JUNST 16, lfr?3.
8
u.i .. - r, ; ;THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT
C;e Uebraska Independent
Tlrln tltbraaka!
LIBERTY BUILDING. J32S 0 STREET
, Entered according to Act of Congress of March
j, 1879, at the rotolfice at Lincoln, Nebraska,
second 1af s mail matter.
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY.
FIFTEENTH YEAR.
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Anonymous communications will not be
noticed. Rejected manuscripts will not b
returned. ,
T. H. TIBBLES, Editor.
C. Q. DE FRANCE, Associate Editor.
P. D. EAGER, Business Manager.
The Independent acknowledges re
ceipt from Former Congressman Stark
t of the annual reports of the depart
ment of the Interior for 1902.
' , Many readers who are delinquent
tor subscription 'give no attention Jo
our bills and requests for payment.
They should remember that business
c our rosy requires the same attention
to a letter and small accounts that is
given to larger ones. Do not put our
bill and letter aside without giving it
the attention it deserves. Send the
amouni due as soon as you can.
Dr. R. H. Reemelin of Cincinnati
writes The Independent that he will
attend the Denver conference," accom
panied by Mrs. Reemelin. He ex
pects to stop off attLincoln on the 21st
Jnst. and reri&in over until the next
morning, and will call on Mr. Brvan
and The Independent. "The ten com
mandments and the Declaration of In
dependence," says Dr. Reemelin, "are
being misconstrued these days."
In connection with the conference of
populists and those who agree with
them, which lias been called tc meet
at Denver on July 27, Mark Foster's
letter to. Mr.Edgerton, the secretary
of the' national committee, on another
page will be of interest. The idea of
this writer is that the balance of
power policy will retain the indepen
dence of the party, sor much desired
by the middle-of-the-road element;
and at the, same time allow co-operation
with the well disposed who still
stick to their old parties, thus gaining
larger attention for the educational
propaganda. Votes cast for a balance
of power ticket would be votes for
principle, as truly as though for inde
pendent candidates; and yet they
would improve the quality of the act
iial filling of public offices.
Mr. Nixon, in speaking of the down
fall of the United States Shipbuilding
company, commonly known as the
ship trust, stated what The Indepen
dent has always held to be the weak
point in all these great combinations
to overthrow competition. He said:
"The result is largely attributable to
-the decrease in energy of manage
ment at some of the plants with the
removal of local and personal respon
sibility." When a large number of
manufacturing plants in different parts
of the country are each managed and
operated by men personally interested,
things are looked after better than
they will be when those plants are
combined in one large trust and the
management of each is entrusted to a
..tired man. The attempt of the Mor
gans to defy human nature and over
throw the foundations upon which the
commerce of the world has long been
Ibased will of necessity fail. .
TBI DENVER CONFERENCE
This Is the last issue of The Inde
pendent ' priorto the Denver confer
ence in which the preliminaries toward
bringing about a revival of populism
will be discussed. Many of our far
eastern subscribers will barely have
time to receive this paper before they
would be required to start, if they attend.-
Next week tin entire issue will
be turned over to the socialists and
kEOwn as the Karl Marx Edition. It
will not be so complete a paper as
was the Henry George Edition but
will give our readers a tolerably fair
I -J - ' .Atnllot nima ' frM " in thplr
lU7Ct Ui OVlUiiWb uiuiu, -
own language.
Very many populists imagine they
are socialists, or at least socialistic.
This comes from the fact that men
more or less clearly recognize that all
thought regarding society and govern
ment ranges somewhere between two
extremes, which may be termed indi
vidualistic and collectivistic, or anar
chistic and socialistic.
In the very nature of things it is
imposible to completely separate these
two extremes. To separate the posi
tive and negative poles of the magnet,
is to destroy the magnet. Each ex
treme is necessary to the existence of
the other.
Notwithstanding this, it is possible
tc distinguish between these extremes
and to classify men accordingly as they
lean toward one or the other. In this
sense, most populists are sociailistic,
although not a few of them lean the
other way. But no populist can truly
call himself a socialist who does not
accept without question the three fun
damental principles of Marxism: (a)
The theory of "surplus value; (b) the
"class struggle" and the historic mis
sion of the wage-workers; and (c) the
materialistic conception of history, or
economic determinism.
The colleetivist, or socialist, holds
that human nature may be changed
by a change of environment; the Indi
vidualist, or anarchist, holds to the
opposite view and contends that a
change of human nature must precede
the change of environment The lat
ter advises introspection and self-purification
of the individual in order to
make society better; the former holds
that the individual will grow better as
society grows better, and that society
cannot grow better except as condi
tions for making a living improve.
Regardless of the sneers which ex
tremists have for the "eclectic," The
Independent, speaking for the great
mass of populists, admits the truth of
both contentions, but denies the cor
rectness of either as an absolute fact.
- Hence, the populists stand as mid
dle ground between the two contend
ing . "schools."
it will be useless for those who at
tend the Denver . conference to make
any attempt at uniting all classes and
conditions of persons, except the trust
magnates. That conference will be
made up largely of men whose inter
ests lie with the "bone and sinew" of
America the farmers, small business
men, and so-called independent pro
ducers, who employ a few wage
workers and work with them. No
great employers tf labor will be there,
and it is doubtful if many employes of
the great industries will be there. It
will be essentially what the socialists
call a "middle class" conference, com
posed of men who are neither rich nor
poor.
In such an event, the duty of the
conference is plain: To formulate
plans looking to a party expression of
the economic 'well-being of the so
called "middle class." Nothing will
be gained in an attempt to occupy the
socialist ground. Nothing will be
gained in an attempt to vie with the
republican party in hoodwinking the
wage-workers by fatuous resolutions
regarding "labor."
In fact, the conference will have
done its duty if it formulate plana for
f. vigorous propaganda along the lines
ot-one political reform: 'majority rule;
and the three economic reforms in
money, land and transportation.
To the intelligent wage-worker ap
peals with great force the socialist
demand for the collective ownership of
all the means of production and dis
tribution,, especially where he has
nothing to sell but his own energy.
But this does not appeal so strongly
to the "middle class" man, and for
him populist demands-are sufficiently
advanced grounds. To the trust mag
nate all of these demands, both so
cialistic and populistic, are obnoxious
because they portend the day when
he shall be deprived of his "special
privileges." ........
The Independent, . after a careful
purvey of the field, can see no present
means of uniting all opposition to plu
tocracy in one party. l must come
later, no doubt. But for the. present
the outlook is that most will be ac
complished by an intelligent align
ment of the " middle class" into one
ri-rty, the wage-workers into another;
and by that means deprive the pluto
cratic republican party of all its sup
porters except the trust magnates who
know what they want, and their vic
tims, the "middle class" and wage
workers who will persist in remaining
it ignorance and being robbed.
POINTED QUESTIONS
Hon. L. H. Weller, of Nashua, la., is
editor and proprietor of the Farmers'
Advocate, formerly, published at Wa
terloo. In order to give his corre
spondents-some food for thought, Mr.
Weller, in a card on his business sta
tionery, asks these pointed questions:
Is gold the God?
Who made gold the God!
Labor and business produce all!
Labor and business pay all!
Why is gold the God?
Why rob labor and business,
that gold may be the God?
' 1
DECAYING MEN and women
Along with the revival of populism
there comes continual protests against
the worship of Mammon. The maga
zines have almost ceased to talk about
the "captains of industry" and there
is a feeling manifested among "the best
writers that after all money is not the
greatest thing in the world. Even
The Outlook, which . has been vilely
imperialistic, has been moved to re
mark concerning the millionaires:
"Their tastes are painfully rude;
their manners deplorably bad;
their way of living conspicuously
vulgar. Each vies with the other
in the attempt to do things a lit
tle more elaborately, to spend
larger sums, to cater a little more
successfully to the news columns '
of the yellow journals. The hol
lowness of this kind of social life,
its crude travesty of genuine so
cial life, its corrupting tendency,
are increasingly plain to all who
know it The note is forced, the
pace killing, and the blight of wo
manly qualities and the decay of
manly strength which come with
this abnormal and unwholesome
way of living inevitable."
The Independent has long been call
ing attention to the "blight of wo
manly qualities and the decay of man
ly strength" which has been the most
distinguishing feature of this age of
commercialism and the "stand pat"
policy so vigorously advocated by all
the great dailies and until' recently by
magazines as well.
There is nothing that has done so
much service to those who ride on
the backs of the people as a sounding
phrase, though it be meaningless. New
ones are coined for every campaign.
"Sound money" did duty long and
well. Now that is changed for "stand
pat"
Hon. L. H. Weller, of Nashua, la.,
writes The Independent that he can
not be present, at the Denver confer
ence, but that he will write a brief
article expressing his views as to the
possible work of that conference. The
Iowa populists will hold their etate
I convention at Des Moines, August 27.
HOW IT AFFECTS US
It is thirty-eight years since the
close of the war and during all that
time until four or five years, ago the
whites and .the blacks have lived ten
gether in peace, with only slight dis
turbances just after the war. Now
there seems to be a race problem of
tremendous dimensions facing the na
tion. The most serious disturbances
have occurred in Indiana and Dela
ware, two republican states, although
they extend over a large part of the
union.
There can be no doubt that this trou
ble is the direct result of the abandon
ment of the Declaration of Indepen
dence and the substitution for them
the evasions and subterfuges of mod
ern toryism. If the United States gov
ernment had been true to the prin
ciples of Lincoln and Jefferson, had
not gone into wars of conquest and re
frained from the official talk about
"inferior races," and "giving them as
full a measure of liberty as they are
capable of enjoying," with all the rest
of the shibboleth of imperialism, no
such state of affairs would exist in
the United States , as we at present
deplore. '
If this government "had been true
to those principles of equality of all
men before the law which have made
this nation great, if we had carried the
constitution and the Declaration of In
dependence to the Philippines and set
up a government there deriving its
powers from the consent of the gov
erned, a wave of enthusiasm a leve of
liberty and an acknowledgement of
the brotherhood of man would have
swept over the land that would have
made the recent acts of savagery im
possible. Very often The Independent has
said that it fought imperialism more
because of the curses that it would
Ibring to this nation than for the suf
ferings it might cause the conquered
peoples. The effect upon us of our
imperial policy in the Philippines has
no far been much more disastrous than
to the conquered people. The "destruc
tion of high ideals Of this government
which urged, for a hundred years, ev
ery man on toward demanding justice
and liberty for all men is a thing so
incalculable in its evil effects that it
ciouds all the future. -
SLAVES NEVER FREE THEMSELVES
The effort of the socialists to round
up the "prolateriat" and get them to
vote the socialist ticket will end in
failure. Those are the chaps who fur
rish the republican majorities. They
icrm the gangs that the ward heeler
brings in on election day to "vote 'er
straight." A glass of beer, a drink
of whisky, the promise of some little
office, a dollar or two in money, se
cures them. It is now and has always
been the "propertyless class" that plu
tocracy has relied upon. They do the
menial work, they vote for their mas
ters, they are the privates in the arm
ies who fight the battles of the rich.
The socialists may succeed in making
a few of them "class-conscious" and
induce them to join some of the sec
tions, and The Independent hopes that
they will get more of them than have
ever heretofore rallied to Marxism, for
every time they get one of them to
vote the socialist ticket there is one
less republican vote. Under the mon
archies of the old world there is a
very large propertyless class. Here it
is very small. It will continue to grow
it the trusts have their way. The
workers who own their homes and the
farmers who own their farms will con
stantly become fewer. Just as they,
do, plutocracy will become stronger.
It is not this class that will ever ef
fect any reforms. Slaves never free
themselves. Some one else has to
bring freedem to them.
- Socialists have the opportunity to
edit the Karl Marx Edition of Th3
Independent . (July 23, 1903) just as
the single taxers did the Henr
George Edition, u v