Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1896-06-26
THEY WILL PASS HIM BY.

gates at large from Indiana to the Chi
cago convention calls to mind an i'm
portant event both in the history of the
present national administration and in
the public life of the senator. That name
| is inseparably connected with the men,
orable contest IN the United States SEN
ate over the bill Internationally repeal
ing the purchasing clause of the
Sherman law, while the passage
Of that measure is inseparably
connected with the public life
of Senator Voorhees,. The people every
where who had kept fairly we'll posted
on political affairs were absolutely as
founded when the information that Dan
lei w. Voorhees,, the tall sycamore of
the Wabash" who had seized onto the
issue of the free coinage of gold and sill
yer at 16 to and upon it fought his way
into the United States senate, was to be-
come the champion in that body of the
presidents clear cut proposition to strike
from the statute books the last vestige
of law recognizing silver as money. 1t
was thought that surely there was some
mistake somewhere. The idea of Voor-
hees championing the cause of gold mon
ometallism was hard to make take root
in the public mind. After the announce
ment and until the bill reached the SEN
ate scarcely anybody would give Gre
dence to the report.
But sure enough the once eloquent and
able advocate of the restoration of silver
to its constitutional place alongside of
gold as money of final redemption came
forward in the senate as the special rep
resentatve Of the presidents policy and
no artio aha Of ba III f1ot
was to stop the outflow of gold, restore
confidence, kindle fires in the idle fur
naces, check falling prices supply work
to the millions of honest laborers tramp
ing in pursuit of employment, open the
doors of broken banks, supply market
for the products of the agriculturists at
remunerative priees-in short, the bill
that was to prove the panacea for all our
| ills.
The voice that had been so often raised
| in the interest of the people and the peo-
pies money was heard in the senate
pressing for the passage of a measure
purely in the interest of the international
| gold trust. Barrels of editorial lauda-
tions from the press specially interested
in getting such legislation passed by con-
gress as the combine represented in the
| United States by J. Pierpont Morgan
desired were forthcoming. Newspapers
| that had never before discovered any
particularly great qualities in the man
began to vie with each other in the effort
| to say the prettiest things about the
great senator from the Hoosier State.
Washington correspondents were in
structed to boom 1.-THE tall sycamore of
| the Wabash" and the booming pro-
ceeded according to order. The battle for
and against unconditional repeal waged
warm and waxed hot But notwith-
| standing all the booming and praise the
| goldbug press was lavishing upon Sena-
| tor Voorhees,, some of his old comrades
| in the senate who had stood with and
| fought alongside of him for free coinage
| in the past, and the press of the country
that was standing by the people and not
representing the gold trust, was daily
| and furfously prodding him.
Things got so warm in the senate and
| the fate of the bill began to grow so
! doubtful that the champion of the policy
| of the occupant of the White House was
| forced to demand of the president the
right to inform his comrades and the
country and his constituents in Indiana
why it was that he, heretofore and at
| the time avowed advocate of the free
| coinage of gold and silver should insist
upon the passage of a measure which
was to completely destroy silver as a
money metal Rather than see the meas
ure defeated and the opportunity to graf
| ify the gold trust pass and to make a
show of good faith towards him, the pres
| ident consented for the reason to be
made public, and promptly the deluded
| senator from Indiana announced that the
| administration desired the passage of the
| bill in order to clear the way and make
| possible the complete redemption of the
party's pledge to giveIthe people the free
| coinage of silver Then 1t was that the
1 less tcredulous came to understand why
| the stalwart friend of silver from the
| Hoosier State was so valiantly battling
under the yellow flag. He had been de-
4 ceived, but the time had not arrived for
4 him to realize it. The announcement,
while not generally credited as being
really what the administration intended,
had the effect of helping the bill along,
| and 1t finally became a law. How far 1t
has fallen short of doing for the country
what was promised for 1t is familiar
| story to everybody and sad, sad reality
| to millions of people. 1t is not likely that
the brilliant senator from Indiana will
ever be able to recover from the damage
done himself politically by permitting
| himself to be deceived as he was in that
/ instance, but be 1T said to his credit he
| is earnestly engaged in the effort to re-
pair as far as possible the damage re-
1 sulting to the people as a result of the
passage of the measure he championed,
/ which completely struck silver down,
while laboring under the impression that
he was actually engaged in a patriotic
| struggle for the rights of the people. We
will wager a silk hat against glass of
soda water that neither Hill nor Whitney
nor any other member of the advance
guard of the administration at Chicago
| will dare approach the tall sycamore of
| the Wabash" with proposition to make
a platform the financial plank of which
| declares for anything short of the free
| coinage of silver at 16 to 1.
/