The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-09-19
MIR. ALIENS SPEECH.

| MR.. ALIENS SPEECH.
Hon. A. f. Allen, the Peoples nomi-
nee for Congress, has been making
several speeches in the county this
week, and has distracted some little
attention-with the emphasis on the
little. He was In Lola Tuesday after
noon and spoke at the Court House.
The meeting was advertised for two
O'Clock, but as there was little sign of
an audience at that hour, or half
hour after, the Wizard Oil band was
called out to help drum up q crowd.
They played for half an hour, and at
the end of that time enough people
had gathered to comfortably fill the
court room. Most of these were Re
publicans and Democrats who came
out of curiosity and many of them
| found so little TO interest them that
they went away before the meeting
was over, an actual count showing IS
persons, men, women and children,
present when the speech was ended.
MIR. Allen Is large man physically,
about 80 years of age, reddish brown
hair and chin whiskers beginning to
turn gray, deep-set blue eyes, large
but not symmetrical head and q heavy,
but rather smothered voice. His face
is strong and serious and he evidently
believes what he says. He speakes
with reasonao ole fiuency, but his man.
ner Is such that that he can never be-
come an impressive speaker. His
speech occupied something over an
hour and is to be commended for its
calm and dignified tone and its free
Hon, FROM, hran A. snooo1 ipfond-
ed, however, to win votes for himself
or to strengthen his party, we believe
we express the sentiments, even of his
party friends, in saying that it was a
disappointment and failure.
He began in the air, and he ended
i'm the air. He did not get down any
time to the solid ground of a settled
policy. Nearly all of his speech was
made up of commonplaces that would
not be cOntradicted anywhere. For
example, he spent about Is minutes
demonstrating that the interests of the
farmer and the factory laborer were
reciprocal, that the laborer must have
good wages or he could not buy the
farmers produce. Everybody admits
that, we believe, and when Mr.. Allen
was Republican he used the identical
argument to prove that the farmers of
the West should vote for the protec-
tive tariff because it maintained high
wages for the laborer in the East. He
spent a large amount of time also
demonstrating that the railroads had
charged the people extortionate rates.
We do not know of any political party
| that doubts it, and the Republican
platforms, both of Allen county and
of the State, demand that railroads
shall be placed under rigid control
and their rates so regulated as to bring
them fair return on money actually
invested and not to pay dividends on
watered stock. Another portion of his
speech was given to depicting the de-
| plorable condition of the Pennsylvania
coal miners. If the reality Is actually
as dark as the picture he painted, then
these miners will have the sympathy
of all humane men; but the speaker
failed to point out q remedy by which
they might be relieved. He spoke of
the injustice that was done to miners
in Democratic Missouri by compelling
them to accept payment in script
which was only payable i'm cash at the
end Of ten years; but when he came
Il
that q Republican legislature had
passed law compelling all mine
owners to pay their hands weekly In
cash. True, he intimated that the
law was not obeyed, but that is not
the case, and If it were 1t would not
be the fault of the law. In this con-
nection he made the broad statement
that all laws intended to assist the Ia
boring man are a mockery; but he
failed to show how that was the fault
of the laws or to show how more laws
would be any better. In spite of all
these laws, he said, "the employee is
at the mercy of the employer That
may be wrong, but somehow 1t is the
way of the world. We never knew
an employer who did not want to- be
the boss. We should not be surprised
if Mr.. Allen himself insists on having
something to say about the wages he
shall pay the hands on his farm, and
he may insist also on his right to dis
charge them If they do not suit him.
/ But il was when he came to discuss
the money question that Mr.. Allen
most effectually babe farewell to fact,
logic and sense. In the first place he
built up great bug-a-boo about the
Rothschilds having mortgage on the
whole civilized world. Here Is his
actual language, every dollar struck
from the mints of the world is already
owed to the Rothschilds for interest,"
Notice that il takes the total coinage
of the world to pay the interest alone!
4 One Is compelled to wonder how the
Messrs Rothschild are ever going to
get back their principal! And this
wonder is Increased when the speaker
asks US little farther on, to believe
that 1.-THE civilized world Is debtor to
England" If it takes all the money
in the world to pay barely the interest
on the Rothschild mortgages, then
how i'm the world is England going to
| collect what Is due her? Even q man
of such limited reasoning powers as
Mr.. Allen himself, must be able to de-
| teet the ridiculous extravagance and
absurdity of these statements when
he sees them in cold print. On q par
with these statements was his asser-
| ton that the annual interest charges
on the public and private indebted
ness of the United States was tUice as
much as the schOie amount ofour ci,cu-
Ldta,g medium! We are informed that
in his speech at Carlyle he stated that
il was three times as much; but O lit
tie discrepancy of eight or ten hundred
million dollars does not trouble MIR.
Allen.
Much that he said about the evils
that had resulted from q contracted
currency, is true. But he failed to
state that one law passed by the pres
ent Congress released at q stroke S7O,-