Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1876-07-14

Chicago Tribune.
That was cheap bait which Gov.
Tilden flung out for the votes of the
workingmen, when, in his Albany
speech, after his nomination, he said:
"Wc all are laboring men," but
when they read the record of his
dealings with the workmen in his
mines in the Lake Superior region,
no working man will bite at that bait.
Gov. Tilden was the chief owner of
the New York Mine, at Ishpeming,
and was largely interested in the
Iron Cliffs Mining Company, of
Negaunee, and the Michigan Iron
Company, of Clarksburg. These are
the companies that flooded the Upper
Peninsular of Michigan with their
shinplasters, known as the "iron cur
rency." 1t was forced into circula-
ton by showing it upon the compa.
MES workmen in payment of their
wages. This dishonest currency,
which Gov. Tilden's companies fore
ed their workmen to accept in pay
ment for honest labor, was, in order
to defraud the Government out of
the tax upon paper circulation, issued
in the form of drafts, payable at
sixty and ninety days after date,
which made it requisite, to fix the
liability of the companies, that there
should be presentment, protest notices
ETC., at maturity. The only pretense
of redemption was in ''store goods"
for which. at such inflated prices as
they chose to demand, it was ex-
changeable at the companies stores.
In truth, it was a wholly irredeema-
BILE currency, issued without authori-
ty of law, and without security of
any sort, and thousands of dollars OF
it in amount, now utterly worthless,
are outstanding in Michigan today,
being precisely so many evidences
of what the companies swindled their
employees and the holders out of, and
Gov. Tllden added bis share of it to
his millions, while the dishonorcd
shinplasters drawn upon his own
Secretary still abound in the Upper
Peninsula as samples of what Gov.
Tilden means by honest currency.
In 1875 his Michigan Iron Com
pany was put into bankruptcy, owing
about $4,000 to it's miners and labor
ers, which remains unpaid. Immedi-
ately prior to the adjudication in
bankruptcy, and when that was fore
seen to be inevitable, the Hon. VIM.
Breiting, and other high-minded
gentlemen interested in the Compa-
ny, voluntarily agreed, upon condi-
ton that the stockholders all would
join in that undertaking, to make up
out of their private funds the full
amount to pay the Company's labor
ers in full. This arrangement failed,
because one of the stockholders re-
fused 10 enter into it after all the
others had agreed to it. That stock
holder was Samuel J. Tilden. 1t
would have cost HIM about $1,000
out of all his bar'ls Of money to do 1t,
In truth, 1T would simply have cost
him the payment of an honest debt
to that amount, which was his pro
rata share Of the Company's debt to
Its hands. For that, too, under the
charter of the Company and the laws
Of tho State, he was legally liable
But to get the money out of him
they would of had to 60 to New
York to sue him, and, as he remark
ed when this view of it was present
ed by one Of his honest co stock
holders who proposed to pay the
men their wages, "not much was to
be made by coming SO far to sue."-
1t is a shabby exhibition Gov. Til
den presents, talking in demagogic
strain of himself as laboring man.
with his iron companies repudiated
shinplasters, palmed off upon their
worEmcn, still outstanding. and with
the Michigan Iron Compapy's hands
yet unpaid, because he refused to
contribute toward their payment the
paltry amount for which he was le-
gally and morally liable, but which
he leaves them to get by law, ii they
can. 1t shows that Samuel J. Til
den, laboring man, is as great fraud
as is Samuel J. Tilden, political re-
former.