People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1897 — Confidence Restoration. [ARTICLE]

Confidence Restoration.

The following article is taken from the Lake County News: It is given out that Major McKinley will wear nothing but American made clothes on inauguration day. He will wear imported ideas on the financial question however.—Chicago Dispatch, A gold bug exchange said during the campaign that as soon as it was known McKinley was elected confidence would return and prosperity set in. The same paper now says. “The late bank failures in Chicago has again tightened up the money market all over the country. There is not much use hoping for or expecting better times until the laboring men of this country have been working a year at good wages. No help need be expected from the money changers.” Some Republican sheets are prone to “squeal like stuck pigs” over the fact that free silver papers are disposed to tell the truth about the present condition of finances, trade and industry. For a few days after election these same sheets were starting up factories (which have not started yet) and telling of the wonderful wave of prosperity which was literally drowning the whole country, all because McKinley’s election had brought a return of confidence. Here is a sample from the Chicago Record of Nov. 11: In the short space of time that has elapsed since the election, the fact that what business needed was the revival of confidence has been forcibly demonstrated. Hoarded money has been pouring into the savings banks and gold has been flowing out; factories have been employing more men; railroads have been starting new lines, the stock of which has been bought in Europe; interest has dropped low enough to allow business to be done on borrowed capital —in fact, the whole commercial world has awakened. It seems as if Pandora had again opened her box and had set free the good spirit of confidence to heal the wouhds that panic fears, and distrust have made upon our body politic. Under existing circumstances what do you think of that little story?

Man acts from motion; behold the fishes of the sea sporting in freedom; the fowls of the air singing in gladness; the beasts of the field roaming in boundless liberty, guided by nature, led by instinct! Man, armed with reason, grasps the elements and binds them to his will; he tames the lightning, teaching it io talk; he rides upon the wind and moves Upon the waters. Man lives and reigns master of . both earth and air. Man first appears upon the planet a naked solitary savage, pursuing and devouring his fellow man, but slowly reason took her throne and man, through ages of experience, learned that labor is essential unto life, division of labor unto happiness, and free exchange of value unto liberty. Man seeking these united first in pairs and families, then into tribes with chosen chiefs, then in communities with unwritten laws, then into cities with protecting walls, then into governments with written laws, then into nations, whitening the seas with peaceful commerce and darkening the lands with bloody wars.