Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1894 — Meeting of the Adullamites. [ARTICLE]

Meeting of the Adullamites.

The People’s party convention yesclay was one of the largest thirdparty meetings held in Indiana since the greenback years of 1878 and 1882. Those who knew the leaders and active spirits in those assemblages saw all of them who are living in the meeting of yesterday. They believe in the power of the government to create unlimited wealth with a printing press in the form of fiat money. They have at their tongues’ end all the heresies and misinformation by which they sustain this view. They are for the most part honest, but they cannot recognize a sac", and logic or experience are wasted upon them. To these can be added that class of men who in ancient times assembled in the cave of Adullam —those who are discontented. Among the discontented are many who set out in the old parties in pursuit of office and have failed. They constitute the spiteful and the unscrupulous element of the party. Those who looked upon the convention must have been struck with the number of

old men it contained and the absence of the intelligent and active young men who constituted so large a portion of the Republican State convention. Among those ■who participated was an unusually large number of men who have voted with the Democracy in the past. Ihe platform is the same in effect which the first national greenback convention adopted. Its open declaration for fiat money is not so emphatic in set terms, but it indorses the Omaha platform, which declared for the loaning of unlimited paper money on real

property by the government. The platform is longer and more of a jumble than its predecessors. Claiming to be for one kind of money, the platform would have the Indiana Legislature make three kinds for those who have debts to pay. Some of the things it asks the Legislature to do are wise, but most are absurd. The

tariff, which might be made to give the farmers of the United States the largest and best market in the world, is declared to be of no account. The surrender of the farm products of Indiana to

the free competition of Canada is of' no * possible account, but the free coinage cSilver, of which notan Indiana farmer can present fifty dollars’ worth as a product, is demanded with vehemence. Every practical interest of the mass of farmers and workers in the varied industries is ignored, but the interest. of tjie bonanza silver mine owners, already rich, is looked out for in a declaration which will enable them to have a dolltrmade out of half a dollar’s worth of silver bullion. As a calamity party in Indiana the People’s party will take the place of -the-Denmeracy, ._and willdgetdhe greater part of its increased vote from the disgruntled Democracy —lndianapolis Journal. The 4, Something-For-Notliing” Fallacy Hon. IL G. Horr of ihe New York Tribune continues to ventilate the fiat money, two per cent." loan and other visionary theories now claiming attention, in his own inimitable way. A correspondent asks him in reference to the populist theory of the Government loaning money on good security at 2 per cent. what. effectsuch a "policy would have on home and foreign trade. In his answer he

says: The first question which these “populists” should answer is this: "W hat right "Has the general. eminent to loan money at all at any rate of interest? Where does’ the Government get the- power to go into the banking business in any such sense as these gentlemen claim? Why should the general Govt rument loan numey any more than it should run farms, manage factories, open factories, open mines, carry on the cattle business keep a livery stable, build ami run hotels, raise chickens and geese, or furnish the people with spring lambs, garden truck and eggs? Then after showing the logical result of the government inaugurating such a wild policy as the populists suggest, he adds: One more suggestion: Why do these gentlemen confine their loans to people xyho can give security? Why do they limit the interest to 2 percent? Ifit is the duty of the Government to furnish money at 2 per cent, why not aTT per cent? Why charge any interest at all? People would rather have money and pay no interest than to pay even 2 per cent. Butter still, why not give them the money outright, principal and interest? Why require security in any case? There are so many people who need money and have nothing on which to give security. Why discriminate against the poor, the very poor, and in favor of those who already have something which t hey can . p ! edge? If the Government can make good money by simply printing it, why not supply all the people want at all times free of expense and toil? Why should people labor and sweat and worry to get something when the Government can furnish it with so little outlay of brain and muscle?" The old-fashioned" way of getting one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow should become obsolete say these modern financiers. They scout the idea that money to be valuable must cost labor. They tell us that money is simply a medium of exchange, that the idea of value should be entirely divorced from it. That people will go on giving something in exchange for nothing so long as they do not know that it is for nothing may be true. But counterfeit money is not good, even though exchanges are sometimes made with it. It is a lie all the same, though not detected.

Buy your farm wagons of B. F Ferguson, and save money. Ten different makes of Sewing ma chines, At Steward’s.