8
THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT.
JANUARY 1, 1903.
tbe Nebraska Independent
Lincoln, Rebraska.
LIBERTY BUILDING.
1328 0 STREET.
Entered according to Act cf Congress of March
j, 18-9, at the I'o&tomc at Lincoln, Nebraska, as
tecond-claf s 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 gel
proper credit.
Address all communications, and make all
drafts, money orders, etc., payable to
Zb ttebraska Independent,
Lincoln, Neb.
Anonymous communications will not be
noticed. Rejected manuscripts will not be
returned.
twiv en vs that "only the shots
that hit count." He has been firing at
the trusts for over a year and has
never yet made a shot that hit.
It is bound to be "fiat" money any
how. The Mad Mullahs of the re
publican party want bank "fiat" and
the pops want government "fiat."
The recent rise in oil and the gift
by Rockefeller of another million to
the Chicago university was only a
happy coincidence. That was all.
New York clearing house ; banks
show a decrease of $50,000,000 in de
posits and an increase of $8,000,000 in
loans over last year. No wonder that
they are organizing panic stoppers.
There is no coal mine near Nahant,
Mass. Senator Lodge introduced a
bill to put Canadian coal on the free
. list. That is only a coincidence.
There is 110 connection between the
two things.
n it- n mtAqt I Ticf I OQ f AT
of crime, whether it is marine, fire
or life insurance. When a.compan;
issues a policy on a single life for
hundreds of thousands, it should bi
. made co pay, suicide or no suicide.
There never was such a year for
the discovery of new oil fields as last
year and every time an increased sup
ply was found oil went up. The more
oil there is, the higher the prices go.
Trust That is all that need to be said
on that suojeci.
In the plutocratic mind of today, Jef
ferson made a greater mistake in
writing the words "pursuit of happi
ness," than he did when he declared
that "all men are created equal." He
should have written the "pursuit of the
almighty dollar."
. A duty on coal. Mines owned by
railroad directors. An unheard of
shortage in the supply of all kinds of
coal. These things are only coinci
dences and have no connection with
each other. Every mullet head in the
United States so declares.
The stories that Marconi has seiit
regular messages across the ocean and
received replies, are not told in a way
thaF' one '' would expect if wireless
telegraphy was really a commercial
success. The Independent must say
that it has doubts on that subject.
If the railroad managers have be
come so imbecile from their immense
accumulations tnat wun improved en
gines, steel tracks and modern equip
mpnt in every department, they can
not get coal enough to the people to
keep them from freezing, theu cer
tainly ..the time has come for taking
the roads from their control and turn
lng them over to the government. .
THE STANDARD OIL TRUST
The purpose manifested by the multi-millionaires
In control of the Stand
ard Oil trust to take advantage of
the stress for fuel among the people
to squeeze out of them better than
45 per cent dividends is becoming the
text of high-tariff organs for renewed
ridicule of the plan of reaching out
against trust extortion through tariff
reduction. Says the particular organ
of high protection at New York:
The price of oil is going up as
the price of nothing else in gen
eral use is going up. The oil bus
iness of this country is entirely in
the hands of a trust. It is the
most complete, the most absolute,
the richest earner of all the trusts
in the world. There is no tariff on
petroleum. Let us by all means
control the Standard Oil trust by
getting at the tariff, there being
no tariff on petroleum!
While petroleum is on the free list
where not otherwise provided for, the
"otherwise provided for" gives it about
as much tariff protection as any other
article manufactured in the United
States. But the tariff protection is
not the basis on which the Standard
Oil monopoly lives and flourishes. It
is discriminating freight rates made
in its favor.
In criticising the above, the Spring
field Republican says: "The people
are not dullards as they are assumed
to be." Now that assertion needs some
proof before it is accepted. There is
only one thing that can be said in de
fense of the people who have put ana
are keeping this trust promoting gov
ernment in power. They, if not "dull
ards." are certainly very ignorant of
facts. Whether it is the fault of the
people that they are so ignorant, is
another question. The press has been
lauded as the paladin of the rights
and liberties of the people for so long
a time that they have come to rely
upon it for all their information.
When plutocracy, represented by
bondholders, trust, promoters, tariff
rabbers, railroad magnates, coal
barons, franchise recipients and tax
dodgers,' bought up the press and
turned its whole force in defense of the
robbers and exploiters of mankind,
the people were kept in ignorance of
that fact and continued to rely upon
it for what' knowledge they had of
public affairs. They were comj Vf"'"
rtflppivfirt hv tms move, una navt ' ..jt
i "l it V tViQ coma nninto Tho intf.rstntn onvn
vuiiug lui mrii j w u ucouutuuu vici
since. The people will continue to act
in perfect ignorance so long as they
rely upon the dailies issued in the in
terest of plutocracy for their informa
tion. The men who are doing the
most effective work for reform are
those who are putting such papers as
The Independent in the homes of the
people so that they may become ac
quainted with the facts upon which
to base their votes.
slips of paper is not a burden. It is
the giving to them a franchise that is
worth millions of dollars. To call it a
burden Is just plain, old-fashioned ly
ing. Every one knows that the bankers
have been scheming for a long time to
get legal authority to issue their
"promises to pay" and get interest on
what they owe. If the people had not
proven so gullible in the past, no one
would have the face to say that the
authority to issue money was a "bur
den" or claim that the banks were so
unselfish and philanthropic as to be
demanding that "burdens" should be
placed upon them that the govern
ment ought to bear. The average mul
let head ought to know enough to un
derstand that the privilege of taking a
slip of paper and printing on it one
dollar, five dollars, one hundred or a
thousand dollars, and then loaning it
at interest is not a "burden." It won't
do, however, to count much on what a
mullet head knows. A man who has
a silver dollar in his hand, "standard
money of the United States and not
redeemable in any other kind of mon
ey," and for which he can get as much
of any commodity as he can for a
gold dollar and then insist that it is
only a forty-cent dollar, can't be
counted upon to know anything.
RULE THE WORLD
Railroads can knock a tariff sky
high and do it quicker than when
Secretary Shaw said "facilitate." The
great trusts, like the Standard Oil,
the steel combine and the coal trust
are all made possible by the control
of railroad rates. Rebates and fav
oritism does the business. The fact
that tariffs have long been nullified
by the action of railroads whenever it
has been found to the interest of the
railroads to do so, has been known
to every one who has made any in
vestigation of the subject Just at
the present time some of the tarifi
grafters are making a howl about it.
and" the subject has been before tht
interstate commerce commission.
Cases have often been brought be
fore that powerless body where the
railroad charge for shipment of im
ported goods from the seaboard to
inland cities was much lower than for
the shipment of similar domestic com
modities over the same line between
BURDEN BEARERS
The president in his message says:
'Banks are natural servants of com
merce, and upon them snouid be
placed ,as far as practicable, the bur
den of furnishing and maintaining a
circulation adequate to supply the
needs of our diversified industries."
Three words in the above sentence
should be especially noted, namely,
"burden," "servants," and "circula
tion." The idea conveyed is that the
banks are not masters, but servants;
that as servants they are carrying our
burdens for us. Could any form of
language be invented that so distorts
the truth. The word "circulation" Is
equally deceptive. If it means any
thing it means "money." That sort
of phraseology has made the people
servants and burden-bearers, but it is
probable that the president, without
thought, took up the style of talk of
those who surround him.
It is. not only deception to say that
the 'burden" of furnishing the money
of the country should be placed upon
the banks, but it is the very rankest
hypocrisy. To be allowed the special
privilege of creating money out of
merce commission has just been in
vestigating other cases of the kin.
It has been found that certain com
modities, when imported, are carried
from New York to Chicago for only 18
cents per hundred, while the same
commodities, when the shipment or
iginates in New York, are. taxed 65
cents, which is the rate charged on the
imported articles for the entire dis
tance from Europe to Chicago. Again,
it appears that the charge on cement
for shipment from Vuicanite, N. J ,
to St Louis is 65 1-5 cents, while from
Hamburg to St Louis the through rate
is only 65 cents. Thus the inland
freight charge for a distance of about
1,000 miles exceeds that for a dis
tance of over 4,000 miles when the
article is of foreign production. This,
of course, operates to break down the
protective tariff on domestic produc
tion and give advantage to the for
eigner. With their agents occupying many
seats in the United States senate and
the control of nearly every legislative
body in the United States the rail
roads are supreme, not only here in
Nebraska, but everywhere else. They
always will be as Jong as tirey are in
private hands and they always will
take all the traffic will bear. If that
Is what you want, all you have to do is
to vote 'er straight
Germany and Great Britain are
exemplars of "civilization." Their re
cent demonstration showed it off in a
great light War without a declara
tion. Bombardment of forts without
notice. Wanton destruction of prop
erty. That's theway they did it
WRITTEN IN NEBRASKA'
The editor of The Independent re
ceived a letter last week from a gen
tleman in New York which was of a
most surprising character. He said
that a gentleman there had declared
that the editorials in this paper were
written in New York and sent out to
bore internal evidence of that fact
He cited three or four instances 0
items that it would be impossible to
write anywhere else than in New Yorl:.
and by some one who was in the sec
rets of the stock exchange. One of
them was the item about the raids
that had been made on stocks by the
pooling of the interests of the little
fellows which had forced the big ones
to put out several millions on several
occasions to stop a panic. He said
that was really the fact and it wai
impossible for any one to know of ic
who was not thoroughly lamiliar wita
Wall street. He said that the question
asked in that paragraph had been an
swered by the formation of a pool by
the big ones to save themselves from
raids of the little ones. Then he re
iterated that it was perfectly impossi
ble that these editorials could be writ
ten in Nebraska.
The Independent replies that these
editorials are written in Nebraska. We
have a very able New York correspon
dent, Mr. Do Hart, but this matter al
ways appears over his own" signature.
Tlit-re is nothing strange about such
editorials being written in Nebraska.
Any man who is a passible economist
and kept himself posted by a close
watch upon the financial columns of
the New York papers could do it. Such
writing does not appear in the dailie::
because the plutocratic management
would not allow it. The moral to this
little tale is that if you want tov eoy
posted you must read The Indepen
dent. There is no other paper like it.
MORE COMING
That things are in a terrible shape
in the Philippines is conceded by ev
ery one who has any knowledge on
the subject, but that they should be
so bad as indicated in the action by
the house last week is surprising. A
year ago the republicans put up a hot
fight against a tariff reduction of 25
per cent on the Dingley duties, and
now a bill is passed, with practically
no opposition, reducing those rates lb
per cent. The republican? would nev
er have done such a thing as tnat if
the conditions in the Philippines had
not been almost desperate. To get
them to make such a hole in the tariff
wall as that, they must have been in
desperate straits.
The action of the minority in con
gress was creditable as well as con
stitutional. WThen the attempt was
made to legislate for the Filipinos in
this matter, the minority refused to
take part in it and answered "pres
ent" when their names were called.
The minority report was as follows:
"A vote against the bill is a
vote for the maintenance of ihe
present rates of duty '.'6 per cent
of those imposed by the Dinrrley
law. A vote for the bill is a vote
in favor of reducing the rates im- '
posed to 25 per cent of those im
posed by the Dingley law. If the
opportunity is offered, we shall
try to amend the bill; failing, be
ing powerless to relieve the coun
try from what we believe to be an '
unconstitutional system, and as a
choice between two evils, we shall
vote for the bill."
The minority held that the whole
Philippine policy was unconstitu
tional, that the constitution followed
the flag and if the Philippines were
annexed, they were part of the United
States as much as Alaska or New
Mexico and that being the case no
tariff at all could be levied. Not be
ing allowed to amend the bill, they
voted for the 75 per cent reduction.
But just reflect to what straits this
imperialism business has brought the
high tariff republicans. There is more
of it coming. ' -.