The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1896-01-21

ned as that of the monopolies and the
money power in the United States to-
day, came to own absolutely one-third
of all the property in this country, and
controlled the balance. The masses
were kept in ignorance and the leaders
and the intelligence of the country
were intimidated or bought. But
there comes an end to such things.
In 1859 the property of the church was
confiscated The church party called
in the English, the Spanish and the
French, and the latter gave them an
Emperor. But the French have been
driven out, the Emperor has been shot
and to-day throughout this great coun-
try, four times as large as France or
Germany, the Catholic church does not
own a foot of soil or Il dollar OF money.
The very church buildings, hoary,
some of them, with nearly four centu-
ries of use, belong to the government,
and services are conducted in them
ONLY by permission of the authorities
elected by the people. Not priest can
walk the streets in his official robes.
Mexico remains Roman Catholic in her
religion, bat when the alternative was
presented whether the church should
own the country or the country should
own the church, Mexico, in spite of
centuries of veneration for religious
authority and the influence of CONSOLE
dated wealth and the ignorance and
poverty of her masses, was able to
vindicate the rights of the people.
What this priestly monopoly was 10
Mexico, the money power is to the
United States. The multi-million-
aires, the bond holders, the trusts and
monopolies already own over one-third
of the property of our country and are
reaching out for the rest. Many lead
erS they nominate and elect to office,
others they intimidate or corrupt. But
our people, while patient, are not igno-
rant. and if the course of the monopO-
lies and combinations continues un-
checked, they will wake up some
morning to find, as the Catholic
church did here, that the sovereign
people own the country and all that
i'm il is. The Catholics here venerated
the church fully as much as we ever
did the rights of individual owner
ship of any species of property, but
the welfare of the people is the highest
lied. as it was in Mexico by the money
power in the shape of the church, and
as it is in the United States by the same
deadly enemy in the guise of multi
millionaires and monopolies, the man
hood and the brains and the honesty
of the people viii assert themselves
and we shall not go down under the
same enemy that destroyed Rome, and
so many other nations in the past.
The world is older and wiser.
The gold dollar in the United States
may well be called a mythical dollar.
Not one man in a hundred ever sees
one. 1t is not used to buy corn, or
wheat, or flour, or railroad tickets, or
dry goods. 1t is only for the sacred
use of the idle rich when they wish TO
measure by high standard, doubled
in value, the principal and interest of
bonds, which, on their face, by the
contract, are payable in coin. G. in
either gold or silver.
In drawing these lessons from the
past experience and the present pros
perity of Mexico, there are those who
will say Mexico is inferior to the
United States in education, in ciyiliza-
ton, and in many other respects. And
so it is-and so much the worse for the
directors. For if Mexico, notwith-
standing all these disadvantages, is
prosperous and going forward by
leaps and bounds by keeping her stand
ard of values at the same level, so
much the greater is the condemnation
of the men who, in spite of our great
and manifest superiority, have
brought the curse and blight of q
long enduring depression upon Us by
robbing the wealth-producers in the i'm
terest of the wealth-consumers
through the device of doubling, by
crooked legislation, the value of the
dollar. And if Mexico, with $50 years
of priestly rule, 300 of which were
also under a foreign yoke, and so
more passed amid international dis
sensions, could assert themselves and
throttle the gigantic money power
which oppressed them, what can not,
and what viii not, rs millions of the
foremost people of the earth be able to
do when satisfied that they owe it to
themselves and their posterity to break
the yoke which. gals them.
Much more might be said, and more
forcibly.
WALTER CLARK.
City of Mexico, Jan. IS, 1896