Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1900 — TO THE YOUNG MEN [ARTICLE]

TO THE YOUNG MEN

Advice Which Is a Safe Guide in This Campaign. QUOTATIONS FROM M’KINLEY Address Made In-. '96 Applicable to the Pressnt Contest. * / Cause For Hesitation; By Young Men, As Well As Others, Before Giving Their Ballots to a Party Which Seeks to Create Hostility Between Would Lincoln, Grant, Logan and Garfield Have Stood Had Their Humble Surroundings Been a Bar to Future Success. An address by President McKinley to the first voters of Cleveland, Q~ delivered October % 1896 is so appropriate to the present campaign, in which are involved the same issues as then, as "to be commended to all those who want to start right and all those who want to keep right in the exercise ct the American’s most sacred privL ;,e. The President then said:

“You have witnessed the greatest progress of. science, mechanics and material development of any period in our history. Y’ou have enjoyed the advantages of the free and higher schools of learning. You have lived iu a period of the greatest opportunity for moral and intellectual growth, and enjoyed most favorable conditions for forming right opinion?. You witness only as you come to your sovereignty a reunited country under the old flag, blessed in natural resources beyond any other country and suffering only because of the unwise policies already inaugurated and the dangerous policies yet threatened. You approach the exercise of your sovereignty, therefore, under the most advantageous circumstances, free from predilections and prepared in calm judgment to consider without bias the issues on which parties are divided. You have-, in this campaign, as in no former campaign, the advantage o/ the most exhaustive discussion. Perhaps some of you, who have already started out for yourselves, have had, iu the last three cr four years, some valuable personal experience, which is quite as good a school in politics as in anything else. You come to your majority at a time when the people are engaged in a national contest w’hich w r ill settle some of the most important questions which ever confronted us, and settle them for long years to come. You are given the ballot at a time when its rf use for good or evil to the country was never greater. You assume this responsibility at a period fraught with as grave problems as were ever presented.

“So nation dan hold its standing be fore mankind that will depreciate its own currency, any more than a nation can stand before the world that will not defend its flag and honor. No nation can hold its position that will violate plighted faith or repudiate any part of its indebtedness under any guise whatsoever. No nation can command respect at home or abroad if it does not at all times uphold the supremacy of law and inviolability of its own sacred olTligation. Surely, every young voter, who has his spurs yet to win, his career to make, his fortune to build, will hesitate before that which seeks to create hostility between classes and sections, between the rich and the poor, between the mechanic and the manufacturer, between the farmer and the banker. He will cast his ballot to continue the equality of citizenship, of privilege, of opportunity, of possibility, which has been the boast of our citizenship and t-Is the very corner-stone upon which our free institutions rest. “No young man will want tq place weights upon his own shoulders or raise barriers to his/own progress, which hitherto have never impeded the progress of the industrious, honest, clean, ambitious young man. Away with caste and classes. Such a doctrine Is un-American and unworthy to be taught a free people. He who would inculate that spirit among our people Is not the friend, but the enemy of the poor, but honest, young mau, whose soul is fired with a worthy ambition for himself. “How would Lincoln, Grant, Garfield and Logan have stood" if, in their time, they had accepted the doctrine, which some knew how to teach, that because they were poor and of humble surroundings they must go off by themselves and shut the door of opportunity to the best impulses of their souls and the noblest aspirations of their minds? The ballot of tho young man, as well as thgt of the old man; the ballot of voter, as well as that of all voters, should always express the voice of truth and conscience. It should represent the calm and unbiased Judgthe voter. It should embody the welfare of himself, his home, his community and his country. It should never be false to his convictions or opposed to Justice and hdnor, either In public or private concerns. It should express on its'face the best hopes and highest aspirations as an Individual citizen, and always represent the greatest good to his fellow countrymen. '“May your votes, young gentlemen, be always given to preserve our unity, our honor, our flag, our currency and our country, and to save our blessed Inheritance always form lawlessness, dishonesty and violence. May your votes always be glvAi for a ffclidy that shall give us the widest development In our unmatched resources;, the wld-

eat incentive to th%, Invention, skill and genius of onr citizens; the largest reward to American labor and tbs highest welfare of the people, and promote the best deals in Ameriaan. citizenship.” V