People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1896 — AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION ON A CHICAGO STREET CAR. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION ON A CHICAGO STREET CAR.

With apologies to Times-Herald.

GOLD STANDARD ADVOCATE —I presume you are for free silver. CONDUCTOR—How did you guess? G. S. A. —It’s easy; but never mind that. Get down to the practical side of it. You are earning $45 a month now. When prices go up under free silver coinage your salary will not go up correspondingly, because the railroad companies cannot increase the rate of fares on the public. How do you figure out that you will be better off under free coinage? Conductor —I’ll tell you in a very few words. You say I earn $45. That's not so; if the money received from the public was divided proportionately among the employes of this company each would have more than double what he is now receiving. But the stock of this company is all owned by three men who, under these conditions, give their employes less than one-half of what they (the employes) earn. They are continually cutting down our wages and there seems to be no- prospect of relief as there are three men waiting for every job, A strike would do no good. Now if money is made twice as plentiful by free silver it will find avenues for investment. The men who are waiting for our jobs will find work elsewhere. Then will come our turn. It will be an easy matter to adjust the wage scale to the new conditions. You see, unlike some classes of men, we are not looking after ourselves first. Work for the idle is the fl rs t object. The gold standard advocate listened to labor’s side with great interest. “By the way,” said the conductor, to him, “you are a rich man, probably worth SIOO,OOO, are you not?” G. S. A. —Somewhere about that sum, yes. Conductor—lt is to your interest to keep prices down. Is it not? G. S. A. Oh, no; I want to keep prices going up. I’m for high prices always. (High rates of interest probably.) Conductor—But how are we going to get higher prices unless there is an expansion of the currency, such as would follow the remonetization of Bilver? G. S. A. You fellows are all crazy, lunacy, madness, anarchy, Tillman, Altgeld, flub, dub —rah—boo —hoo —hoo —!!! !!!!!! —******