The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1892-07-05
THE PEOPLES PARTY.

Weaver Is built upon the posts OF long
and hysterical preamble. The first
plank is fine, broad and smooth one,
but it won't nail into the posts with any
amount of hammering. "We declare"
it says, '' first, that the union of the
labor forces Of the United States, this
day consummated. shall be permanent
and perpetual"
"Shall is word that can't apply to
so heterogeneous body, and the at
tempt to fuse the Farmers Alliance
with the Eastern labor parties promises
to result about as might be expected, in
dismal failure. The Farmers Alliance
has the whip hand and it has filed the
preamble with outcries against falling
prices for agricultural productions.
That is the farmers side, bat it is not
the side of the laboring man in
the great cities in which the
Peoples party has been threatening to
make this autumn an aggressive cam
paign. On the issue of cheap food the
tenement districts and the farmer can
not unite and sweep the country. The
seller and the buyer are not natural al
lies.
There is the same antagonism of inter-
est on the question Of cheap money, the
food question being, indeed, nothing but
a phase of the money question. "Silver,
which has been accepted as coin since
the dawn Of history, has been demone-
tized to add to the purchasing power of
gold" writes the Alliance, and "(A) We
demand free and unlimited coinage of
silver and gold at the present legal ratio
of is to 1. B) We demand that the
amount of circulating medium be speed
lily increased to not less than $50 per
CAPITA" declares the platform.
The mortgaged West would like to
pay its debts in seventy cent dollars,
and in general it would like a cheap
circulating medium which would make
all prices but the price of labor high.
Wages, experience has proved, are the
last things to rise under cheap money
system, and the artisan and mechanic
are expected by the Peoples party
to vote for a higher cost of liv-
ling with no heavier sums to pay
the increased bills. The laborers' inter-
est is for dear money because that
means low prices, and also because or
ganized labor finds it easier to make
good fight against reductions than for
advances. With cheap money the bat
tie would have to be for a steady ad-
vance in order to maintain anything like
the same standard of comfort, and real
would call for 80 big a
jump as to be practically out of the
question.
The sub-treasury scheme is the old
Farmers Alliance notion, exploded and
as soon as broached. The
demand that the Government own and
operate the railroads, the tele-
graph and the telephone service
is concession to the Nationalists
and meant to please Boston. The
declaration that other reforms
however urgent must be postponed
until the great issues now pressing for
solution" shall have been gotten out of
the way, is meant to stave off the Pro-
and here the party has
shown CLEAN of practical sense in re-
fusing to load itself up indefinitely.
No heavy vote can be polled by a
party with little cohesive power. In
the West and the South free silver will
be an issue, but the Peoples party has
fallen sadly short OF making itself
national. II is still the Alliance and
little more.
THE Populists say the civil war Is over.
Well, we all know that, except possibly
the rebel brigadiers.