Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-01
THE ABOLITION OF DEMAGoGY,

THE ABOLITION OF DEMAGOGY,
The reported decision of the Ways and
Means Committee to reject the Farmers
Alliance Government warehouse bill, is
based on the agreement of the leaders of
both sides "to cast aside all demagogy for
once" This resolution is first class
one. Abstention from demagogy is al
ways a good thing to resolve upon. If the
leaders OF the parties can impress this
determination upon all the members of
Congress, it will work great and desirable
change in the character of the bills which
are now encumbering the Government
Printing Office and swelling the waste
paper output of each Congressional session.
The need for inducing an extension of
this laudable resolution is evident from the
fact that sundry of our statesmen are busy
in introducing measures beside which the
Farmers Alliance bill rejected by the Ways
and Means Committee assumes the char
acter of most conservative and well-con-
sidered fiscal measure. The production Of
the widest schemes. under the idea
that the Government can leglslate each
class of people into universal wealth, may
have been as chronic heretofore, as it is at
present; but it has never found as many
agents in Congress to help it along, at least
to the extent of getting the bill printed at
the Governments expense. Senator STAN
ford's bill to set the Government printing
presses at work making money to lend
to the farmers at two per cent, while it
must pay ~ to ~ per cent on its own loans
has been discounted by Congressman Nc
Clamney's bill, which puts the rate down to
one per cent. 1t certainly seems that while
the Legislators are about it they might as
we'll abolish interest altogether.
That is the view taken by the Wage
Workers Political Alliance, whose function
in public affairs appears to be to produce
practical demonstrations that there is no
idea so utterly absurd that Senator John
James Ingalls, can be induced to stand god
father to its introduction in the Senate. In
its bill to abolish coined money and do
away with interest. heretofore referred to in
these columns, the idea was very clearly ex-
pressed that when the process is once
commenced money might as well be made
so cheap and worthless that no one will
paw interest for its use. 1t has, ho Gever,
discounted its former efforts by bill-also
fathered by Senator Ingalls-which provides
that any tenant of any property can become
its possessor by drawing his personal warrant
on the United States Treasury for two
hundred times the rent paid in the last
A. rbo
declines to accept that piece of paper, in ex-
change for his real estate, is to be i'm
prisoned for lite!
OF course Senator Plumb must make a
vigorous effort to keep abreast OF his
colIeages, and so he brings in bill to
labor, the principal feature of which is that
every member of it is to work only four
hours day, but five days in the week and
thirty-nine weeks in the year. For
this each member is to get $3.50 per year
from the Government Treasury, which will
necessarily keep the rest of the country
hustling to pay the money for the grand
army of labor whose distinguishing feature
will be the minimum of labor it performs.
No special attention is given as to what the
labor shall be, further than provision that
each county shall have Government farm,
which would thus be made even more
decidedly an asylum for idlers than the
present poor farms.
1t would be interesting to go into the
inquiry what the epidemic is which has
produced this harvest OF financial and social
lunacies. The production of such unique
humor if it were not that the Ameri-
can humorist for the present day is totally
unable to rise to such heights of original
and unconventional conception. The har-
vest of absurdities can be most adequately
explained on the ground Of an acute
of the idea that it is the
business to provide for every
one; that legislation consists of a mutual
grab for the special benefit of various classes;
that the way to rectify privilege in favor of
one class is to establish it for another; and
that Government can establish universal
plenty by act of Congress.
As to the explanation for the readiness of
legislators to cumber Congress with bills
proposing to enact these anomalies it is not
so difficult to make. 1t can be accounted
for adequately and solely on the hypothesis
of demagogy. Let US hope that the Ways
and Means Committee will be as successful
in abolishing that vice as it was in passing
its tariff bill.