaged in, is that of pulling strings to place himself In office. To wish a party to succeed because it represents certain ideas is right, but to scheme to put himself forward is the action of just what I have called him.

The common people get punished for doing the very things in a small way that the office-holders and monopolists do daily on a gigantic scale. Just as kings and nobles could kill, rob and outrage womanhood by wholesale, but for doing which the common people were executed. The present state of affairs in the United States is just the old state of oppression in another form. Newspaper postage is to be increased to 8 cents a pound instead of one, if congressmen dare do it. Like the tax on whisky, it will aid the big dailies that are almost wholly carried by express companies, and the county papers are free inside the county. This 8 cent rate is the English standard. Anything to ape England and prevent the people from getting any benefit out of the government. Millions for wholesale murder, but not a dollar for the intelligence or benefit of the people.

The poor farmers feed the world, yet go ragged, live in poor houses and are »in want. The fabric workers clothe the world, yet are ragged, hungry and houseless. The builders shelter the world, yet are houseless, ragged and hungry. The people who furnish none of these have abundance of them and the many vote for the system that produces these effects and are too silly to see the cheat.

We are solemnly informed by the bankers that the withdrawal of SIOO,000,000 in gold and locking it up for the bonds will cause a stringency! And we are solemnly told the government must get that gold and lock it up or the nation will go to the demnition bow-wows! A case of heads the country loses and tails the bankers win. And men who dress well, eat three times a day, who can read and write, gulp both these statements down without salt! We are surely the greatest, wisest people on earth!

Why do you hug poverty so? Are poverty and want and anxiety so sweet you will not give up your stlly notions about private property to rid yourself of them? You see if all the property were public no one could draw an income from it unless they worked. It would have no rent roll, deeds of trust, mortgages, interest, etc., to get hold of and live in luxury on. Not a bit more than the postoffice or the public streets. Under such a system work would be provided for all and if they would not work they could starve. Houses better than 99 men out of 100 now live in could be had for SIOO a year if the wages were SI,OOO. If you don’t like poverty why the deuce do you vote for it?

Secretary of Agriculture Morton is not distributing any seeds this year, and the assets of some of our congressmen who have been selling their portion to seed venders will be cut down by that much, while the constituents of other congressmen who have been receiving them be losers. Things have come to a pretty pass when nothing can be put in sight of our congressmen, or in their care, that they won’t steal.

Tillman’s courage will Inspire others. The end is not yet