Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-08-23

Let us found a government upon the intelli-
gence of the people and the equitable distri-
button of property. Let us make laws where
there shall be no governmental partner
ship with favored classes. Let US protect all
the life. liberty and property and then say to
every American citizen. for the gifts that God
has given you. your brain and Drawn and
energy. work out your own fortunes under a
just government and an equal jurispru-
dence."
III Jefferson could today revisit the earth,
or if the dead can take notice of the affairs of
the living, what must he think of the country
he helped to establish and whose independ-
ence he put in letters of living fire upon the
pages of history if he should find 81, 100000 of
free men with the continent for an inherit
ance, with the rain and sunshine and dew, the
mountains and rivers, with almost illimitable
resources, in the hands financially of dozen
men in New York who make and unmake and
who can in an hour SO hoard the currency of
of the whole country as to produce a money
famine, and then exact from the people their
own terms in regard to their products and
commodities?
No, Mr.. President. desire TO enter into no
philosophical or continental essay. am an
American and, trust, practical in the con-
sideration of every question, but the genius
of our institutions and of our people. the fun
damental doctrines on which we exist as
nation, the instructive feeling of every true
American no matter what political belief he
may be must be naturally against the tend
ency that centralizes and consolidates the
fearful power of financial movements in the
hands of the few against the many. For my
self, would give up every doctrine Of my life
and every feeling of my nature If 1 did not
stand now to the last against legislation that
would further extend this doctrine of central
ization and give so fearful power to any set
of men whom God has ever created upon the
earth. But we are told that silver must be
demonetized because it fluctuates in value;
that gold is stable and silver is the changing
child of caprice and circumstance and that
values cannot be based upon it.
1t is blessing to have a favored few to de-
termine these questions for you; it is a great
boon of Providence that a few gentlemen in
New York are to determine this question for
the American people, and all of~us who de-
cline to follow them and abandon the ira
ditions and policy Of the Government and the
manifest dictates of common justice are
either guilty of crime Intentionally or else we
are put in the roll of harmless Iunatics 1t is
a favorite oppression now to talk of 1.-The luna
cy of silver"
Mr.. President, l am ready to follow that
great lunatic Thomas Jefferson on this Ques-
ton. am willing to follow the men who
made the Constitution of 1889 and say that no
State should make anything but gold and sill
yer legal tender for the payment Of debts.
II they did not mean that silver was a money
metal by that expression, then the English
language has become so nebulous as not to be
understood. The Bank of France has $780,
100000 of gold aud $225. 100000 of silver. The
Russian State Bank has $4S0,000,000 Of gold.
Mr.. President we are told that it is impossible
to sustain silver in this country unless we have
a conference with other nations of the world
and all agree to it. Franco sustained the BIZ
metallic standard for SO years before 1873 with
Germany on one side on an exclusively silver
basis and England on the other on gold basis
and today the French people are financially
the first people in existence. =
In the Brussels conference / was struck
with this statement coming from Mr.. Boise
vain, the delegate from Netherlands He
said: I'm my opinion the chief cause of the
fall In the price of silver has been the enor-
nous decrease in the monetary use of SILVER
during the last 20 years in consequence of the
legislative measures which date from the new
monetary law enacted in Germany" How
could we expect silver to maintain its valne
when the two largest nations in the world, the
two most important MISUNDERSTANDING and
the United States-struck it down and took
away from its money valne and reduced it to
the basis of silver spoons and forks and plate?
We give free coinage to gold and 1t goes up
and up, and say to it: 10 triumphe!''
Here is the idea financially of the whole
world: Take away the monetary value of
silver and then say: Here is metal that is
debased and deprecated" What 1t has done?
l have read the tables to show that overpro-
duction did not do 1T, II was legislation
that did il; the settled determination by ad-
verse laws for the benefit of the capitalists
and the financial centralizationist of the world
to bring us to gold basis for their own pur-
poses. =
But there Is another consideration, and did
not intend until the Senator from Massachu-
sets interrupted me to allude to it. Argument
would be so potential as to amount TO remon-
stration before would ever agree to strike
down one section of this country and PROSTATE
1t for all time to come. II we arc TO destroy
silver there are a million people in the West
ern silveEproducing States whose livelihood is
taken away from them. 1t was said the other
day rather dramatically by an ex-member OF
this body that in the extreme WeSt the peo-
pie arc crying for bread and in New York
they are crying for gold.
| say arguments must be brought here
stronger than proofs of Holy Writ to make me
do this. If can by any possibility, by legis-
lation, tentative or otherwise, keep this great
disaster from the people, citizens of this Re-
public, of the same blood and lineage with
ourselves. ] will take the responsibility of
even mistake on my part rather than per-
petrate what consider such an outrage on
them. l know those Western States, not from
theory, but experience; l know what these
people have misunderstanding the comfort of
what was then civilization in the eastern and |
midnle states, and going there, with rifle in
one hand and pick in the other, blazing the |
pathway of civilization in the canyons of the |
Rocky Mountains. They have built up this |
industry upon the faith pledged to them by |
the people of the United States in its Consti- |
tuition and laws that the product OF those |
mines should be considered as a money metal |
metal, aud we are now asked, because the I'm |
ancial 400 I'm New York and the commercial !
classes in England think they alone intellecm-
ally are to dispose of this question, to beggar
these people and say to them: "Find some
thing else to do. We want gold, gold, gold"
No Mr.. President, will not do it. If the
time comes when aId have made a mis-
take, can at least have the consolation of
knowing that both my heart and my head
have approved the action have proposed to
take in regard to this measure,
--z---y-----------------
THE Medicine Lodge Cresset in its
last issue comes humbly to the public
door and asks the people to letits party
again enter its politicians on the pay
roll. It's plea is based on the doubtful