. .XI ftft jj | Jj.r&toj8t.TJ\.y * * fjJ ? afe@ jA Mlr Jj-Vl .n
"Che Conservative. 9 Mf
nf legislation as shall insure the main
tenance of the parity of the metals wore
by a breath strewn to the winds. Nei
ther the traditions of the party were
preserved nor the precedents of the past
obeyed. The teachings of Jefferson ,
Jackson , Ben ton , Tilden , Cleveland
were repudiated and the heresies of
Bryan , Altgeld and Tillman substituted.
For the first time the doctrine of the
free and unlimited coinage of silver was
preached. Truly , strange gods are put
up in the democratic sanctuary and
false prophets are heard in the land.
The platform reads :
"Wo declare that the act of J87 de
monetizing silver , without the knowl
edge or approval of the American people
ple , has resulted in the appreciation of
gold and a corresponding fall in the
prices of commodities produced by the
people ; a heavy increase in the burden
of taxation , and of all debts , public and
private ; the enrichment of the money-
lending class at home and abroad ; the
prostration of industry and impoverish
ment of the people.
"Wo are unalterably opposed to mon
ometallism , which has locked fast the
prosperity of an industrial people in
Ihe paralysis of hard times. Gold mon
ometallism is a British policy and its
adoption has brought other nations into
financial .servitude to London. It is not
only un-American , but anti-American ,
and it can be fastened on the United
States only by the stifling of that spirit
and love of liberty which proclaimed
our political independence in 177(5 ( , and
won it in the war of the Revolution.
"We demand the free and unlimited
coinage of both gold and silver at the
present ratio of Hi to 1 , without waiting
for the aid or consent of any other nation.
We demand that the standard silver dollar
shall be a full legal-tender , equally with
gold , for all debts , public and private ,
and we favor such legislation as will
prevent for the future the domonetiza-
iioa of any kind of legal-tender money
by private contract.
"Wo are opposed to the policy and
practice of surrendering to the holders
of the obligations of the United States
t he option reserved by law to the gov
ernment of redeeming such obligations
in either silver coin or gold coin.
"We are opposed to the issuing of in
terest-bearing bonds of the United
States in time of peace , and condemn
the trafficking with banking syndicates
which , in exchange for bonds and at an
enormous profit to themselves , supply
the Federal treasury with gold to main
tain the policy of gold monometallism. "
When the history of this country will
be written , the Macaulay of the future
will point to the silver agitation and the
presidential campaign of 1890 and the
last stand made for silver in the two or
three years following , as one of those
unexplainable political conditions recur
ring from time to time. History repeats
itself where a people carried away by
ignorance and prejudice , hysteria and
commercial depression , stand in the way
of their own civilization , industrial de
velopment , progress and happiness.
The same perversion a hundred years
ago incited English workingmen to tear
down factories and destroy labor-saving
machinery. The prejudice of the Chin
ese to the steam engine and modern
appliances is the same temper intensi
fied in the Orient. Will the historian
of the future compare the free silver
party with the misguided English
man of the enrly century or with the
half-civilized Chinese , neither of whom
had any use for the better tool of mod
ern industry ?
CIIAKLES S. ELUUTTER.
Omaha , September 15 , 1898.
There is loft still some idealism , some
of the spirit of doing a thing because it
is right to do it , and not because it
promises profit. Imagine a paper called
Tun CONSERVATIVE , published in Ne
braska City , Neb. , in the home and
haunt of Mr. Bryan , and the heart of
the political "bad lands ; " yet there it is ,
in something the same form as The
Nation of New York , with much of the
some spirit , but without , I regret to
say , the New York paper's excellence of
make-up , and without , I am glad to
say , that tinge of yellow , which is as
wearisome in ultra reactionism as it is
in the tlnrmiec journalism of the new
school. THE CONSERVATIVE is for the gold
standard , for merit as the test in the
civil service , for free trade and for free
shade , for it has the excellent forestry
hobby , for municipal reform , for the
rights of the rich as well as the rights
of the poor , for law and order , for high-
class , intelligent common sense it
stands , in a word , for American , social ,
industrial , economic and political sanity.
It is not a "plutocratic" paper. It is
edited by a man long known as the
friend of the farmer , an agriculturist ,
an aboriculturist , a horticulturist , and a
gentleman who happily combines with
all these cults of the open air the cul
ture of the library and the study. His
name is J. Sterling Morton. Ho was a
member of Mr. Cleveland's second cabi
net and a most puzzling individual to
the misunderstanding many , who could
not reconcile themselves to the blend in
him , as vulgarly phrased , of "tho dxido
and the jay. " Mr. Morton has the ro
mantic , roccoco sympathies of a popu
list tempered by the eminently hardheaded -
headed and stiff-backed rationality of
Mr. Cleveland. And so ho represents ,
in a double-barreled fashion , what
Henri Labouchere has called "the new
chivalry" of the United States , in which
there are intermixed Quixotism and
shrewdness , imagination and reason.
THE CONSERVATIVE is a paper that
should focus and render effective for
good , in national affairs , the saner senti
ment of the West as against the ever-
reciirring mania in politics , which seems
to bo generated in Kansas , like the
cholera in India. Mr. Morton is just the
man to take a tilt at the windmills of
the West , being touched with the spirit
which , iu varying forms , may be incar
nated in such dissimilar entities as John
J. Ingalls and William Jennings Bryan.
Wo may expect Mr. Morton to make
himself as picturesque a personality in
behalf of conservatism a.s the men
against whom he enters the lists. Mr.
Morton will give us the romanticism of
Charlcseliotnortonism and Larrygod-
kinisin , and we shall owe him much
gratitude if he shall succeed in making
entertaining those things which arc now
an affliction. So much for Morton. His
paper is packed full of good matter that
must work , if it can bo gotten into the
heads of the pessimist population of the
West , for the broadening of good citiz
enship , and for the disarming of the
demagogues who have been a worse
plague to the West than blizzards ,
prairie fires , grasshoppers , booms , mort
gages and "bum" banking. Mr. Mor
ton's paper should succeed ; he has per
sonality enough to bring it into national
prominence. The Mirror calls THE CON
SERVATIVE to the attention of the think
ing people. Such papers are needed in
the West , where the whimperers , the
winners and the whangdoodlers have
had things their own way for so long
that mental political health has almost
come to be regarded as moral disease.
St. Louis Mirror.
0 Z * Z & 3 < i&Z ± Z < 1Z ± & :
CURRENT COMMENT. |
Astronomy In the United States.
In no country has there been a keener
interest in astronomical science and no
where has there been more devoted and
skillful research into the mysteries of
tlie ekies than here. We have the two
largest refracting telescopes in the
world , and iu the possession of instru
ments of the next grade , wo stand
among the throe foremost peoples in the
world. In the number of important dis
coveries made during the last quarter
of a century we compote favorably with
any other. In that important branch of
the science known as speotroscopy wo
are u little behind our contemporaries ,
but iu all other directions , including
stellar photography , our record is a
magnificent one. Among the more cele
brated men , the names of Newoomb ,
Ilarkuess , Hall , Davidson , Langley ,
Young and Elkin are famous worldwide
aud among the younger aspirants such
students as Pickering , Todd , Keoler ,
Barnard Buruhuin , Comstock , Lowell
aud others equally deserving are almost
as well kntwu and honored.
An important step iu the organization
of astronomical work in the United
States has just been taken in the forma
tion of an astronomical society similar
to the Royal Astronomical society of
Great Britain. It is worth while that
this great science should be represented
with more dignity than as a mere
branch of the American Association
For the Advancement of Science. The
( pedal affiliation of men working in
the same direction is in line with that
differentiation of work so important for
effective research. It will more effective-