People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1896 — CURRENT COMMENT. [ARTICLE]

CURRENT COMMENT.

< Tlle editor and publisher -of the ‘Cosmopolitan Magazine,” J. Brisbane Walker, in addressing a meeting at Cooper Union, N. Y., recently, said: This is not so much a fight for silver as It is a fight to escape from a clique which controls the currency of the people. Well said. We are in the hands of conspirators whose sole object is the control of the people’s money, so that they may absorb all the products of labor by drawing Interest on the ‘ money they have hoarded in the banks. Down with the conspirators. Free silver will do no good until the control of the currency is taken away from the banks.

Quite a sensation has been created .n the east by the recent utterance of E. Benjamin Andrews, president of Brown University, and heretofore a prominent gold-bug. “Brown University, Providence, June 22, 1896. Stephen W. Nickerson, Boston, Mass. My Dear Sir: I n yours of the 2Qth inst., after adverting to Cernusjchi s latest position touching the policy of the United States in freely coining silver at 16 to 1, without waiting for an international agreement, you ask what, if any, objections I would urge against their policy: I reply that I would urge none. The vast new output in gold in recent years as compared with that of silver impresses me that free coinage by the United States alone would not lead to the displacement of our gold; that, therefore, free coinage would be safe. If it is safe it is certainly desirable. Of course no one can be absolutely certain that we could proceed with free silver coinage and yet retain our gold. To my mind, however, the overwhelming probability is that gold would stay with us. I have noticed of late no seriotis argument to show that it would not Cordially, “E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS.” College presidents generally are so tied to the money power by endowments from such robbers as Rockefeller that they dare not express an independent opinion without losing their jobs. Mr. Andrews will probably receive the usual treatment for “heresy.” * * * For several years the populist and prohibitionist parties in Nebraska have had direct legislation p.lanks in their platforms. This spring the regular democratic convention, which met at Lincoln on April 22, put the following plank in its platform:

“We are in favor of the Initiative and Referendum system as an aid to securing a government of the people, for the people and -by the. people.” This is the third state, Massachusetts and Oregon being the other two. in whioh the democratic party has declared in favor of direct legislation. But in Nebraska the gold Taction of the democratic party went to the other extreme and denounced the principle in the following language: “We believe in the government founded by the fathers of this republic and in the constitution, which for more than a century has been the admiration of the civilised world, and we repudiate the theories of populists and so-called democrats allied with populists, who would destroy that constitution for the socialistic experiment of Initiative and Referendum.” This is the first time any political platform has denounced direct legislation, or referred to it as “socialistic.” ' It is pleasing to reflect that this was only a bolting faction, however, and that It received no recognition in national convention, x Direct legislation is a principle that is in no sense partisan, and should receive the earnest consideration of everybody Interested in rearing the government to tb~ - - nle. Children’s photos a specialty at the Ravillion.