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About The Nebraska independent. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1896-1902 | View Entire Issue (March 5, 1896)
THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT. March 5, 1896. Nebraska Mtpc nbent THE WEALTH MAKERS 4 LINCOLN INDEPENDENT. PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY T TBI Independent Publishing Go. At USOX Street, .1NCOLN, - NEBRASKA. TELEPHONE 538. $1.00 per Year in Advance. Address all communication! to, and mk all Wtii money orders, etc, parable to TUB INDEPENDENT FCB. CO.. Linooli, Nil. One more year of Grover. You can't vote for a populist without voting for a silver man. Tub phrase "shell out" comes down to ns from the days when shells were a le gal tender. All our great railroad systems are owned in England. Every raise in rates is an increase in our tribute to foreign ers. If increasing debt is not stopped in this country we will soon be in the condition of Egypt. The interest charge will consume everything that labor can produce. The economists in England do not de ny that the fall in prices is caused by the demonetization of silver, but they say England is a creditor nation and gains by falling prices. Thb Independent is down on Tillman. Be has been slandering the man who who sold his master by referring to the great southern traitor as "the Judas from Kentucky." Joe Blackburn has promised to sup port a goldbug for president. He will probably be re-elected now. The free sil yeritesof Kentucky, are thus made the most efficient fighters in the gold bug ranks. The republicans bought out the popu list paper at Stanton, and now the pop ulists fyiive organized a stock company and started another, which makes the editor of the republican paper in that town very weary. When Dr. John Hall introduced the syphilitic, drunken debauchee of the white house and installed him as chair man of a home missionary meeting in New York, he may have thought that he would, in that way, increase the contri butions to his church. He will learn in the end that he made a mistake. The demo-reps elected a sheriff of Wayne county. One of his first acts was to take a deputy and call out a school teacher whom the two proceeded to thrash. The two officers were then called up aud fined f 10 and f 15 respectively. What a gret thing the people of Wayne county did wi.sn they downed the popu list party! The last three or lour presidential campaigns have been sham fights over the tariff and other side issues but the one now on is of entirely a dif ferent kind. There will be no blank cartridges fired. No marching up hil and down again. It will be shoot to kill every time. Is your gun loaded, your knapsack, haversack and canteen filled? In the intellectual feast served up by the hundred columns in the dailies, one must take his choice between the wordy war going on between Corbett, Fitzsim mons and Maher, and that between the rival candidates for the republican nomi nation for president. Any fair or com petent critic will say that the Corbett Fitzsimmons stuff is the best literature. Pbof. J. W. J enrs says: "The strong est argument of the bimetallists and free silver advocates i. e., that the apprecia tion of gold is the chief cause of the in dustrial depression under which the world is Buffering has lost much of its force in the minds of the people since the revival of business in the last few months has been so marked." That is pretty fair lying for a literary hireling. The State Journal says the railroads didn't raise the rates at all, instead of that they lowered them, and that is what the cattle men and farmers in the north and west part of the state are howling about. Old Truthful Is getting down to business in the old style again. What an up-to-date, intelligent set of persons its readers must bel A paper comes to this office headed Nebraska r. A. & 1. T., which we sup pose means Farmers' Alliance and In dustrial Union. What puzzles us is, that it seems to be fighting the platform re cently promulgated by that order. We call the editor's attention to that platform published in this edition of The Independent, with the hope that he will stand by it. Ol'B HOMK1.EH SILVER FRIENDS. The Independent is for uniting with any one and every one who will unite with the populist party to down the money power, but we want to say a word to the newly converted who are going to hold a convention in St. Louis at the same time as the populists. You have at last conceded to be true what the populists have been telling you for the last four years, L ., that monetary reform could never be obtained in either of the old parties. When that fact ap peared to us as plain as the nose on a man's face, you were so infernally stupid mat you couia not see it. How, it is possible that you may be just as stupid about comprehending some other things that are just as plain to us as that was. But as you have proved yourselves hon est and patriotic, notwithstanding you were a little dull of comprehension, we are willing to take your hand, and trust that you can understand some other things about which you seem to be very much muddled in your ideas. Populism is a system, perfect in all its parts. You have come to understand one part of it pretty well. You have no other friend on earth than the populist party. All others are your natural ene mies. You are houseless and homeless. We open the door of our mansion and ask you to come in. We will treat you as honored guests. But if you give us notice that when you get in you will kick the wife and children out and sit at the head of the table, it will maketrouble in the family. We will give you theguest chamber, and it is the best room in the house. We will Bervo you first, of the very best we have, but, by the eternal, the wife and children shall stay in there too. Most of you are real good, honest fel lows and, being gentlemen, know what is good manners. But there are a few among you who have so recently cut the society of thieves and robbers that they are hardly file to be admitted to good so ciety just yet. You must give, between now and July 22d, these chaps some in struction, or they will make themselves offensive and spoil the harmony of the occasion. We bid you welcome to a regenerated pnblic service, a prosperous country, and a happy people, all composing one great American family of the free. IT WAS VERY PITIFUL. Hon. G. W. Lambertson delivered an address last week to the University Econ" omic Club. There was never a more piti ful sight in this world than to see this man, evidently perfectly honest, sitting there, denying every fundamental princi ple laid down by the standard economists. doing it in almost every sentence and honestly thinking that he was teaching economics to the Btudcnts of the State University. Mr. Lambertson gravely asserted that since 1879 there had been, in the United States the most enormous and constant increase in the amount of money in cir culation that the world had ever seen, and that the chief cause of our present distress was a redundant circulation. He denied the constitutional right of the government to issue money. He de manded the retirement and destruction of the greenbacks, and said that Sher man's plan to impound or lock them up in the treasury would not do at all. Mr. Lambertson, poor fellow, thinks he has been studying economics, because he has been reading the gold bug literature of the Reform club. In fact, his talk of an hour was nothing but a rehash of that club's latest publication. His statistics and his quotations from Chase, Conklin and others were all taken from it. If Mr. Lambertson will look up the orignal records he will see that only one of all those quotations was not garbled, and that the Reform club led him to appear extremely silly before a body of men.who knew at least a little of the science of political economy as taught, by Mill, McLeod, Adam Smith, Jevon and Francis A. Walker. Mr. Lambertson did not even seem to know that Secretary Carlisle had recently publicly stated that in the figures that he, Mr. Lambertson was relying up on, there were grave errors, in thatt gold certificates and the gold they repre. sented, had both been counted. However grave the errors Mr. Lam bertsonso solemnly announced asscien. tific truth, no one could feel angry at him, but there sat near him the head of the department of economics of the State University 01 xseorasKa, wno, wnue prou ably ashamed to make such statements himself in public, constantly puts up such men to teach economics and never gives any one the opportunity to deliver a lecture in which economics can be illus trated as taught by the scientists who wrote the standard works on that sub ject, aud the farmers are paying his sal ary by raising ten cent oats and twelve cent corn. The farmers of this state want the Uni versity to be kept at the highest stan- dard. They are willing to tax themselves to the limit of endurance to do it, espec ially the populist farmers, but they want the students taught science. It seems almost incredible that a man would be allowed, without a word of protest or correction from the head of the department of economics to gravely state to the University students that an enormous and heretofore unheard of in crease in the volume of money had re sulted in a constant reduction of the general level of prices, or in other words, the irreater the amount of money we hae the dearer it becomes. Mr. Lam lt,a atoll- U T, MAID V iV . ' bertson's economics teaches that an in crease in the supply of money increases the purchasing power of each one of its units, and the pity of it is, he honestly believes it. OUTWITTED PLUTOCRATS. When it comes to beating the schemes of the politicians put up to fool the peo ple, there has been no man in the senate for twenty years who baa shown such good judgment and foresight as W. Y, Allen. The plutocrats in conclave had resolved to manufacture a boom for pa triotism, and while the people were car ried away with that, complete the legis lation that would forever make them slaves of the money power. Allen walked into the senate, and almost the first day of the session stole all of their thunder by making a speech on the Monroe doc- trine that took all the wind out of their sails. Their plan of "pressing the point of patriotism in the coming campaign," as Hon. John L. Webster put it, was com pletely spoiled by this little maneuver on the part of Allen. Then they were going to make extrav agant appropriations so as to hold solid the old soldier vote. Allen killed that plan with one blow by making a speech on pensions that was immediately indorsed by every honest old soldier in the country. Then they were going to the country on the plan that they were for free silver and protection, but that they could do nothing in the senate because there publicans did not have a majority there. Allen knocked this plan into smithereens in two minutes by rising to his feet in the senate and saying that if the republi cans wanted free silver and protection they could have it then and there, as every populist in the senate would vote with the republicans on that proposition and give them a majority. This last blow from Allen's big fist made the whole republican party tremble on its legs. Then they began to say: "Well, if we can't eiect a majority of the presidential electors, we can throw the election of president in the house, and we've got the house." If Senator Allen never does anything more, the producing classes of this country owe him an unpayable debt of gratitude for !)he courage, sound judg ment and wisdom with which he has made the fight for their interests at this session of congress. The wiliest old-time managers of the old parties have been outmaneuvered by this new statesman from the west. WHY SILVER DOLLARS ARE AT PAR. The republicans still go around saying that the only reason that a silver dollar is at par with a gold dollar, is because any man can go to the treasury and get gold for them. Most of them know they are lying when they say it. This paper has a standing offer to pay $100, to any man who will point out the statute that provides for redemption of silver dollars or silver certificates in gold. No one has ever called for the money. Why then are silverdollars, containing little over fifty cents worth of silver, worth 100 cents in gold? One reason is because they are a full legal tender except where gold is stipulated in the contract, That alone would make them par in this country but it would not make them par outside of the jurisdiction of the United States. But American silver dollars are at par in London and every other mart of trade ju the civilized world, and they only con tain about fifty cents worth of silver and are not redeemable in any other kind of dollars. Why? Because this country has a large foreign trade. If an iingiishman, a frenchman or a German has 1000 silver dollars he will not take less than the face value for them less the cost of sending them to this country, as loner as he can send them here, and buy corn, wheat, beef, pork, cotton, pretroleum and a hundred other things that be wants and must have. There is another reason why he would not take less. He has goods to sell in this country and he could take the silver and pay the import duties with them These are the reasons why the silver dol lar with about fifty cents worth of silver in it is at par with gold. If it had only ten cents worth or one cents worth, or if it had no bullion or commodity value at all, it would still beat par, provided that there were not too many of them. The reason why a Mexican silver dol lar with more silver in it than the Ameri can dollar, is not at par is because Mexico has little or no foreign trade. If an Englishman has a thousand Mexi can silver dollars what can he do with them? Mexico has but few things that he wants and must have. If Mexico had for sale five or six hundred mil lion dollars worth of raw mater ial which the English, French and Germans must have to feed their people and run their factories, the Mexi can silver dollar would very quickly be at par. The next time a republican tells you that a silver dollar is redeemable in any other kind of dollar, tell him, if he is about your size, that he is a liar. About a hundred sacks of goldbug lit erature was mailed from the state house last week. It is manufactured in Wall street and sent here and distributed by the republican boodlers. Wall street pays the till. The farmers of Nebraska ought toKO into perpetual servitude if thev are voted with such stuff as that ley b,, .-.X Paine, Warfel & ttumsteaa. Bo. Jutu SUPPLIES FOR THB ENEMY. You have learned to reason and to or ganize. A'oir you must learn to fight We are going into a contest where no quarter will be given. We shall meet a well trained foe who has studied polit ical strategy for years. Every deception that the acutest iatellect can invent will be practiced npon you. They will seek to drive you into indefensible positions, to lure you into traps, to divide and beat you in detail. They will slander, betray, they will in fact do everything to win this fight. It is grim, savage war this time. There are some things that populists have been doing that they must stop do ing. One of them is, yon must not fur' nish supplies to the enemy. One of our bitterest foes is the State Journal com pany. It is not an honorable opponent It does not, as every populist knows, fight an honorable warfare. Yet popu lists furnish supplies to keep that enemy in the field. If populist support were withdrawn from that company it is doubtful if it could stand six months. Populist county officers send it the blank book and other work on which it lives. Populist papers (a few) advertise it. It lives and fights by reason of this support. Withdraw it and thjs organ izer of boodle, this defender of public thieves, this champion of the money power would die unless supported by the direct contributions of the corporations and the banks. If the support given to it by populists was given to a state populist paper, the fight is won. If county officers, if the state institutions under populist control gave all their work to their own paper instead of turning it over to various re publican houses, they might put it into thirty thousand homes in six months. To do what has been and is being done is to furnish supplies to the enemy in time of war. You cannot fight an armed foe un armed. You must know the position and objective point of the enemy. You can only learn this through your own paper. The enemy will not furnish you these facts. You must get them from your friends. Put this alert, watchful friend in every populist household in the state and you will have something to fight with. You will make it possible for you and your children to have some thing of life's comforts and luxuries. NO CHILD'S PLAY HEREAFTER. It is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total over throw in this nation. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities," another calls them self-evident lies," and others insid iously argue that they apply to "super ior races." These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect the supplanting of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste and legitimacy. They would de light a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them or they will subjugate us. (Is notthat a pretty good populistedi torial? Well, it is stolen, every word of it, from a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to II. L. Pierce of Boston, Mass., dated at Springfield, 111., April G, 1879, and can be found in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, by Nicolay and Hay, page 533.) However, that is not all of the good, populist doctrine in that letter. Mr. Lincoln further said of Jefferson: "All honor to Jefferson to the man who, in the concrete struggle for national inde pendence, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely rev olutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and to so embalm it there that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyrrany . and oppres sion." Then Mr. Lincoln tells a story about two men whom he saw fighting. Both had heavy overcoats on. At the end of the scrap each had fought himself into fhe others overcoat, and shows how the republicans of that period had adopted wholly the principles of Jefferson, and the democrats those of the federalists. He adds: "The democracy of today(1859) holds the liberty of one man to be sbsolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property; republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict, the man before the dollar." It seems today (1896) that the repub lican party has got the old democratic overcoat of 1859 on, and holds the rights of man as nothing when they come in conflict with property, or what is now more frequently called capital. Abraham Lincolnl we fought for you, we voted for you, and we wept for you when you were cruelly murdered. We still hold to the truths you taught, and shall fight for them while life lasts. A FABULOUS FLOOD OF GOLD. The magazines and the dailies again tell wondrous stories about the fabulous finds of gold in all parts of the world, and they pretend to tremble in every joint at the thought of this overwhelm ing "flood of gold." They think they can persuade a million or so of simple tons to Btay in the "old party" by this sort of lying. It would not make a particle of differ ence to the prodHcing classes if unnura Dl. bend tons of gold should be found or if very mine in the world should shut down, as long as the money power controls legislation. If there should be an enor mous output of gold they would demon etize it, as several nations did when the output from California and Australia was so great. The leaders of the money power are all thorough economists. They do not de lude themselves with "intrinsic value" iaeae. xney Know tnat money is, as Aristotle said, "not by nature, but by law." They don't care whether money is made of gold, silver, tin, paper, or anything else. AH they are concerned about is to bo limit its quantity that it will constantly grow dearer. If gold should become so plentiful as to begin to grow cheap, it wouldn't be long until they would begin to talk about "the nasty yellow stuff," as they did once be- before, and they would take up some thing that was scarcer aud harder to get to make the dollars of. There is no safety for the producing masses but to control the government It is for them to say whether money shall be scarce and dear or plentiful and cheap; whether it shall take ten bushel of oats or five to buy a dollar; whether it shall take 100 bushels of wheat to pay their taxes and interest, or whether it shall take only twenty-five bushels and have the other seventy-five bushels left with which to supply their wants. It is not a question of gold, or silver.or paper dollars. It is a question of the number of dollars, and who shall say how many there shall be. GREAT BRITAIN'S POPULIST. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, who is now the real head of the British Empire, re cently said that the key note of his whole career was: "That all monopolies, which are sustained in any way by the state, ought to be in the hands of the repre sentatives of the people, by whom they should be administered, and to whom their profit should go," from which it seems that the rankest kind of a popu list is in charge of the British govern ment. Mr. Chamberlain began his career by securing the enactment into law of his theories. He began in Birmingham and carried through four schemes. 1. The town bought op the gas works, which now represent a capital account of $11,150,000 re" ducing tbe price of gag from 75 cents to 26 and S5 cents, and making an annual profit of $ 150, 000. 2. The town bought up the water works, pay ing over $272,455 per annum to the shareholders. The result was tbe creation of a property valued at $ll,000,000,the Improvement of the supply and the rednctlon of water rents by $149,170 per an num. S. The town bought up the central slums, bor rowing $7,000,000 for the purpose, and construct ed Corporation street through the Improved area. The area was rebuilt on leases of 75 years. When they fall In Birmingham will be tbe richest borough In the world. 4. Birmingham formed a drainage nnlon with surrounding towns and established a model sewerage farm of 1,200 acres In the Tame valley. It cost $2,000,000 to lay out the farm, and It cost $275,000 to work it. Notwithstanding all the benefits con ferred upon the people, the tax rate is less than it was thirty years ago. That is what one populist has done in Eng land. Of course he is a bimetallist also. SATAN COULDN'T BEAT IT.' There is but one full legal tender money in the United States at this time. The gold dollar is an unlimited legal tender and nothing else is. There are nine different kinds of money in circulation, some with no legal tender power and others which are legal tender in various amounts. It is the worst financial hotchpoch any civilized nation ever had thrust upon it. It was all evolved out of the brains of that "wonderful financier, John Sherman." Gold is an unlimited legal tender. The standard silver dol lar is a legal tender for all debts pub lic and private "except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract." Greenbacks area legal tender for all debts, public and private, except import duties and interest on the public debt; treasury notes (issued under the Sher man law) are a legal tender for all debts public and private "except where other wise expressly stipulated in thecontract"; silver certificates are "recivable for customs, taxes and all public dues," but are not a legal tender for private debt. Copper, nickel and subsidiary silver coins are legal tender for small amounts, and that is the hotchpotch that John Sher man has given us, which is puffed to the skies by the goldite dailies as "the best financial system tha world ever saw, The devil himself couldn't have invented anything worse. EARTH'S GREATEST LIAR. February 24th, between 1 and 2 o'clock in the afternoon, old John Sherman arose in the'senate and said: "There Is no poverty In this country, no un willingness to pay taxes, no reason why taxes should not be levied." Congressional Record, page 2405. This is the man whom the daily press and republican leaders constantly laud, praise and glorify as America's greatest statesman, patriot, and financier. If the Father of Lies can beat, or ever has beaten that statement, history has never made record of the fact. "There is no poverty in this country!" John ShermanI The prize is yours. You are the greatest liar ever found in heaven, hell or earth. You shall have the blue ribbon and the gold medal, and if you will only die quick, we will contribute to raise a monument to your memory, on which shall be inscribed: "Sacred to the memory of earth's greatest liar, Requiea- cat in pace," f EN A TOR TELLER. Senator Teller will the day when be will bitterly regret tbe part he played in the last campaign. All dictates of I'WIlVlbOt VUIUUIUU Dvlllru UIgUU U I 111 LU take the step that Stewart and Jones took two years ago. Neither he nor his state have anything in common with the plutocrats of the east, yet he stuck to their party organization, went home and secured the election of a man to the sen ate who had not one sentiment in his heart in accord with the common people. Walcott is a plutocrat of tbe plutocrats. Teller now finds that the men "with whom he has so long associated, openly insult and deride him. It would have been much more dignified and much pleas anter for Mr. Teller to have walked out of the party in '93 than to be kicked out in '96. WHAT THEY KNOW ABOUT MORALS. If John Sherman should take a $ 1,000 bond, and by skillful forgery make it read $2,000, even the ordinary gold bug would admit that he had committed a criminal act. The $1,000 bond would.. at present prices, be of about the value- of 2,000 bushels of wheat, but if John raised it to $2,000 it would be of the- value of 4,000 bushels of wheat. All the gold bugs would admit that that would be stealing. On the other hand, if John Sherman. by legislation, should make that bond,, which is only worth 2,000, worth 4,000 bushels of wheat, all the cold hnaa would say that was patriotism. That's all a gold bug knows about morals. OF COURSE THEY WILL. A Washington dispatch of February 27, says: Nebraska Republicans insist that the sound money element in that state Is largely in the as cendancy. The republicans are mainly for sound money and from 15,000 to 20,000 democrats. It was said would vote the republican ticket If the dem ocratlc party committed Itself to a declaraton favoring the free coinage of silver. Well why should'nt they? Did any one ever say that they would not That news is about three years old. Gold bug democrats have been voting the republi can ticket in this state to a very great extent for several years. The party or ganization has only been maintained in the interest of the republicans. The As sociated press is a grand old concern- News three years old will do it just as well as plain lying. The Southern Mercury is still fighting all the constituted authorities of tbe- people's party, both in its own state and the nation at large, while still claiming to be a populist paper. An editor, among the sheep who follow the bosses in the old parties, is supposed to know it all, but among the intelligent men who vote the populist ticket no such - sentiment, exists. The populist party cannot be bossed by editors any more- tbanitcan be by office holders. It is time the Southern Mercury had learned that fact. We gather from the numerous ex changes that come to this office that at last the people of the state are becom ing fully aroused. Meetings are befng held every where in the smaller cities and towns to discuss the situation. Everywhere the people seem to be of the- same mind, and that is that the con traction of the currency has caused the- fall in prices and the present distress. There was one held in Central City last week, of which a good report was made- in the Democrat. The republicans have come down a. good many pegs in their claims to sweeping the whole country clean. They don't feel so very certain about it now as they did a few weeks ago. They say now that they can throw the election into the house, and then tbey will have it all their own way. They are begin ning to acknowledge that there is a big fight on hand. A good deal of arro gance has been taken out of them, and a good deal more wfll be before the cam paign is over. Senator Chandler thinks that if he could only get Allen out of the senate the republicans of that body might have some peace. His exact words were: "If the senator from Nebraska should be taken away from this body by reason of his candidacy as the representative of that party for the presidency, we should endeavor to get along with the reduced number of populists in this chamber." Wk greet No. 1 of the Norfolk Inde pendent, a populist paper, with best wishes for its ultimate success. It is a bright, readable paper and will help along in the work of redeeming Ne braska. How to Sow Alfalfa. The above is the title of a little tract published by McBeth & Kinnison, Gar den City, Kansas, the leading growers and dealers in alfalfa in the United States. It contains valuable informa tion concerning the growing and har vesting of this "King of Forage Plants" which is train inc such a. hold nn tha ot. tention of farmers and is solving the problem of profitable farming in this western country. It will be mailed free to anyone writing for it. The attention of farmers and dealers who desire to pur chase pure alfalfa seed is directed lo the advertisement of this firm in The IJnde penent, This firm has a recognized standing, and is a reputable one.