People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — WANTED---A MAN. [ARTICLE]

WANTED---A MAN.

ONE WHO WILL. NOT BETRAY THB PEOPLE. Interview with Gen. Sherwood —He Compares the Financial Policy of Other Nations to the Present Policy of the United States. Gen. Sherwood has just returned from a business trip to Indiana. He has had facilities for becoming acquainted with the condition of business, and last evening, when asked for the result of , his observations, he said: “Business ought to be a great deal better, but we have the consolation that it could not be much worse. I saw a b gcod business man in Toledo this morning, who has been in active business for twenty-five years, and he told me that , this is the worst February for business he had ever experienced.” “Dozyou find business men generally talking that way?” “Business men generally are not as hopeful as one year ago, especially merchants, and manufacturers. Congress, of which so much was promised by the republican long-distance prophets a year ago, is doing nothing to help business or to ease the money market, and from present indications will adjourn without doing a thing. Last week I was down in central Ohio in one of the large manufacturing cities, and both the president and cashier of a leading bank there told me money was tighter than a year ago. I asked if the new bond issue would not help, and they both said it was only a temporary expedient that would not help anybody outside the bond buyers. The cashiei said the fact that so many bankers were anxious to put their money into bonds at a low rate of interest was a sure indication that they had no confidence in the future of business enterprises. doth the president and cashiei said a majority of the business men in that town were not making any profit, hardly keeping even, and most of the merchants were afraid of a further * decline in values of textile fabrics. “I went into the bank to get a smaM check cashed; you know I never have s a large one, and when I was leaving the cashier asked me if I had read Tillman’s speech in the senate. I told him I had not; only the press summary. He then said that it was a powerful speech, and Tillman only said what a great many people are now thinking. He said he had subscribed for a number of Tillman’s speeches for free distribution among his goldbug friends, and agreed to send me a copy. After thanking him I expressed surprise, as I knew he was a John Sherman, Grover Cleveland, close corporation, gold 1 standard man only six months ago. He then said his convictions were now for free silver, as he had been fully educated by the disasters and business wrecks we have had under the gold standard and that he belonged to that class of men who had the courage to admit when he was wrong.” The reporter asked Gen. Sherwood if he had seen the statement of Chairman Anderson of the Ohio democratic committee that Cleveland could not have the democratic nomination again, if he desired it. “Yes; I read that and was very much surprised. Col. Anderson doubtless judged by the last Ohio democratic »state convention at Springfield, when the office holders proved more potent than the' delegates representing the democratic masses; but the result of the election ought to have admonished Col. Anderson not to try any more experiments on that line. It is true that Cleveland is a rank favorite with the republicans; and from a party standpoint he' ought to be, as he has betrayed the democratic party on every vital issue, and has carried out without e quiver, either of remorse or shame, all the financial schemes of the party ‘he was elected to repudiate and overthrow.

“When I came up from Indianapolis a few days ago, a couple of farmers got on the train at the first station this aide of Muncie, Ind., and took a seat in front of mine. One was from Darke county, Ohio. From conversation on the deplorable condition of farming, they drifted into politics and to condense the animus of their talk, one said he had always been a democrat, but if he had known Grover Cleveland would have done what he has done, he would sooner have voted for the devil for president. In reply to a taunt from his companion that Cleveland might run again, he said he would sooner vote to hang him than vote for him for president again, or any other man like him, ‘and,’ he' added, ‘I know lots of democrats in my section that feel the same way.’ His companion, who was •evidently a Harrison republican, said: ‘Well, I guess it don’t make much difference to us who is elected. Congress and the president are just alike.’ ” The general continued: “There is a deep and all pervading discontent among the masses of both parties over prevailing conditions, and all the people need now is for the leaders of the democratic party to cut loose from Grovei Cleveland, repudiate entirely his financial policy, absolve the party from all responsibility for his deplorable administration and put the party back on Jeffersonian lines. Then there would seem to be a chance, and it is the only chance, to elect a democratic president this year. It is criminal folly for democrats to longqr attempt to sustain a man who has betrayed every democratic principle worth anything. iThe real facts are, Grover Cleveland is a stench in all right smelling democratic nostrils. At the end of his term he will have less real friends among the democratic masses than Benedict

Arnold had in the continental army when Lord Cornwallis surrendered. “Witness the absolute brutality of the last proposition of the gold standard papers, that borrowing gold by issuing one hundred millions of interest bearing bonds would strengthen the public credit and help business. Carry this idea into your own business. Could a corporation or business firm strengthen their credit by making a large loan of money and issuing interest bearing notes for obligations that bore no interest? Is not the proposition thoroughly idiotic when examined iff the light of ordinary common sense? We have now had over $260,000,000 useless bonded debt created in the past two years, and the end is not yet. When the Sherman silver act was repealed all the gold bugs in the land, big and little, from John Sherman down, claimed that we would have prosperity in sixty days. Read Senator Sherman’s last speech in the senate, just before the silver repeal bill passed. Sherman was the chief bugler among + he loud singing cuckoos in both houses or congress. He then said that all we needed to bring gold from Europe by the ship lohd and give us a substantial business boom was to destroy silver as a unit of value and a money 'metal. And it was done by men who were elected to congress sacredly pledged to bi-metallism. Look at the terrible business wrecks in the’ immediate trail of this infamous enactment. Look at the record of bond sales since then. See from the records how every promise for better times has been proved criminally false and delusive. And again we see Senator Sherman, as the teal mouthpiece of his platitudinous obesity of the White House, arise in the senate and commend the present house of representatives because they have just voted to kill any silver legislation whatever. “And did you notice that Sherman savagely criticised leading statesmen and senators of his own party for voting against another tariff bill, and commended the republicans of the house for defeating any legal recognition whatever of the white metal; that Sherman, in a speech made at Zanesville last year, before the Ohio republican convention, claimed to be a stanch and trusty friend? And he had the marvelous audacity to claim, in his speech, not yet five days old, that these house republicans, ‘fresh from the people,’ as he said, represented the people. It was almost 1,900 years ago, if I remember aright, that Christ, talking by inspiration from on high, of just such beings, said: “ ‘They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. Woe unto y&u, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayers.’ “And all these modern Pharisees from Sherman down claim to be champions of the only honest money, and that all are dishonest or ignorant who oppose their schemes of confiscation of the property of the common people by law. I would like the Plain Dealer to look up the campaign records of the members of the present congress who voted a few days ago to murder the honest silver dollar of the constitution at every stage of the voting, and see how many preached the gold dollar of the vampires on the stump when out vote begging. I venture the opinion there are not ten congressmen in the whole array, from the entire country west of the Allegheny mountains, that dared talk to their constituents in their electioneering campaigns as they voted in the house. Everybody knows, who knows anything, that nine-tenths of all the Intelligent citizens of Ohio are at heart bi-metallists. And we have the scoundrelism of modern politics well represented in the vote referred to, showing that fidelity to a public trust is no loger the rule of conduct with a majority of our public men. In fact, representative government has ceased to be representative and the boodler in the primaries expects his servant, whom his corruption money elects, to become the tool of the Shylocks when elected, and the record of this house of representatives to date proves that whom the boodler buys the Shylock holds securely in his grip. “When we witness the humiliating cowardice of the present house of rep-“ resentatives in refusing to even make one move to relieve the financial stress of the people, it is no wonder so many business men are giving up in despair. Let us suppose that the silver men had had their way in 1893, as the gold men had theirs, and suppose we should have had the result we witness today —of the Increase of the bonded debt of over $260,000,000; with falling prices of all products of labor, and of the farm and mine, and with the appalling list of business failures, suicides, want and woe, and crime, that has followed as the inevitable result of the gold standard. Why, it would not be safe for one of the silver leaders to venture out upon the streets of any city, or hamlet in the country on account of mob violence. Surely, there would be no newspapers in the land with enough of the gall of brutality to have advocated a continuance of the policy. “And now that we have had the terrible experience of the last two years and a halt with a policy that every democrat of intelligence and patriotism predicted at the outset would result only in disaster, it seems incomprehensible how any well meaning citizen who loves his country and his kind should exhibit a disposition to further exploit the field of disaster. Certainly no true democrat is in favor of it. My observation is, and I am looking at the situation only from a business standpoint, that business men

of both parties are thoroughly con. vinced that the present fiscal policy must be changed before we can have any substantial prosperity, and I believe that a majority of sagacious business men understand that the present effort of the republican leaders to try and avoid the only live issue (the money question) by switching off on the tariff is a scheme of humbug and fraud, as transparent as it is insincere and dishonest. ’•The people are about ripe for a leader who is sound on the money question for the people’s honest dollars and not the scarce gold of the Shylocks that has never been seen by the common people, has never been the money of circulation and never will be. There is no civilized country anywhere that has ever adopted or ever will adopt our present financial policy of flat money for the people and gold for the Shylocks. There is no civilized country in the world that would discard silver as a money metal if . that country was as rich in silver mines as the United States. The world’s record today is that all the silver using countries are prosperous and all the exclusive gold countries are not. This ought to dissipate the miserable rot of the gold standard organs that a silver standard for the United States would mean bankruptcy. It is a bare assertion with nr vitality to sustain it, but lie. Even England, the credit nation of the world, would not tolerate for a month our present fiscal policy. We recovered soon after the war from the Geneva award some $15,500,000 of England. When this claim matured* the banking and commercial classes of Great Britain, fearing a disturbance of the mon> ey market should gold be withdrawn for export, induced the Bank of Englahd to Interpose and the United States treasury was induced to exchange securities, so as to prevent any withdrawal of gold. "Here is McKinley, who claims to be for protection (and no one is able to tell just what that means now), not in favor of the protection of our richest and most favored American product silver. The fact that whole communities have been wrecked in the west by legislation which he commends, and populations wrecked by hostile legislation, in direct conflict with his whole theory of protection, does not move him to utter a word of condemnation, He has been going up and ’down the land with Napoleonic beak and Chesterfieldian pose and talking the barren paucity of unmeaning platitudes about protection, utterly oblivious to the well known fact that a bill embodying all his ideas, framed according to his own sweet will, not only created revolution in his own party in almost every state in the union, reduced wages in ten thousand manufacturing establishments in less than three months, but so disturbed economic conditions that the most sagacious students of history attribute the panic of 1893 almost solely to his work. Surely it is a desperate case of desperation to look for a savior from present disaster in a party and country wrecker whose work is only five years old.

“But where is the people’s savior now, Io you ask? Ido not seem to see him but Gov. Matthews of Indiana, looks ’airly well. This time the people will scrutinize the man more than the platform. Cleveland’s base betrayal has taught us that. Sibley of Pennsylvania is both the man and the platform I remember during the war, when disaster after disaster overtook the army of the Potomac, that it was the poet ol the camps, Edmund C. Stedman, who wrote the ringing battle cry that electrified the country. It was the well remembered poem, ‘Give us a Man.’ ‘Give us a man of God’s own mold. Fit to rally his fellow man; Give us a rallying cry and then, Abraham Lincoln, give us a man!’ “Then a man on horseback wat wanted to command the army of the Potomac. Today we want no man on horseback. We want no man who looks to an increased standing army and formidable battleships and forts and fortifications along our frontiers for continued protection and glory; but we want a man anxious to do justice to the great, brave, patient people, and whose humane rule will cause the people to love the country and Its free institutions; and then neither armies, noi nayies, nor forts, nor bastiles will be needed. A happy, contented and prosperous poulace is the best shield of the state.”