People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1896 — CONFRONTED BY A CRISIS. [ARTICLE]

CONFRONTED BY A CRISIS.

It la Not • Partisan Question, but One of Genuine Patriotism. We are confronted by a money power that is seeking to fasten upon the people of this country an English yoke. We are now in the midst of crisis that ever confronted this republic. In 1861 the Union was confronted with dissolution which meant anarchy in respect to government and a perpetuation of the African slavery. In 1896 we are confronted with the question of perpetually enslaving the white race. We are confronted with the question whether we shall install the English Shylock as a taskmaster over all the generations of Americans that are yet to come. We are not proposing to wrong anybody. We are proposing to give every man his due. We are not suggesting experiments. We are demanding a return to the experience of the world for thousands of years, and we say that this experiment of trying to force the nations of the earth on to a gold basis for the benefit of European creditors is ruining the American people. We propose to, pay back the English creditors in the same money they gave us—gold and silver. We propose to give them dollars that shall have the same purchasing power, that will buy as much property and as much labor of every kind as had the dollars which they gave us—money having exactly the same purchasing power. We propose to pay them principal and interest in the same money exactly which they gave us, and we say that their acts in getting silver demonetized and gold made dear, after they had succeeded in getting our bonds and our notes, so as to compel ns to pay in a different kind of money from what they gave us, to pay in dollars which cost twice as much sweat, twice as much blood, as did the dollars which they gave us—we say that that act was a fraud and was a crime against civilization. This is not a partisan question. It is not a question of Republicanism or of Democracy. John Sherman and Grover Cleveland ate sleeping together. It is a question of patriotism. It is a question of maintaining the institutions of the fathers, for if the present standard is to be maintained, if our people must go on paying interest and principal in dollars that require twice as much labor, twice as much sweat, twice as much blood to obtain, as did the dollars that were in circulation when the debts were created, then the doom of the American producers is sealed. Low prices will be made perpetual, and there will be no hope for the American farmer, the American mechanic or the American laborer.—John P. Altgeld.