Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1894 — ANARCHY IN CONGRESS. [ARTICLE]

ANARCHY IN CONGRESS.

Mr. Reed Is Alarmed at. the Possibilities That Are Dooming Up. Washington better to New York Sun. I can see how ex-Speaker Reed is naturally the physical and intellectual leader of the House. His size is tremendous, his mind quick, and he Is in dead earnest. When I asked him what the Senate would do with the Wilson bill he said: j. . r 1! begin to get alarmed. -At first we thought the cooler heads of the Senate'would put back op to the tariff a good deal of the $84,000, W 0 deficit and make a tariff for revenue' according to the Democratic platform. But now I see there is Anarchy in the Senate. I' am afraid that "the Wilson bill will go through the Senate with its worst features retained- The Southern free-traders are in •power.” “How will this affect the Democratic party?” I asked. . “It will destroy it in the North.

- —*—j but frith its destruction will cotna great damage to the Republic. I should like to see the party wreck itself, but I feel that patriotism should take the place of party now. If I were a Northern Democrat I would put that $84,000,000 deficit back. Then they can go back to the foolish voters and say: ‘We have done your bidding. We have made a tariff for revenue and for the whole revenue.’ As it is, and as it will be, the voters will say: ‘You have not made a tariff for revenue. You have made free trade in some things and destroyed the revenue* on others. You have caused our wages to be cut twenty-five per cent, to fit your wage-destroying tariff. You have stopped mills, made workmen paupers, and taken billions of wage money out of circulation, and run the country in debt besides.’” - “How can money be made flush again?” I asked, and Mr. Reed answered:

“There is no way to put money in circulation except through wages paid. Issuing Government bonds doesn’t make circulation. The laborers must earn it and spend it. and that will make it flush. The statisticians say the 20,000.000 laboring people in this country earn when they are at work from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 a day. The Wilson tariff bill will cut these wages from ten to twenty-five per cent. The. ten per cent, cut on $40,000,000 will be a loss of $4,000,000 a day to laboring men, or $1,200,000,000 in a year. A twenty-five per pent, cut in wages will take $3,000,000,000 out of circulation. One-third of our labor is idle now. This idleness, is. costing. us probably $10,000,000 a day. Ido not wonder that the times are hard and tha,t money -is tight. There is money enough in the banks. They are glutted, but labor isn’t getting any of it. It will stay there till labor gets jt out.” . :. / “What will bring money out?” “Why, labor,-1 say, and nothing else. . .Set the mills to resuming, keep wages up, and the boys, wjlj soon earn money enough and spend enough to make times good- again.”'