Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-05-31

class legislation pure and simple. If this
government has any right to tax the people
to raise money with which to construct
warehouses, pay officers and cover losses
that must follow, and provide fund tc
loan to those who may possess cotton,
wheat, corn or tobacco, or who. II you
please, may chance to own lands, the Strug-
gle of the Democratic party for more than
a hundred years to shield the people against
the evil effects of class legislation have
been worse than cheats. The power to tax
is confided to this government for public
purposes only, and not the benefit or gain
of any individual or class OF individuals
hewever worthy, and the courts say that
whenever the government takes by taxa
ton the money
OUT OF THE POCKETS OF THE PEOPLE
for the purpose of bestowing it upon any INF
dividual or class of individuals to enable
them to better their condition in life, IS
none the less robbery because the transfer
is made under the forms of law. We all
deny the right of the government 10 tax US
to enable manufacturer TO increase its
profits. We all deny the right of the govern
mert to contract the volume of currency in
order to enrich the money power. We all
deny the right of the government to allow
corporations to issue money and control the
volume of circulation. How is it that the
people may be taxed to construct ware
houses and furnish money TO enable the
owners of certain products
TO BETTER THEIR CONDITION
in life? II does not follow that because the
constitution may have been violated once,
twice or thrice over the protest of the
Democratic party. that it becomes proper to
vloiate it again. This measure was never
designed to benefit the farmers, especially
the poor farmers. There are thousands of
corporations in the United States, organ
lied syn9icateS, raising immense quantities
of grain on the great prairies, and immense
cotton crops. They might be benefited by
having the people taxed TO build ware
houses for them in order that they might
compel the government to hold their grain
until the bread necessities OF the people
would enable them to eXtort unreasonable
prices for their grain. There would hardly
be one county in twenty-five in Texas that
would secure a warehouse.
THIS SCHEME
violates the platform of the FarmersAlliance
as shown in the fifth clause of that instru-
ment 1t is not democratic measure; the
plank referred to in the platform, announces
a pure democratic principle. This bill or
scheme is based solely on the principle OF re-
publicanism. 1t is constructed on the very
same principle as high protective tariff !:
upon the same principle that you are now
taxed to maintain civil pension list; upon
the same principle that you are taxed to
support appropriations necessary to provide
money to levy silver bullion not for Coinage
Where did it come fromi Let the very
ablest representative Of the Farmers
Alliance in the United States, Mr.. w. S.
Hall. president of the Alliance of the state
of Missouri, say this scheme was
NEVER PRESENTED
to, considered or reported by the committee
on demands. AS l was secretary of that
apI yy-oS a+ all itC
ings and kept and now have complete min
utes of that committees work, know l am
right. The committee on demands was
composed of one delegate from each state
to draw up demands on the national gov
eminent, thus giving all parts of the coun-
try voice in our demands, and this scheme
not being in our demands at all in our last
meeting at St. Louis, l regard 1t as espe-
cially unfortunate that our national officers
should have placed so much stress upon it.
The way this scheme ever come before the
body was by q report made by committee
of five, the
oRIGINAToRs OF THE BILL
being chairman of the committee and the
other four members being not members Of
all the different political parties as was the
committee on demands, but all i've of these
members las l am informed) of one polit.
cal party. And that report was most bit
terly fought in the convention and only
adopted after some states, notably Mis-
souri,, demanded that her entire vote be
registered against the scheme under all cir
cumstances" Thus, my fellow-citizens,
YOU will see that this sub-treaSury scheme
was concocted by a self-constituted commit
tee of five Republicans, and sprung upon
the Alliance convention at st. Louis, after
that convention had formulated its demands
on congress, and adopted amid the bitter
denunciations of such Democrat delegates
as that of Missouri. 1t was
A TROJAN WAR HORSE
led into our ranks and filed with the enc
mics of the Democratic party. Our farmers
and laboring people all over the land had
become aroused to the wrongs and injustice
of class legislation. The time had come
when monopoly protected industries and
the money power. beheld the end Of
their tyranical reign. The ranks of the
Democracy We're filling up; unless our ranks
could be broken their doom was sealed.
This device in the shape of bounty, boon
never to be realized, was concocted IN Re-
publican camp of five is now regarded by
Republicans, by Greenbackers aud by all
the enemies of the Democracy as the enter
ing wedge with which the party must be
disintegrated and destroyed. ] do not be-
lieve it. recognize the patience, the forti-
tude, tho heroic manlineSs with which the
Democratic farmers of the South have borne
the injustice of class legislation
YEAR AFTER YEAR.
For more than quarter of a century
they have hoped for and worked for relief,
but the Democratic party has never had
the power in congress to secure it for
them. True, the magnificent department
of Texas and the benefcent condition of
her laws. attest the wonderful devotion
of the Democratic party to the interests
of the people. Here Democratic admins
tration has imperial sway, and within the
sphere of its Jurisdiction it deals out
handed Justice to all alike; but, be-
cause of the war, and the preIudices en-
gendered by it the Democratic party has
never been able to acquire the control of
the law-malling power of the general gov
eminent. Happily for the people of the
United States the time has come when We
may hope that the great
ECONOMIC QUESTIONS
upon which the prosperity of all the people
so much depends may be settled in the in
terest of justice and equality without refer
ence to questions growing out of the war.
If the farmers of the country will stand by
the Democratic party and its principles,
class legislation will soon be wiped from
the face of your laws and the financial
despotism which enslaveS you will be
broken and overthrown. The great ques-
lions which confront us are tariff reform
and the volume of circulation, the free
coinage of silver and of gold and silver and
legal tender treasury notes convertible into
coin. They stand side by side They are Of
EQUAL IMPORTANCE.
The tariff and financial policy, hand in