Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1896-07-15
Fundamental and InsuperabIe Reasons.

There are fundamental and insuperable
reasons, other than the silver plank, why
men who stand true to the sound principles
of democracy, which are and ever have
been the recognized principles of good gov
ernment, cannot accept or pretend to sup
port the platform dictated by the Altgelds
and the Tillmans and promulgated in the
name of democracy at Chicago. No true
and steadfast democrat, trained in the
party of Jefferson and of jackson, can
think for moment of pledging himself to
the securing of legislation that shall inter
fere with the right of private contract. By
adopting the clause 1--WE favor such legisla-
ton as will prevent the demonetization of
any kind of legal tender money by private
contract" the Tilmanites and Altgeldites
not only threaten to strike blow at indi-
vidual rights and to overturn all established
ideas of justice, but confess the inherent
weakness of their cause and betray their
own conviction that the money they pro-
pose to force upon the people will not be
accepted by the people.
Again, the men who drafted the Chicago
platform are not content to stop with silver.
They demand ''that the power to issue
notes be taken from the banks, and that all
paper money shall be issued by the treas
ury department" This is greenbackism,
pure and simple, revived years after the
rag baby was supposed to be dead and
buried.
Of equally grave and ominous import is
the implied purpose to ignore all demo-
cratic principle and tradition and SO change
the supremeecourt as to secure a, reversal
of the adverse income tax decision. No
democrat who remembers the hitherto un-
varying and conservative policy of the dem
ocratic party with reference to our highest
court need be reminded of the dangerous
significance Of the income tax plank in this
populistic platform which has been promul-
gated in the name OF democracy.
Equally dangerous is the proposition that
courts shall be stripped Of authority and be
rendered powerless to protect themselves
or enforce thealaws. 1t is not democratic,
but anarchistic, to oppose the use of lawful
authority in suppressing riot, in protect
ing life and maintaining respect for~the
federal government, whether represented
by its mails or the exercise of any other
proper function. The plain purpose of the
federal interference plank is to give an en-
dorsement to Altgeld and to administer a
rebuke to Cleveland for suppressing the
Chicago riot-a purpose SO plain and so
outrageous that it will receive, as it Ge-
serves, the condemnation of all law abiding
citizens.
The Chicago platform contains enough,
and more than enough, to condemn it
utterly, without reference to the silver
plank but when we come to that remark
able exposition We have the crowning
achievement of stupidity, mendacity and
false reasoning. No cause was ever before
set forth in a declaration so packed with
what is most untrue and most unreason-
able. 1t is not true, as any school boy
may learn, that the constitution provides
what materials shall be employed as money.
1t is not true that the act of 1873 demone-
tized silver, for silver had been demone-
tized and had disappeared by common con-
| sent more than two decades before. The
act merely recognized as fact that which
had already taken place, and substituted a
dollar which it was hoped might circulate
| somewhere for dollar that was not circu-
lating at all. Everyone knows that it is
not true that the .'gold standard locked
last the prosperity of an industrial people
In the paralysis of hard times" Everyone.
whether democrat or Republican, populist
or silverite, knows that this country never
had greater prosperity than it had from the
resumption of gold payments in 1879 down
to the time when the enforced purchase ot
silver had caused imminent danger of the
replacement of the gold by the silver
standard in 1893.-Mancheste Union.