People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1896 — Gifford’s 16 Reasons. [ARTICLE]

Gifford’s 16 Reasons.

Below are given the famous 16 reasons promulgated by Benjamin J. Gifford, Jasper county’s great land lord, Indiana’s imbriotic prototype of Illinois’ Lord Scully. Mr. Gifford is entitled to great credit for his work of redeeming the vast swamps and marshes of the Kankakee and its tributaries, fc-r he has made good lands-of many hundreds of practially valueless acres, but it must not be forgotten that these acres belong to 'Mr. Gifford now, that any advance in their value is his, and under a system allowing private enterprise to enter upon such wholesale- reclaiming projects as are compassed by his great system of ditchers he is justly entitled to them.

He is organizing a gigantic system of tenantry designed to grow in extent and be as permanent as that of the Scully estate in Illinois. He evidently believes that the system thht makes tenants and sends men begging to him for farms to till upon his own ironn clad terms, is the system, best suited to his interests, and below are the sixteen calamaties which he falsely represents will follow the free coinage of silver. These “reasons” he has circulated in printed form among his several hundred tenants and employes; rea sons only inname, for each proposition is but brazen assertion unsupported by any argument whatever. Think of the “reason” that “Free silver will make less money instead of more;” if that be true what becomes of the “flood of silver” that is being so persistently harped about? Or the next that free silver will reduce values instead of making them higher; that being

so a silver dollar would be more valuable than the gold dollar is now, for it would buy more, and our republican friends are telling us just the reverse will be the case, and bemoaning the possibility of the old soldier having h : s living expenses increased. Truly Mr. Gifford must have taken his tenants for the narrow eyed class of people described by S. P. Thompson as silver men. It matters not how narrow may be the margin of their existence under a Gifford contract, they are long nosed enough not to be caught by any such stuff as those “16 reasons.” And though he has notified them that he will not do business with a free silver man, 4hey are too patriotic to allow him to dictate the way thdy shall vote. It is easy enough to keep a man quiet during the campaign by threats of dispossession but it is quite another thing to control his vote in the booth. SIXTEEN REASONS FOR GOLD. Free silver will drive gold out of circulation. Free silver will cut off the supply of foreign capital. Free silver will make less money instead of more. Free silver will reduce values instead of making them higher. Free silver will reduce the loanable funds of America to less than one quarter of the present volume". . Free silver will double if not treble interest rates. Free silver will prevent the extensions of loans. Free silver will result in forced collections. Free silver will cause foreclosure of farm mortgages in a manner unprecdented in America. Free silver will shut off all new enterprises and cripple many old ones. Free silver will reduce wages of all laboring men. Free silver will shut up factories. furnaces and mines wherever borrowed capital may be required to operate. Free silver will take from one man something that belongs to him and give it to another who has no claim upon it. Free silver will tend to* destroy confidenc e in the American people at home and. abroad. Free silver will cause bread riots in every city, Free silver will call into active service the militia of every state in the union. A majority of these propositions are already demonstrated. Respectfully submitted,

BENJ. J. GIFFORD.

Kankakee, Illinois.