The herald., 1896-07-25
CLEWS' WEEKLY LETTER
NEW YORK. July IS. 1896.


In Wall street affairs continue unset
tied, in sympathy with the disturbed
condition of politics. The revival Of ex-
ports of gold has also helped to encour-
age speculative selling. The latter.
however. appears to be transient mat
ter. The ordinary mercantile demand
for bills Is comparatively nominal, and
the current remittances are mainly for
the liquidation of loans made for the
carrying of securities. We are now on
the verge of conditions which will in
fiuence the exchanges in our favor and
put an end to gold shipments for some
time. Already advances are beginning
to be made against the growing cotton
crop, and foreign bankers show more
confidence in loans of that character
than in the last two seasons. Indeed.
there is a manifest Improvement in the
disposition at London to extend credit
to our various forms of commercial op-
erations.
The result of the st. Louis convention
has produced a distinctly favorable i'm
preston upon the foreign banking in
terest. 1t appears to have been receiv-
ed as establishing strongly preponder-
ant probability that, at least for the
next four years, the government will be
controlled by the friends of the gold
standard; which is viewed as warrant
ing the hope that the silver danger will
ultimately be overcome. The humil-
iating political exhibition made at Chi
cago has no doubt in some measure
checked that recovery of confidence for
the time being. Not SO much, perhaps,
because it is regarded as threatening
the success of the sound money cause in
the coming election, as because the
speech making and the platform ap-
peared to disclose state of popular dis
content and a violence of party atti-
tude which might be of the utmost i'm
portance did 1t truly represent the real
sentiment of the masses of the west and
the south. On this account there has
been cessation Of the London buying
of our securities since the conclusion of
the Chicago convention; and the for
eign attitude is likely to remain that of
reserve until the course of the election
canvass affords fuller means of estimat-
ing the significance of the outbreak Of
socialistic demagogism which has so
taken the country by surprise.
At the present moment the feeling ex-
cited by these Chicago performances is
much less that of concern for the fate of
the gold standard than one of alarm al
the seeming spread of hostile sectional
ism. of socialistic sentiment. of deliber-
ate reputation and of Populism In an
exaggerated form. Not a few people
have drawn from these revolutionary
planks of the platform the most peSsi-
mstic conclusions as to the future state
of the country, and that sort of alarm
ism has found its sympathizers and is
H.
turbing confidence. These, however are
mainly the conclusions of shallow OBJ
servers or hasty judges of events, who
have not fairly weighed the question
whether the millions of loyal citizens of
the south and west have degenerated to
the type freckless revoultionists pic
tured in the lurid resolutions of the
Chicago platform. These alarmists
have not seriously weighed the alterna-
tives whether such a mass q people
have become suddenly transformed into
red revolutionists, or whether the men
who got themselves Surreptitiously
chosen to represent them as delegates
have sought to make them such for their
own despicably selfish purposes. If the
sentiment of sectional and class dis
content is as unanimous among the mil
lions of western and southern voters as
it was among the delegates from those
states, it is inconceivably strange that
the fact should have been SO little known
and should have been so little expressed
through the representative press. Such
sudden transformation from order
respecting citizenship to the bold an
archie attitude expressed in the Chicago
platform is something of which we are
not prepared to concede our fellow
citizens of other sections to be capable.
II IS quite conceivable that the embar
rassment arising from the general de-
cline in the prices Of farm products may
have created discomfort and led to de-
mand for mistaken remedies. But among
Americans discomfort and reputation
ly apart; they do not join
hands in a day; nor are there any
grievances for which our people have
ever been wont to seek satisfaction
through robbery and ruin.
Our politics and our politicians, how
ever. are less pure than our people. There
are few things which they allow to stand
between them and power or spoils. If
they have lost the confidence of the peo-
pie, they know how to raise false issues
by false representations in order to win
the support of the masses most liable to
be misled and most susceptible of being
excited by infaming issues. Pre-
eminently that was the game played in
the Chicago convention. The leaders of
that gathering had no cause on which
they could appeal to the sober judgment
of the country; they therefore created a
fictitious one, expressly constructed to
appeal to the masses of our least educa-
ted population. They boldly resorted to