THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT,
DECEMBER 11, 1902.
the Uebraska Independent
( Lincoln. Utbraska.
LIBERTY BUILDING.
J328 0 STREET.
Entered according toActof Congress of March
( 3, 1879, at the Postoffice at Lincoln, Nebraska, as
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Address all communications, and make all
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Zht Tltbraska Independent,
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noticed. Rejected manuscripts will not be
returned.
The gridiron hero is often the class
Idiot, but the pretty girl with a heal
,with nothing in it, does not lessen her
admiration on that account.
Speaker Henderson will not have
things his own way during this ses
sion of congress. He is a played-out
czar and there are none to kneel at his
feet and plead for his favor.
The railroads bought the elections
in Nebraska and several other states.
Immediately afterwards rates were
raised every wnere. waili up, Mr. Mul
let Head, and vote 'er straight again.
' J. J. Hill, of merger fame, is the
first great magnate to give unqualified
indorsement of Teddy's plan for crush-
Ing the trusts. Hill sas: "President
s Roosevelt is all right, and his remedy
for what are called trusts is all right."
Now let us all wait and see the trusts
lie down and dio. '
Rich, powerful and benevolent mo
nopolists are to be the salvation of this
country and lead it on to wealth and
happiness, seems to be the underlying
principle of the president's theory of
' political economy. The "bad" monop
olists he is going to kill.
To bear the odium of the saloon an.i
lose its vote is the game that has been
played against fusionists in the la?i
several elections. The letter of Jona
than Higgins in the last Independent
shows to what extent the whisky inter
ests went in its effort to elect Mickey.
Football scored eleven deaths dur
ing the last season, besides the perma
nently disabled and slightly injured
Sixteen New York dudes shot each
other for deer in the hunting resorts
of the Adirondacks, Michigan and
Wisconsin. One woman was danger
ously wounded, being mistaken for a
bird by another city hunter.
The Chicago Record-Herald is great
ly mistaken when it says: "The right
under international laws tp torture
Christians is one of the rewards of
being a Turk." It would seem thai
the United States has the same right
to torture Christians as has the Turk.
At least no nation has entered any
protest against the torture of Christian
Filipinos, not even after the facts ia
the case of Father Augustine were
made public.
According to the official statement
of the treasury department, the in
crease in the volume of money from
December 1, 1901, to December 1, 1902,
was $102,453,92S. The total amount
now in circulation is $2,352,710,158. It
seems to The Independent that it re
members a time not long ago when
populists were called repudiators, an
archists and several other names of
like character for saying that the vol
ume of money ought to be increased.
TEDDY'S ARTICLE
The president's message will prob
ably be read by a larger number of
citizens clear through than any other
message In recent years, for it is more
like a magazine article than a state
document. No message ever sent to
congress perhaps ever contained so
many recommendations to which all
the people will agree and every mess
age has things of that sort Yet the
message does not touch one funda
mental economic question except
that of money. All the remainder of
those questions which have occupied
the thought and time of the learned,
are utterly and completely ignored. He
shows his tender feeling for animals
by recommending that th worn-out
cavalry, artillery and draft horses of
the army should be cared foi and not
sold in their old age or turned out to
die. He recommends the preservation
of game on the government forest re
serves, but for the toiling masses
the thousands who in their old age af
ter a life of wealth-creating toil suf
fer for want of food and warmth, he
has no thought. He is proud of thn
military exploits of our army which
succeeded in bringing into subjection
an oriental race of home-loving,
peaceful Christian people, greatly in
ferior in numbers and scantily sup
plied with weapons of war. He says
nothing about the horrible condition
those people are now in, after 300,
000 of them were slain, the country
ravaged by war and their beasts of
burden destroyed by the rinderpest,
after cholera and the plague has swept
away more than a hundred thousand
more of them and still thonsands more
starving while the government is try
ing to feed them upon imported rice.
He gives the Iowa republicans an
awful whack for their tariff shelter
plank by denouncing the repeal, or
any attempt to repeal, the tariff cn
trust-made goods. He wants the sil
ver dollars made redeemable in golci
and talks about putting the "burden''
of redemption upon the national banks
while advocating a law that would en
able a national banker to go to the
treasury of the United States and de
mand gold, not only for ledemptio".
purposes, but for export o- any oth;-r
purpose. He favors the concentra
tion of wealth in few hands as far a
he touches upon the subject at all.
Concerning the "merging of rail
roads and rebates to the Standard Oil
company and other favorites, he has
no remarks to make. After all, Teddy'
article is a very good on j and The
Independent would have printed it
entire if it had had the space. It took
the reading clerk an hour lo read it,
while it was shorter than most mess
ages are. It is principally remarkable
for what it don't say. The new con
stitutions in the south and the whole
mass of colored people are not even
referred to even indirectly. He ap
proves of the report of the secretary
of the treasury, and thd secretary
wants an asset currency and silver
eliminated from the standard money
of the country and made redeemable
in gold like copper cents and nickles
are. He wants to "strengthen" the
financial position of the government
by adding a billion dollars to its
present liabilities. The Inde
pendent hopes that they ill try it.
The thing has to be settled some time
and now is as good a time as ever.
The void created by the contraction of
a thousand millions of the money of
this country cannot be filled by an
asset currency, when the assets of
the banks are now pledged for more
than they are worth to the depositors.
But The Independent says, Go ahead
and try it Don't be forever talking
about it and never do it. Democrats
and populists should put no impedi
ments in their way.
IV n EAT, COTTON AND SILVER
Commenting on the recent slump in
the price of silver, the Louisville Courier-Journal
remarks: "We used to be
told that India and China would take
all the silver that could possibly be
produced, but events have demon
strated that this is as untrue as the
famous statement that the market
price of wheat and cotton fluctuated
directly along with silver."
The Independent is fully aware that
many free silver advocates mistook a
tendency for something mysterious or
miraculous, and they doubtless made
rash statements regarding the question
of wheat, cotton and silver going hand
in hand. It is interesting to note,
however, that for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1902, silver-using countries
could buy for 192 ounces of silver as
many pounds of cotton, delivered at
tide-water, as could be bought for 190
cunces of silver In 1873; and that 125
ounces of silver in 1896 would buy as
much wheat as 132 ounces did in 1873.
This may be only a coincidence, but it
is a fact, well proven by statistics,
that silver-using countries year after
year give about the same weight of
silver for a given article that they did
years ago, before the price of silver
went down.
The fact is, they give all they can;
and if a bushel of wheat or a pound
of cotton or a yard of cloth cannot
be procured without giving a largely
increased weight of silver for it, these
people quit buying. That's the trou
ble today. The cry is going up that
our foreign trade to the orient is be
ing ruined by the slump in silver.
That's true. When finally silver reaches
the lowest notch it can at present,
under the readjustment the Americans
must be content to take the same old
ounce of silver at its new price or
quit trading permanently. Which is
only another way of saying that the
American farmer and manufacturer
must take lower prices named in terms
of gold standard money. The manu
facturer can probably stand it, as he
has the tariff to help him; but what
will the farmer do?
NATIONAL RANK INSECURITY
There is a notion prevalent among
the mullet heads that a deposit in a
national bank is safter than in a state
or private bank, and the frequent to
tal collapse of national banks fails to
enlighten them. The Independent hai
often remarked that no system of laws
ever enacted or that an ever be en
acted will make a back t-afe. The
safety of evevy bank under any sys
tem depends entirely upon the bank
er. It is impossible that it should be
otherwise. It is upon his honest
and business ability that the whoie
thing depends.
As is usually the case, the receut
bank failure at Boston proves to be
worse than was at first said to
probable. Some $1,000,000 of securi
ties, or about a fifth of its total as
sets, and twice the sum of its capital,
are classed as doubtful. This means
an assessment on the stock which
may have to extend to the full limit
of 100 per cent, and v. hich may not
then satisfy the claims of depositors.
Investors in Boston national ban
stocks have had some pretty sorry
experiences of this kind in recent
years, but the Bostonians do not seen
to have learned anything in that cost
ly school. The security for depositor
that populists advocate is the govern
ment itself. Government saving
banks have always been advocated by
populists. Most other naticiis see to
it that the savings of the poor are
saf3, but under the leadership of the
old foggy republicans, this country is
kept at the tag end of civilization
trailing along behind even Japan in
everything that effects the well-beins
of anybody except the millionaires
and trusts.
President Roosevelt after long and
hard study and hundreds of consul
tations with the leaders of his party,
arrived at the conclusion and so stated
in his message, that notwithstanding
the trusts needed regulation and tho
tariff needed revising through recip
rocity treaties, that if the trusts and
tariff grafters would all be good, then
we should all be happy. That is the
sum total of all his ideas on the great
questions that press for solution.
GROPING IN THE DARK
There has been considerable discus
sion in the World-Herald of late by
the socialists and others who have
made an effort to replying. On the
part of the socialists the same old
fundamental errors held in common
by them and the advocates of plutoc
racy have been the foundation of all
that has been said. It is the doctrine
of overproduction. Tha socialists
claim that four hours' work would
produce all that the country would
consume and every, one would have
plenty. How they arrive at such a
conclusion is hard to tell. The va
garies of the human intellect are past
comprehension.
At the present time all the popula
tion of 76,000,000, with th-5 exception
of the army and navy about 80,000
and at the outside 200,000 of the mil
lionaire class who do no useful work,
is at work. Even many thousands of
children who ought to be in school are
at work. Hundreds of thousands of
women and girls toil from ten to
twelve hours a day at gainful occupa
tions. When all are at work except
the aged, the sick, the incompetent
and a few thousand millionaires and
have been at work for two or three
years, still of most things produced
the demand is greater than the sup
ply. To reduce the hours of work to
four hours per day would certainly
reduce the supply more than one-hf
of what it is now. What would the
condition of the world be, if there
were only one-half as much wheat,
corn, meat, clothing, fuel and the
thousands of other things that people
consume produced as ther? is now?
No one can deny the facts in the case.
They are as stated. The people who
are able to work, with th exceptions
named, and they are aided by all
that science, invention and general
intelligence can do to assist them, are
at work at least eight hrmrs a day.
But there is no f.verproduction except
in very rare oases. Nothing that it
produced is allowed to go to wast3.
No wheat or corn lies rotting in the
bins. No warehouses are stored with
clothing for which there is no sale.
No coal is piled up which the peopb
do not want. All these are facts that
no man has the hardihood to deny.
Is not then the proposition to reduce
production one-half, by reducing the
hours of labor ic four -hours a day,
one of the most unreasonable things
ever advocated by men w-io are con
sidered sane?
There is another fact th;U is recog
nized by all men. Some millions cf
people in the Un ted States do not ob
tain as much tuod, clotting, or a
good shelter and warmth as they ought
to have. They ? not have i-nough of
things to make them comfortable. It
they could get them, consumption in
many quarters would be dc. tied. They
certainly cannot get them by reduc
ing production 'ne-half. Tt therefore
appears that the socialist remedy in
this regard is a hundred times worse
than the disease.
The evils of which the socialists
complain are re?.!. There are millions
of people in these United States who
cannot obtain enough nourishing food
to sustain bodily vigor, who have in
sufficient clothing and miserable
shacks for shelter from thj cold. But
this condition does not ome about
by the overproduction of these things
and the reduction of production ouo
half would not relieve thd want and
suffering. It is groping in the dark
following the Wind leader into the
ditch-to seek relief in thnt direction.
These evil things come from the fact
that the wealth produced is not more
evenly distributed. Some have more
than they can use and some have not
half enough. It is the result of the
concentration of wealth in few har.ds
a condition that produced the pop
ulist movement.
The great concentration of wealth
has come about from three causes:
First of all, the giving of public prop
erty in vast amounts to a privileged
few. Among these gifts have been
millions of acres of the public lands