People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1897 — THREE LETTERS. [ARTICLE]

THREE LETTERS.

Committee Appointed by Editor a at Memphis Inquire About ArcheryBrief Replies in Outline. The following correspondence is self explanatory: Mr.W. P. Smith, Indianapolis. Ind.—Dear Sir: Our editors at Memphis resolved to push the work of organization the best they know how for the coming campaign, and I have been appointed chairman of the committee on organization, aDd we are very desirous to get up the best plan possible. Mr. C. Vincent, of the Nonconformist, very high ly recommended the Archers, and if you can do so I wish you would send me the obligation, ritual and other matter. If you can do so, send me about three copies of each at your earliest convenience, and enclose the bill. If you have any advice on the matter please give me the best you have. If it were not so much out of my way I would come down to see you. Perhaps you may be in Chicago or some point near, if so let me know,- and I will try and meet you. Yeurs truly, Jas. H. Ferriss. Joliet, 111.

Jas, H. Ferriss, Dear Sir:— Mr. W. P. Smith has received a letter of inquiry from you,which he requests me to answer, being acquainted with you, .and for some days past having gained an insight- aud acquaintance with the organization referred to. It is a misfortune that Mr. Smith could not have attended the Memphis meeting and presented the subject for your fullest comprehension. Like yourseli and thousands of others engaged in this work of emancipation, I haye felt that a link was out somewhere; that Populism, Socialism, nor Co-Op-erative Commonwealth as it is vaguely termed, has supplied. Archery supplies this deficiency and removes the barrier. It will be difficult for me to throw my energies into the work of organization again on party lines. The fruitless hardships incident to twenty years campaigning has left a very widely entertained conviction that “we’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.” Human nature is always reliable; human judgment it is you cannot bank upon. Self interest steps in at every opening to divert and divide; in one place to fuse, in another not to, till as a political family not one has confidence again to trust another.

In Archery, we find a feature which enlists the selfish interests of every class but one, the money broker. Diverts our selfish desires so they minister to the benefit of all in order to the greater help along self. The farmer, the machinist, the man who, as the socialist says, “owns the machine;” the merchant, the tailor, the politician, the fisherman, the shop hands, the sew ing girls, and every degree of employer and employee engaged in productive enterprise. The banker’s clearing house gives us a secret for effecting $25.00 of exchanges with SI.OO of cash. They have adjusted their business to the money volume, and can continue to do so as it rises or falls. Once let productive enterprise adopt this same method, which it has in numerous instances under Archery, and “per capita” agitation becomes a phantom of the past. 1 have seen most gratifying results here with intellectual leaders in the community, business men of wide experience who would criticize if they could, but they can’t; it’s a case of give-in at once. One gentleman, a salesman, head of a leading establishment in Rensselaer, who served six years in one of the great department stores of Indianapolis, said to me, “If the Archers had one, just one complete department store in a leading city with their organization behind it they would revolutionize the business systems of the country, and yet foster the small tradesmen, not destroying them as the big stores now operate. It would market the stocks for all of them, increase profits and pay those wn<> produce, better prices for their labor and products, nor increase the prices to the consumer.” The second edition of the ritual is nearly exhausted, and a new and improved one is soon to appear. Inquiries are coming to Mr. Smith from every direction for the same line of information asked in your own. To meet this demand, the parent society will shortly issue its official publication, dealing exclusively with questions pertaining to the Order; questions and answers; reports of active societies and organizeis; showing both the so-

cial and industrial features at work. The initiation ceremony alone will cure the most stubborn case of gold basis and instead of leaving the candidate in a maze of bewilderment, gives him just what he has been groping after. I will enclose a copy of letter written today by Mr. Smith to another inquirer, touching specific features. Your committee should visit Indianapolis on any Tuesday evening and see the Society in regular session, then stay over a day or two and study critically its working degrees. I count myself only as one of the groping multitude, tired and disheartened over the clashings and senseless bickerings into which our forces political have resolved; the only logical outcome of following the line of action laid down by the enemy, instead of learning the secret of their methods and employing it in spite of them. It inspires me with new hope. I only speak for one. Very truly, Henry Vincent. Rensselaer, Ind.