Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1896-09-24
AFFECTS FARMERS.
FREE SILVER AGITATION is SERIOUS
~ CROWOlNG THEM.

Hard to Secure ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lend
ers Chary About Renewing Mortgages
Former Dictator of Terms Becomes
the supsliant.
I'VE will bring back the good times
which you had before the crime of '73"
is favorite argument of the free sill
yer demagogue, especially when adj
dressing an audience of farmers. All
the ills and woes that mankind has
fallen heir to since the memorable day
when congress is said to have rele-
gated silver to it's natural position as
subsidiary coin are recounted and
multiplied with narrowing details for
the purpose of impressing upon the
minds of the rural voter that the panacea
for all ills is the free coinage of silver
at 16 to /. So persistently has this
been dinned into the ears of the farm
er, months and months before this
campaign opened, that it has in many
places come to be considered as an in
controvertible fact, just as the theories
that the earth was fiat or that the sun
moved were for centuries regarded as
beyond question.
Within the last few weeks, however,
there is more than an indication that
farmers are beginning to have their
misgivings on the free silver millen-
mum, either present or future. Things
are not ripening as they had been led
to believe would be the case. The
only things that mature are mort
cages, and, while in past years there
has been little or no difficulty in re-
newing these at the borrowers own
terms, this year things are just little
different. The consequence is that
farmers are doing little more than
their usual amount of independent
thinking and are not slow to discover
that the glittering promises made by
the silver agitators are only silver
plated at best, and that IL things con-
tinue to rub the wrong way a little
while longer as they have acquired the
knack of doing recently, even the sill
ver-plating will wear off and leave but
common pewter. The silver agitator
has invited farmers to look back over
which he holds out for the future.
And farmers, especially the farmers of
central illinois, have begun to look
back, and this is the picture they see.
Glance at the Past.
Away back in 1866, when the crime
of '73" was still unmatched, the great
corn belt of central Illinois was settled
~ the sturdy yeoman who, following
Horace Greeleys advice after the close
of the war, had gone west" The IL
linois Central Railroad company, the
greatest of all pioneers in this state,
had for sale sections of land from one
end of the state to the other which
were then being freely sold at IS to So
an acre. Men who knew next to moth
ing about farming beyond realizing
that it meant hard work settled upon
this soil which by dint of assiduous
labor they presently converted into
rich farm lands. While these farmers
were toiling and sweating to make the
best of the opportunities offered them,
the dark 'crime of '73" was perpe-
trated. The panic of '73 which no.
body has yet accused of relationship
to the crime" of that year, like
wise interviewed to offset the prosperi-
ty, which was setting l.. I'll over he
country. Disasters enough to
momentarily shock the verv
founda. ons of natio- commerce
fell thick and fast. Yet despite all
this havoc and ruin, lie unskillful la
hnI
businessmen" as Bryan calls them,
found themselves in 1876, three years
after the panic and crime" in a posi-
ton to sell their holdings of Illinois
lands for an average of $25 an acre,
or more than three times as much as
the land had cost in the good old
days" before the Crime of '73" was
perpetrated.
The effect Of this era of prosperity
soon became manifest. Where former
ly miles and miles of prairie farms
had been innocent of the vestige of
anything like municipality, villages
and towns sprang into existence. Men
who had gone into the farming bust
ness as a venture and who had for
saken the beaten paths of ordinary
commerce Ito go west and grow up with
the country" found themselves DOS
sessed of snug little capital upon
which to embark in more congenial
business than that of agriculture. The
businessmen" of the villages were
the men who had sold their farms,
still leaving goodly portion of their
capital invested in the shape of mort
cages on their lands. True there was
not quite so much in it for the lender
on farm mortgages as there had been
in the good old days when per cent.
to 10 per cent. interest and s per cent.
commission was the regular rate
for farm loans. But still there was
enough to warrant the retired farmers
loaning their savings or acting as
brokers for other small capitalists
seeking giltedge security for invest
ment.
Prosperity Follows the "Crime.r
For nearly twenty years under the
changed condition of affairs conse-
quent on the crime of '73" farmers
and their creditors managed to strug-
gle along somehow without any very