The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-08-14
FROM GEN. WEAVER.
He Exhorts Reformers to Take
COurage-The Battle
Is On.
AFTER SIX MONTHS HEAVY
FIRING NOT A MAN HAS
BEEN LOST.


projectiles have not penetrated or
cracked a single plate in the reform
armor. Cleveland, Carlisle, Sherman,
Eckles, Allison, Mclaughlin and host
Of lesser lights have all spoken. Bankers
and brokers' conventions, boards of trade
and gold standard literary bureaus have
kept up continual fusillade for full
half year. but they have failed to break
our line or to bring down a single one Of
our gunners. Their stale platitudes have
all been caught and punctured like so many
puff balls. From a thousand platforms
their sophistries have been riddled and
riven and given to the four winds. There
are hundreds of farmers and laboring
men, thanks to the revival of economic
learning during the past twenty years,
who can answer and who have answered
the ablest of these champions point for
point and speech for speech. The speeches
Of Carlisle uttered years ago, and those
Of Allison and Sherman in days lang syne,
have risen up like gibbering ghosts to
fully answer and give the lie to all these
apostate statesmen are saying at the pres
ent time. In fact there are two Carlisles,
two Allisons and two John Shermans,
those of former years, strong, agile de-
tenders of the weak and the oppressed,
and the fallen, crouching sycophantic
apologists of today who, to further a bad
cause, are now masquerading under
names once made great by services rem
dered in their better days in behalf of tha
people. They are now sowing to the wind
and are certain to reaRa cyclone of pOpu-
lar indignation.
The insincerity of the leading advo-
Gates of the gold standard is apparent
upon the face of everything that they
say. 1t is plain that they are depending
upon two things for victory-the money
power of their hackers and the terrors
of the party lash. BY the former they
control the machinery of the heretofore
dominant parties and through it they
WELD the power of life and death over
the debt ridden, homeless and helpless
people. The latter empowers them to
visit the slightest assertion of personal
independence with the terros of the polit.
cal blacklist, petty boycotts, prosecutions
and business Ostracism.
The writer has studied with care all
the speeches delivered Of late by the
champions of the gold standard. Their
utter hollowness and lack of breadth,
candor, depth and grasp must be appar-
ent to all candid readers. They bear a
central trade mark as though made
to order in some gold standard sweat
shop and sent out to be committed and
detained before the people. They one
and all ignore and leave out of the dis
cussion the following important factors:
The glaring inadequacy of the pres
ent scale of wages, the ruinously low
range of agricultural prices and the bale
full effects of such conditions upon the
life, morals and safety of society
The fact that 52' per cent of the families
in the United States are homeless, and that
at the present rate of wages and oppor-
tunity for employment they have will
never be able to buy back their lost in
heritance.
The vast army Of the unemployed who
are kept in enforced idleness as reserve
force for plutocracy to fall back upon in
case of strikes and lockouts, and as
kind of blazing hell of torture into which,
those now employed may expect to be
plunged If they are not obedient, docile
and contented.
The fact that the aggregate Indebted
ness Of the people reaches at conserva-
tive estimate, $4,000, 100000 with an
| average interest rate of per cent, most,
ly payable quarterly and half yearly,
which involves an annual interest charge
of over $2,O0O,OOO,OOO.
That this interest sharge alone
amounts to more than double the sum Of
| money in actual circulation among the
people.
That it is shown by extra census bull
letin No. II that the annual interest
| charge on real estate mortgage indebted
startling sum of $490,OOO,O00, which is
| nearly one-half of the total sum of money!
| in actual circulation.
That federal taxes alone eat up annual
| ly over $4OO, 100000 more. The relation
which these vast sums bear to our vol
| ume of money, and the fact that prompt
payment of interest and taxes is always
exacted, and that this money returns but
| slowly through the sluggish channels to
| the people.
The amount of ready money necessary
| to enable the railroads, which are but a
single arm of our commerce, to do spot
cash business and to keep their system in
successful operation; and that this money
| passes at once, as conduit, to Eastern
money centers and that the profits result
| ing from it's use largely stay there.
The production of the precious metals
as compared with their increased con-
sumption, growth of population, and in
| crease of business.
The fact that modern facilities for in
| communication between all parts of
| our vast country call for an immense in
crease of circulating medium as cOmDared
with the sluggish, plodding days of the
coveredlwagon and the stage coach. There
is not one of these gold standard cham
pions who would be willing to give, or
ever has given to the public an honest and
| impartial statement of the amount of cir
| culating medium at the close of the war
as stated by Secretaries McCulloch and
| Fessenden nor as subsequently frankly
told by ex-Comptroler Knox.
| They ignore the important truth that
| the circulation of our currency at that
| time was confined to less than rs, 600, 900
people residing in the Northern states.
They close their eyes to the fact that
our money using population is now TO-
| 100000, which shows an increase of 100
per cent in such population since the bu-
| giles of the two armies called us to peace,
| and that in point of fact not one dollar
has been provided for this vast addition
of $4,000, 900 souls.
| They shut their eyes to the effect Of a
| plentiful currency as compared with a.
restricted volume of money as plainly set
forth in the history of England during her
| rs years in Napoleonic wars, and in that
of the United States during our late war
| These mighty witnesses condemn them
| and they stubbornl1 refuse to hear either
| All these important considerations are