The Portland daily press., 1877-11-13
The Bandit East.

Ino Bandit East
The debates in the House upon the re-
sumption act have been characterized by
many bitter assaults upon men who have
money to land, and the act of lending money
is held up as dark crime while the act of
borrowing is described as shining virtue. It
has been asserted again and again that the
farmer and the laborer of the West are
robbed by the capitalist of the East. The
oppressive money-power and the tyrannical
money-king are stock subjects for abuse
with the men who are seeking to suly the
honor and destroy the credit of the country,
whose aim is to unsettle all values, to repu-
pudiate or scale down all debts, to swindle
all creditors, and to bring anew upon the
land the curse of an inflated and irredeema-
bic currency. The East is described by
Western Congressman as the home of ban
dts, who prey upon the country, who find
their account in the mistortunes of their fel-
lows, who thrive upon distress and fatten
upon usury."
What is this crime that the men of the
East have committed? 1t is this: they have
lent money to the men of the West. Those
who went to the new lands OF the nation
were mostly poor. They found a country
rich beyond parallel, and yielding wonderful
returns to the laborer. But in order to de-
velop it they found also that capital was nee
essary. They must have money to build
railroads to carry their surplus products to
market. They must have money to buy ma
chinery to speedily harvest their great crops,
money to put up warehouses in which to
store those crops until they could be moved
to the East, money to build mills to put their
products into more marketable shapes, money
in order to buy leisure for the schooling OF
their children, money for the houses in
which their children were to be taught,
money for the thousand purposes in which it
is employed by growing and civilized COM
munity. They sent to the East where men
by industry and self-denial and ingenuity had
through the toll of years accumulated surplus
capital. The East had those things which
the West lacked; and its surplus earnings
were not needed for such purposes at home.
1t could spend its money in extravagant liy
ing or put it into those articles of luxury in
which highly civilized nations have always
delighted, or it could lend it to poorer men
seeking to get what the East already had
gained. 1t chose the latter method of EN-.
ploying its money. Eastern capital built
Chicago and hundred other cities. 1t Gov
prQ6 tbn Vast Wit of
1t started enterprises whereby the corn and
lumber and minerals of the new country
were made more marketable and became
sources of great riches. 1t educated the
children of the West, it gave the men that
leisure which breeds knowledge and refine
ment, it assured them steady market fol
the products of their labor and with it the
conviction that the foundations of their pros
perity were stable. In word it made the
West great, Iich and prosperous commu.
nifty. That is how the East robbed the
West. That was the work of the oppressive
money-power and the tyrannieal money
kings.
In return for these benefits what has the
West done? After getting what benefit il
could out of the money it borrowed, it has in
numberless instances swindled its Eastern
creditors. So often and so conspicuous have
been these cases of chea ting that Western
faith is synonymous with bad faith, and
Western town and county and railroad bonds
are looked upon with more suspicion than
the bonds of half-civilized countries like Tur-
key. Nor is this robbery thing altogether
OF the past. Within year the greet state o
Minnesota has by popular vote approved the
most conspicuous swindle which has dis
graced her history. And in the nationa
Congress, the West, taking advantage of it.
numerical superiority, and in alliance with
the unscrupulous and impoveri shed South, il
endeavoring to swindle its creditors again by
decreeing that ninety-three cents shall pay
dollar of debt. Indeed it seeks to 60 farthe
and to pay its debts in paper which. shoult
the schemes of the infationsts be carried ou
will be worth no more than a Frencl
ossigndt or continental note of the revolu
ton.
Certainly if money-lending be crime tn
Western Congressman are taking the sures
course to prevent crime. Their wild ant
wicked declarations are alarming all capital
lists, and no man will lend dollar to the peo
pie who avow a determination to repudat
the debt if they do not find it convenient t
pay. The West will hereafter be tree fror
The oppression of the money-power. 1t ha
looked forward icyfully to the day when
should become like Panurge's p aradise, a Ian
where all men are debtors and borrowers.
will find itself in land where no men ar
lenders.