Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1900 — A DEMOCRAT TALKS [ARTICLE]

A DEMOCRAT TALKS

James H. Eckles Gives Reasons For Repudiating Bryan. A BUSINESS PROPOSITION Questions For Those Who Have Vital Interests at Stake. Dignified Arraignment of the Political Demagogues Who Are Preaching the Gospel of Discontent, Arraying Class Against Class and Proclaiming Doctrines of Disastrous import—An Appeal For the Preservation of the Dearest Traditions Pressnled With Force and Logic. Among conservative Democrats gen erally the address of the Hon. James H. Eckles, ex-controller of the treas ory, delivered In Chicago, has attracted much attention. In his calm, logical and dignified repudiation of the “Bryanized and emasculated Democracy” Mr. Eckles submitted reasons for his act, which may well command the attention and interest of all thoughtful citizens of the republic. Mr. Eckels said in part:

“I propose in this campaign, as a Democrat, to support William McKinley, the nominee of the Republican party, for re-election to the presiden tial office, and on that behalf I am on this platform. “The fact may well challenge the thoughtful attention of every laboring man that no where do the declarations of principles of the Democratic party as today constituted, or the utterances of the Democratic candidate appeal to any business interest, whether that interest be small or great. In every section of the country business men, no matter what the calling, repudiate them as violative of all sound rules of business conduct and ■destructive of those underlying principles upon which the common welfare of the successful commercial world must rest. On analysis the laboring men will find that this almost universal rejection of Bryanlsm "by those who are conducting the great affairs of finance, of manufacturing, •of trade and commerce, and who pi the very order of things are giving the largest measure of employment to labor, does not arise from a selfish, a political or class prejudice, as Mr. Bryan would have them believe, because neither enter into the forming of that opinion. It is their knowledge of the subject, gained through study and their knowledge gained through experience in transacting business affairs, which uniformly unite in a verdict against the issue promulgated by a debauched Democracy and a theorizing Populism. They do not wish 'to evade any legal responsibility, to pay less than their just proportion of taxes, to treat unjustly their employes, or deal unfairly with the public. They want only stability in money, equity in law, and wisdom of word and action In the executive. They ■distrust Mr. Bryan, because he has made it impossible for them to trust him. A Fair Question. “The questions which I submit with confidence to the laboring man is, who has most at stake in this country, the business man whose energy, thrift and venture of capital, has made possible Its greatness, or the political demagogues who are going up and down the country preaching a gospel of discontent, arraying class against class and proclaiming doctrines, which, if enforced, would bring widespread and far-reaching disaster upon every Interest which now stands for the use of capital and the employment of labor? Who today are employing the thousands upon thousands of men in mine and mill, in furnace and factory, upon railroads and the waters, in store and office? Are they the Bryans or the Tillmans, the Altgelds, or the Weavers, the Townes or the Crokers? I call your attention to the fact that these men and all their associates who write the platforms, map out the policies and control the action of the Democratic party as today that party reveals itself, are men who know no calling but politics and contribute nothing to the support of their fellows beyond the emoluments of such political offices as they may by chance secure. If once eliminated from politics they will find, like Othello, their occupation, gone. I assert that these men are not as well equipped either m word or deed, to so well counsel with labor ns are those who are in the daily life of business undertakings. I assert with still greater emphasis that any party which by wedding Itself to unsound and destructive doctrines, has so completely eliminated all employers of labor from Its councils, and made Impossible their support of its candidates, is not to be trusted with the power to legislate for either labor or capital. Its influence would be injurious to the Interests of both; its acts destructive to that financial fabric; the maintenance of the integrity of which is essential to the well-being of all. Remember you citizens, who toil day In and day out and thereby upbuild the country, I beg of you to remember before you give In adhesion to the cause of. Mr. Bryan and his party as against the advice of the business world, that by so doing you embrace the tenets of a party solely of politicians, controlled wholly for tho benefit of politicians and by politicians alone. I do not believe as a business proposition you can, from the standpoint of yonr own good and the good of those dependent upon you, aford to take the risk to which you are tn-

vited. I am certain, despite some individual injustice here and Individual injustice there, you are better off at present and will be in the future, by acting with those who employ labor and not making common cause with men, who neither themselves labor outside *of the realm of politics for their own advancement, nor give employment to others. Another Phase of the Question. “But there is another phase of thi3 question which we cannot overlook. If Mr. Bryan stands for any one thing more than another it is in his antagonism to all forms of aggregated wealth. If he Is to be believed the country Is menaced by the fact that each returning year shows the American people to have accumulated greater wealth. He selects, above all else, the oank, as the institution which threatens most and the banker as finding his source of employment in enriching himself at the expense of distressing poverty to his fellows. I submit, without fear of successful contradiction, that a bank, whether it be national, Btate or private one, properly conducted and honestly managed, Instead of being the cause of detriment to any community or harmful to any interest, public or private, is a source of strength and benefit. I allege further that no one is more benefitted by such institutions than labor. Over and above the distinctive feature of the good of savings departments, pro-, viding a safe and profitable place for labor’s earnings, rests the greater good accomplished by the bank in gathering to itself the surplus ijooney of the country which would lie in idleness, and directing it into proper channels of trade and commerce, thus making ’t possible to carry on the thousand undertakings which furnish the daily wage of labor. In the debasement of the currency of the country and In that general assault upon banks which would follow the inauguration of Mr. Bryan’s policies, nowhere would the disaster fall more quickly and more completely than upon savings institutions. The injury done to the creditors of national banks would be comparatively no greater than that done to those of savings ones, though such could better stand it. I deny the doctrine of Mr. Bryan that the banker prospers in the distresses of the people, as unsound in reason and untrue In fact. Does Mr. Bryan dare assert that the banker increased his riches in 1893 and the years immediately following, when failure was to be noted in every section of the country and labor everywhere idle? If he does he has failed to study the statistics of those days, for then was demonstrated the economic truth of the interdependent relations of capital and labor in periods of depression and prosperity. Can Be No Money Trust. “There can be no money trust on the part of the banks of this country to the loss of the people. What has been the result of tho multiplying of banks, the enlarging of banking capital, the increase in available bank deposits? The small borrower today buys his borrowed money for 6 per cent instead of 8, the farmer his mortgage money at 5, and all because this moneyed octopus, which Mr. Bryan and his political adherents decry, has Increased in strength and spread Its operations everywhere. The interest rate has fallen from 12 to 4 per cent and less. What has labor lost by this? Surely nothing, for in the cheapening of the rate of money and credit, ths use of which the banker sells to the man of business, his employer has been enabled to take on a wider scope of operation and Increase the number of those he employes. “The national banks have been the cheapening force In lowering interest rates by educating the people to a general use of banks, and thereby making capital available. It has given to the people a currency absolutely safe and everywhere current. Mr. Bryan, if the truth were known, attacks that currency, not because of the power to issue it being lodged in the national banks, but because he stands as the, nominee in the first instance of a political organization which is against a redeemable currency. The party to which he Is most closely allied is the party of Irredeemable greenbacks and kindred fiat issues, and Mr. Bryan as their especial champion assaults the note issue of the national banks in order to pave the way for a government note possessing no other value than the stamp of the federal government. The wild vagaries of the Greenback party were defeated more than 20 years ago. Are the American people now willing to resurrect them and vitallize an issue then held to be productive only of harm. Bryan’s Statesmanship. “The difficulty with Mr. Bryan’s statesmanship is that it is a statesmanship of prejudice, class distinctions and misinformation. It Is a statesmanship which takes no thought of the morrow, but contents itself with the polltcal advantage of today. I venture the statement that in all the range of American political annals there never has appeared a public man who has Illumined so many different questions with so much mis-informatlon. The leadership of Mr. Bryan found Its origin In the peculiar conditions of the world of business and labor four years since. It has maintained itself, because in the Bryanizlng of the organization, the Democracy has beep denuded of every leader of thought, sagacity and high political principle. It has now neither ability for political organization, nor capacity for wise, safe or conservative constructive legislation. In the last analysis the leadership of Mr. Bryan demonstrates Itself to begin and end In the denunciation

of the existing order of things. Is it safe to trust the governmental control of a great nation in the keeping of a man who sees nowhere anything to command; who is quick to charge conspiracy and dishonesty upon great numbers of people, who in dally life draw to themselves the respect of oil their fellows? What thoughtful and inquiring citizen will from a knowledge of Mr. Bryan’s past erroneous discussion of these paramount economic problems believe him eapable of bringing about a proper solution of the present ones? In the campaign upon which we have now entered the Democratic candidate changing from the issue announced at the opening us paramount, has taken up the discussion of the trust question. I do not mistate the fact, I think, when T say he is discussing this Issue in the manner which has characterized all the other discussions with which be has favored the public. “He does not undertake to go into the merit of the question, for that would not be Bryanesque. He knows that such a course must eliminate the political advantage which he seeks for his party to his own advancement, and therefore he does not make it. The argument which he makes is, addressed to prejudice, backed up by misstatements, illogical in presentation and unfair in deduction. There Is no man of any prominence today standing in defense of illegal combinations of capital, whether great or small, formed for the purpose of throttling all_ competition, raising the price of articles us consumption, and burdening the people. But there are a vast number who, recognizing the economic soundness iu the added volume of business to be obtained through aggregated capital, properly brought together and wisely managed, deny that from such any harm flows to either the consumer or the laborer. They go further, and assert, with an emphasis not to be mistaken, that far from being harmful, such combinations are on the contrary productive of good, most of all to the laboring man. I am not speaking for combinations, illegal, unsound or unsafe, but solely for those which, though large in the amount of capital invested, have regard for all the rules which control in all the ordinary business affairs. On principle I do not perceive why there is more harm or danger to the interest of the citizen because a thousand men are employed by one concern instead of one hundred, or One million dollars of capital invested rather than one thousand. Disregard of Economic Truth.

“The misinformation which is every hand upon this subject has ariMta from an insistence upon a discussion of it in the light of partisan polities instead of in that of economic tr*th and history. If those who are now protesting so vigorously against what .they deem the baneful effects of so called trusts, would better inform themselves we would have more reason and less reclamation from press and platform. I am sure I do not misdefine the term when I say that what the concentration of capital or labor, or capital anfl labor for a specific, legitimate purpose. It is the unification of the resources of many for the common welfare. In political life it ultimately assumes the form of gov • eminent; in finance it results In systems of banking, upholding the transactions of the business world; iu transportation It finds fruition in railroads and steamboat lines; industrially It evidences itself in manufacturing plants, in mines and mining and the thousand forms of industry which make for an advanced state of civilization. It is, I assert, the highest development of a complicated and efficient form of civilization, made more manifest as man is more and more removed from the influence of Ignorance and barbarism.

“As long as conflicting interests wage war upon one another, with capital diversified, with labor struggling to adjust wages, with many beads instead of a few, with policies and methods all at variance, it was Impossible for us to enter successfully in competition with nations where the capital employed was larger and the wage paid cheaper. In all this evolution in our industrial world, I assert that no loss has come to labor. The economics introduced have not reached him. On the other hand, whatever changes have been wrought, and there have been many, have been to his advantage. His more general and steadier employment during the past few years attest this fact. The saving which has been made under the new order of things has been in dispensing with the cost of middlemen and unnecessary management is to his benefit. If the prices at tbe outset to the consumer were Increased, it arose more from extraordinary and immediate demands after the years of retrenchment and idleness, and not from other causes. As that abnormal condition passes away, and we settle down to a normal one, two things will become manifest. First, a cheapened price to the consumer, with a lessened profit to the manufacturer; second, little or no disturbance in the wage of the employes, despite the falling market to the employer. The reason for such a state, hitherto unknown, rests In aggregated capital having now the ability to gather to Itself world-wide markets, finds its source of gain In the large increasing of its volume of business at a lessened individual profit. As an offset, in the increased volume the manufacturer will look for his dividends and not In a reduction of labor cost. “If combination of capital neither increases the price to the consumer nor diminishes the number of laborers, nor the amount of wage, it cannot be either a menace te society or a detrt-

ment to, the public good. It certainly does not present such a situation in the country’s affairs as to demand unusual wws or extraordinary action. The laws which apply to the dealings of daily business life I deem sufficient, the laws which make requisite common honesty and fair dealing between man and man.

A Cunning Subterfuge. “It seems to me there is no justification for all this hue and cry of imperialism and threatened militarism. It is an issue conceived and uttered by the opposition to divert from the real things at stake, to conceal the purposes that those who are in the confidence of Mr. Bryan, to make for their plans at home and not work out reforms abroad. Who, knowing Mr. Bryan, analyzing his mind, following the course of his career, passing impartial judgment upon his declaration on any question, will believe him capable of heading an administration which can carry out a successful foreign policy? How is it possible for Mr. Bryan, wrong on all things at home, to be right on all things abroad? But his position upon the Philippines is not one that entitles him to consideration. He did make possible the acquisition of the Philippines by insisting 1 upon the ratification of the Paris j treaty, and now when it, his act, returns to plague-him, undertakes to disprove his responsibility by assert ing that his action was based upon the idea of making mere manifest the dangers of imperialism. Why make it more manifest? Why jeopardize, If his present position is correct, the liberties of the Philippines by creating more evidence of title for the United States to the land he claims fs theirs? Why? Simply that Mr. Bryan might have another issue in his presidential campaign. If he states the truth, that he was against it all the time but yielded to make more manifest the issue of imperialism, he stood for politics then as he does now, for partisan purposes then as he does now, for self aggrandisement then as he does now. He was not patriotic then and he is not now. Bryan’s Vagaries Repudiated. “I was not in favor of the war with Spain. I believed it to be a mistake, but having entered upon it, I do not see in the light of all the facts as presented by the records that things could have been different. I was oppoe-i to colonial expansion, but that expansion is an accomplished fact, made so largely by Mr. Bryan’s co-operation, and dealing with conditions as they are and not as they might have been. I prefer to trust the wisdom and experience of President McKinley, backed by a party that yet retains some conservative elements in it, to the vagaries of Mr. Bryan. Supported by an organization which boasts that within its circle the radical rule and there is neither use nor place for the conservative. The public must not'forget that Mr. Bryan’s supporters in Congress urged on the war with Spain; that Mr. Bryan’s friends gave their requisite vote to ratify the treaty. The speeches of Democrats were the speeches making for blood and fire before the war, their votes after Its conclusion bespoke either their hypocrisy or their belief in the wisdom of the treaty which they were aiding in ratifying, a treaty the provisions of which, judged by their present utterances, they did not believe in and the result of which as they now profess to see them, they condemn. The policy which Mr. Bryan announces for the Philippines, if elected president, to convene Congress to create stable government for them and establish a Monroe doctrine protectorate over them, the public knows to be idle. The great mass of ttie American people know that it is impossible to accomplish these things until conditions as to education, guarantee of property rights and safety of personal ones warrant such action. However, many the errors of judgment made which wrought the condition which now presents Itself in the colony the country is not willing without taking thought, to set adrift, though retaining a full protecting responsibility for their acts, any people who have come to us through the Spanish war, educated in Spanish ways and grown in Spanish practices. Mr. Bryan and his friends misjudge popular sentiment if they think that upon such an issue they can blind the electors of the country to those things, which affecting the immediate country, are more paramount than any involved In the Issue they now attempt to create. The dangers of military authority here, of lessened liberty to the American people, of enlarged power to the army, do not now and will not in the future exist, for patriotism everywhere and at all times has been the priceless heritage of the people and will continue to be for centuries yet to come. With each returning year a better condition wIH, through American Influences, be worked out for the people of our foreign possessions, until, fitted for a larger liberty, they take their place in the galaxy of republics. But it will come about only through wisdom of act, statesmanlike legislation and education. It will not be the fruit of designing demagogues, partisan politicians, and self-enriching spoilsmen. When that day comes there is no patriotic citizen of the republic but who will gladly acclaim ‘Hall and farewell.’ A Word In Conclusion. “In conclusion, a single word and this address is finished. It Is a word for those Democrats who have not bowed the knee to or placed upon the neck the yoke of the men who have made an honorable party a hissing and a by-word. In accepting Republican candidates now, they assume no other attitude than that which they took In the first instance, when Popu-

Ilstn defiled the Democratic temple. They Justify their course now as they did then, believing that their highest duty as citizens as w» n as party men makes any other action Impossible. They do not believe in any of Mr. Bryan’s views on the one hand, 'but on the other they approve of much that President McKinley has done. I believe an unbiased consideration by Gold Democrats of all that has been done by the administration under times of unusual stress, will lead to the conclusion that their efforts In that behalf were at least worth while, and that much has been accompllhsed of great benefit to the country in many of its varied and Important interests. The administration of President McKinley has been successful in making more secure the gold standard through enacted law and In refunding much of the public debt. It has maintained the national credit and improved the country’s banking system. It has sustained the country's well being at home and its dignity abroad. Upon the Issues as made up it ought to and it will receive the approval of that body of voters who either within or without the lines of organized political affiliation know their rights and dare those rights maintain. “Fellow citizens, In the Interest of good government, (Conservative ad ministration and economic laws, full and fair regard for personal and property rights, the elimination of class distinctions, the wiping out of class prejudice, the dignity and power ?of law, I ask you to sustain the administration and defeat the Bryanized and emasculated Democracy. In such a course lies assurance of preserving for your childrens’ children, untarnished in all their integrity, best traditions of the republic which in the past have added a splendid luster to American citizenship and people, and in the future will gain for them a still greater weight of glory.”