The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-07-18
BEAUMONT TALKS "REFORM."
Peoples Party Orator Advocates Singl q
Tax and Denounces Millionaires.

Peoples Party Orator Advocates Single
Tax and Denounces Millionaires.
Ralph Beaumont, the orator of the Peo-
Piles party, delivered characteristic
speech on the campus of the university
yesterday afternoon. As on the previous
evening he contrived by an admixture of
native wit and originality, an array of
facts and figures and by sarcastic illusions
to the old political parties and systems to
hold the undivided attention of at least
1900 people, who sat ON the grass or stood
beneath the shade listening to his
eloquence.
The audience itself was a study. It was
composed of all sorts and conditions of
men and women from the dude with his
cane in his mouth to the old white-haired
crank who glories in the title. The APP
plause was indeed most vigorous when the
speaker hurled thunderbolts of warning to
the rich millionaires and the corporations
that he claimed were absorbing the earn
ings of the laborer without giving him an
equivalent therefor.
The orator paid most of his attention
to the land system which prevails in the
United States. He said that in converse
ton with Henry George he had been in
formed that the unearned increment in
the city of New York alone was SIPS, 00O,-
600 per annum. This, he explained, was
the amount of money which the owners
of land got out of the people one way
and another without doing single thing
except give the use of land for the same.
He went on to show from this that the
entire city government of New York could
be operated for this. and that it would also
permit the citizens to ride free upon every
street car line of the metropolis. From
this he branched into witty dissertation
on how many people were paying not
only rent for the actual use of premises,
but for mere location, and denounced in
forcible term the injustice of such sys-
tenn.
The speaker then proceeded to work his
audience up to the highest pitch of en-
thusiasm by sarcastic illusions to the al
legged corruption existing in all the de-
partments of administrative government.
He ratified off score or more of what he
termed great public scandals, and asserted
that the time was coming when the peo-
pie intended to right the wrongs under
which they suffered. He said that such
enormous frauds had been perpetrated in
the land department of the United States
ter for fear that both would be swept from
existence.
Mr.. Beaumont proceeded to trace the
gradual awakening of public sentiment on
these vital issues. Forty years ago, he
told the people, two-thirds of the preach
ers in the land were prepared to prove
that slavery was divine institution, but
that few men would be willing to assert
such doctrine now, and if Jesus Christ
was to come to New York today and
preach the principles he spoke on Calvary
he would be crucifed even before he had
been given fair hearing. He compared
the body polite to the human system and
said that small ills that affected the hui
man system might be cured in time, but if
neglected would prove fatal. So it was
with government: evils must be cured in
time or the people will in the end be the
sufferers.
He did not hesitate to pay his respects
to the capitalists of the country. He
knew of no land so perfectly adapted to
the schemes of capital and CORPORATIONS
as this. He SAID that something was rad
ically wrong in that system of finance
which would permit capital of itself in
twelve years to absolutely eat up what it
had taken three generations OF toilers to
build up.
The entire address was interspersed with
Jokes and apt illustrations and was on the
whole of more conservative character
than orators of the Peoples party usually
favor the public with.