Democratic Northwest and Henry County news. [volume] (Napoleon, O. [Ohio]) 1894-1905, 1896-09-10
DEMOCRATIC NORTHWEST NAPOLEON o. SEPTEMBER TO- 1896

ePOhel OlilbN lOT EXISTING cOnQltlOnS.
1t would be well 10 heed these, while
You are denouncing them. for they
will continue, although your power
and your money may defeat the sue
cesstul expression Of the popular
will in 1896.
Now sir, permit me in turn to offer
word of counsel Dishonor and
disorder will never come in this
country unless the just, the fair, the
reasonable demands of its plain peo-
pie are denied them. The yeomanry
OF the West and South are neither
socialists nor anarchists; they are
Americans. In the West they are
descended largely from the best
| stock of New England and are at
tached with passionate devotion to
the institutions and the welfare of
the Republic. They are it's defen-
ders In times of war, and its support
ers In times OF peace. They are fa-
miliar with its history, with the pri-
vat1ons and struggles of its founders.
with the patriotism and heroic sac.
rifices OF its preservers; they have
builded the great commonwealths of
the nation, East, West, South and
North by their enterprise, their in
dustry, their indomitable pluck and
constant endeavor they have ex-
pended their best years in efforts to
improve their condition, to accumu-
late a little property for wife and
| children, and to make the path of
| the loved ones who succeed them
less toilsome and thorny than their
own; they have done their duty as
citizens and honest men; they have
ever upheld the supremacy of the
law and rights of the individual;
they have built schools, supported
churches, encouraged improvements
and everywhere upheld and extern
ded common civilization.
But in spite of their toll, their self
denial, their earnest efforts and
rigidly economical management of
affairs, they have for years felt their
substance slipping away from them.
Earth has been fruitful and nature
generous; the seasons have come and
gone; the fields have been sown and
harvests gathered; cattle have multi
piled and waxed fat upon thous-
and hill-sides, yet the task of life has
become harder with the flight of
years and the approach of old age.
Income has fallen as crops and cat
tie have increased in quantity; it has
passed below the point of expendi-
ture; the mortgage has become nec-
esary, and it has come to stay; pay
ment of the annual interest thereon
and of increasing taxation is more
and more difficult; the wife grows
old and worn; her fading cheeks and
faded dress present a sorrowful con-
trast tosswhat the ambitions of earlier
days had pictured; the children, dis
couraged and disheartened, have
drifted to the cities, there to swell
the ranks of the unemployed, the
vicious and the dissolute; prices fall
and stop and fall again; tariffs and
tariff reforms have alike been tried
and abandoned. The declension
continues; manufacturing pursuits
show similar signs of depression;
they close down, or work on half
time; the railways find little support
| from local business; fewer trains are
run over them and fewer hands en-
ployed; the Receiver is in active de-
mand everywhere; everything de
clines save interest, taxes and the
products of the trusts; relief has been
sought in all directions, but in vain.
Suffering and hardship are some
times the spur to information, as
necessity is said to be the mother of
invention. The producers have
learned by investigation the funda-
mental cause of their condition.
By cunning system of legislation
they have become pawns on the
worlds great financial chessboard.
Great Britain has brought them into
CALLING competition with silver-using
countries by giving the latter boun-
ty on all their products eqnal to the
difference in exchange between gold
and silver. By demonetizing the lat
ter, the former is alone the primary
money for the payment of debts and
the sale of commodities. The money
and property of the country is thus
being gradually contracted in few
hands, which control every depart
ment of the government, and shape
legislation to suit their own inter-
ests and purposes. The government,
in the language of Mr.. Carlisle in
February, 1895, is ''at the mercy of
the bankers" The masses realize,
as they never did before, that their
financial and material salvation de-
pends on a radical change of condi-
tions. They propose, however, no
new, untried reforms; they desire
return to the conditions of better
days; they demand restoration of
the laws under which the nation
grew and prospered; they intend to
control their own government as
their fathers did, and thus give thrift
and labor and honesty and enter
prise the opportunities guaranteed
to them by a free Republic. Men
like yourself are opposing and de-
nouncing these people; you are ac-
cusing them of unworthy motives, of
disloyalty, of treason, because they
deny your right to superiority before
the law, to bring them into condi
tion of abject servitude through the
manipulation of exchanges. You
vilify them because they will no
longer submit to existing conditions,
because they object to further con-
troll of presidents and secretaries by
New York and London syndicates,
you declare them to be the votaries
of reputation, because they deny
your right to confscate. You are
alarmed lest they shall become sue
cessful, and out of your boards of
idle money you are contributing
millions to be used criminally and
corruptly for securing their defeat.
You may succeed in this attempt for
yet a little longer; you may tighten
your bands upon the seething mass
of discomfort, and coEfine its pent-up
forces for the present, and then con-
gratulate yourself that at last there
is an end of it all. But remember
that when the accumulated wrongs
of a great people find no lawfulre reme-
dy,-when the cry for bread is al