The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-08-28

~t'SJ tAA9ht JuSl ttS fWcll pdSo i lttW that 50 cents Is dollar, That would not make it so, would it? It would not buy dollars worth. What is the ef- feet of that? The merchant would take care of himself. A man keeps a store down here on Broadway, and that law is going into operation tonight He summons all his clerks and buys twen- l ty-five cents worth of pencils and be- fore he opens his store in the morning he has marked up his goods to the new scale, He can do all that. But there are a great number of people, number less people who enlist our interest and some of whom enkindle syrppathies, who cannot use the pencil Take the working man. He cannot go to the payroll with pencil and mark it up, He has got to consult somebody, He has to enter into an argument. He has | got to get some other mans consent before he can mark up his wages. Then there is the pensioner-those that are receiving pensions from this govern ment for gallant deeds done in the war and others for the loss of beloved ones. i He cannot take his pension certificate and when it reads $S make it read $16. He must wait for an appeal to congress and a congress that is populistic in character would be unsympathetic. 1 (Applause.)
 He must make an appeal to congress to have his pension raised to twice what it was, before he is made equal, l what can the depositors in our sav
 ings banks, this great company of wid- ows and orphans. the people of small means who are putting by a few pen- nies against hard time in life What can they do when this change comes? Can they take their bank pass book and if 1t says $10, write $40? Not at all. Take the men who have life insurance, l A man who has providently taken out l a policy that his widow and children I might not come to want when the bread winning hand was stricken with l death, can they where the policy reads 1 $5000 make it read $10,000? No Can ] the managers of these institutions make it right with them? No. This policy coerces integrity. (Applause.) \ However honest a president of sav- ings bank may be, however full of 1 sympathy the president of life insur- ance association may be he is compell- ed to say, All of the loans of this company are sealed down to 5o-cent l dollars. We loaned dollars that were worth 100 cents; we are now being I paid in the reduced dollar.
 Although our integrity revolts against it our honesty is coerced and we must pay the widow half" My friends, these I men surely do not contemplte the ir- 1 retrievable and extensive character of the disaster and disturbance and dis
 ruption which they are proposing, for all of it is in all our business affairs
 great and simple. Take the laboring man; how full of sympathy they are him. My countrymen, never spoke a l false word to the laboring man in my 1 life. (Great applause.)
 l have never sought to reach his vote or by appeals to that part of his na- ture that will pollute intellect and con-
 science. I have believed, and I believe to-day, that any system that maintains the prices of labor in this country, that I brllgs hope into the life of the laboring man, that enables him to put by thnt l gives him q stake in the good order, in
 the prosperity of the country, is the i policy that should be our American l policy. (Applaase) I have resisted in
 many campaigns this idea that a de
 basel curr aney could help the work ingmar. The first dirty errand that a
 dirty dollar does IS to cheat the work
 ingman. eApplause.)
 My friends, cold statistical inquiry, non-partisan in it's character, was
 made by committee of the senate in | coll I committee was composed of democrats and of republicans and they set out to study as statisticians the relative prices of commodities and wages at different periods in the history of our country This investigation covered the years of 1 the war. It showed how prices of goods I went up and in what proportion labor advanced. Goods went up rapidly be- cause the pencil process is a quick pro- 1 cess.
 Wages went up haltingly and slowly because the employer has to be per suaded and the pencil won't serve. | Now, I have here somewhere mem
 orandum of some of those facts re5Llt-
 ing from that investigation. Labor in one period advanced 3 per cent. Goods
 the things the men had to huy out of l their wages for their families and their living-advanced IS per cent. Through another period the laborers' wages ad-
 vancad 10k per cent. and the price of goods advanced 49 per cent.
 In another period the wages of the laborer went up 25 per cent. and the prices of merchandise advanced 90 per cent. Tn another period the laborers' wages went up 43 per cent. and the prices of goods 117 per cent Now these statistics are the result of cold scien- l tific inquiry made by men of both par ties to determine what the truth was, and the truth they found; the enor- nous disparity between the advance of the cost of living and the advance of wages. falls on exactly with what we would conclude in advance.
 I LaboreTs, men who work, whether with head or hand, in salaried positions would do well to take these facts to heart and settle the question after that broad, deep inquiry to which MT. | Bryan invites you as to whether you want to enter into another experience such as you had during the war, when wages advanced so slowly and tedious 1 lv and the cost of yoIlr living rnoved on