People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1896 — CONTINUING THE panic. [ARTICLE]

CONTINUING THE panic.

Gold Owners Are the Vultures of Business. • Squeezing the Life Blood . Out of the People. They Thrive on Financial Trouble. General Prosperity Would Be Their Disaster. fan,,—The gold oontractionteta, who are squeezing the life blood out of the people, depressing trade and continuing the panic they oommeooed in 1898, are endeworing to explain the hard times by saying that they are result of a “want of confidence. ” This is refreshing impudence from a set’ of men who live upon the destraction of confidence and the Wrecking of business enterprises. They are the men who watch the treasury gold reserve as buEsards watch dying mules ou the read, and who fill the eax with croaking predictions that the national credit Will suffer if it falls below |100,000,000. They aae the men who draw the gold out for expert and then sell the gold back to the government at a premium to replenish the reserve. They are the men who ay down the bonds of the government so that they may buy them cheap. They are the men who induce the treasury department to put $100,000,000 of bonds on the market at one time in order, to lower-the price, when ordinary business prudence would dictate the sale of the bonds in small lots, if at all, and in advance of the necessity for them, and without any flourish of trumpets. They are the men who advocate the gold standard because they have money to sell 'and want to make it dear. As money becomes dearer property becomes cheaper. With prices constantly falling capital is afraid to invest itself in enterprises. Farm products will not sell for the cost of production and transportation. Railroads become bankrupt for want of freight business. This frightens the foreign holder of railroad bonds, and he throws them into the American market for whatever they will bring. The greenbacks he. receives are turned into gold at the treasury department and the gold is sent abroad. This makes more business for the bond buyers and the gold sellers. The gold men have bad their way now for many years. They repealed the Sherman act over three years ago expressly to restore confidence. They have advertised “the silver craze” as dead at frequent intervals ever since. They now declare that it is again dead. They say that McKinley’s election is sure. He is going to carry all the states. Bryan is going to be snowed under. Gold is king. Gold is coming over here by the millions from Europe, apparently as an advertisement of the certainty of McKinley’s election, but really for two other purposes. First, to render a new issue of bonds unnecessary during the campaign, and, second, for the money that can be made on gold coin by temporarily forcing it to a premium by the gold panic makers after the election. With all these conditions what more is lacking? If all this will not restore confidence, what will? But one answer can be made. Confidence can- never be universal under any system .of finance or any administration of it so long as there are pirates on the ocean of business who can enrich themselves by frightening the timid. A very few men can make a great deal of noise. A false report of the existence of cholera in any city wonld send thousands of people out of it without an investigation. The vultures of business life thrive only in the presence of financial sickness and death, just as the vultures of the air-thrive only where dead and dying animals can be found. What does Pierpont Morgan want of confidence? It would rain his business and the business of all others like him. It is do* a want of confidence that causes the hard times. They are caused by the contraction of the volume of money, and the men who make the most out of them are confidence men to whom the general prosperity would be a crowning disaster.—Cincinnati Enquirer.