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About The independent. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 1902)
8 THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT. 4 Zhe llebraska Independent Lincoln. nebraska. LIBERTY BUILDING. 1328 0 STREET. Entered according: to Act of Congress of March 3, 1S79, at the Postoffice at Lincoln, Nebraska, a second-class mail matter. PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY. FOURTEENTH YEAR. $1.00 PER YEAR . When making: remittances do not leave money with news agencies, postmasters, etc., to be forwarded by them. They frequently forget or remit a different amount than was left with them, and the subscriber fails to get proper credit. Address all communications, and make all drafts, money orders, etc., payable to Zbe nebraska Independent, Lincoln, Neb. Anonymous communications will not be noticed. Rejected manuscripts will not be returned. ' If "16 to 1" is such a horrible thing, why don't the republicans change the ratio or stop coining silver? Quay is not yet done counting up the majority of his man over the gold bug plutocrat that the democrats nom inated in Pennsylvania for governor. Better reorganise the party some more. j Free passes have been abolished for ' all time in Wisconsin; a constitutional amendment having been adopted that J prohibits the issuing of them. Oh! that Nebraska would go and do like- No jury has ever hung a man on the testimony of hand-writing experts. Juries have been known to do some silly things, but not one ever did a thing like that Yet the "experts" continue to appear in the courts and draw their $50 a day. There is trouble ahead for the tar iff grafters. John B. Perkins, a re publican merdber from Rochester, N. Y., declares that the first day after the next session of congress opens he will Introduce a bill to put coal, hides and meat on the free list and greatly re duce the tariff on lumber. The president went on a bear hunt down in Mississippi. Another fellow roped a bear and tied it to a tree and then as" ed the president to shoot it, but he refused. That "reminds us" that another fellow roped a coal trust, and asked the president to kill it with a criminal prosecution, but h? refused. 0 he keeps up "the parity." - Four genuine newspaper men have been elected as members of the next house and they are all democrats, namely, W. R. Hearst, New York Jour nal; F. E. Shober," reporter New York World; Gilbert M. Hitchcock, pub lisher Omaha World-Herald, and E. J. Livernash, a reporter of the San Francisco Examiner. Oxford college taught the doctrine of the divine right of kings for gener ations after the last king of that pre tention had been beheaded. Harvard college is of the same stamp and is teaching the making of heroes out of scabs after all the world has awak ened to a believe that labor has some rights that capital is bound to re spect For several days silver has remained constantly at 49 7-$ cents an ounce. The editor of the Springfield Republi can ought to sleep well of nights dur ing these days in the happy thought that American money has not lost in "worth" any more millions in that time. That unhappy editor don't know that while silver bullion has fluctuated over 3 cents an ounce during the last year, the silver dollar has been at a parity with gold all the time. MARION BL'TLEH, LISTEN! ' The editor of The Independent has received several-letters since the elec tion from parties in different 'states, some of which he hopes to get per mission to publish; asking for a state ment concerning the course that the people's party should now pursue. Events have proved that the people's party was right in its financial the ories. The increase in the volume of money has produced exactly the re sult that populists said it would. The doctrine of public ownership of 'all public utilities continually receives new adherents and as far as cities are concerned, is being constantly adopted. On the money question the populists and Bryan democrats were right. The populist position upon the necessity of the public ownership of railroads and telegraphs is just as sound. Every where, in every state in the union, pop ulists are at a perfect agreement on platforms and principles. The fears that all populists have always enter tained that the democratic party could never, as a whole, be brought over to the advocacy of these principles seems to have been realized. Except in the south, where the race question holds it together at the polls, it is divided into two factions which fight each other with more bitterness than the" do the republicans. Even in the south it cannot be relifd upon to act as a whole in the support of any principle. Louisiana democrats are as much pro tectionists as Lodge or Aldrich. In Tennessee there are democratic pa pers and democratic leaders advocat ing exactly the 'same financial prin ciples that Mark Hanna entertains. In Alabama there are democrats who are just as ardent imperialists as Bever idge. In Massachusetts their candi date for governor was as much of a trust promoter as J. Pierpont Morgan On the other hand, there are some millions of democrats who are honest and faithful, who believe in the Kan sas City platform, in the referendum, the public ownership of public utili ties, who are opposed to the concen tration of the wealth of the country in few hands by means of tariffs, trusts, combinations and rebates on the rail roads, who still believe in the Dec laration of Independence, and who are just as ardent and radical reform ers as any populist. This class of democrats are forever done with the Clevelands, the Hills, the Gormans, the Taggarts, and will no longer vote the democratic ticket while those men are in the leadership. The charge is made that Bryan is the cause Qf the failure of such demo crats to vote. That is not true at all. If Bryan should go over to the Hill- Cleveland crowd, all his magnetic elo quence could not get them to do it. He would simply be denounced by them as another traitor, just as the democratic voters in Indiana de nounced Dan Voorhees when he turned traitor, and Dan was as much an idol to the democrats of Indiana as Bryan ever was anywhere. The editor of The Independent has had hundreds of letters from demo crats during the last two years and knows whereof he writes. Not long since a chairman of a democratic state committee said to the editor of The Independent: "If Hill and that crowd get control of the democratic party I would leave it If the choice of the two evils were presented to me and I had to vote one or the other of the two tickets, I would vote for the republican ticket before I would for that crowd." It is with that kind of democrats that populists have been willing to co operate. But if Hill, Cleveland and Gorman have succeeded in making of the democratic party, instead of an united organization, a set of wrangling factions, without any settled principles or defined policy, what is the use of trying to further co-operate? It pro duces no effect The Independent believes that the chairman of the people's party, under these conditions, should call a na tional and representative council some time during next winter and let the party make a formal and official state ment concerning the policy that it proposes to put sue in the future. Let him invite to1 that council representa tive Bryan democrats, and let both ot them promulgate a statement to plu tocratic democrats that there can be no misunderstanding. Let these demo crats and populists bid defiance to the reorganizers and tell them that from henceforth there is a fight on with no let-up until it is decided whether a party can put up candidates for con gress and president under one name, when it is divided into two sections holding diametrically opposing prin ciples. ECONOMIC IDIOCY The demand coming from every source at the meeting of the conven tion of national bankers at New Or leans was for "more money." The comptroller of the currency while de claring that the volume of money had been greatly increased, said there "is not enough to handle the additional business. Not only is there more of every kind of material, but prices are higher, requiring much larger sums of money. Transactions which ordi narily could be conducted with com parative ease are now matters of much anxiety. The operations of the treasury department in collecting mon ey for taxes and the disposition of the funds of the government; the money required for moving crops, or any large payments of money for interest, dividends, or syndicate payments of unusual size, produce much more dis turbance than they did before the present condition was reached." The concensus of opinion among all the bankers was that there must be more money furnished from some source, or not only stagnation of busi ness would ensue, but there would be a large amount of "liquidation" in the near future, and "liquidation' is a banker's phrase for a panic. Of the amount of money now in cir culation $600,000,000 is silver, (during October $2,287,000 more of it was coined at the ratio of 16 to 1), and $346,000,000 of greenbacks, neither of which is a drain upon the government gold reserve. Here are $1,000,000,000 of the money now in circulation, which it is proposed to destroy, while all the bankers are calling for "more money." What has the republican party proposed in regard to this mat ter? They have introduced three bills "to reform the currency." One of these bills provides for the r -coinage of standard legal tender sil ver dollars into small change. Orig inally it was part of the Hill bill, but was placed in a separate bill, was passed by the house, and is pending in t':e senate. The second of these bills is the Hill bill, which provides for the redemp tion of standard legal - tender silver dollars in gold and their ultimate re tirement and destruction. The third of these bills is the Fowler bill, Which contemplates the redemp tion and destruction of the greenbacks and the establishment of bank note currency, based on the assets of the banks. With a cry going up from all over the land for "more money," the re publicans propose to destroy $1,000, 000,000 of the money we now have and the only proposition that they make toward increasing it, is to issue bank promises to pay, with the de positor's money which they hold, the only security! If this is not economic idiocy, then will some one please give us a name that will better describe it Knox Lehman, Francesville, Ind., be lieves that "The Independent is a good educator there is none better" and accordingly sends a club of five educational subscriptions. THE GOSPEL OF DISCONTENT The wise and great editor who was imported from the mouth of the Kaw to take charge of the drivel department of D. E. Thompson's Lincoln Daily Star, undertook Monday to preach The Independent a sermon on the sin fulness of "preaching; the doctrine of discontent to the constitutionally dis contented." He takes for his text the communication of James W. Fitch, Uncasville, Conn-, which appeared in column 3, page 7, of The Independent last week. Mr. Fitch has apparently given up all hope of ever accomplish ing any reform by means of the bal lot, and said so in his letter, and closed by daring the editor to print it Of course The Independent does not pretend to indorse all the various shades of belief expressed by its read ers in their communications, and so far as space will permit it denies no man a respectful hearing if his thoughts are couched in decent terms. The Star is shocked because Mr. Fitch-believes there must be "either a moral and spiritual reformation or civil war," and beseechingly implores the editor of The Independent to "pause and ask himself if he has not made quite enough frantic asses more frantic by preaching the doctrine of discontent." Doubtless the Star would call Herbert Spencer a "frantic ass" because back in 1894 in writing to an American friend he said; "We have bad times before us (in England) and you have still more dreadful times before you civil war, immense blood shed, and eventually military despot ism of the severest type." Surely the Star will not charge up Mr. Spencer's frantic assininity to The Independent Like all others of its ilk, the Star is working overtime preaching two in consistent doctrines: (a) that the re publican party is a party of progress, a party of affirmation, a party that does things; and (b) that we should "keep on letting well enough alone." No individual or nation ever made progress by "letting well enough alone." Had that doctrine been ap plied to the newspaper situation in Lincoln prior to October of this year, there would have been no exodus of editorial gray matter from the mouth of the Kaw. There would have been no Lincoln Daily Star to gause Will Owen Jones and the Seacrests to lie awake nights wondering how to stop the leaks in their newspaper circula tion. The gospel of discontent is the gos pel of progress. Not the discontent that merely snarls and whines, but the discontent that points out defects fearlessly, suggests remedies, and at tempts to apply them. The Indepen dent is not afraid to give the devil his due, and frequently accords the repub lican party its meed of praise when ever, in its judgment, praise is de served. But it is tired, very tired, of this everlasting bombast about the "greatest, the best, the most prosper ous and liberty-enjoying people under the sun," as the Star puts it. Granted that this is true what of it? It does not follow that we are as great and good and prosperous and liberty-loving as we might be under a better sys tem of laws, or even under a better administration of what we have. It does not follow that we cannot be come greater, . better, more prosperous and more liberty-loving and that is why The Independent preaches the gospel of discontent Mr. De Hart feels quite sure that President Roosevelt will smash tha trusts. It is to be hoped he will. But however sincere the president may b, The Independent cannot agree with Mr. De Hart that any great "smash ing" will be done by bringing civil and criminal actions under the provi sions of the Sherman law. These suit may help a great deal but until dis crimination in railroad freight rates is wiped out, The Independent has lit tle hopes of any smashing "staying put"