Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1896-10-23
Silver Threads Among the
Gold.
A Disgusted Audience.

opera house greeted Senator Stewart
last Saturday night. The make up Of
the audience was study not wanting
in interest. There were fully one hun
dred women, fifty children and seventy
! five boys below the age of twenty,
present. OF the voters present, One-haH
We're republicans who gave the most
respectful attention to ali the proceed
| lngs, even when such men as Nick
! Davidson used the occasion as a trelliS
| TO trall himself upon III an effort to
gain little cheap nOtOrlety and his
description Of the display made at the
| Bryan rally III Saginaw gave the inn
preston that he must have stood on the
! sidewalk, and by counting himself times
enough, increased the crowd of 10000 TO
Il coucOurse of $4,000.
But OF the speech proper. 1t remained
for Senator Stewart to introduce into
the campaign, as conducted here, the
| first personalities ty denouncing, Sher-
man. Carlisle, Cleveland, Hill and
Harrison as liars, betrayers of public
trust, sellers of influence, conspirators
with European capitalists to put this
country III bondage TO England and the
ROthchilds. These accommodations and
charges We're unsupported by any testi-
he has been bowling for years and that
has been refutcd a thousand times until
even by silver advocates III Congress he
is looked upon, except in the matter Of
voting as a hinderance rather than Il
help.
1t has been a standing joke in the
reporters gallery that no matter what
the business before the senate, if ne
spoke upon IT at all, the crime of ,3
would come in. And 10 bet the cigars
with each other as to the number of
minutes he would speak before he
brought it i'll.
The argument for silver was a weak
| rehash of the old, old story so poor and
insignificant as TO require no answer
| Better points-wer made by the fiat
money repudiationist and pOpocrat
doctor from over in the wilds of Elwell
who spoke against time at the opening
of the meeting. The argument i'll short
was that the act of 1913 WAS the most
infamous, damnable and accursed crime
ever committed" He forgot to say
| that he helped TO commit 1t. He eX-
planned his speech in the debate on the
money question in the Senate, June -,
| 1874, by saying he used the word gold
for specie. Even populist reading
what he said and knowing the question
i'll debate will say it was very small
hole TO crawl out of and that the truth
was rubbed off III getting through, leav-
ing his veracity i'll rags.
Why, even in the Chicago convention
shat nominated Bryan, when he
attempted to speak he was howled down
by the frenzied delegates, and when one
man from way down south moved that
the old man be given 10 minutes TO pre-
sent his side of the question: even this
poor favor was denied, there We're none
so poor as TO do him honor. What was
| true of him III the convention Is true
of Teller and the few others who left the
republican convention, they are without
influence, place or station among the
true blue Bryanites and whatever else
may be SAID of the silver men they have
not opened their ranks to the Judases
and Benedict Arnolds of the republican
party.
But to return TO the speech, up to
this point, when we stopped counting,
the senator had used the personal pro-
noun |, 90 times, Il did, ;" Il said, etc.
until we began to think he was the only
| friend that silver ever had, that in fact
he invoked the tempest now sweeping
|
coinage of silver involving an attempt
TO stamp into it twice its value is an
experiment pure and simple never tried
by any nation. Still this silver mine
owner who tried TO palm himself off as a
poor man, and while not owning "a mine
in the United States does own one in
Mexico which pays net profit of $1,000
per week, or rather he said that mine
belonged TO his wife, well we have
known mon i'll Gratiot county whose
wives owned all the property and yet
they seemed to be happy and have
plenty of money to spend.
He went on to state that free coinage
| would restore confidence, start all the
| factories, give employment to labor,
make farming remumerative and do
away with the tramp nuisance, so that
there would no longer be any hungry
cold or naked in the land, and there
were men in that audience who actually
believed it, When this craze is over il
will be as great a mystery to them how
they could have been so deluded, as it is
to us today.