People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1896 — EDITORIAL NOTES. [ARTICLE]

EDITORIAL NOTES.

Kansas now has three separate prohibition tickets in the field, the third being nominated at Topeka last week. The effort of the republicans to capture the convention was a complete failure. * * * This is a great western movement and when the next congress meets with Bryan in the presidential chair, and the tariff is revised, its protective features will reach out to the great plains and see justice done there as well as to the eastern manufacturers. * * * Over a hundred McKinley pictures have been taken down in Lafayette and brought to the Bryan headquarters. There are five hundred more that are kept up by intimidation of laboring men who are threatened with discharge if they don’t display McKinley pictures and buttons.

* * * Nearly every labor paper in the country, certainly every one of national reputation, is for Bryan and free silver, and they are backed by the action of every labor and farmer organization, and this is the condition in spite of the desperate efforts being made by the gold men to capture the labor vote. * * * This is war; war with all the earnestness and desperate resolve of self-preservation on the one side, and of relentless self conscious oppressors on the other. It is war with all its passionate impulses except the violent shock of battle. The contempt of the classes is met by the hate of the insulted common people. * * * The Populists and democrats of Salt Lake county, Utah, have united on a county ticket. The Populists take four of the candidates and the democrats get the rest. The Populists in that section have heretofore been among the strongest middle-of-the-roaders in the country. The logic of events is doing more to unite reformers then everything else. * * * It is announced from Washington that the United States Treasury department will soon issue a circular giving information respecting National, State and Savings Banks, loan and trust companies and private banks of the United States, compiled from reports of the comptroller of the currency, showing the aggregate resources and liabilities of such institutions, together with other important information relating to finance. A copy of the circular will be furnished free to anyone applying.

An enthusiastic gold advocate was offering a bet on the streets of Rensselaer a few days since that if Bryan was elected every bank in the United States would be closed and we would smell burnt powder in thirty days. Desperate as we believe the money power to be, we know that the masses of the people are willing not only to submit to the verdict rendered at the polls, but would rally solidly to Mr. Bryan’s support in case the bauks attempted to carry out the threat of their, anarchistic apostle. * * * On Friday, Sept. 18, at one of the large factories in Indianapolis, when the mon were given their pay envelopes, they were also given buttons inscribed, 4 ‘Gold is good enough for me,” the cashier putting them on their coats. Two of the men refused to wear them and they were told that their services were no longer needed. This is but one instance of the general system of coercion that the republican party is practicing. It is a campaign so repulsive to American patriotism that it will react against the candidate who is holding royal court at Canton, Ohio.