Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-02-18
Mills ON the Silver Question.

Mills ON the Silver Question.
fFrom the Congressional Record.l
The following is an extract from re-
cent speech of Representative Mills, OF
Texas. It will repay reading:
Would you take the country again
through that valley of the shadow Of
death? Would you repeat again that
experience so full OF lament ations and
mournings and woes? If you would,
listen to the soft, sweet notes of the
siren as she sings from the vaults ofthe
national bankers about dishonest dol
lars. Drive out into banishment the
old silver dollars of our fathers; call in
the silver certificates; retire all the
| Treasury notes; make money so scarce
| that the poor bankers In New York
can buy bushel of wheat for dime,
a pound of cotton for penny; make it
impossible for people to pay their debts;
make labor SO cheap that working peo-
pie can only earn enough to pay inter-
est to money-lenders and taxes to sup
port the Government, and you will see
again the return of that night with all
its horrors intensified.
| Sir, let the man who lives by the
sweat of his brow, and his representa-
tive here, be not deceived by the shams
and false pretenses that are thrown
around this measure that is filled to
| the brim with the direst of consequence
es to millions of people. Let the labor
er remember, and write it on his wrist
| let's, carve it on his frontlets, and wear
| it as an amulet over his heart, that
scarce money is his sleepless and un-
| forgiving foe, q foe whose bosom never
swells with sigh of sorrow, whose eye
never moistens with tear Of pity. No
one can deny that it increases the bur-
den of debt which labor must pay. No
one can deny that it makes the life
struggle darker and harder.
One of the most distinguished advo-
Gates of the suppression of silver has
but recently said if we stop coming sill
yer that the act will be drag upon
production and that suffocation and
to express the agonies Of q people who
are encircled In the coils of this golden
serpent. And yet, with our eyes open
and looking down into this abyss of
human suffering that yawns before us,
we are entreated and importuned to
drag the country to the edge of the
precipice and plunge it over into the
tortures and agonies of contraction, to
satiate the lust for gold. Sir, history
has recorded on its pages every kind
of scourge that has been sent upon
mankind from the hand of his fellow,
and it has carved the names of the
they stand before the eyes of each re-
curing generation to suffer the exe-g
Grafton due to the atrocity of the
crimes. 1t tells of Nero vainly strug-
Cling to extinguish the truths Of Chris
tianity by lighting the streets of Rome
with the burning bodies of her mis-
sionaries; of Tanlerlane discussing
philosophy with the sages Of Aleppo
while his savage soldiery were gather
ing the heads of his slaughtered foe
men into monumental piles to please
Philip III. sacking, burning and BUTCH
ering the helpless Inhabitants of the
Netherlands, loyal to his kingdom and
crown, because they elected to worship
at the siirines where conscience bade
them kneel; it tells of the obliteration
of Poland, the partition of its territory,
the banishmens and confinement ol its
unhappy people in the caves of Siberia
by the sceptered robbers Of Russia,
Prussia and Austria; 1t tells of the con-
quest and long-continued oppression
and robbery of ireland by the kings,
parlia ments and people of England for
500 years, and that in the face Of the
remonstrances of all Christendom still
stretches her victim on the bed Of tor
ture.
But in all the wild, reckless, and re-
morseless brutalities that have marked
the footprints of resistless power there
is some extenuatlng circumstance that
mitigates the severity of the punish
ment due to the crime. Some have
been the product of the fierce passions
of war, some from the antipathy that
separates alien races, some from the
superstitions of opposing religions. But
the crime that is now sought tn be per-
petrated on more than fifty millions of
people comes neither from the camp Of
conquerer, the hand of foreigner,
nor the altar of an idolater. But If
comes from those in whose veins runs
the blood of a common ancestry, who
were born under the same skies, speak
the same language, reared In the same
institutions, and nurtured In the prin-
ciples of the same religious faith. 1t
comes from the cold, phlegmatic, mar
BILE heart of avarice-avarice that seeks
to impale the whole land on bed of
torture to crafty the lust for gold Tap
plause]-avarice surrounded by every
comfort that wealth can command, and
rich enough to satisfy every want save
that which refuses to be satisfied with
out the suffocation and strangulatIon
of all the labor in the land. With a
forehead that refuses to be ashamed it
demands of Congress an act that will
pal ialyze all the forces of production,
shut out labor from all employment,
increase the burden of debts and taxa
ton, and send desolation and suffering
into all the homes of the poor. In this
hour, fraught with peri. to the whole
country, happened to the nnpurchased
Representatives of the American peo-
pie to meet this bold and insolent de-
mand like men. Let us stand In the
breach and call the battle on, and new
er leave the field until the peoples
money shall be restored to the mlnts
on equal terms with gold as 1t was
years ago. prolonged applause.l
IMPORTANT.
When Won visit or leave New York CITY