The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1892-04-09
FOR SILV ER
An Able Address to the Wealth
Producing Millions Of
the Nation.
Disasters RsslIk which Have FeileWed
TIE Deneaeilzstlsa ef Silver
Retrieved.
Losses to Producers of Wheat,
Cotton and Other Staples,
rs Well as Miners.
The Issue Il Silver and Silver Hen
Everywhere Must be Active
and Vi9ilant.

The Issue Il Silver and Silver He,
Everywhere Must be Active
and Vigilant.
An Address to the Wealth Producing Voter
| Of the Nation:
The Colorado Silver League, or
behalf of an army of Colorado vo.
ters, sends greeting:
We have undertaken a great work
in your behalf as we'll as in our own
and it is to secure your active co.
operation in that work that we come
to you with this earnest appeal
We have common interests, and
those interests have common foe
1t is for the laudable purpose of as
serting and maintaining our rights
that we are banded together. Will
you not join US?
In consequence of one deliberate,
cowardly blow, dealt by the hand
of organized avarice, we have for
years been groveling at the feet of in
solent, unscrupulous money-chang-
ers, whose openly avowed purpose
it has been and is to control and
contract the worlds volume of cir
culating money.
With that end in view was the
demonstration of silver accom-
plished. The foul means which
were used to achieve that purpose
are too we'll understood to require
discussion here.
The disastrous effects of that in
iquitous scheme have been felt by
each one of us. To-day they are
plainly visible on every hand, in
the deprecated value of almost ev-
cry commodity produced by the
labor of human hands, and especial
ly in the ruinous prices of wheat,
cotton and silver, as we'll as in the
constantly falling prices of asricul-
tural lands, mines and labor. The
distress and suffering which it has
bred throughout the nation is be
yond the power Of the human
mind tocompute.
Year after year we have gone reg
ularly to the polls and persistently
fought each other, while working
for the supremacy of one or the
other of two great political parties
instead of standing shoulder to
shoulder to meet and resist the at.
tacks Of one common enemy. Those
parties, as they exist at present,
deem the spoils of Office Of para
mount Importance to the welfare of
the people. They are maintained
chiefly for the benefit of self-seeking
politicians, whose most lofty am
bition is paltry Office. To attain
that end they do not hesitate to
persistently betray the interests of
the people, whose aid they solicit,
into the hands of the money power.
They are partisans for revenue only.
At the bidding of this same money
power, they have placed the general
government on level with the
stock broker; they have rendered
thousands of families homeless !;
they have changed the toiling debtor
into a cringing mendicant, and
from the ranks of honest labor they
have recruited an army Of tramps.
If a traveller was ever robbed on
the highway, then the silver miners
Of our country-loyal, patriotic
citizens-are now being robbed by
the general government al the rate
of $50, ,00O, 900 year. If, then, the
silver miners have just cause for
complaint, what shall we say Of the
cotton growers of the South, who
lose more than four times that
amount annually; or of the wheat
growers of the North and West,
who year after year have filched
from their earnings more than five
times the annual loss of the silver
miners? Figures grow bewildering.
But if the miners, planters and
farmers have suffered q loss that
the human mind cannot compre-
hend, what shall we: say of the g.
600 900 of idle laborers? Not less
than twenty four millions I week
is the loss of the wage earners, the
producers of wealth.
In the face of these exasperating
outrages, what use have we for po-
litical parties-so long as those
parties are dominated by the peo-
Piles foe?
The people have complained and
their complaints have been met by
sneers; they have murmured and
their murmurs have encountered
derision.
We are now firmly convinced that
further submission to these griev-
ances il simply to bear our backs
TO the lash Of insatiate greed. Yes,
it would be to pursue q course un-
worthy Of Americana, and unworthy
of the manhood which We boast.
There are, ;. this time, in the
state Of Colorado upwards Of forty
nom partisan silver club6, and the