The Louisiana populist., 1894-10-19

OF Mr.. Wheeler had been capable
and had taken the pains to inform
himself. he would have found that
these bills introduced by Populists
did not call for a single dollar of
taxation, but on the other hand
proposed a plan for relieving the
people of the burdens of taxation
that have been heaped upon them
by Democrats and Republicans for
the last thirty years. The Popu-
list platform demand that our clr-
culating medium shall be increased
to $50 per capita. The bills intro
duced by Populists were intended
to accomplish this object by the
free coinage of silver and gold at
the ratio of Is to /, and the issue
of legal tender greenbacks. The
passage of one or two of these
bills would have accomplished this
and at once done away with the
necessity for the passage of the
other bills. Mr.. Wheeler well
knows, if he knows anything, that
the Populist party has never advo-
Gated or demanded that our cur
rency should be increased to more
than $50 per capita. The Secre-
tary of the Treasury claims that
we now have about S25 per capita
in circulation. The Populists de-
mand that this amount shall be in
creased to $50 per capita about
the amount we had i'm circulation
in 1860. which would require that
silver be coined and legal tender
greenbacks be issued to the amount
of S1.750, 100000 The bills in
troduced by Populist Congressman
referred to by Mr.. Wheeler only
contemplated the issue of the
above amount instead of the S35.-
600, 900, 900 as conceived only by
the shriveled brain of Mr.. Wheel
er. These old mossback politicians
realize the fact that they are total
ly unable to depend on their own
treacherous records, and meet the
Populists in the discussion of the
living issues of the day, hence they
are circulating this imaginary and
foolish twaddle, called a speech by
Joseph Wheeler of Alabama.
Lately quite number of people
have written us, asking us to send
them the bills introduced by our
Congressman. Endeavor-
ing to comply with this request,
we applied to the Clerk of the
House Document room at the Cap
itol, and he informed us that the
files had been exhausted. They
have been taken out by the Demo-
cratic and Republican Congress
men to use on the stump in ridicu-
ling and slandering our party in
their usual way. Failing to find
any Populists bills on file, l con-
cluded to investigate the files of
the bills introduced by the two old
parties, and behold / found some
thing rich. The $35, 900, 900 which
Mr.. Wheeler claims for the Popu-
list bills is not in it at all. 1t is
not a drop in the bucket when COM
pared with the amount proposed to
be appropriated by the thousands
of bills introduced by Democrats
and Republicans.
During the sd and 53rd Con-
crosses the Democrats and Repub-
licans introduced something over
$4,000 bills. The record shows
that more than half of these bills
called for appropriations. With
out knowing what amount any par
ticular bill called for, we selected
the numbers of eight bills from the
Document rooms of the House and
Senate. This was impartially done
to ascertain the average appropria-
ton called for by the $4,000 or
more bills introduced by Demo-
Gratis and Republicans, calling for
appropriations. The following fig