People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1896 — The Republican Party's Abandonment of American Principles. [ARTICLE]

The Republican Party's Abandonment of American Principles.

From the American (Republican.) The republican convention is of the past. Marked by a general listlessness and an utter | wan: of enthusiasm, the St. Louis Convention, ‘ assembled, registered the will of the bosses and has gone. Contests over the political supremacy of this boss and that, and the bickerings over the phraseology of the financial plank of the platform were fought out between the old bosses and the new. The Convention ratified their J conclusions and carried out without hitch or turmoil the cut and dried program laid before them. Ye: the adoption of the platform, with its fina». :?.l plank pledging the Republican party to the maintenance of the appreciating gold standard. marked an epoch in the history of the party. Indeed, it marked the disruption of the Republican party as such. Only eight years ago the Republican party, by its representatives in National Convention assembled, pledged itself to bimetallism, the Republican platform of 1888 declaring that “The Republican party is in favor of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic (Cleveland) Administration in its efforts to demonetize silver.” Button this and all similar declarations pledging the party to bimetallism, the Republican party has turned its back and at the behest of the money cliques it has taken up the advocacy of gold- monometallism and pledged itself to maintain the present gold standard of value to the infinite injury of the producing classes, but to the great profit of the money-lending and creditlending cliques. The Republican party having thus become sub servient to the dictation of foreign money cliques and their American allies, can no longer receive the support of conciencious bimetallists. The bolt of the silver Republicans from the Convention. ’hough small itself, presages the defeat of the Republican party at the polls, for the great numbers of bimetallic Republicans who. have hitherto acted with that party, but who are resolved to free our people from a financial policy dictated in the interests of the creditor classes, and that, unperceived, is through gradual stepsof poverty, suffering, degradation and despair, • reducing our producing classes to abject depend- I ence on the money cliques, cannot support. the! Candidate of the Republican party. Suva bimetallists, as well as the great body of: the Populists, will gladly support the nominee ofthe Democratic party if that party will make it I possible for them to do so. To make it possible . the Chicago Convention must rise above part-i isansnip and act. not as a Democratic Convention. ! but e- a Convention representing the bimetallists; of ail parties. If it does so and nominates a; Presidential candidate who will be acceptable to! all bimetallists, and whose nomination will be! enthusiastically endorsed by the Populist and Silver Conventions to be .eld in St. Louis on July i. 2, the election of such candidate by a decisive majority will be assured. The platrorm adopted by the Republican Convent .-n can command lit; :e respect. The arraignmerv the Democratic Administration is drawn up with little regard to fact. We are ostentatiously told that incapacity in the administration of our finances has led to a deficit in revenue and the piling up of an indebtedness of $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade and kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund. We are left to understand that the drain on our gold for export leading to ■ a constant menace to the gold reserve arose out of the prospective and actual cutting down of tariff duties and a resulting adverse balance of trade. As a matter of fact, such adverse balance of trade has not existed. Daring the fiscal year 1893—nine months of which was under the wise and beneficent.fiscal administration of President Harrison —there was an adverse balance of trade amounting to 618.737,728. Since then the balance of trade has been much in our favor. $237, 145,950 for the fiscal year 1894, $75,568,200 for 1895, and over 890.000,000 for the first eleven months of the fiscal year. The drain on our gold reserve cannot, therefore. be attributed to an adverse balance of trade resulting from the repeal of the McKinley law. for such adverse balance did not exist. It is true that an indebtedness of 8262,000.000 has been piled up by the present Administrati s, but such increase of our indebtedness is the result of a fiscal policy inaugurated by Mr. Harrison and his Secretary, Mr. Foster, not by Mr. Cleveland. In 1889, when Mr. Harrison was inaugurated, the gold, reserve in the Treasury stood at nearly 8190,000,000 When he turned the Administration over to Mr. Cleveland. Mr. Carlisle found but little more than the traditional $100,000,000 of gold in the Treasury and available for redemptions. The Republican party was only saved from inaugurating the policy of replenishing the gold reserve by borrowing by

the opportune ending of the Administration of Mr. Harrison, which enabled Mr. Foster to shift the responsibilities that confronted him on to the shoulders of Mr. Carlisle. It was Mr. Foster, not Mr. Carlisle, who sowed the seeds of financial chaos. It was the policy iqaugurated by Mr. Foster of paying Treasury notes in gold, and discarding the silver in the Treasury as an available asset, that made our currency system top heavy—left our narrow gold reserve quite inadequite to support the increased burdens thrown upon it, and led to the diain on our gold reserve. Mr. Carlisle merely followed In the steps of Mr. Foster. One step more in office and Mr. Foster would have issued bonds. That it was his intention to do so is proven by the preparation of plates by his order in anticipation of an early bond issue. Yet now the Republican Convention condemns Mr. Carlisle for following in the footsteps of Mr. Harrison and Mr. Foster. It* is true we have experienced during Mr. Cleveland's Administration panic, blighted industry and prolonged depression, closed factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise and general distress. But all the suffering, misery and distress through which our producing classes have passed had its origin, not in any policy inaugurated by Mr. Cleveland, for Mr. Cleveland has merely carried out the financial policy inaugurated by his Republican predecessor. Blame for the chronic hard times should rest equally with Mr! Harrison and Mr. Cleveland. It was Mr. Harrison and Mr. Foster, not Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Carlisle, who inaugurated the payment of Treasury notes in gold, who put silver as a money metal available for redemption purposes, and who put silver aside as a money metal available for redemption purposes, and who put, as near as might be, our currency on a gold basis. The export of gold, the drain on the Treasury gold, and under Mr. Cleveland the replenishing of the depleted gold reserve by borrowing, was but the logical outcome of this policy. Silver being discarded and an increased demand thrown upon gold, gold appreciated and prices fell, gloom, panic, distress, poverty, settled over our producing classes. And for this appreciation of gold Mr. Cleveland is no more responsible than Mr. Harrison. AH through Mr. Harrison's. Administration. ' gold flowed away from our shores. And so, also, has gone during the years of Mr. Cleveland’s! Administration. And why? Not because of high tariff or low tariff: not because of McKinley tar-I iff or Wilson tariff, for gold went under high tariff and under low tariff, it went under McKiilley ; tariff ana under Wilson tariff, but simply because the fall of prices, resulting from the appreciation of gold, increased the burden of our foreign , debts—simply -because the fall in prices des- ■ froyed the debt-paying power of our exports. We increased the quantity of our exports, from, year to year, but the increase in quantity was absorbed in the yawning gulf of falling price.-; more wheat, more cotton did it take to pay our debts, from year to year, so in spite of increased exports, such increase fell 'short of meeting our interest charges on our foreign debt, and gold went to settle the balance. It is the appreciation of gold, not tariff, that has led to the troubles of our Treasury and the distress of our people, and for the appreciation of gold Mr. Harrison and Mr. Foster are equally as responsible as Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Carlisle. In view of the bounty conferred on exports from silver-using countries to gold-using countries, owing to the premium on .gold, the Protection plank in the platform is farcical. Under the gold standard a protective tariff can be but a mere sham, and it is folly to advocate gold monometallism and protection at one and the same time. The republican party, as set forth in the platform adopted, proposes to protect our producers by levying tariff duties against imports from foreign countries. Yet, with the other hand, they hold out to the producers of silverusing countries a bounty on all imports from such countries equal to the divergence in the value of gold and silver. Thus, with one hand, they propose to build up a protective barrier, and with the other pull it down; for they declare their purpose to adhere to the gold standard with the inevitable result that gold must further appreciate, thus leading to a greater divergence in the value of gold and silver, and a still greater bounty on imports from silver-using to goldusing countries. Moreover, our surplus of agricultural products finds a market in Europe, where they are sold in competition with the products of silver using countries, and the premium on gold has enabled our competitors to cut prices in half. Thus have our farmers and planters been impoverished, and being impoverished how can they buy freely of manufactured goods? The home market for manufacturers must be made worth having before protection and the preservation of such markets to our manufactContinued on Page 4.