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About The Nebraska independent. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1896-1902 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 6, 1896)
THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT February 0, 1806. ' LJ 25 Nebraska Jnbcpcnbcnt CtmvlUtkn if THE WEALTH MAKERS and LINCOLN INDEPENDENT. PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY v BY THE IndepEijdeijt Publishing Go. At 1120 H Street, LINCOLN, - NEBRASKA. TELEPHONE 538. $1.00 per Year in Advance. Address all communications to, and make all droit, money orders, etc., payable to THE INDEPENDENT TCB. CO.. Lincoln. Neb, LET EVERY OWE TUEH OUT. The Reform Press Association will meet in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 22d Every populist editor in the state of Ne braska has a duty to perform and that duty is to be at Dallas when the Reform Press Association is called to order. Let nothing detain you except the impossi bility of getting there. It will be the greatest meeting the pop editors ever hold. Matters of the most vital impor tance to future success of our papers will there be discussed and decided. Victory is in sight in this state and in the nation. Let us make sure of it. Come, every one of you come. Bio silver meeting at Raymond Satur day night. Good speakers. Be sure and attend. Why don't some farmer announce him self as a candidate for office in the re publican party, or are there no farm era in it? You can't say "as good as wheat" any Imore, for wheat is no good at all in these gold standard days. , It don't pay the cost of raising. The right to issue money is a function pf the government and not a function of the banks, and for that the populist will tight till he dies. The populists of Minnesota will run a special train from St. Paul to St. Louis, on July 22, to carry the crowds who will attend the populist national convention. We hear a great deal these days about republican and populist candidates for the presidency, but where are the demo cratic candidates? Won't some one trot one out? What troubles a great many honest men about the financial question is op-' eimathy. The only remedy for it is a good populist paper taken regularly and paid for. Yob might as well, try "to coax an earthquake with a bun" as to try to get Alleu, Butler, Holcomb, or Taubeneck to abandon the essential principles of this reform movement. Brad Slauglter gave all the editors of the Nebraska Press Association an annual pass, on the Lincoln street car lines, lias Brad got his eye on some future legislation? J. Sterling Morton can use that his toric instrument with which Samson slew his thousands, more continuously, and with less effect than any other man in the United States. Prof. TAUsiosays: "The appreciation of gold is the general fall of prices. The two are not related as cause and effect, they are simply two names for one and the same thing." Donnelley's paper now has 15,000 circulation, and he asks the populists of that state to put up the money and buy a press. They will do it, too. The pops np there mean to win next fall. Every national republican leader is a coward. Not one of them dare to state fairly and honestly his position on the money question. Cowards never led an army to victory and never will. The new commander of the Spanish troops in Cuba seems to be no more suc cessful in whipping the Cuban's than the old one. When men fight for liberty they are usually pretty hard to whip. The dailies are now rejoicing over the 'flood of gold." The rhetoric of the ex pression is on a "parity" with its truth. Do they mean that the metal is melted and flooding the country like an over flowing river? The Chicago Sentinel can come down -oriiilir whftn it is beaten that all the ill feeling is banished from the minds of those who contested with it. I ne i o v Advocate and Southern Mercury didn't know how to do the graceful so well. They are eomewnai more awk ward, but they get there just tne same. THE UNBBASONINO MUtiriTUDB Mr. Carl Snyder, whoever i hi this writer knoweth uot.snysin tlO'Vbruary Review of Review in des'ivrb'ing the awful "flood" of gold which he says Is pouring out of the mines of the world that: "At the preseent time f 27 will buy the same supplies which cost $100 in 1870. In other words, the cost is hardly a fourth what it was aquarter of aceutury ago, while the price of gold is the same today as then, the same a in 1849 the same as it has been for more than half a century. All other values have fallen; this alone stands." That the writer himself does not be lieve a word of the whole statement is proved by half a dozen passages in the same article. The intention is to juggle with the word "price" in the above sen tence, but the idea conveyed is that the value of gold never varies, that it is always and everywhere the same. That no reasoning human being believes that statement and that he does not believe it himself is abundantly proved by the the following statement on page 172. "Will it be possible for our monetary system to survive the addition of such an overwhelming flood? Our present system was framed to meet exactly the opposite conditions which iw present themselves. Its author had in view a scarcity, not a glut of gold." If the value of gold is not affected by an "overwhelming flood" or by a strin gent scarcity why should not "the mon etary systems survive?" A note of hand, a bond or any obliga tion made payable in dollars is now practically an agreement to deliver on a certain date named in the paper so many grains of gold. Is there any sane or reasonable human being who will suy that the hardship of payment may not be increased or diminished by an "over whelming flood" or an overwhelming scarcity of gold? The trouble about this matter is that there are multitudes of unreasoning hu mati heings in these United States who have votes, and who, when told that the value of gold never varies, that the value of all other thiugs may rise and fall, but gold, whether there are "floods" of it or dearths of it, is like God himself, without variation or shadow of turning, believe it, and vote to make themselves slaves. The only thing that stands in the way of populist Buncess is blind, unreasoning ignorance. The voters are buncoed by the gold brick writers of the great maga zines and never b top to think that the said writers are the paid attorneys of the power that absorbs, year after year their hard earnings. Aside from this the whole article is false and deceptive. If there was such a "flood of gold" as Mr. Snyder describes, prices would rise, Instead of that they are constantly falling. THE OAT IS OUT OF THE BAG There has been no assertion of the troldtte speakers and writers that has done more harm than the claim that wages have constantly risen since 1880 while the price of products of labor have as constantly fallen. The goldites had to support them in this statement the U. S. census report and Mun hall's tables. While every economist knew that the theory that prices could fall constantly for a period of years and wages as con stantly rise was just as ridiculous as to say that every ounce of metal added to a pound weight made it that much lighter, yet here were always these statis tics and Munhall's tables to meet. Senator Jones in his great speech re. plied to the assertion by saying that when we estimated what labor received in this country we must divide the wages per capita, among all the laborers, the un employed as well as employed, and that we must also include the agricultural laborers, whose rate of wages was not in cluded in those tables at all. He did not attack the statistics as unreliable. It now turns out that the Englishman whom the republicans put in charge of the census of 1890 "fixed" the wages re turns so they are not only unreliable, but on this point are wholly false. Prof. II. L. Bliss in the December number of the Journal of Economics shows up this fraud completely. It appears that in the census of 1880, only the real wage earners were included, but in the census of 1890 the salaries of superintendents, owners, agents, stockholders and scient ists employed in and about the great mills and factories were all included. This of course raised the rate of wages enormously. The superintendent of . the great Amoskeag cotton mills at Manchester, N. II.. was once showing the writer of this over those immense works. In an swer to a question about the rate of waxes he replied: "Oh. we pav them pretty well. There is one." pointing to the chief chemist, "we oav him $25.00 per day, "and there is another," pointing to a skilled draughtsman and artist who made and enlareed the patterns for prints, "we pay him $16.00 per day. Besides that we have two or three employees in Boston and New York whom we also pay from $5,-. 000 to $8,000 a year. In Porter's census, all these high priced officials, azents, artists and professional men, were put in as wage workers. No wonder that the statistics show that wages rose while the product of labor fell THE OMAHA EES AT XT. Now that the Omaha Bee has gone into . s . f straight lying, or rather into tne ousi of nrintinz old lies, it is making a good job of it. Hear it: "After years of ffort to put silver dollars In circulation, (dm tbau $60,000,000 are being used as turrency. It is impossible to conceive what the tditor thought he could accomplish by Writing or printing such an audacious or unbelievable lie as that. 1W fore the peo ple hal any press of their own, there might have been something accompliehed by printing such falsehoods when there was no way oj denying them, but now it only brings contempt upon the paper that prints them. There is scarcely a man in the state bo ignorant as not to know there is over $500,000,000 of sil ver in constant circulation, in silver dol lars and in silver certificates. It is about all the money there is in circulation. The bankers lock up the greenbacks and the gold. A PHIL ARMOUR SCHEME. Some one asks the Independent how much better the green bracks are when there is $100,000,000 of gold in the treasury than they are now with only about $10,000,000 there? Would they beany better with $200,000,000 there than with $20,000,000? They certainly would be better, for as the currency is contracted just so much by every dollar locked up in the reserve, the remaining dollars left in circulation will be that much "better," using the word in the goldite way. But according to the pop ulist idea they are that much "worse." The whole idea of the gold reserve is to contract the currency. Its effect, and its only effect, is to further lower prices. 0' course 1200,000,000 locked up can do no one any good, except the owners of money and paper culling for money. Every dollar locked up increases the value of what they own. They are getting the government to play the same game that Phil Armour played when he locked up all the pork and took four or five million dollars from those who had promised to deliver to him pork, as they could get it only by buying it from him. These goldites have contructs binding governments, states and individuals to doliver money, What money they don't own themselves, they are getting the government to lock up. So when the day of delivery comes, the parties who have promised to deliver money have to come to these goldite conspirators and pay whatever the said conspirators de mand to get it. If they demaud 100 bushels of wheat for twenty-five dollars, this man who has promised to deliver dollars, is helpless. He must accede to the demand. Asnoone can create money except the government, to carry out their plan, they got the governmen to stop making money at all by repeal of the Sherman act, and now they are try ing to get it to lock up a large part ol what is left. A good many idiots call thatscheme "sound finance" and "good statesmanship." DISSIMULATION AND DECEIT. The duplicity, the hypocrisy, the un limited lyingof thegold standard writers, some of them scholars, professors in the great universities, Booie of them editors of great literary magazines or weekly papers, make us sometimes almost de- spnir. Last week the New York Nation in an editorial condemning corruption in our public men, in our city, state, and na tional government, all of which was true, was written for another purpose and had another effect upon the reader altogether. There was as much cor ruption and hypocrisy in that article as in any half dozen public men in the United States, possibly excluding Sher man, Cleveland, Carlisle & Co. The object of that editorial was not to condemn corruption in public men, but to give currency to a lie. It had these two sentences in it and the whole article was written for the sole purpose of put ting them there. It asked: "Why have we 'so many tons of silver stored at Washington? Why is it not made to circulate among the impoverished peo ple?" Now the editor of the Nation knows that there is not a dollar, let alone tons of silver, save the seigniorage, in Wash ington not in circulation among the people by means of silver certificates. That is the same lie that John Sher man enunciated in the senate when Sena tor Teller rose and said that the state ment of the senator from Ohio was false, and that he (Sherman) knew that it was false when he uttered it. It is almost enough, when one sees these things, to make one despair ol humanity. THURSTON'S BRA VERT. Last Monday the State Jonrnal had printed in the center of its first page in pica French old style the following ex tract from the speech of John U. P. Thurston on the Monroe doctrine: Sir, believing that the honor ot my country la Involved; that the hour calls tor the highest ex pression of loyallty and patriotism; calmly con fident ot the verdict of prosperity; reverently calling Ood to witness the sincerity ot my par pose; I shall vote for It, not as an affront to any other nation, but to uphold the dignity of my own. I shall vote for It In this time of profound tranquility, convinced that peace with honor can be preserved. But, sir, I would vote for It Just as a rely were we already standing In the awful shadow ot declared war, I would vote tor It were the shells of British battle ships bursting above the dome ot the nation's capttol. I would vote for It and would maintain It, at all baiards ead at any cost, with the last dollar with the last man. Yea, though it might presage th coming of a mighty conflict, whose conclusion should leave me without a eon, as the last great contest left me without a aire. For unlimited bombast that para graph is perhaps not excelled in tin whole range of the English language. The fun of it however, is in the last sentence. It will be seen that Thurston, on the proposition of going to war, takes exactly the same position as that taken by the late lamented Artemus Ward, who, rather than see the Union destroyed was willing that all of his wife's relations should be drafted into the army. "Yea, though it presage the coming of a mighty conflict says Thurston, "whose conclusion should leave me with out a son as the last great contest left me without a sire." Johnny is willing to sacrifice a father and a son, but his own tender carcass he does not offer. SENATORIAL PREVARICATION Perhaps some innocent voter may im agine that the Associated Press and the goldite editors are the biggest liars on earth and, especially the editors, the greatest economic idiots; but he will give up both points when he reads the follow ing from the speech of Senator Gray of Delaware, delivered on January 29th The senator said : "We have now silver bullion and silver dollars piled up in the Treasury vaults which is not demanded for circulation. All attempts to force a larger circulation of silver have proved abortive. The fact is that we to-day have a redundant cir culating medium gold, silver, green backs, treasury notes, and bank notes, all interchangeable and of equal purchas ing power aggregating somewhere near $1,500,000,000 or $1,600,000,000. "Think of the enormous economy in the one factor of transportation, which enters into the price today of every ar ticle of common use and common neces sity. At the commencement of this pe riod, or a little before, corn was burned as it was taken from the fields over the west ern prairies. Today it is sold for only a little, 0 or 9 cents, less than it is sold on the coast line of the country and at the port of New York." That is the way the goldite senators talk. The Independent will leave it to any old farmer in the state if that don't beat Annin or the State Journal. If Sen ator Gray knows of any silver dollars that won't circulate in his state let him send them out here, and we will be pro foundly grateful to be shown how Ne braska corn can belaid down in New York at a freight charge of six or seven cents a bushel. Bye and bye the people will find out that a good many senators are common, every-day liars, and nothing else. COMINQ TO TKEIB SENSES. At last there is beginning to appear some sound political economy in the great quarterly scientific journals, a thing that is very encouraging. Prof. Willard Fisher has an essay in the Jour nal of Political Economy which com pletely demolishes the claim that 95 per cent of the business of the country is done with checks, drafts and other credit devices. The article shows long, hard Btudy and much patient investigation. From the comptroller's reports, bank statements and other reliable sources, he Guds that the amount of credit paper passing through the banks in a year is about $15,000,000,000. Then taking the amount of money of every kind in circulation at one billion, and estimating that it changes hands about three times a week, which is a very low estimate, he findu that the cash transactions just about equal the credit business. His conclusion is in these words: "The cash and credit exchanges of our country, in stead of standing as 1 to 10, stand in the ratio of 1 to 1." The claim so often made upon the floor of the senate that as civilization ad vances, less and less money per capita is needed and less used, Prof. Fisher utterly denies and closes his article with these words: "That recent years are seeing the field of credit money slowly contracted is pretty well proved." TWO WHIFFED CURS. Last Monday the Board of Public Lands and Buildings had a meeting had Beveral of them in fact, some open and some secret. The result of it all was that the theiving curs who had planned to rob the tax payers of this state through their illegal appointment of a superin tendent of the penitentiary, of thousands of dollars, stuck their tails between their legs, yelped, whined, and finally gave up the whole thing as a bad job and quit. Churchill and Russell agreed to pay the bills which Warden Leidigh had made to maintain the convicts for the five or six months during the time these would be boodlers were trying to get their itching fingers on the money appropriated by the legislature to maintain the prison. The only thing that saved the tax pay ers was the brave fight made by a popu list governor and a populist warden. When a pop undertakes to defend the people against public thieves, he makes things lively for them as Churchill and Russell have found out No two "yellow dons" ever got a more complete wallop ing than these two at the hands of Hol comb and Leidigh, and honest men of all parties and all creeds rejoice over the victory. BANKER YATES BLASPHEMY. Recent statistical tables show a gen eral decline of prices since January 1, 1891, of 14.72 per cant, that is if $100 would buy a certain amount of goods January 1, 1891, $85.29 would buy the same amount January 1, 1896. But farm products have fallen in far greater proportion than that. The general level oi prices has been somewhat kept up by ihe riite in articles controlled by trusts, Ike coal oil and cotton seed oil, which have risen in prim, notwithstanding a loll everwhere else of 8.22 per cent. In fur in products $59.59 will now. buy as much wheat, corn, oats, rye, and flour as $100 would buy January 1, 1891. Yet Mr. Henry Yates tells us that gold is a stable standard a standard without a shadow of turning, and will stand com parison with thecharacter of Jesus Christ, which is a blasphemy uttered inaY. M. C. A. building without a protest. TOM RIED ON SILVER. Senator Chandler who is a warm sup porter of Tom Reed for president recently wrote a letter deflningReed's position on silver. It is as follows: "He is not willing to agree to the un limited coinage of silver at the present ratio by the United States alone; but be is apposed to the gold monometalism of Cleveland and Carlisle, and in favor of Republican bimetal I ism, to be secured by the most feasible means and with the least possible delay, bo that gold and silver, admitted to unlimited coinage at an agreed ratio, shall together constitute the standard money of the world's values." That is to say: "I am in favor of and opposed to, regarding with friendly dis position, to thus hinder, destroy, defeat the opus operatum, remembering my opsimathy. I am still frieudiy and in oposition Yours truly, Tom. Reed." The United States marsh alls are after the half naked, half starved frontier set tlers in Boyd county again for cutting timber on public lands; and they brag that they will have 200 of them in jail in a short time. There was never a more inhuman piece of work inaugurated on this continent. This gang of goldite marshals are simply after fees. Their conduct in arresting these shivering wretches for taking a load of wood from the public lands to warm their wives and children, even if the charge could be proved, is on a level with the tyrannies of the old feudal lords of 500 years ago, but when the arrests are made for thi sole purpose of getting lees, as has been proven in many "Cases in the past, the j villains who do it deserve the warmest berth in slieol. The York Times being incompetent to argue the money question, says "If every body would unite with everybody else to rotten egg the first fellow who proposed any legislation in regard to money, it would put a stop to a whole lot of use less and damaging talk." Now don't throw up the sponge that way. Write about overproduction, intrinsic value, Peffer's whiskers, or Jerry Simpson's socks. Never show the white feather. Bull it through and earn your money. The Associated Press liars sent out a dispatch to the whole western circuit to the effect that the bimetallic national convention would be held on July 2. A lot of populist editors believed it, and straightway went after our national committee tooth and toe nail, among them the Utah Democrat. When will these editors learn to take the advice of the Independent and believe nothing in the Associated Press until they have some proof that it is true. Many of the farmers in Norway have telephones in their houses. The govern ment owns the telegraph and telephone lines there. Must the United States for ever tag at the tail end of civilization for the benefit of the gold bugs, Every civ ilized government on earth, including Japan, owns the telegraph and telephone lines, while the United States is yoked with the pig-tailed Chinese. Gold-bugism is barbarism and nothing else. The Dispatch, "theonly democratic pa per in Chicago," is acting as'if it were go ing to turn populist out and out. During the few weeks that the Chicago Times wrote populism before the Harrison boy8 sold out, it increased its circulation from about 40,000 to over 100,000. The Dispatch seems inclined to try the same thing. There is money in it. Either the goldites will have to buy it or it will get a big circulation. Any sort of stuff called money that has to be redeemed in some other kind of money before it can legally pay a debt is a fraud, and as for the Independent, it will have nothing to do with it. The only concession it will make to men who advocate paper money redeemable in gold, silver, or anything else before it can pay our debts, is to give them the privileges of voting the populist ticket. January 29th the great coal carrying roads of Pennsylvania held a meeting' formed a pool to hold for fifteen years, and regulated the amount each should haul. The next thing the price of an thracite was advanced 35 cents a ton, and thirty-two mines were closed. There is old party government for you. If you like it, all you have to do is to keep on voting the old party tickets. The "flood of gold" that all the hire- line writers in the magazines are shout" ing about.comes from working low grade ores which could not be worked at all i1 gold had not so greatly appreciated. Be sides, half of it is pure, unadulterated lying, anyhow. You must keep Japanese goods, made with cheap silver out with a tariff, says the gold bug republican. A tariff of 100 per cent would not equalize exchange. How would yon like to sell wheat, twef. and pork in Liverpool at present prices and then pay one hundred per cent more for your goods than you do now? That Would bring prosperity wouldn't it? That is the stuff republican idiots talk. In my judgment there is a determined effort being made in this country to create a great national debt, and in that it has got the assistance of the public authorities. It is as determined as it waa that the Sherman law should be repealed. They intend to create a great debt of a thousand, fifteen hundred, or two thous and million dollars if they can. Senator Teller. . , Harrison refuses to be a candidate for president. He says: "There never has been an hour since I left the white house that I have felt a wish to return to it." It is refreshing to know that one gold ite is so ashamed of his work, that he proposes to hide his shame in private life. A good many more will do the same thing after the next election. , It turns out that Mr. Poor, of Ken tucky, whom the Associated Press liars informed the public was a populist, is not a populist at all, and never claimed to be one, so the populist party is entirely re lieved from any responsibility in the fac tional fight in Kentucky. The one pop ulist in the legislature is keeping straight in the middle of the road. Gorman, Harris, and Morgan are con cocting what they call a compromise scheme to retire the greenbacks and treasury uotes and issue silver certifi cates in place of them. That, they say, will make a market for $500,000,000 of silver, and will please the gold men. Crit tenden peace commissions won't work now any better than they did in 1861. Kansas republicans have always been represented in the United States' Senate by free silver men until they sent Gold Bug Baker there. Ingalls and Plumb were both for free silver. The redeemers who redeemed Kansas redeemed out a gold bug while they talked free silver. That's the way they always do. Put up a tariff high enough to keep Japanese goods out and where would your revenue come from ? From bonds. A prohibitive tariff means no revenue from customs duties. A deficit in the revenue means bonds, bonds, bonds. That is the wisdom of these goldite high tariff redeemers. The official reports show that the cur rency has been contracted $110,000,000 in the last two years. Now they are go- fug to contract it $100,000,000 more and lock it up in the treasury reserve Vaults. There will be another fall in ' prices and that is all there is of it. To the question why so many republi can newspapers failed, the Nebraska Press Association, which held its annual session in Lincoln last week, unanimously replied that it was because the ready print and paper houses always sent their goods C. 0. D. A gold bug Lincoln weekly is adver tising that it will pay $2.50 and send free its paper to any one getting up a club of five. Some sort of a cash pay ment has to be made to get men in this part of the country to read gold bug rot. SENATOR FEFFER. A Writer Who Thinks Him a Master of Folitical Strategy. Some weeks ago there was printed in The Independet a character sketch of Senator Peffer from the pen of Bright Eyes. Last week another sketch ap peared in the New York Independent, the old conservative, cultured, orthodox re ligious paper of that city, from the pen of Janet Jennings, taking exactly the same view of the populist senator. The first two paragraphs of her article are as follows: Senator Peffer is the mildest mannered mau in in the senate. No other . senator is possessed of such unobtrusive tenacity of purpose as this Kansas populist. He has, also, the courage of conviction, and never goes a long way round to get at things, but makes a short cut and calls a spade a spade. On the first day of the session Senator Peffer introduced a bill providing for the "proper disposition" of senators who die while congress is in session in other words, statesmen who fall at the post of duty. The out look for Mr. Peffer's good inten tions were not promising. Appa rently the bill received no attention, beyond a broad and very general smile of amusement in effect, the cold shoulder of discouragement. A man of less sanguine temperament would have given it up, gone his way, and let the dead bury their dead. Not so Senator IVffer. I do not pretend to say how he managed it, but manage it he did prob ably by strategy, the populist weapon; and a formidable weapon it is bound to be, too, as both republicans and demo crats already realize. Under less clever tactics such a bill, in its very nature, must have been buried at the bottom of the calendar, below the possibility of res urrection. But Senator Peffer led the cal endar with his bill, actually got it at the top before the senate was aware of what be was about. And then? well, every day for four consecutive weeks, when the clock struck two, the vice president, rising with a gravity becoming the situation, would tap his gavel solemnly and say: "The hour of two o'clock having arrived, the chair lays before the senate the unfinished business; the clerk will read." Here the clerk, also with a gravity becoming the