The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1892-04-30
The Trail Of the Serpent.

The Trail Of the Serpent.
In a recent article under the
above caption, we referred to part
of the scheme devised by foreign
bankers for the enslavement Of
American labor. Our intention in
doing 80 was to show that the de-
monetization of silver was premed-
itated and its effects upon American
labor contemplated in Europe long
before its final contamination. We
will now enumerate some of the
principal acts that preceded and led
up to the eliminating villainy of
demonetization, and hope to show
that they were each and all designed
to, and had the effect of, curtailing
the money of circulation in this
country, as outlined in the Hazard
circular, and the enrichment of
European bandits and their strikers
and stool-pigeons in the money
centers of the United States. Hav-
ing stopped the issue of legal tender
greenbaacks they had clear field,
and they Immediately proceeded to
till it in q manner that has already
cost the people of this country fully
twelve billion of dollars, and the
end is not yet. They burned up our
greenbacks, by this act adding
100000 to the debt they had
"made out of the war;" adding also
81, ,OOO, 100000 to the bonded inter-
est-bearing debt of the nation. They
sold bonds in Europe at so cents
on the dollar, upon which we were
compelled to send away $50, O,OOO,O 900
in gold every year, for upwards of
twenty years, to pay the interest,
though it was not necessary that
our government should borrow one
dollar from abroad, and had our
law makers refused to heed the Off
cious advice and clamor of foreign
money kings, and continued to issue
legal tender greenbacks, not one
dollar would have been borrowed.
1t was only because our Congress
permitted foreigners to dictate our
financial policy during and after
the war that our people are bur-
dened with an enormous debt and
have their paper and silver-their
means of paying their debts-de-
stroyed. Instead of self-govern-
ment, this looks to us very much
like alien government.
They procured the exemption of
their bonds from taxation in order
that they might be able the better
to hold all they got, and throw the
burden Of taxes on the poor and
limit the money in their hands.
They prevailed upon the govern
ment to pay their interest in ad-
vance, and having thus possessed
themselves of many millions of
dollars at the beginning of each
year that properly belonged to the
government, they proceeded to in
vest it in other bonds, thus drawing
interest not only on their bonds,
bat on the interest received on them
before it was due, which was equiv
alent to the payment of compound
interest. They deprecated the bonds
before buying them by crying down
the credit of the government, when
not man Of them would have pur-
chased bond had they doubted it's
solvency; and to further this rascal
| ity Congress actually invited them
to fix their own price on its bonds.
1t also permitted them to draw in
terest on their bonds and bank
notes at the same time, although the
bonds had been given in exchange
for the notes. To such an infamous
extent was this robbery carried that
at one time John Sherman's bank
(Fort Sherman) in New York, with
capital stock of only $500, 900,
was making 100000 a year by
drawing interest on the peoples
money, which, by virtue of law
permitting the wrong, was deposited
in his bank when it should have
been in the vaults of the United
States Treasury.
They induced the government to
purchase $1OO,OOO,O0O in gold to
enable it to return to specie pay
ments, which money nobody wanted
nor used, but it was boarded away
in the treasury, serving no purpose
whatever except to further limit the
volume of our money of circulation
as it was meant to do. They had
the resumption act passed, which
is said to have caused a loss, by the
depreciation of property which re-
suited, of $6OO,00O,000. This act
overwhelmed the country in busi-
ness failures and bankruptcies, caus-
ing more widespread ruin than the
war.i And to prove that people gen.
orally preferred greenbacks to gold
"a fact which was testified to by