People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1896 — DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS JOIN IN A STEAL [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS JOIN IN A STEAL

The Populinta Alone Solidly Voted Against the Recent Salary Grab—Cleveland Will Vote for McKinley —• The Threatend Panic. Well; congress finally adjourned, ami the history it left behind may be summed up in a foot-note by some future historian. It proposed to ,do nothing—and did it. However, the republican congress is responsible to the people for some things the democratic executive did —and which it refused to pass a bill to prevent. The populists in congress declared by voice and vote that issuing bonds was a wrong and a robbery —the republicans indorsed the robbery by doing nothing to prevent it. The populist party urged by both voice and vote some measures of relief. They have proposed both financial measures and measures restricting the corporations and combines that are' robbing the people yet these measures failed to pass because the members of the other party refused to support the populists in their efforts to secure relief. The republican party passed a steal known as the Clerk Hire bill which increased each congressman’s salary SIOO per month. The democratic party gave its consent and meekly with its minority whined in “me too” and voted for it. The populist party solidly opposed it. Which do you prefer? The republicans and democrats have not passed a single distinctively party act (unless it was the Clerk Hire steal) with their vast majority of the members composing the body. The populists have secured the passage of a resolution to investigate the bond deals that increased* the people’s burdens by $262,000,000. The populists forced through the senate a bill to prohibit the further isuse of bonds and placed the republican house on record as bein£ in favor of bonds and bondage. The populists by offering to assist the republicans in a tariff measure if they would in return assist in the passage of a free coinage measure showed the utter hypocrisy of the republicans in their pretended friendship for each. Which party’s record meets with your approval? President Cleveland gives it out that he and his cabinet will vote for McKinley in case the silver men win In

the Chicago convention. He doesn’t wish to see the gold-bug vote divided. |ie considers democratic part} merely^Cieveiand ciub?• ’ He is the head of the party .and the cabinet its hind legs. *:> # < : A Speaking of the advantageous sltution of the populists in the coming campaign, the Twentieth Century says: The party has very little money and that is a fortunate thing. Nothing injures a political organization more than the possession and the expenditure of funds on a liberal scale. Such pecuniary resources are sure to create a swarming band of needy adventurers who prey upon the organism and desert it the moment their own selfish ends are attained. Another good thing for the populists is the fact that the approaching campaign is to be an educational one in the strictest sense of the expression. We cannot have too much discussion. It looks as if many a venerable delusion in the world of politics is destined to be exploded in short order. We hear very little of the pauper labor of England nowadays. What has become of that ancient and consecrated bugaboo? The only resource of the monopolists is to threaten to bring about a panic and this threat has been held over the heads of the people like a club for months. It does not seem to have much effect. The people are quietly and surely turning down the gold monopolists. That by no means Implies the exclusive attention of the people to silver. There are many other things than silver in the world and the voters are expecting declarations upon other subjects. The people’s party platform will be broad enough for all reformers to stand upon. , • • « Congress refused to restrain tne issue of bonds —and as the gold reserve is going to Europe at the rate of nearly ten millions a month, Grover will probably have another chance to make a “stake” upon which to retire from office. Shipping gold back and forth to Europe is very profitable to the dealers in gold. There are charges on both sides for the use of the gold—and in both places it lies stored up, useless as far as the people who pay the freight are concerned. It is a great game of “now you see it and now you don’t” — and the manipulators draw interest all the time whether you do, or whether you don’t see it.

Even the goldbugs sometimes get caught in their own trap. In presuming on the interest of the people they sometimes succeed in convincing them too thoroughly. For instance, a recent dispatch from Ashland, Ky., says: Col. A. W. Boscomb, one of the largest tobacco planters in this section, is having a queer experience with negro laborers. During the campaign just closed there has been talk about silver dollars being only worth 50 cents. The negroes have taken this literally, and when Boscomb offered to pay them ■in silver dollars, they emphatically objected to accepting 50-cent dollars, and wanted to be paid in paper money or gold. * ♦ • A controversy between Sherman and Teller calls forth the following from Col. S. F. Norton, of Joliet. Ill.! We beg leave to correct Senator Teller of Colorado and John Sherman of Ohio. You see there is no one who has kept a closer tab on John Sherman during the last twenty-five years than the writer hereof. We know him. as the saying is, as well as if 'we bad wheeled the dirt to make him. In course of a speech on the antibond bill Senator Teller had the following “exchange of courtesies,” v. ..li the senator from Ohio. Teller—The senator from Ohio tail's about the sacredness of contracts, i remember when the senator from Ohio declared that theperson who would not take a 40-cent greenback in exchange for any debt that the government owed him was a robber and a thief. Mr. President, he changed his mind very soon after that. Mr Sherman—l do not think I used those words. Mr. Teller—He used the words “robber” and “extortioner;” that it was “extortion.” Mr. Sherman—Not “thief." Mr. Teller—He was a robber without being a thief. Now, the fact is what Sherman said about the bondholder’s being an “extortioner” did not occur in a public speech. It was embodied in a letter to the Hon. A. Mann., Jr., of Brooklyn Heights, written from the senate chamber March 20, 1868. We quote from the letter th,e following extract—which is mighty interesting reading just at the present time when John is talking so loud about “repudiation” when it proposed to stop the issue of more bonds: “Your idea that we proposed to repudiate or violate a promise when we offered to redeem the principal in legal tenders is erroneous. I think the bondholder violates his promise when he refuses to take the same kind of money he paid for the bond. If the case is to be tested by the law, I am right; if it is to be tested by Jay Cooke’s advertisement, lam wrong. I hate repudiation or anything like it; but we ought not to be deterred from what is right tor fear of undeserved epithets. If under the law as it stands, the holder of 5-20’s can be paid only in gold, then we are repudlators, if we propose to pay otherwise. If, on the other hand, the bondholders can demand only the kind of money he paid, then he is a repudlator and extortioner to demand money more valuable than he gave. • • • A Good Book. —“The Danger Line Reached,” by Ex-Governor Hadley, of Arkansas, is a book of unusual merit It treats an intricate subject in a simple but thorough manner. To the business man who wishes to arrive at a correct conclusion upon the money question it will disnel all dmibt . Thnm

who are Marching for truth, and want complete and straightforward answers to the gold-bug assertions of the Wall Street press, should read this work. It is strictly 'non-partisan, written in a calm and philosophical vein, and should be in the hands of every business man.