Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-12-18
SILVER A LIVE ISSUE.
EMONETIZATION is A MAT
TER OF TIME.
No Decline In Athe Price of Silver-Goid
Has Appreciated In Value and VIII
|. Continue to Appreciate Under the
Present system.

full newspapers owned by or controiieu
in the interests of plutocracy, and by
thousands of their paid attorneys, the
most gigantic act spoilation ever al
tempted, is by the vote Of the people
on November 5 been apparently ratl-
fed, and by means most dishonest and
discreditable; a vote of people as an
tagonistic to each other as political lie
can anywhere show, was secured to
perpetuate the wrong. Once more the
silver question is pronounced dead
by large class whose wishes have
been father to the thought 10 these
many years.
We say apparently, for we feel sure
that a vast body Of the vote cast for
Major Mckinley are ardent bimetallists
today. He would be indeed an ig-
norant man who assumes this verdict
at the polls to be a sanction of the
monstrous OPPRESSION of the sole gold
standard. Those acknowledgements
who put out the Indianapolis ticket
were the only ones who declared out
and out for the gold standard, and
even their leaders at the Chicago con-
vention endeavored to secure deciara-
ton in the platform declaring for IN
ternational bimetallism. and the great
body of them voted for the candidate
who represented that idea, even while
hating him as the embodiment of Nc
Kinleyism, which they fought with I'M
quenchable hatred in 1892. Quite ma
turally the gold-standard men on both
sides of the ocean regard 1t as an in
ternational victory. Mr.. Cleveland
and his supporters, with Baron Roths-
child and his observation-disclosures. re-
joice in the defeat of democracy, when
for the first time in a generation 1t be-
came truly democratic by contesting
for government of the people and for
the people, instead of government OF
corporations and of class interests for
class interests.
The deception of voters, the out
rageous abuse of those engaged in the
great popular movement for reform,
the lavish use of money, the coercion
of wage-earners by employers. and OF
debtors by banks and other creditors,
the locking up of money, and the pubic
threats of an awful panic sure to follow
If Bryan was elected; and the creation
of a condition nearly equal to a real
panic, furnishes an object lesson for
the American people. They can now
realize fully the power that confronted
them. Another object lesson we have
In the international congratulation eX-
tended by the class which has con-
verted Europe into an armed camp not
so much for national defense as 1t is
to keep the people down; as Senator
Teller said in the senate.
The vital question was utterly lg-
nored, and in its place we had sur
felt of senseles jasrgon about sound
money and the rank dishonesty OF the
money the people were daily using; tor
about the only money in circulation
during the campaign was silver. ana
silver certificates wrenched from our
opponents by the Bland, Allison. and
the Sherman acts)
The one vital fact SO aptly stated IN
the now historic phrase of Hon. L. b.
Reed, that we were confronted by a
struggle for industrial supremacy be
tween the yellow races using the white
metal and the white races using the
yellow metal" which to-day threatens
all western civilization, was ignored
totally. SO was the grave danger OF
false coinage, going on constantly and
increasingly as the gold price of silver
falls. This danger was so grave even
when silver bars sold at AID. per ounce
about "a cents that one of the ablest
members of the late British Royal Com
mission on gold and silver in separ-
ate paper called attention to it. How
much greater the danger when silver
fell from AID to god. per ounce the fire.
quent arrests of the counterfeiters at
tests.
Blind to all arguments, intent only
in successfully putting down the people
and defeating their aspirations for
larger opportunity for advancement,
that class now wantonly boasts that 1t
is a vote of the people for the gold
standard and that 1.-The silver craze is
dead" With Haunting banners in
scribed Mckinley and prosperity"
what will be the next verdict of a
great people in 1898, when they find
that they have been deceived?
With decreased revenues caused by
the curtailed consumption of the pro-
ducts of our own mills and factories as
we'll as of imported goods. The natu-
raj result of the impoverishment of the
people, and more particularly of those
engaged in agriculture, who supply all
food and clothing products, what can
be thought of the proposed remedies?
Higher protective duties, intended to
hold our markets for hoRe production
must lower the revenues by lessened
importation. 1t cannot stay the intense
competition of silver standard coun-
tries, fostered by an increasing bounty
in exchange as gold appreciates in
other words, as silver falls, for they
are co-relative terms.
Judging from the source of the inter-
national congratulations upon the re-
cent victory" there is little ground to