People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1896 — A KANSAN TALKS. [ARTICLE]

A KANSAN TALKS.

WANTS THE OMAHA PLATFORM IN ITS ENTIRETY.

A Delegate to the National Populist Convention Tells Why He Thinks We Should Adhere to the Omalia Platform. The proposition that the People’s Party attempt to make the coming national campaign upon the single Issue of free coinage involves the very existence of our organization. Populism was born of the dire necessities of the great common people. It voices the protest of millions against a long ; series of oppressions and 'usurpations, i that, if continued, will compass the disruptiou of the republic, the downfall of self-government, and the destruction of constitutional liberty. Like all great reforms, -it sprang from the so-called sub-stratum of our social fabric, those who from long suffering have developed a marvelous power to feel rather than to reason—to see rather than to grope blindly. The so-called higher classes —the rich and educated, with here and there a rare exception—are conservative. Favorites of fortune and the recipients of countless unearned blessings, they desire no change. They are above the terrible grasp of extreme necessity or the appalling sense of utter destitution that burns like a consuming fire into the very vitals of the suffering poor. They realize little, and many care less, of the burdens that gall and bow and crush our common people till the pathos of their heart cades becomes the fountain of a peaceful but farreaching and utterly resistless tide of reform, or the bitterness of their indignant protests erystajflizes into curses that form the of bloody revolution. The Omaha platform was evolved from such conditions. Its preamble voises the dire extremity of millions who have suffered till they feel aud know. Its demands embody the highest wisdom born of the terrible experiences of adversity and intuitively and unerringly grasp the solution of problems that have baffled the most profound philosophy. It is not a mistake. It is not an accident. It is the vox populi that will be written as the voice of God in American hißtory. It must be heeded in its entirety and without one jot or tittle of diminution. To ignore it is to turn back for half a century the hand of political progress upon the dial of reform. To cast away all but one of its sacred principles, and that by no means the most important one, is a surrender that will be stigmatized as cowardice or treason by an indignant and outraged people. A victory at such a cost would be but a disastrous defeat —a degrading and despicable scramble for spoils. It would result in the utter disruption of our party and its absorption by the old parties, that would then, as now, be finder the complete domination of the enemies of actual reform. What has the Democratic party ever done that we should consent to be swallowed up by it, or any part of it, and become the mere tool of tricksters and spoilsmen who would sell the people’s birthright for political pottage? WJiy should the silver kite, with its ponderous tail of old party prejudices temporarily concealed by a free-coin-age attachment, expect the Populists to furnish string with which to fly It to victorious altitudes, merely for the sake of routing an enemy that is no more wicked and not as despicable as we would be after discarding all our principles but one, at the dictation of political leaders who have always denounced us as either fools or fanatics? The single plank advocates tell us Napoleon always whipped his enemies in detail. True; but was he ever guilty of the supreme folly of surrendering every strong, strategic position to the foe on the eve of a great battle? Free coinage is important as an index that an obstruction has been thrown across the destructive current of contraction, but the people demand more than this. They demand justice, and justice requires not only that contraction cease, but that expansion begins. The disease that has prostrated the nation requires stronger and more active remedies than free coinage—certainly more immediae in its effects. , When a cord is drawn so tightly around a human throat that death is imminent, it is not enough that it be drawn no tighter; it must be loosened, and that quickly. The nation is being strangled with a contraction cord in the hands of the thugs of Wall Street. It is also being held up by brigands that monopolize public utilities. Its life blood is being drained by the vampires of usury. Its domain is being wrested from its legitimate owners and turned over to aliens. The confidence game worked on de- i positors by criminal or incompetent bankers whereby the people are robbed of millions annually still goes on. Does any one suppose that the coinage of a few silver dollars will remedy all these evils? Will the output of our mints run to their full capacity loosen the contraction cord that is strangling our people soon enough to avert financial death? Is such coinage of more importance than the saving to the people of $500,000,000 annually through government ownership of telegraph, telephone, and er significance than the saving of an equal amount through government ownership of tlegraph, telephone, and express lines? Is it of greater significance than the demand that the people own and operate the trusts and not the trusts own and victimise the peoPl®| All these things have the people demanded. All these reforms do they expect from the hands of the young and vigorous party that, stands to-day as firmly for free coinage as for any other tenet of its political faith. Those who

bear the burdens have intuitively grasped the remedy. They have spoken in language as solemn and sublime as the Declaration of Independence, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Decalogue given amid the clouds and thunders of Stnai. Let there be no trifling with things that are sacred. Let there be no barter and sale of principles for temporary victory. Woe to the leader, and woe to the convention selected to uphold this modern Magna Charta who shall dare barter its grand principles for a single plank platform, or worse still, go over to the Democracy.

W. H. MELLEN

Garnett, Kan.