The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1896-10-30
The Battle of the Ballots.

Before another issue of the MIDLAND
JOURNAL the last great contest, of the
many great pitched battles that have
been fought between the powers of dark
ness and the powers of light, will have
taken place The powers Of darkness
have ever had gold for an ally, and on
that side have been arranged greed, sell
fshness, sordd ambition, injustice and
the inveterate foes of human rights.
These battles have been fought with diff
ferent weapons at the different periods in
the worlds history. In its more barbar-
Gus and ignorant eras, war with the sword
and implements of wholesale murder was
waged against the struggling masses, con-
tending for their birthrights. Gradually
as the light of intelligence showed the
way the masses have located their natural
enemy and directed their attacks against
him with greater degrees of success, until
the world has almost reached the begin
ming of the twentieth century.
Dsarmed of the sword the enemy to
the human race, with gold as ever in all
the past his shibboleth, the attack is being
made upon the rights of man by decep-
ton, cunning, temptation and the power
of bribery. The people have at length
reached vantage ground and command
ing position and find themselves armed
with the ballot. The powers Of darkness
panoplied in their gold arnior, find them
selves confronted by force they have
never before had to meet when the
field was so clear OF every obstruction
and ambush 1t is now the gold party
with its pride, its arrogance, its assump-
TONS its usurpations, its false pretense,
its duplicity, its thinly yelled cruelty
arrayed against the rights of man.
There are but comparatively few who
do not comprehend the conditions which
confront them But there are still few
who do not and continue to bow before
this Baal of gold. A few of these who
linger in the scattered and broken ranks
of superstition are farmers, class of toll
ers who have felt i'll every age which
history chronicles, the yoke of this slave
master, gold, more heavily than any other
class They have been ground down and
stamped upon by the arrogant and cruel
power of wealth and privilege more
severely, more savagely than any other
class, and still i'll the light of the present
era we find a few who are too weak i'll
will power to desert the service of their
old master and take their position among
the hosts of freedom.
The battle of the ballots that is to be
fought next Tuesday between manhood
and the powers of darkness will be the
greatest, notwithstanding bloodless, that
was ever joined between the powers of
darkness and human oppression and the
powers of light justice and the rights of
man. That the rout and defeat of the
gold power will be the greatest ever re-
corded in history, none who behold with
clear vision has for single moment
doubted. The battle now pending will be
more disastrous to the powers of darkness
and the enemies of mankind than any
preceding defeat that arch enemy, wealth
and privile, has ever sustained.
This defeat which they stand on the
brink of means pursuit and humiliation.
There will be no patched up truce after
the battle as in the past, but this old
tyrant of gold and privileged wealth will
be pursued to his Businesses, disarmed
and made captive to labor i'll the future in
the cause of humanity, and not to rob and
abuse mankind as i'll the past.
This enemy has enshrined its idol in
gilded prison like the Grand Lama, who
delivers his oracles to delegations of pill
grinls, whose darkened meaning is inter
preted by the goldbug priests to bewilder
and mislead the people. But the idolatry
of the old past has almost disappeared i'll
the sunlight of intelligence, and from the
western bounds of New England to the
Pacific, and southwark to the gulf, the
hosts of freedom under the banner of
Bryan will sweep the land. The defeat of
the gold crowd will be. appalling to them
and amazing to the world. The battle of
the ballots OIL Tuesday next will be the
battle of Armageddon to the gold trust.