The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-04-21
POLITICAL PROBLEMS.
Ex-senator Ingalls, on the Issues
That Confront the Country.
The Modern Jack Cades Who Are HOwlIne
For the Promised MilIennium-vItal
Questions That Must Be Met BY
the New Administration.
From the St Louis Globe-DemocratI

From the St Louis Globe Democrat
-Four hundred and fifty years ago
there was much political and social dis
content in the English county of Kent.
George Bevis and John Holland said
there were too many gentlemen in En-
gland; that the nobility would not
wear leather aprons, and that the mag
istrates and kings council ought to be
Iaboring men. because the best sign of
a brave mind was hard hand
They told Dick the butcher, and Best
the tanner, and Smith the weaver, that
they were robbed and plundered by the
party in power; that bad and corrupt
men were in office; that the public do
main had been squandered; that taxes
were too high: that misgovernment had
banished Justice and prosperity. So
they all fell in, with swords of lath, I'M
der the command of Col. Jack Cade, the
leading reformer of that time. and
marched on London to the number of
$4,000 or 100000 He promised his fol-
lowers that seven half-penny loaves
should be sold for a penny; that the
three-hooped pot should have ten hoops;
that il should be a felony to drink
small beer; that all lands should be
held in common and the cities turned
out to grass; that the educated and
wealthy classes should be degraded
and poverty abolished; that there
should be no money. and all should be
fed and clothed at his expense; that he
would kill all lawyers, and that his
mouth should be the parliament of En-
gland.
lis rabble mob captured London, but
was finally routed. lie became fugi-
tive. \ few days later he was slain in
single combat by Alexander Iden, a
sturdy kentish farmer, about whose
fields he was prowling, and his head
exhibited. stuck on a pike, on London
bridge, as a warning to the advocates
OF paternalism in government.
Jack Cade's body lies a-moldering in
the grave. but his soul goes marching
on. The Omaha platform is feeble
imitation and echo of his formulas for
adjusting the relations between capital
and labor, for the equal distribution of
wealth. and the equitable diffusion of
the burdens and benefits of society. 1t
is an ancient problem-old as history,
venerable as Adam.
Every age it is renewed, and each
generation has its Jack Cade, deluding
the wretched and unfortunate with the
same vagaries, chimeras, nostrums and
panaceas that have cheated mankind
since the food, and will, perhaps, con-
tinue to cheat them until the final con-
hagration. And still the nobility do
not wear leather aprons, nor are seven
halfpenny loaves sold for penny, and
many are compelled to drink small beer
OF go with their thirst unslaked.
UNDER CONDITIONS OF TO-DAY.
The administration of President
Cleveland has been placed in power as
a protest against existing social condi-
tions. The congress in sympathy with
him is the expression of profound,
widespread and implacable discomfort
with the civilization of the nineteenth
century, under which it is alleged that
the rich have been growing richer and
the poor poorer. OF the truth or the
falsity of the partisan assertion that
these conditions have resulted from po-
ltical misrule it is unimportant now to
inquire.
The facts of the crisis being the same
in the consideration of the work to be
done by the administration and con-
gress. it is immaterial by what agency
it was imposed. 1t is enough to say
that George Bevis, John Holland. Dick
the butcher, Best the tanner and Smith
the weaver are disconnected. They
have been so often told that many of
them believe that the government of
the United States has become a central
lied oligarchy, controlled by million
aires and corporations; that wicked
men have held high office; that the
revenues and public lands have been
corruptly wasted; that the civil service
has degenerated into despotic ma
chine for the perpetuation of party
power, and that they have been sub
jected to burdens of taxation for the
benefit of favored classes. They have
been instructed that the reason why
they are poor is because others are rich;
that the reason why they are unfor-
tuEate is because other are prosperous,
and that the true way to mend matters
is to repudiate all debts, distribute all
fortunes. curtail individual activity, de-
prive ambition of its incentive and in
-dustry of its reward, put thrift, idle
ness, sagacity, stupidity, sobriety,
drunkenness, genius and medioerity on
the same level, reduce all to obscurity
and poverty, and thus satisfy the
4.yearnings for an equal division of un-
equal earnings"
Wages were never higher nor the
prices of the necessaries of life lower,
nor markets more extended than under
&he Mckinley tariff. The real cause of
the hostility to the doctrine of protec-
ton was not because it unjustly in
creased the burdens of the people, but
because it enabled some manufacturers
20 get rich. Railroads, telephones and
other corporations have undoubtedly
been extortionate. but they have
made civilization possible, and
there was never a time when
a man could travel so far or
send pig or barrel of -four so many
miles for a dollar as now. The true
ground of the cutlery against railroads
and monopolies is because they have
allowed some sagacious and unscrupu-
Ions men to acquire colossal fortunes.
EFFECT OF THE MoNoPoLIEs.
The methods of the Standard Oil
company have undoubtedly been per-
nicious, but by reason of them the price
of petroleum products has steadily de-
clined until artificial illumination by
kerosene may almost be said TO be as
cheap as daylight.
The denunciation of the standard Oil
company is not because it has increased