8 THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT. MARCH 12, 1903. tbe Uebraska Independent Lincoln, Utbraitta , LIBERTY BUILDING. J32S 0 STREET Entered according to Act of Congress of March 5, 1879, at the Postoffice at Lincoln, Nebraska, as second claw mail matter. -' PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY. FOURTEENTH YEAR. $1,00 PER YEAR When making remittance 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 psoper credit. '... Address alt communications, and malca all tfrsfts, money orders, etc., payable to ' T!)f tttbrask 1niptndnt, Lincoln, Neb. Anonymous communications will not b noticed. Rejected manuscripts will ' not be returned. . ' , The English effort to , establish 'forced labor" in South Africa finds its counterpart in this country, in Judge Adans' injunction. Plutocracy is the sanie sort of devil everywhere. " The Independent is working on a list of offices that have been created by the' republican party in the last six years. Office-holders have in creased by several thousand during that time. Who pays the bill? It'.. Is astonishing what a deathlike silence the great dailies can maintain when anything happens in, which the people are generally interested. The disgraceful ending of the republican pet admiral, Crowni'nshield, has not elicited one paragraph from the pen of the "great" editors. The plan to down Bryan includes the sending of a contesting delegation to the national convention after the same way that they did -it m isao. 11 Pave Hill has a majority of the con vention outside of Nebraska, he cal culates to make an end of Bryan then and there. Gambling on the board of trade is bad, as The Independent has often as serted, but it hardly deserves a sen tence of murder in the first degree and imprisonment for life, which seems to be the conclusion that the jury in the Lillie murder case arrived at ; If your subscription is delinquent please remit. We have a number of unpaid balances due for material used 'n the construction of Liberty Build ing and need the money to meet them. Recently we sent bills to delinquents, but for some reason only a few have sent the money as yet By killing House Roll 330, the rail roads have the "age" over other tax payers in the cities; but let no farmer feel that that is none of his affair, for when the revenue bill passes he will find that the railroads have a-still greater advantage over him. It's a case of "turkey" for the railroads whether coming or going. The Independent is pleased to see the populists of Iowa taking steps to unite the factions in the party. With a call for conference, signed by more than 500 Iowa populists, the Albia meeting ought to accomplish some thing. The populists over there" are not falling over themselves joining the "kangaroo" socialists, it seems. The eastern papers that are gloat ing over the prospect that Bryan is going to be beaten in. the next demo cratic stafe convention in Nebraska evidently do not know Dr. P. L. Hall, who is the chairman of the democratic state committee in this state as well as The Independent does. If they did they would not be quite so lilarlous in their prophecies. THE LAST PRETENSE OONK The republicans have abandoned the last pretense that ware on the gold standard basis." It . .was at best. but a pretense- from ..the beginning. ; We never had a "gold standard" in this country and "the republican . leaders when they talked of "more firmly es tablishing the gold standard" knew that they were frauds of the first water when they did it . : , After the house killed Senator Pat terson's bill, authorizing the presi dent to call an international confer ence to fix a ratio between silver, and gold, it was .added by the senate to the sundry civil appropriation bill, was passed by the house' and become a law. The Independent has learned that it was not only upon the appli-, cation of Mexico and China that the president sent' his special message to the house on that subject Several of the European countries had indicated that such a measure would meet with their hearty concurrence. All, these countries have trade relations with Asia and many of them have large territorial possessions in the Orient The continual fall in the gold price of silver promised to ruin their trade. They at last saw that the greedy attempt of bondholders to dou ble the value of their bonds by de stroying half the money of the world, would, if carried to its full fruition, bring such disaster that they could not stem the torrent. What the econom ists prophesied was coming true and the results; that they predicted were at hand. Senator Patterson's bill carries an appropriation of $100,000 and the commission will be appointed. It will meet with a hearty reception on the other side of the Atlantic for the ruin of the Asiatic trade has been greater there than here. The result will prob ably be a compromise. Instead of one-half of the money of the world being destroyed, it will be one-fourth. That is, instead of a ratio of 16 to 1, it will be a ratio of 32 to 1. The Brit ish government has already fixed a ratio between England and India con siderably below 32 to 1. No honest man can look back on the contest that has raged since 1873 with out revolting at the mendacity, the greed, the wholesale piracy of those who advocated the gold standard. It was the foulest and most criminal at tempt to deceive the people and then rob them, that" was ever engaged in since the world began. The pirates that roamed the Spanish main were Christian gentlemen in comparison with them. The most contemptible of the whole lot were the economists who had a scientific knowledge of the whole subject, who sold themselves to this gang of gold standard robbers and chief among them was one J. Laur ence Laughlin, Rockefeller's profes sor of political economy. The only thing that will ever save him from eternal damnation is that he never got the courage to 'positively and openly deny the quantity, theory of money. In all other ways he aided the pirates to the best of his ability. It is true that many thousand of ordinary intelligent persons support ed' the . pirates and voted" for their tickets, because of their ignorance of political economy. Now that the re publicans have abandoned everything that they contended for, have enorm ously increased the "quantity" of money instead of decreased it, and have abandoned the last pretense of a gold standard, if these men are hon est, they will forsake the leaders and the party that deceived and lied to them and spend the rest of their lives in trying to drive the foul criminals from power. ' If they don't, they will show that they are no better than the worst of them. POPULIST PAPERS Readers of the Missouri World and the Southern Mercury are somewhat aroused and worried because the Ap peal to Reason's "populist" edition made the assertion that "The Inde 1 pendent is the only paper of GEN ERAL CIRCULATION in the United States that still pretends to teach populism,"- but they seem to accept as a matter of' course the further statement in that edition that in 1897 Bryan told the writer of the screed that he and the populist leaders had arranged months before the St Louis convention to nominate him for the presidency. . ; ' r;? The writer of that screed is an ex populist of the mid-road variety. .He certainly knew of the existence , of both the World 'and the Mercury. Either he had some doubts about the populism , they pretend to preach, or felt that they had no such circulation as would warrant the use of the term "general;" but the chances are that he did not intend to slight either, one of them. He seems to be a man who jumps at conclusions based . on sus picionwho gives as a solemn state ment of fact what exists only in his imagination. , If he had said that The Independent has probably the largest general cir culation, that would be true. But there are other, populist papers of general circulation, the World and the Kansas Commoner being the best that reach this office. The Mercury seems to have contracted Hearstitis and can hardly be called a political paper now. For the information of the World we would say that the Nonconformist and Advocate did not die; they be came farm papers. . LOGIC OF BARBARISM The republicans have started out to discussing the tariff in the old way, for they evidently , believe that the tariff is to be a vital issue in the next campaign. The thing that perplexes The Independent is that any man could be influenced by this old post hoc argument that Henry George so thoroughly annihilated " with his the atre illustration. Senator Gallinger delivered a set speech at Detroit the other day in which he contrasted conditions in the country in 1895, the year before the passage of the Dingley law, with con ditions in 1902. He pointed out the great increase since 1895 in railroad business, in bank clearances, in sav ings deposits, in the money in circula tion, in the exports of the country and the domestic manufactures. Then he said: - "These figures tell the story of the difference between low and high tariffs more eloquently and convincingly than tongue or ora tor possibly do." ' He did not attempt to tell how the Dingley tariff effected these things. The assertion was simply that the tariff was enacted and "afterwards" these things came to pass, "therefore" they were the result of the tariff. It is the old barbaric logic and the sort of reasoning by which congress guid ed their lives. There was an eclipse of the sun. "Afterwards" the chief suddenly died. "Therefore" the eclipse of the sun caused his death. That was the logic of the savage and is still the logic of Senator Gallinger. The Independent invites Senator Gallinger to attempt to prove that the tariff caused any . . one of the things that he mentions. It would be pleased to know how the tariff in creased the amount of money in cir culation which is one of the things that he mentions. Most people be lieve that the amount of money in cir culation was Increased by the coin age of gold and silver and the issue of more national bank notes. Senator Gallinger asserts that that was not the case at all. It was increased by raising the tariff. After all, that sort of logic may not be barbaric, but simply republican idiocy. Let us make the Independent School of Political Economy a great body of truly educated men and women, and thus counteract the evil being done by the National Economic League, with its plutocratic college presidents, trust magnates, and Grover Cleveland. FREAKS OF THE M ISO Many times the editor of The Inde pendent ha3 listened to a public speaker or minister, who, for fifteen or twenty minutes, would make a logi cal, 'symmetrical and consistent argu ment,' and then all at once proceed to state conclusion, not only unsus tained by the facts, but absolutely, contrary to human experience. The minds of the brightest men will sometimes play them freaks of . that kind. Henry George was an exam ple. Take his last unfinished work on political economy. Up to the point where it was necessary for him to treat of money, no work on the sub ject is more logical, but the moment he takes up that subject his reasoning powers seem to break into disjoined fragments. Look at the statement (we quote, from memory, the volume not being, at hand) .that money is partly wealth and partly not wealth. That portion that is composed of gold is all wealth, the portion that is composed of silver about half wealth, and the paper money not wealth at all. Notice the strange use of the word "money." He seems to con ceive that it is two or more different things. It must be, if part of it is wealth and part of it not wealth. Many of the single taxers are trou l!ed with .this same frailty. Here is a statement made by The Indepen- dent's correspondent, Mr. C. F. Shan drew. From the facts that "men were given feet to walk with, that birds were given wings to fly with, that, fishes were made to live In the water and men to live on land," he draws the following conclusion: "Hence if he (the editor of The In dependent) would learn the intent of the Creator in social affairs, let him but look and he will find that the Creator made man -to livein society, and knowing that society would need revenues, He at the same time pro vided the revenue just as he provides milk in the breast of the mother for the nourishment of the child." . The Egyptologists tell us that civ ilized man has certainly existed on this earth for 10,000 years. During all that time the child has been nourished at its mother's breast, but never yet has man found the revenues that God has provided. Without the mother's milk the race would have become ex tinct within,, one generation, though it is possible . with modern knowledge to raise a child without it, but with out this single tax the race has in creased and multiplied until It covers nearly the . whole face of the earth and society has never once gathered in this God-ordained revenue. Man could not exist without feet, nor birds without wings, but man does exist without the single tax.. If one were as much a provision of nature as the other the failure to apply them would have the same results. Man cannot exist in direct violation of natural law. That is so evident that no mind will play such a freak as to deny it But according to the statement of Mr. Shandrew man has existed for 10,000 years in direct violation of natural law, which is an absurdity. The Independent has never yet made a dogmatic statement against the single tax. It is open to convic tion. If it can be shown in a logical way that the adoption of the system will bring about all the blessings, or even half that it is claimed it will, then it will become an enthusiastic advocate of the system. It has the very highest respect for the men what advocate the single tax from Henrj$ George down to the humblest in the ranks, for unquestionably they are men unselfishly advocating a system which they believe will be a blessing to all humanity. . : Persistent efforts for a greater navy have resulted in victory. The naval appropriation bill just passed provides for five fighting ships of the line; four to-be first-class battleships of 12,000 tons each, of the Kearsarge type, and one armored cruiser of 16t 000 tons. WHpssWbw t Vfi... f.,,- ., v -m,