Daily Los Angeles herald., 1878-11-20

trial in its intensity and duration
has been the more singular because
We have had, during all its stages,
what we lacked in all other times
Of pauic-a durable and perfectly
guaranteed currency. At every
stage Of our financial disasters of
the past five years our currency
has been appreciating instead of
dsprecIating In value. During the
panic of 1887 aud 1857 myriads of
wildcat banks, whose bills sank to
nothing, intensified the popular
distrust and distress, and yet with.
81 our latest agonies have been
threshold those Of 1887 and 1857.
What is the cause of this remark
able development, whose singular
ity Il outlined all the more forcibly
by the fact that, for four years, the
balance of trade with the rest of
the world has been largely in our
favor?
Quite number of financial ply
aicians have tried to diagnose the
disease. OF all none is more clever
or more forcible than CnI. Robert
q. Ingersoll. No one more cogent-
~ than he has built logical SUPER
structure. provided that his prem
ises be granted. II his postulates
are unsound his stately fabric rests
upon q foundation of shifting
sands, with the disaster fore
Swallowed in Christ's parable in
Matthew ahead. Ingersoll refers
all our misery and stagnation
in business since the panic of 1878
20 two causes = over speculation
during and since the war and to
the fact that every one individu-
ally got largely in debt then and
has had since to pay his way out.
It cannot be doubted that these
two causes have contributed largely
to our sufferings. But they are too
much dignified when it Is assumed
thatr(Aey-are the causes ofour diffi-
cuities. They are as much incl
dents, merely, of the changed stat.
" Of things in the United States as
the fact that hundreds of thous-
ands Of stalwart men cannot to-day
get labor at rates remunerative
enough to support their families, or
the other fact that millions of the
hitherto prosperous people of the
United States cannot get food and
fuel.
Our own solution of the matter is
that every essential condition of
the people Of the United States has
been changed by the creation of an
enormous national debt and by the
mushroom growth of unnumbered
agencies for the accumulation OF
wealth Ia few hands. AS long as
our railways and banks were few,
poor and comparatively feeble, the
Inhabitants Of the United States
wsre emphatically free and pros
porous. The spider had not then
woven his web around their limbs.
The privileged classes of the United
States have, in the past twenty
years, become SO powerful that
they dictate National and State
leglslation;. and, without asserting
the right in so many words, they
absolutely control everything in
their own interest. They have
brought about an artificial condi-
tfon of things in which the ostens.
ible owners OF farms are not the
real owners, in which the wages of
labor does not really go in consid-
erable part to the hewers of wood
and drawers Of water who now too
pitifulIy abound for our welfare.
The average citizen of the United
States is To-day living under a tn
telage and In u subjectiou as
iron and unrelenting rs that
which crushes down the people Of
nLy OF the civilized nations OF
Europe. The capitalist now really
assigns him his labor and his re-
muneration with pienary power
OF industrial aud commercial legis-
lation which Is not any the less
felt because ii Is not embodied in
written statute..
II our theory be the correct one,
and the creation of monstrous
national debt aud unuumbered ag-
gregations Of wealth in the shapes
OfstocEs, bonds and other evidences
Of value, have resulted In subject
Ing the people to despotism of
monocracy as great and grinding as
that which flows from he hespot.
ism OF monarchy In Europe, where
is the wonder tina. we are suffering
and Rroanlng A people cannot
1t once be transformed from free,
primitive and pastoral community
10 hewers Of wood aud drawers of
water to the moneyed class with
'ut writhing little under yoke
% whioh they have net been &C.
'usfomed. Admitting that the bal
lnee Of trade with the outside world
snow largely in our favor, do not the 1