Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1896 — Father Endeavor Clark verses Anarchist Ashby. [ARTICLE]

Father Endeavor Clark verses Anarchist Ashby.

Stump Ashby says that 70 per cent, of the American people' are dependent, are “paupers.” He used those very words. He says that more people here are poor, ~msre~Sfe homeless than in any other country on earth. That our American people are the worst off of any people on earth. What monstrous, what wicked, what infamous lies! They are the exact opposite of the truth in every particular. Even at this day, in spite of the hard times resulting primarily from fear of and partial realization of Democratic free trade; and secondarily from agitation for a debased money system; even now, we repeat, the American people are the best off of any people on earth. More of them are independent, more of them own their farms, more ..of them own their houses, more of them Command the comforts of life, in proportion, than in any other country on earth. • “The American people the worst off of any people!” Ashby says. Compare them again with the people of Mexico. Our nearest neighboring nation, and, next to China, the free silver country, par excellence. In this connection, which will you believe: This Ashby, this unknown agitator, this unreconstructed Rebel, this unrepentant slaveholder; or Rev. Francis E. Clark, the universally known. and universally respected founder and president of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor? A society, by the way, that in Its wonderful growth, and in its earnest work for the spread of the Christian religion, and the promotion of all good and noble virtues, gives the lie -to one 'of Ashby’s most infamous statements: Namely that the younger generation of Americans are growing up in irreligion and infidelity. But which will yOU believe? Will you believe Ashby, or will you believe Clark? Last Thursday, the very day when Ashby was hero uttering his infamous, his disloyal, his anarchistic libels on the American people, The Republican quoted from the New York Independent some extracts from Rev Francis Clark’s description of the condition of the common people of Mexico, and which he had just witnessed with his own eyes. These extracts will bear repetition: Here they are. Read them again. See what the condition of the common people of free silver Mexico really is; and compare the statements of the truly great and good man, Rev. -Clark with those of this irresponsible blatherskite Ashby. Mr. Clark says: “The silver of prosperous Mexico has not as yet found its way to any great extent into the pockets of the poor people. Wages are evidently on the highest sort of gold basis. • A number of my friends told me that they pay their cooks about five dollars a month, about one-quarter the price of such labor in the States. In the conn* try districts an able-bodied man earns six dollars (Mexican) a month (three dollars American) and his board; while a fair day’s wages in the city or country for a

laboring man is fifty cents (Mexican).” ‘‘Nowhere are beggars more numerous, op squalor and wretchedness more in evidence than in prosperous Mexico. The railway stations are thronged with almost naked children, holding out grimy hands, while their pitful and monotonous wail “Centavos,” “Centavos,” reminds one of the •‘Backsheesh, ’’ ‘‘Blacksheesh,” of Egypt and Syria, Indeed, the condition of the common people seems not one whit, better than of .the fellahin of Egypt /or the pariniis of India.”