Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 August 1891 — THAT BILLION DOLLAR CONGRESS. [ARTICLE]

THAT BILLION DOLLAR CONGRESS.

i A Chicago, gentlemen visiting in Rensselaer, and one who for twenty years or more has been an eminent and trusted democrat, remarked yesterday in tliehearingof several persons that “If the Alliaance had sense enough to hold together until 1892, they can elect a president” adding after a significant pause. “A Democratic presient that is.” And that is only a sample of what all Democrats are thifiking; and also talking when they give their thoughts truthful expression The holding together of the Alliance as a political party until 1892 is the hope of the Democracy. There was never a time since the beginning of the world when farmers and laboring men could get so much of the necessaries and luxuries of life for a given amount of labor than right now. Never a time when it was more “money in a man’s pocket” to be alive thaunow; the croakings of the calamityites to the contrary, not-with-standing. There was a short time during the war, when the circulating medium was greatly depreciated, when previously incurred indebtedness might have more easily paid off than now, but not even then could so good livings be made by labor as at this present time. It is not necessary to go back more than five centuries to find the vast majority of the people in all even of the most civilized nations, worse fed, worse lodged, worse -clothed and worse instructed than are inmates of the poor houses and prisons of this day. From that time to this there has been an uninterrupted improvement in the condition of the masses of the people, but at no time and in no place, lias this improvement been in any degree comparable with what has taken place right her 9 in the United States during the last thirty years, under the enlightened and progressive policy of protection and national developement, instituted and maintained by the Republican party. Senator Peffer in his speech here dwelt with much unction on the good old times of his boyhood, when his father’s bureau drawer was never entirely empty of a few dollars, to be drawn on whenever occasion required it; but if his fathers’ money box was never empty, it was a rare exception in all the older days we have ever had reliable {information of. In fact, all the talk about “the good oldtimep,” is the rankest kind of humbug. The old times were tough oldtimep, to the great mass of the people, and there is not a man of fair and sound judgement, whose memory goes back more than thirty years who does not know that they wereAsk auy of the older men or women of your acqnantance what kind of times fanners and working men had before the year lj&l? Ask how many had carpets on their * ' **"•

floors, organs or pianos or any other fine furniture in their honsesf How many of them kept carnages, buggies, fine harness and extra horses to use them with. Ask how the wives and children of farmers and * laboring men were clothed in those days? How much money they spent on flue raiment, in jewelry, on books, music, or "higher education, or in journeyings about,or in luxuries for the table; and when you have made a full and complete inquiry as to all these particulars, then you will be in a position to rightly compare the present prosperous, and progressive period, with any of the alleged “good old times” Senator Peffer or others of his class tell us about.

Tiie Fifty-first Congress which the democrats are derisively calling the billion dollar congress, appiop riated $988,410,120 or $l7O 446,269 more than the Fiftieth Congress, the main items of increase being $25,321,907 for a deficiency pension bill left unpaid by the Fiftieth (democratic) Congress. $22667,343 was for post office bill, a large amount of which will be returned to the treasury. $7,307,146 for the purchase of Indian lands that will bring the government three times their cost; $14,042,344 was to meet contracts for naval vessels heretofore contracted for and $62,668,536 to pay pensions of soldiers under the liberal laws enacted by that congress. By a glance at the above items of appropria tions it will be seen that over one half the increase was on account of pensions, which we think is the cause of much of the democratic opposition.