Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-09-25
CRAZY IOHN !.

he delivered 1t at Wakarusa last Saturday. lie
has been getting off the same old speech for
number of years, and this new speech, though
direct contradiction o. the statements he has
been making, is relief to the people, not be-
cause of any truths it contains, but because the
monotony has been broken. In the main, this
new speech consists of a succession of orator.
ical pyrotechnics, practically meaningless, but
there are some passages that we feel constrained
to notice because they are such glaring contra
dictions of his former speeches especially the
one delivered in the United States senate, Jan.
IA, ISoI-his great free-coinage speech. Here
are few sentences from his Wakarusa speech
81 admit things are not exactly as they ought
to be, but here and now wish to denounce,
DENY and renounce as unworthy the assertion
of an American citizen that anything but
substantial degree OF prosperity has prevailed
in this country during that period. Not man
in all Shawnee county who has not enough to
eat, is fairly prosperous, unless it be by reason
of his own indifference. | have no patience
with the calumny heaped upon us by these ira
ducers of our people"
w
idea that the people Of Shawnee county are in
better condition than the rest of the country or
not, we cannot tell. The idea would be absurd,
at any rate. Here is what he said in the SEN
ate speech above referred to, relative the accu-
mutations of wealth and the condition of the
people of this country:
''That is not the worst, Mr.. Presi-
dent. 1t the wealth has been largely &C
quired by men who have contributed little to
the material welfare of the country, and by
processes that l do not care in appropriate
terms to describe-by the wrecking of the for
tunes of innocent men, women and children;
by jugglery, by bookkeeping, by fnanciering,
by what the senator from Ohio Sherman
calls speculation this process is going
on with frghtfu and observation-disclosures
rapidity The entire industry of this country
is passing under the control of organized and
confederated capital. More than fifty of the
necessaries of life to-day, without which the
cabin of the farmer and the miner cannot be
lighted or his children fed or clothed, have
passed absolutely under the control of sydicates
and trusts and corporations composed OF specu-
lators and by means of these combinations and
considerations, competition is destroyed, small
dealings are rendered impossible, competence
can no longer be acquired for it is superluous
and unnecessary to say that if, under system
where the accumulatons distributed per capita
would be less than 81 900, 81 1000 persons OBJ
tanned possession of more than one-half of the
IL - &c
possible that others should have a competence
or an independence. So it happens, Mr.. Pres
ident, that our society is becoming rapidly
stratihed-almost hopelessly strati6ed-into a
condition of superfuously rich and helplessly
poor We are accustomed to speak of this as
the land of the free and the home of the brave.
1t will soon be the home of the rich and the
land of the slave. | cannot forbear
to affirm that political system which, under
such despotic power, can be wrested from the
people and vested i'll the few is democracy
only in name. A financial system under which
more than one-half of the enormous wealth of
the country derived from the bounty of nature
and the labor of all, is owned by little more
than 1000 people, while million American
citizens, able and willing to toll are homeless
tramps, starving for bread ,lrequres adjustment.
A social system which offers to tender, vrtuous
and Independent women the alternative between
prostitution and suicide as an escape from beg
gary is organized crime, for which, some day,
unrelenting Justice will demand atone,nent and
explanation"
Reader, do you detect and difference in the
tone of these two speeches.?
Speaking of the crime of 1873, ingalls, said