People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1896 — INGERSOLL FOR SILVER. [ARTICLE]

INGERSOLL FOR SILVER.

An Eloquent Exrtact from His Address to the Farmers of Illinois. Republican newspapers have sometimes referred to Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll in this campaign as an opponent of free silver and a supporter of the single gold standard. We are sure this must do Colonel Ingersoll great injustice, for he does not ordinarily place himselt on both sides of any great public question. In an address to the farmers of Illinois, delivered in 1891 and given in full in his volume of speeches and lectures published'by the Rhodes & McClure Publishing company, of Chicago, Colonel Ingersoll thus spoke In his own picturI esque style on this subject: | “For my part Ido not ask any Interference on the part of the government, except to undo the wrong it has done’ I do not ask that money be made out of nothing. I do not ask for the prosperity born of paper. But I do ask for the remonetization of silver. Silver was demonetized by fraud. It was an imposition upon every solvent man; a fraud upon every honest debtor in the United States, it assassinated labor. It was done in the interest of avarice and ■greed, and should be undone by honest men.” This eloquent extract is to be found on page 19 of the volume of his speeches above referred to. One who spoke from such strong convictions then cannot have gone over to the support of the single gold standard now and become an apologist for the very crime here so strongly denounced. We are satisfied, therefore, that the nubliehed report that Colonel Ingersoll is opposed to the remonetization of silver is u gross and unfounded libel.

The Republican goldbug papers have already begun to fear that, as one of them prints, “in the event of McKinley’s election, the Republican political managers will find themselves handicapped with expectations which cannot be easily realized.” It is entirely unnecessary that McKinley’s backers should begin, either now or later, to pave the way for their utter failure to redeem any of the extravagant promises they have been making the country of great prosperity and good times in the event of McKinley’s election, for that contingency will never and they will have no occasion after the election to explain. The railroad bosses may drive their men Into McKinley clubs and compel them to go to Canton, but they cannot eqmpel them to vote a McKinley baJ-