People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1896 — NOT FOR SILVER. [ARTICLE]

NOT FOR SILVER.

republican party pledged AGAINST WHITE METAL. A Declaration that It Will Bear Defeat Bather Than Surrender to the Demands of the 811ver Element In the Party. One of the strangest thing in politics b the apparent blindness in the adherents of a party to see its defects, or to determine its policy. It cannot be said that all men who hold views opposite to the well-established policy of the party bo Which they belong are dishonest. It te like color blindness, a species of detect which, while it exists, cannot be accounted for. A good illustration of this idea 'presented itself in the senate the other day when Carter. Dubois and ethers took a firm stand for silver, and Insisted that they represented the republican idea on that question. As a matter of fact the republican party has made no pretensions to being a free sil- j ver party for over twenty years. While 1 It is true that It has declared for bimetallism in its national platforms, • and for the use of both gold and silver, yet it insisted on impossible conditions to obtain bimetallism, and only favored the use of such silver as was already coined. It knew that bimetallism through international agreement, which meant England’s consent, was impossible, and growing more so every day. That declaration is only an artful evasion of the real issue for want of courage to meet tt. The republican party demonetized sHver in 1873. It opposed its full restoration in 1878. It is responsible for the Sherman makeshift in 1890, and for the decision that creditors of the government could demand gold in payment for coin obligations at their option. All these things are matters of record. Intelligent and well-informed men know them to be so. Yet in the face of all this evidence, there are thousands of men who believing that relief from the present condition of prostrated industries can only be had through free silver are still hanging to the republican party, hoping against hope, fighting against fearful odds, with defeat staring them in the face, surrounded with broken pledges, and blasted hopes, weighed down with despair, knowing full well that they are engaged in a losing fight. In addition to the record of their party every leading republican paper is against them and in favor of the gold standard. A recent issue of the GlobeDemocrat contained an editorial along these lines from which we clip the following: “Even if the entire mining region were solidly arrayed in defense of the bolters the republican party would make no surrender to silver. On this question of honest money—of money which, in the language of Jones, of Nevada, in his best days, “can not lie,” and which “keeps its promises to rich and poor alike”—the republican party has taken its position. To this position it will stick despite the threats of fanatics and demagogues, and regardless of the fortune which the immediate future may have in store for it. The position which the party took in the conventions of 1888 and 1892 is the position which it will take in the convention of 1896. It would be easy, to j be sure, to make the silver utterance ' clearer, squarer and stronger than \ those of the years named were. Prob- ! ably that of 1896 will be. In any event it will mean a dollar which at all times,! In all places and under all conditions 'will be worth 100 cents in the world’s toney, gold. If there is to be any split in the two i great parties on the silver question 1896 is the time to have it. A square contest on this issue without any entangling alliances with the tariff or any other question, is the great need of this country at the present time. One canvass on the silver issue—one canvass in which the 14,000,000 voters of this country could vote “yes” or “no” on the question of whether the national finances were to be debased to the Chinese level —would stamp out the silver distemper and remove finally and eternally this flat money in peril. It is well for the honest money men in both . parties to understand that silverism is as hollow and false physically, so to speak, as it is morally. Outside of the half a dozen mining states it has no standing among the people. The result in 1895 in Kentucky, in Nebraska (where the democrats split into a silverite and anti-silverite group) and in the eighteenth Illinois congressional district tells the story of the feebleness of the silver folly when it is attacked. But even if it were as powerful as its advocates pretend, the duty of the republicans to assail it would still be imperative. The party which created the national banking system, which maintained, in the face of powerful opposition, the government’s faith with its creditors of 1861-5 and which brought every dollar of the country’s currency up to the gold level, could better afford to be defeated in defending tbe-public credit than it could to win by a surrender which would l make it break with its record of a third of a century’s glorious achievements in the policy of financial sanity and honesty.” It would be utterly impossible for the English language to make plainer the position of the republican party upon the silver question. Then why do men who are honest and -intelligent any longer cling to a party that is so palpably pledged to pursue a policy inimical to their interests and their principles. The time has come for a new dispensation in the domain of politics—or rather a revivifying of an old dispen sation that has been set aside to make room for a system of spoils and reign of greed that are undermining the foundations of our republic. Thera never was 4 time when this nation ap-

proached nearer a crisis fraught with nore importance than the present. Let men weigh well their duty as patriots against their allegiance to their party. The republicans apparently have been having pretty smooth sailing, but recently a large sized skeleton has ahown itself in the family closet. What3ver may be said of the sincerity of the senators representing the silver mining states, there is a constituency behind them that don’t propose to take a 3tone for bread, and between their allegiance to the grand old party and the frantic appeals, not to say demands, of their constituency, the aforesaid Senators are between the devil and the deep blue sea, with the chances that the party will have a devil of a row r before the thing is settled. If there is anything that the people in Colorado, Nevada, Idahq, Montana and other silver 3tates want more than anything else it is free silver, and they are not at all backward about declaring their intention of having it or a free fight. When the tariff measure came up in the senate the other day, five of these silver senators voted to block any further progress along those lines, unless we were to have free silver. This proceeding was so extraordinary in the republican family that it excited much comment, and no little criticism against the aforesaid five senators. Senator Carter, who also happens to be the Chairman of the National Republican Committee, smarting under these criticisms, dropped his robe of senatorial courtesy, borrowed brother Tillman’s pitchfork and proceeded to probe the old republican dung-hill in the following refreshing style: “It is high time that republicans who claim to be within the party should take their cues from the party platform, rather than from the White House. If it shall occur that this senseless crusade against republicans who believed in good faith in the Minneapolis platform, when it declared for bimetallism as well as protection, shall be carried to such an extent as may result in the adoption of President Cleveland’s scheme by the St. Louis Convention, I submit that republican success will be rendered utterly impossible. If the platform of 1896 announces to the country, in conjunction with the action of republicans between the two conventions, that the plank on bimetallism adopted at Minneapolis was a delusion, a fraud and a snare, it would be just as well for the republican party not to make a nomination at St. Louis at all. Such a platform as that, which will be the logical outcome of the republican following of President Cleveland’s scheme, would leave the republican party in this chamber with scarcely enough members to second a demand for the yeas and nays. In plain view of these facts, the drift-of the republican party in the eastern section of the country toward Clevelandism and the gold standard is to me an appalling spectacle. In the name of all the republican party means to human civilization, let republicans in and out of congress take counsel of their own party platform and traditions and cease blind devotion to the false god who deals in mysterious phrases.” Senator Carter said much more than this, but it is enough to show that he knows how to handle a pitchfork and that there may be more trouble ahead for the republican party than it is willing to admit. One thing, however, Carter and his associates ought to know, that is they are making a hopeless fight against fearful odds in their own party, and that their action only serves to keep the free silver forces divided and ; thereby assists the goldbugs.

W. S. MORGAN.