Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-07-12

1 hllON lulS Is Il great DuI nave
my reasons for thinking SO, which will
give you.
was on the National Alliance committee
on demands when we met at st. Louis in
December, 1889. l offered in that
committee resolution demanding
that the national government remove the
protective tariff tax from cotton ties, iute
butts, binding Irvine, farming implements
and all the raw material that went into
making them, and all of the necessaries of
life that the poor of our land must have,
and it was voted down by Macune's men
al his special instance.
l then tried in several other resolutions
to attack that system of protective tariff
by which the plutOcratic manufacturers of
the East were by national legislation rob-
bling the farmers of our country, and in
everv instance Macune men voted them
down, hut at last presented our fifth de-
mand in the St. Louis platform and got it
through by small majority, and it reads:
believing in the doctrine of equal rights
TO al and special favors to none, we demand
that legislation neither state or national
shall be used to build up one industry at the
expense of the others.''
And when we met at Ocala. Fla, on last
December drew our tariff plank so as to
demand, THAT the present heavy
tariff tax be removed from the
necessaries of life, that the poor u our
land must have, and further demanding
that the national government should cease
legislating 50 as to build up one industry TO
the ruin of the Others"
The demands were as much demands of
our order as the sub-treaSury demand.
Macune says that anyone who opposes the
sub-treasury demand should be dismissed
from the order. And vet he has been OPP
posing and denouncing this tariff demand
through the National Economist,
our national official organ, and de-
claring that "the tariff question is
a hoary breeder of sectional STRIFE That
its agitation by the Democratic party is an
attempt to galvanize this old ghost Of sec
tional hatred" That its agitation is a tariff
dog-fight in which the farmers should take
no interest" And in almost every issue of
this paper Macuue, as editor of the national
Official organ, and holding the Office Of
chairman of the national executive com
mittee, has denounced and derided this de-
mand of the national Alliance and pleaded
with the order to only turn its attention to
the sub-treasury scheme. Now, why has
he taken such 4 course, and yet
trying to force me to resign as 4 member of
the national legislative committed There
is one answer, and in my opinion but one.
Macune has been bought up by the pro-
tective tariff barons of the East to try and
draw the minds of the farmers from our
greatest curse, the protective tariff, and to
divert our attention to a species of legiSla-
ton that will prevent US from fighting it.
Knowing full well that his only hope to
build up Il third party in the South IS the
sub-treasury scheme, for he knows one OF
the political parties will come to any demand
that the farmers make, or that we can by
united action bring it TO them.
And he knows that the sub-treasury
scheme violates every principle of Democ
racy, as well rs good government, and that
the Democratic party cannot and will not
i,,Io Al hot ha At
enough of the farmers of the South to vote
with party that does advocate it to bring
around a defeat of the Democratic
majority of the South and turn aside the
danger that now stares the protective tariff
barOnS OF the Eastern states in the face, for
this reason and for this reason alone, in my
opinion, he is sneering at the tariff question
and trying to keep the sub-treasury scheme
only in view.
l viii now examine the sub-treasury
scheme and ask my brother farmers. for
the sake Of your wives and children and for
the love you bear them, to listen calmly
and dispassionately to plain brother ALI
ance farmer while he gives his reasons to
you, in kindly and fraternal spirit,
the reasons why the sub-treaSury
schnme is fallacious, and why it
will bankrupt aud destroy Us if enacted
into law.
1. The whole scheme and system is based
Macune says, in all his arguments on the
sub-treasury scheme, ''that the volume of
the circulating medium in the United
States that fixes prices, is fixed volume,
say 81. SOC, 100000, which is enough to trans
act the business of the country for nine
months in the year, but that during the
months of September, October and No
vember $3.50 O00, 600 worth of farm
products is thrown upon the market
and that this makes an increased demand
for money, but there is not money sufficient
to meet it. That this flexible demand
comes in contact with an intiexible volume,
thereby producing fluctuations in prices,
on that well settled principle of political
economy 'that the price of a product is
fixed Supply and demand being the same)
by the volume of the money in circulation
at the time" Macune is right when he
says that any increase in the volume of cur
rency increases prices, and that any de-
crease in the volume of money decreases
them, for Mr.. John Stuart Mill tells us in
his great work on Political Economy, book
3, chapter S, section 4, that this lis the most
elementary proposition in the theory of
currency, and without it we should have no
key to any of the others" Mr.. Mill does
not mean that au increase in the volume Of
money increases the value Of products, but
only the price, a most important distinct
ton which should be kept constantly in
view.
But you viii see from the above quotation
of the position of Macune, that he bases
the whole sub-treasury scheme upon the
statement that the volume of the circulation
that makes prices in this country is fixed
volume.
Did anyone ever see or hear Of sub
treasury advocate try to prove this propo-
sitioni No, and why notl 1t is the very
foundation of the whole scheme, for they
all say the only element of the sub-treasury
system that we care anything about is the
texibility in the volume Of the circulating
medium that fixes prices.
Then why did not Macune go to work first
and show that this volume that fixes prices
was fixed infexible volume? Because it
is not true. The volume of the circulating
medium that fixes prices in our country is a
flexible volume and has always been flexi-
bic volume, and it is an utter impoSsibility
for it to be fixed volume.
| will now prove my last assertion, asking
you to bear two things in mind.
l. That it was his duty to have proved
that the volume was fixed, because he as
serts that it is, and bases his whole sub
treasury scheme upon this assertion, and
no man should be permitted to bring for
ward and advocate a measure which will
change the whole financial system of our
statement he Makes especially a statement
so vital as this one which rests at the very
foundation of his whole system.
.. That If l show that the volume OF the
circulating medium that fixes prices is not
infexible, but on the contrary is and has
ever been flexible, then his whole system
goes down for the lack of a foundation. The
volume of money in circulation in the
United States is, we might say, fixed