The Labor enquirer., 1884-08-23

advocated it as well = I could that congress
grant aid to families 0f lahoring men in cit
les to settle on the public lands In the West
and make hemes for themselves, and as
communities be able to protect themselves
AGAINST the Indians and thus dispense with
the cost Of the army. It slept in the proper
committees of Democratic house and q Re
publican senate the sleep of all proposals in
favor of labor that knows no waking.
This bill would have begun another much
needed reform, the reduction to skeleton
of the regular army which is expensively
useless in time of peace.
Let congress expend half Of the vast sum,
thirty millions, now appropriated to the
army for its varied expenditures, in organ
king and disciplining the militia to be
trained under the authority of the states, in
stead of the paltry $200 900 heretofore given
and we shall have military force as reli-
ance in every emergency, like the trained
and organized militia Of Massachusetts, and
the national guard of New York, the first
armed bodies at the capital when in danger
in 1851.
The Republican party has in its ranks
many good, true and console ntiOus men, who
followed its fortunes and carried its elections
because it protected the labor Of the South
laborer Of the North in his wages!
call the attention of such men TO the fact
that that party has failed 10 do either,
Labsring men are cut of employment and
starving. after quarter of century of Re
publican rule. Nay, more 1t is well
known in Massachusetts, and Rhode Island,
and how far in other parts of the North /
leave the good and just minded of those
localities to speak, capital has coerced the
votes of the laboring men to its own pur-
poses by threats, intimidation, and in some
cases worse means. The negro of the South,
also cannot go to the ballot box for fear OF
the shotgun, and if he does the ballot box
stuffer puts in
- TWO VOTES 10 NEUTRALIzE HIS ONE.
To the substantiation of these facts, call
upon the laboring men of both sections to
bear Witness Is it not SO? You know asI
know-you feel as feel upon this matter. |
submit to the producer, whether the farmer,
the mechanic or the laborer, whether he has
any hope as against the inroads of capital
upon the rights of labor or the grasp Of
monopolies which absorb all the profits of
production, until we have in this country,
even in its youth, almost infancy as regards
the length of life of nations, richer men than
in any other country in the world, and as
poor men as any other country in the world,
however enslayed that country may be, for
aman cannot be poorer than starvation.
In the matter Of finance there is nothing
to hope from the Republican party, any
more than from the Democratic party. The
bankers and capitalists of both parties,
uniting together, have controlled for
twenty wears the financial legislation of the
nation. And the resulti What have we
lust seen? With money enough in the
country for all its wants, with no substan-
tial drain from abroad, with an accumula-
ton of wealth such as the world never has
seen, with a crop of corn and wheat almost
untouched, and another one about to be
garnered-with o stock of petroleum
already produced sufficient for the
consumption of the world for
year, with nearly years stock already
produced of cotton goods, with more than
six months stock of wooilen goods as they
will average, with production of iron that
leaves its further production impossible un-
til greater consumption becomes possible,
with provisions in such abundance that the
means of sustaining life are cheaper than
before for fifty years, yet, because Of our
financial system, in every class OF business,
embarrassments and failures to an unheard
of extent, with banks locking up their
TONERS, who by our financial system have
been made dependent upon them, to be
ruined-the producing laborer goes about
the street unemployed, and the farmers
wheat, which with our fathers was meas.
ure of value, is a drug in the market. and
that which he raises to-day, produced by the
sweat of his face. is without profit to his in
dustryl Dr."
plf7p
We, the despised Greenbackers, offered a
remedy for all this which no rejecting, keen
sighted business man will now say would
not have been efectual. Myself in congress
more than fifteen years ago proposed that
instead of issuing a United States bond
which would be held by capitalists only, and
for the purpose of securing bank currency
only, congress should make an intercon-
vertible bond at low rate of interest, to be
issued by the government, SO that any man
might invest in it instead of placing his
money in savings bank or trust companies
to be loaned out on margins Oh kiting
stocks, and then lost. when he called for it.
That bond bearing 8 65-100 per cent interest,
to be presented by the holder at any tire to
the treasury, and legal tenders to be issued
for it. and thus the interest to that amount
of the national debt accrues to the govern
ment instead of being paid by it from the
taxes of the people. And then when an
other bond was desired by the investor, one
should be issued by the government, and in
terest thereon begin. ~
Every financier knows that it is the odd
fifty millions withdrawn or put out that
makes redundancy or scarcity of the cir.
culating medium, and is there man who
dares say now that such a bond would not
have prevented the panic and desolation to
business through which we are now pas
sing2 .A'''@ %,N
The time has come when the greenback is
sustained by the Supreme court as a consti
tutional currency against the opinions of the
paid attorneys of every financier of the
country. The time will come, if the people
of this country can get the clutch of mon
opoly of its currency off its throat, when
such a system of finance as I have sketched
will give freedom to the ind ustrial and bus
iness interests of the country from the terri
BILE fluctuations which the people now
suffer. '-'TN "" = I
NO CANAL BUT OURS ACROSS THE IsTHMUs.
It will be observed that put in my plat
form plank against the construction of
Panama ship canal without the consent of
the United States. 'tta
hold such a canal in time of peace de-
stIuctive to our commerce. San Francisco
has become an .entrepot of goods of which