Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1894-10-31
NUMBER 24s
VOTE FOR WEALTH..
BY YOUR BALLOTS SHOW
YOUR THRIFT.
Every vote Cast for the Pop1list
Party VIII Add to the Wealth
OF Those Who Have Been
Robbed.

More than half the total number Of
less. having no claim whatever to the
house in which they dwell an ad-
ditional seventh whose homes are
mortgaged, only 81 per cent Of the
families of the country who own their
own homes free from incumbrance-
these are some of the startling aud
thoroughly provoking conditions 70.
vealed by the United States census
of 1891 The figures are as follows:
Number Of families, 1e. coo, 152; num-
Der OF tenants, 6,623, 635. or SO per
cent of the whole number; number Of
families whose places of abode are in
numbered by mortgages /. o96, 500, or
IA per cent; number of families whose
homes are free from debt. 4, 36a 527.o
"a per cent of the total number.
These figures include farmers and the
people who live in villages. towns
and the smaller cities The follow
ing table showing the conditions in
these respects of thirty cities of the
country. east west north and south,
OF $4,000 population and over. in
dicate how great is the disparity
among urban families:
New York represents the extreme
tendency to the concentration of land
ownership, with it's "a per cent of
homeless families subject to the ca
T1r-lnn lf ha lo Al.
age of all the cities shows that the
tenant families represent as per cent
of the total number, while the aver
age of mortgaged homes is o per cent,
and of those free from incumbranoe
a pitiful 10 per cent
Nor is this the most suggestive
lesson of these census figures In q
nation where the people sang in truth
but few short years ago
And Uncle Sam is rich enough
To give to each farm
to-day 33S per cent of our farming
population are tenants, just about the
same proportion that is fouud in Bel.
gium, France. Germany and many
other countries while in Sweden the
percentage of farm tenants falls to II
per cent of the whole number And
yet Maj. Mckinley and the advocates
of protectson boast of "'the free land
and the free homes which the bene-
ficent policy of the republican party
has encouraged and developed!''
What is the advantage, save that
which generous nature gives, of the
American farmer over his fellow who
leases his patch of ground in the land
rnled by monarch?
The close sympathy between land
and labor as indicated by the concen-
tration of the former and the increase
in the number of wage-earners which
Is its unfailing concomitant, 10 sup.
gested by a comparison of census fig
ures for the last thirty years. In 1860
wage earners represented So per cent
of those engaged in gainful occupa-
tions, including farmers; in $50 the
percentage had grown to 65, and In
1850 it had become 75-three fourths
OF the people dependent upon the re-
naming fourth for their means of
livelihood; rs per cent at the mercy
of his majesty. the landlord
The parallelism is startling, indeed,
and the ever-increasing rents suggest
the possibilities of the future If there
be not something done to check the
growing power of the few who own
the land. No sincere, courageous
friend of the people. no truly patri-
otic citizen who earnestly desires the
perpetuation of popular government
can study these figures and read their
larger meaning and not be impressed
with the imperative and immediate
necessity of such a reform as will re-
store to the people their inherent
righ is in all natural opportunities
and bring the reign of the landlord to
an end d-Chicago Times