IISTWEALTU MAKEltS.
July 18, 1895
.mi , - . i " 1 g
PROBLEMS
A Uasterlnl Address by R. S. Thompson, the
Great Economic Writer.
A Powerful Appeal to Reason; with a View
to the Bettering of the Conditions
of Humanity.
The True Cause of our Nation's Financial Distress-Why
the People Mourn and How
to Heal Their Woes.
The Money and Labor Problems are Moral
Problems as well as the Saloon Question
A Great Speech, Full of Instruction and In
spiration to the Common People.
Speech of Hon. R. 8. Thompson, editor of the
Nw Kra and Candidate ior the U. 8. senate
from Ohio, before the Nebrahka Prohibition
state Convention:
iff. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle
men of the convention'. If there are
any present tonight who have come with
the expectation of being entertained
-with a lot of funny stories, I give them
fair notice that tbey will be disappointed;
and if that is their sole object they will
waHe their time in remaining. Life
is short and my time too valuable for
me to spend nearly a week, and travel
nearly a thousand miles for the eake of
perpetrating a lot of jokes which you
might read for yourselves in your last
year's almanac.
If there are any present who have
come to indulge in a morbid taste for the
horrible, while I paint word pictures of
the drunkard's home and the drunkard's
voe if they have come expecting to
have their flesh creep as they hear the
blows fall on the quivering flesh of the
drunkard's wife they have come to the
wrong place, I closed my career as a
temperance lecturer several years ago
and registered a vow never again to
preach a gospel temperance sermon
while 240,000 grog Bhop doors stand
propped open by four million christian
votes.
It is the deacons and not the drunk
ards I am after now.
Neither shall I attempt to prove to
you tonight that the liquor traffic is
wrong. It is well to assume that an
audience has some intelligence. If there
is a man in your state who does not
know that the liquor traffic is wrong you
should send him promptly to some asy
lum for the feeble minded. I hope
there are none present who are ignorant
of the fact that the liquor traffic is
wrong; I like to talk to men's heads, but
not to cabbage heads.
Neither is there necessity for my ad
vising Nebraska prohibitionists in re.
gard to their duty on this matter. The
position of the party on this question is
o plain that the newspaper man, though
a fool, need not err therein. The various
schemes which have been devised to
sidetrack the party, such as constitu
tional amendments, local option, non
partisan anti-saloon leagues, etc., have
themselves been sidetracked, and are
rotting on the rubbish heap while the
great prohibition engine with uutn as
its headlight, and perseverance at the
throttle, keeps steadily onward along
the main track ol destruction to the
traffic, through a party pledged to that
work.
But I am glad to be with you in this
convention where you have assembled
to nominate men to take the ieins of
government in order that 2 they may
guide that government in the ways of
justice, equity and righteousness.
The time has come when men of hearts and brains
Mast rise and take the misdirected reins
Ot government, too ion; left in the hands
Of aliens and ot lackeys. : He who stands
And sees the mighty vehicle of state .
Hauled through the mire to some ignoble fate,
And makes not such bo'd protest as he can
Is no American.
And I trust that you here are Ameri
cans in the fullest and noblest sense of
the word ; Americans bearing our starry
flag of liberty and fully resolved that it
shall not be made a flaunting lie nor
wave its protecting folds over injustice
and oppression. You are here as Amer
icans, to stand jealously for the great
American principle of human equality
and for the preservation of equity in
government and righteousness in law.
And if these principles are to be main
tained and our mighty vehicle of state is
not to be hauled by demagogues and
plutocrats and rumsellers, through the
mire of corrupt politics to the ignoble
fate of complete destruction, then you
men of hearts and brains must rise and
take the misdirected reins of govern
ment. They have been left too long in
the hands of aliens and lackeys. Too
long have the great alien financial
houses of Europe directed the road
which we shall travel, and for too loiig
have such lackeys as Benjamin Harriron,
Urover Cleveland, John bherman and
John G. Carlisle held the reins and
driven as they were directed by these
alien lords of land and money.
It has been well said that he who
dares not reason is a .coward, he who
will not reason is a bigot and he who
cannot reason is a fool.
OF
REFOffl
I am convinced that I am not stand
ing tonight in the presence of cowards
or bigots or fools, hot in the presence of
men of hearts and brains, who are able
to reason, and ready to follow reason
wherever it may lead; men who are
ready to lay aside former prejudices and
inherited ideas and view the present sit
uation in the white light 01 reason and
justice.
My efforts tonight, therefore, shall not
be to awaken your sympathies, or stir
your emotions, or arouse your indigna
tion but to appeal to your reason, .that
we may reach a reasonable conclusion
as to the present condition of the coun
try, its causes and the remedy. My
work shall therefore be more that of a
collator of facts and figures than that of
the impassioned orator on the platform.
I shall present facts, reason out conclu
sions and leave your own honest hearts
and sturdy seose of justice to make the
application.
Not that I would for a moment sug
gest that there is not need for the im
passioned orator, or that sympatav and
indignation have no place in these great
reforms. lie who can look over tnis
land and see the wreck and ruin which
is wrought; who. can hear the wail of
the widow and the cry of the starving
child, who can put his ear to the ground
and hear the tramp of marching millions
seeking for work and proffered a prison,
begging for bread and told to keep off
the grass he who can see aad hea- all
this and not have his sympathies awak
ened and his indignation aroused has
not the spirit of the Christ who wept at
the grave ; denounced in language too
strong toe used in our churches today,
the hypocrites who devour widows hous
es and for a pretenee make long prayers,
and who scourged the mouey changers
out of the temple : but my work tonight
is of a different kind.
I do not c me before you tonight as a
howler. 1 have done some calamity
howling in my time, but for the past
two years our republican friends nave
taken the task off our hands and execu
ted it with a grace aad ability that leave
nothing to be desired.
If there had ever been any doubt that
the country under years of republican
rule had gotten into bad condition, that
its buBinee s, its morals and its finances
were honeycombed by corrupt legisla
tion ana were ready to crumble at a
touch that doubt would have been diss!
pated by the republican howls of the
past two years. They have looked upon
the ruin they had wrought and lifted up
their voices in lamentation and could
not be comforted. They would have
you believe they are n ourning over the
troubles ot tne people, out they are
mourning for the offices because they
have them not.
80 they will enble me to shorten the
work ol pointing out.
EXISTING CONDITIONS.
The country morally, socially, indus
trially, financially and politically Is In
a state ol unrest.
There have been industrial wars and
rumors of wars and political earth
quakes in divers places. For years the
country has been in a condition of
chronlo industrial insurrection.
Hungry and desperate men have set
at defiance authority, municipal, state
and national. In a time of alleged
peace we have seen the troops of state
and nation called out again and again
Many of us are becoming quite familiar
with the drum's discordant sound parad
ing round and round and round.
We have seen the streets of our cities
reddened with the blood of our fellow
citizens and seen the heavens aglow
with the flames of incendiary fires. We
nave seen tne soldiers wearing the uni
form and bearing the flag ot the nation
received with hoots and leers by our
own citizens, and strange to say it has
in nearly every case been evident that
the sympathies of even the most care
ful and conservative people have been
with the mob and against the govern
ment. There must be something radi
cally wrong when such a state, of affairs
Is possible.
Our American people are aboye all
things patriotic. Love of home, pride
of country and reverence for their
country's flag are deeply ingrained in
their very being.
When they begin to lose respect for
their own government, the creation of
their own hands, it is evident that some
one must be dragging the mighty ve
hicle of state not only through mire
but through quicksands and that a most
ignoble fate awaits it unless men of
hearts and brains shall Quickly arise
and take the misdirected reins of goy
ernment; and vet we are told that our
country is prosperous, and the figures
seem to bear out the assertion. We
are one of the wealthiest nations on the
face of the globe. Our annual produc-
tlon of wealth is claimed by some to bo childhood. ThU It the present condl
twenty blllloni of dollars, tion of oar country whose glorious an-
In the last thirty years we have ' ntversary will be celebrated la speech
itn.ihU i aii i. nnnui&tinn and ouadruoled 1 and soof . with ringing bells and roar-
our wealth, hei.ce our wealth in propor-1
tion to the population has been doubled, j
The accumulated property of the coun- j
try, that which we have produced in
excess of consumption, is over $5,000 per
family, on an average. If the estimat
ed annual production of twenty billions
is correct, our annual income is nearly
1 1,700 per family, on an average. And
there is nothing under the shining sun
that can lie like an average. The devil
could not keep in sight of it, and even
John Sherman would come out seconi
in the race.
When the average man hears that
the wealth of the American people is
five thousand dollars per family, on an
average, he naturally concludes that
the wealth of the average family is five
thousand dollars, but be misses it. If
one man has a hundred million, and
nineteen thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine have nothing, the wealth
of the twenty thousand will be five
thousand dollars per family, on an aver
aye, but the average family will not
have five thousand dollars it will have
nothing.
If one man has an income of a million
a year, and five hundred and ninety
nine others have nothing, the income
of the whole six-hundred will be nearly
seventeen hundred dollars, on an aver
age, bit the average man will not have
an income ot seventeen hundred dol
lars, he will have nothing. So wise
men talk about the average wealth and
the average income of the American
people and create the impression that
the average citizen is in good clrcum
stauces and increasing in wealth from
year u vear but it is not true.
At the oeglnnlng of the civil war,
notwithstanding the unequalizing in-
uuenoe of slavery, the wealth of the
nation was distributed among the peo
oie with some approach to equality in
proportion to aoility and Industry. A
nn.aonaire In those days was as scarce
as an nonest politician is today. Pau-
oers were so rare that public provision
or the care of the poor was almost un-
Hmown. Wje knew nothing 01 the great
public charities of today, not because
the people were less charitable, but be
cause there was little need for charity.
The word trump, as a noun is not in
Webster's old dictionary.
At that time the average wealth was
about $2,500 per family and the average
family wasprobably the possessor or
nearly that emount-
Now we have something less than
two hundred thousand families owning
an average of a quarter million per fam
ily and thirteen million families owninr
an average of a thousand dollars per
family, so that the average family in
this country today is the one owning a
thousand dollars.
We now have princes and palaces by
the thousand, and paupers, hovels and
tramps by the million. We have men
who can build a seven hundred thousand
dollar stable for their pet horses, pay
three hundred thousand dollars for a
pleuture b at, furnish their houses with
solid silver bath tubs, in which they
cannot wash their sins away, spend a
million representing the life work of
a hundred men on a wedding feast,
and pay ten to fifteen millions apiece
for titled husbands ior their daughters.
What see we on the other hand?
That my republican friends may not
be exhaulted beyond measure 1 quote
from that iridescent republican states
man, John J. Ingalls. In January 1891.
when the republicans had every branch
of the government and the country was
basking in the unoimeo enuigence 01
the McKinlev bill. Mr. Ingalls said on
the floor of theU. S. senate: "A million
American citizens, able and willing to
work, are homeless tramps starring for
bread." Mr. Ingalls was not referring
to the professional tramp, nor to the
aged or infirm, for he specifies that this
million men were able and willing to
work, yet, starving for bread.
A million American citizens repre
sents a population of five million people,
absolutely destitute 01 the means 01
subsistence and depending on precar
ious charity to preserve their undesir
able lives.
The sharpness of the line between the
affluent and the poor cannot be better
illustrated than in two newspaper dis
patches sent out from New York on the
same day, Listen to this.
New York. Dec, 4, 1894. Mrs. Drink-
wiler gave a poodle dog tea party yes
terday afternoon at her palatial resi
dence in this city. It was in honor of
the birthday of her favorite poodle dog.
Her dog wore for the occasion an ele
gant diamond necklace costing several
hundred dollars, v ery ornate prinieu
invitations were displayed to the poodle
dogs and pugs in good society. When
the hour for tne party arrived, tne
street in the vicinity of the receiving
residence was thronged with grand
eauioages in which the lucky canines
rode in state warmiy wrapped in silk
and satin blankets, richly embroidered
in lace and gold, with a coat of arms
appearing on most of them. Each dog
was accompanied by a liveried col
ored attendant and all the parapherna
lia of aristocratic ran. The poodles
and pugs sipped milk from golden sau
cers, The subject of founding a dog
hospital was discussed.
And here is the other on the same
day:
New York. Dec. 4. 1894. Mrs. Ella
Morgan found a little girl baby in the
hallway of No. 218 W bith street, Tues
day night. It was taken to the matron
of police headquarters. At noon Wed
nesdav. a woman dressed in the gar
ments of a widow, entered the police
station; she was wet through and lean
ed for support against the railing as
she burst Into tears and told uapt.
Smith that sbe was the mother of the
abandoned child. She had walked the
streets night and day since Sunday, and
had laid the Infant in the hallway
with the hope that some kind
hearted person would find it and
at least save it from death by starvation
She would have fainted from weakness
had she not been supported. The Capt.
sent out for some food and when theun
fortunate woman revived she was taken
to the Yorkvllle court. She will be
committed until she is strong enough
to look for work when she will be per
mltted to go out and starve herself
somemore.
Alas, that flesh and blood should be
so cheap and gold should be so dear,
Diamond necklaces, gold saucers
silk blankets, fine carriages, llyeried
servants and hospitals for poodle dogs
and rags, and starvation, and police
court, and the Ulack Maria, and police
man, and jails for women and babies,
God pity the land where poodle dogs
are worth more than womanhood and
log runs upon the morrow. We shall
glory over the deliverance from King
George, and while we shout our praise
to aoeriy, we cianic tne cduu mug
: greed has bound around our hands and
feet.
We fought for seven years rather
than submit to a tax of six cents a
pound on tea, but now in meekness bow
before another despot who takes our
all acd condemns millions to lives of
misery, vice and crime.
Three million homeless, starving, unemploj ed.
Tramping, naif naked, in a laud of peace.
Where plenty heaps her stores and gold
abounds
And golden harvest tributes never caase.
Ten million crouching on the frlghtful-brlnk
Of the dark precipice of shame and want.
Home, gone, hopes dead, and faith In God
grown weak
Before the wolves cf hunger fierce and gaunt.
And twenty millions more with white lips set.
And tense nerves strained to burning with
the stress
Of the unequal contest waged by gold
On human rignts and homes and happiness.
Insatiate Greed with roober fingers clutched
On sixty mi'llon gasping human throats.
Thou law protected outlaw, blgn enturoned,
Who on the all pervading rum gloats.
Dare you still trust your graven Gods of gold?
Pare jou still heap 111 gotten gains the higher?
And carelrss tread above the smouldering mine
Where slumbers retribution's awful Ore?
Can you not catch the warning of God's wrath
In the sad wall of want, the cry for breid, .
The plea for work, the prayer ot famished lips
The ghastly faces of ypur victims dead?
Such are a few of the conditions,
conditions not thrones which confront
us. But could I keep you here until
the silver goddess of the night had
paled before the coming of the golden
god of day, I could not picture unto
you a millionth part of the misery and
wretchedness and hopelessness and deg
radation and servitude and vica and
crime over which floats our starry flag
of liberty, and which crouches and
and covers in the shadows of our marble
palaces of pride, farms mortgaged, far
mers who have spent their lives in
honest toil to provide a home for their
declining years finding their hard earn
ed homes hopelessly in the clutches of
the mortgage shark, business men con
fessing that it is impossible to do bus!
nesson christian principles and succeed
and watching with wakeful eyes each
change in market. Manufacturers try
ing to deal honestly with their employes
but threatened with bankruptcy if they
do. Workingmen laboring for less than
living wages, aud in daily fear lest their
employment shall bo taken from them
ond their families starve. Other mul
titudes of men who have ceased to fear
and ceased to strive for success because
they have ceased to hope and have set
tled down to sallen despair willing to
be paupers and parasites and breeding
a race of paupers and parasites to prey
upon the society which they feel in
some way has wroiiged them.
Scores of thousands of innocent
women ana girls compeuea 10 cnoose
starvation and a life of shame and
taught by tke cruel lash of hunger and
cold that the virtue of womanhood is
the only thing which always has a
market value. Hundreds of thousands
of children turned upon the streets to
live by beggary or theft and to grow up
to be tramps, loafers and criminals, it
is estimated that in England a million
lives were lost by starvation, suicide
and crime as the result of the financial
policy of contraction which followed
the Napoleonic wars, and it is more
than probable that the loss of life in
this country in the last thirty years
resulting directly or indirectly from
our financial policy has sot been less
than that,
We are confronted with a condition
in which every man is pitted against
his brother man; with a condition in
which one man's gain is some other
man's loss. The working man stands
In daily dread lest some other shall get
his job, or 11 out of employment watches
the chance to get seme other man's job,
or if he hears of some place rushes
to capture it lest some other man get
ahead of him. Jvery man in securing
a job for himself knows that In so doing
he is shutting out some otner man. ine
merchant who would succeed In busi
ness must drive his competit or to the
wall. The railroad that would pay
dividends must draw.away the business
of other lines and force them into bank
ruptcy. Our business and commercial
society has become a barbaric ship su
oremacy at the expense of others
Every man's hand is against every other
man: each one books to advance oy
climbing on the shoulders of another
and to build his fortune ou the ruins of
some other fortune. It is a race for
success in which eery man who would
win must do so bp tipping up hia com'
petitor and one loan's gain means an
other man's loss. Our civilization un
der our present system has become the
highest development 01 the barbarism
of selfishness.
A DANGEROUS CONDITION.
I wish to impress upon you most
profoundly tonight the fact that our
present condition is a dangerous con
dition. We are Hying over a volcano
of discontent, that is liable at any
moment to break forth and devastate
the country. There are millions of
DeoDle In this country who are hungry
and it is the most difficult matter in
the world to satisfactorily expound
principles of ethics to hungry men and
still more difficult to expound them to
men who have hungry wives and bab
ies at home.
There is a good deal of apprehension
about the dangers that may ariso from
the wild harangues of the red-mouth
ed anarchists which Europe is dump
ing on our shores. And there Is cause
for apprehension. Let a man tramp
the streets all day in search of work
getting a rebuff at every door. Let
him return to his home to find the
cupboard empty, the grate flreless and
his wife and little ones crying with
cold and hunger. Put some anarchls
tlo document in that man's hand and
he is ready for "treason, stratagem
and spoils." He is ready for the dyna
mite bomb and Incendiary torch. He
Is ready to raise a riot on the street and
loot a bakery. He has lost hope in
God and faith in man. He has nothing
to lose, if arrested and sent to jail his
condition will be more endurable than
tramping the streets begging as
chalrity of his fellow men that which
belongs to him of right, the opportun
ity to earn an honest living by honest
labor. But give that same man
steadv job with fair wages; give him
home of his cwn paid for by his own
labor, fcive him protection in his
rights, a certainty of beiug able to
support himself and leave something
for his family, and the harangues of
the anarchists will have no more id
fluence upon him than the buzzing of a
goat will have upon a locomotive. Ha
will be a falthfal patriotic citizen,
ready if need be to lay down his life
for hia flag and his country. No power
from within or without can overthrow
that government under which every
man is the possessor of his own home
and is protector in his rights. And all
the bayonet of Europe can not make
secure the government under which
the people are plundered and pauper
ized. Take hope out of a man's heart,
crush him down to low that he has
nothing to lose and you make a demon
of him ready to kill and destroy.
There are multitudes of men in this
condition, and you would tremble if
you could hear their expressions of
reckless desperation and of wild ha
tred of all existing institutions. I have
heard such expressions from men who
are looked upon as faithful, honest
law-abiding citizens.
You may Bay that wrong will not
justify wrong.
Granted. But it is conditions and
not theories we are considering to
night. This world is peopled at pres
ent with men and not with angles. -
With all our boasted educational in
stitutions there is an immense mass of
ignorance in this country. The man
who has to work twelve hours a day
at exhaustive toll; has little strength
or inclination left to study "Darwins
Descent of Man' or Adam Smith's
"Wealth of Nations" or Baxter's
'iSaints Rest."
No truant officer hunts up the child
ren of the slums and sees that they go
to church. Hundreds of thousands of
children in America are growing up in
ignorance as dense as if they lived in
darkest Africa. The only school they
have a chance to attend is the saloon.
And this great mass of ignorance and
suffering and desperation is producing
a rapidly increasing dangerous ele
ment. Unless something is done this
element will soon be strong enough to
deluge our land in blood and test to its
utmost the fabric ot our government.
Beware the Isralllte of oltl who tore
The lion In bis path, wnen poor and blind
He eaw tne blessed light st heaven no more
Shone of nis noble st,reitjth and force to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A ponaer ior muisuue reveiry,
Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His aesper ,ie hands ana in Its overthrow
Destroyed ulmseif and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sighilbHS woe
The poor blind si' ve, tne scoff and Jest of all
.Expired, ana tnousinas pensnee iu uis iuu.
There is a poor blind Sampson In this land
Shorn 01 111s strengtn ana oouna in uanus ui
si eel
Who may, in some grlui revel raise bis hand
And shake the Dinars of ihls commonweal
Till the great temple of our liberties
A gnapeiess mass 01 wrccs ami ruuui m lies.
You may denounce this class as vic
ious, but it is none the less dangerous
bebause it is vicious. You may con
demn it as ignoroat, but ii is none the
less dangerous because it is ignorant.
You may declare it Is unreasonable,
but it is none the less dangerous be
cause It is unreasonable, iou may
say that they will injure themselves
as well as others. Sampson destroyed
himself in the downfall of the temple,
but that wag no consolatiou to the
Philistines when the stones bagan to
fall on their heads.
These men are vicious and ignorant
because of the conditions which have
made them so. They are dangerous
because they are vicious and ignorant.
Society has made tne condition and
society is liable to suffer from the re
runs. These men have tanen .no
course of training in political economy,
they have had no education in social
ethics, they cannot analyze the situ-
uatlon, but they Know that tnere nas
been an awful wrong and injustice
committed somewhere, and that they
are Buffering from it. They feel that.
When earth produces free and fair
The golden waving corn.
When irgrant fruits perluine th? air
And fletcy flocks are scorn.
White thouosands more with aching hearts
And slog the ceasflos3 song.
We starve, we ale, or give us bread
'J here must oesometmng wrong.
Tbey can not reason out who has in
jured them or how the Injury was com
mitted, but they have been carrying
in their hearts for years a bitter sense
of injustice and wrong and it is rank
ling and burning and getting more
bitter and deeper, until it is tailing
On the form of hatred for society, hat
red for law, hatred for government,
hatred for everybody who is better off
than they.
And if these conditions continue
until the explosion comes an explos
ion compared to which the uhicago
riots were but a firecracker, God pity
you good comiortaoie conservative
business men for you win oe ins ones
to suffer. In their blind rage their
motto will be, "When you see a head
hit it," and they wont stop to consider
whose head it is. "wnen you see
property destroy it." And they wont
go into any close examination of title
deeds to see whose property it is.
The Carnegles will not suffer, they
will be off in their palaces in Scotland.
The Pullman's will not sutler, they
will be enjoying the breezes in their
mansions in the Thousand Islands.
But you, careful, honest, conservative
business men who nave been Butter
ing from the same conditions which
have created these ignorant and vic
ious classes, you will have to bear the
brunt of it. And on you will rest the
terrible and costly responsibility of
restoring order out of chaos, sup
pressing rioting and tumult and of
rescuing your country irom tne ig
noble fate to which you are now allow
ing it to be dragged. Oh! my fellow
countrymen, at this dawning ot the
anniversary of our nation's independ
ence I wonld once more press upon you
the fact that,
The time has come when men ot hearts and
brains
Must rise and take the misdirected reins of
government.
You have already too long left them
in the hards of aliens and of lackeys.
You have already far too long left
them in the hands of an alien money
power and political lackeys. Neither
must we forget for one moment that
the problem envolyed in this matter
is in the highest possible 6ense of
the word,
A MORAL QUESTION.
I grow disgusted over the insuffer
able cant about the distinction be
tween a financial question and a moral
Question.
When God Almighty said "Thou
shall not steal" he laid down the whole
foundations of the financial problem.
Until that edict is repealed stealing
will be an immoral act and the ques
tion whether one portion of the com1
munity shall steal from another por
tlon will be a moral question.
And I hold that it is, as immoral to
steal a railroad as to rob a hen-roost,
at Immoral to deprive worklngrcen of
that which they have earned as to
steal a sheep, as immoral to beat a far-
mer out of his farm as to rob an orch
ard, as immoral to rob a whole nation)
of the fertile lands and precious mlnea
and sturdy forests which God has
given them, as to pick a man's pocket.
Ana 1 hold that the morality or Im
morality of an act Is not changed be-""
mnoA it la liWAmnnllBliflH thntunh la nr.
lsiation. 11 1 secure the enactment 01
law which will enable me under
forms of law to rob you of your home
I am a thief. And ii you assist me to-
secure the passage of a law which will
enable me to rob some other man of
bis home you are a thief. And if you.
and I having the power to prevent it,
stand by and allow laws to be enacted
which will allow some Wall street-
Sharks or Lombard street jugglers to-
rob a million farmers of their homes,
we are particeps. criminii with the -
thieves and before the moral laws are.
equally guilty.
And l bold and defy any one to de
ny the truth of the propositions that
whenever any one Is compelled by law
or by conditions created by law to part
with that which belongs lo him for
less than it is worth he Is robbed, and
that those who through conditions or
forms of law secure that which be
longs to another for less than it la
worth are robbers. And I stand for
ever on the rock that the question
whether robbery shall be committed
or tolerated Is a moral question.
And the magnitude of the robbery
that has been committed is beyond the
comprehension of man.
It has been demonstrated by careful
calculations that of the entire wealth
of this nation, three-fourths or nearly ''
hfty billion dollars worth Is In the po-
session of a little plutocrat company of
less than two hundred thousand man.
These men toil not, neither do they
spin, yet verily I say unto you that
Solomon In all his glory never had a .
bank account like one of these.
They did not produce the wealth,
for they are not the producers It la
the product 01 the labor of the great
masses of the people, the manufactur
ers and merchants, and miners and
fishermen, and farmers and doctors,.
and teachers and vtorkingmen and
women generally.
This plutocnfctlo class did not get
this wealth by giving full value to
those who produced it for having pro
duced nothing themselves, they had
nothing to give and as those who pro
duced it have practically nothing it ls
evidence they received nothing.
This immense, this incalculably
great amount of wealth has been
taken from the people by gambling in
stocks and grain, by money corners.
by the tariff, by land monopoly and
by skillful manipulation of the finances
of the country.
I have spoken only of the amount of
which our people have been robbed by
the plutocratic class of America. Of
how many millions and billions they
have been plundered by the plutocrats
of Europe, through subservient Amer
ican legislation the Omniscient Lord
alone can tell. But this much we do
know that foreign noblemen own today
in fee simple twenty-five million acres
of our best farming lands and hold
mortgages which amount to owner-
snip UD ii uuuurou uiiuiuu oi;roo mure
and we never received anything from
them for it. We know that they own
nearly all our breweries, and every
one of our McKinley tin mines, and a
large number of our protected iron
factories, and at least half of our rail
road property which American troops
are so continually called out to defend.
We know that In the thirty years
from 1862 to 1892 the balance of trade
in our favor of which we hear so much
was $649,780,785. That is the merch
andise we rent abroad was worth that
much more than what we received
from abroad. And in addition to that
our exports of corn and bullion iu the
same period exceeded our Imports by
$812,471,969 60 that the total amount
of merchandise and coin which in that
period we have tent abroad and for
which we nave received naming 1a
$1,462,252,754.
These robbers are not responsible to
our laws but tbeir robberies have been
committed under our laws through the
connivance of the political lackeys in
whose hands we haye committed the
reins of government.
Whether we shall permit our people
which this government wa3 created to
protect to be plundered by alienB
through such political lackeys as Ben
jamin Harrison, John Sherman,
Grover Cleveland and John G. Car
lisle. I insist is a moral question.
But there is a deeper, darker Bide to
this matter.
As a result of this plundering and
pauperizing of our people we are de
moralizing, degrading anu ueuuman-
izing them.
Poverty and the fear of povert
makes men mean, tricky and dishonl
est. A business man recently said in '
answer to a question that It was prac
tically impossible to conduct business
in accordance with christian principlea
and avoid going into bankruptcy. The
man who has the fear of nnanciai dis
aster hanging over him is driven to do
mean, tricky and dishonest things un
til his sense of honor and nonesty is
blunted. As a consequence we find
our whole commercial system honey-
comed with dishonesty and sharp prac
tice, and winked at as busmes neces
sities. The effect grows still worse as we
descend the social ladder. There is
nothing not even t'ue drink habit
which so degrades and brutalizes a
man as hopeless, helpless, uninvited
poverty. When a man loses hope of
ever being able to better hia condition
he loses heart and ceases to try. He
becomes a pauper because he is com
pelled to be, he remains a pauper be
cause he chooses to be. Every time a
man is compelled to depend on char
ity to receive as alms that which he "
should have been able to earn by his
labor, you take away his manhood and
independence.
A workingman in your city loses
his job today. He starts out to tramp
your streets in search of another; he
meets rebuff at every ooor. .&acn oay
he trsmps he becomes shabbier and
dustier and seedier, and less likely to
get a job. At last, his money ail gone
he concludes to go to some other town.
He has no mosey with which
railroad fare, so he walks and you calif
him a tramp. He has no money
to buy food so he stops at farm house '
and begs a crust perhaps be gets it,
perhaps they set the doga on him. -He
has no money to pay hotel bills so
he sleeps at night in barns or out
buildings. He falls in with a gang of
To be Continued.