Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1896-10-15

They threaten to withdraw credits, fore
close mortgages, confscate collaterals,
bankrupt industries and pauperize labor
if free coinage is adopted in this coun-
try. They invade the sacred rights of
citizenship by threatening to discharge
tens of thousands of working people for
their political opinions. On the twenty
second day of last May the authorized
mouthpiece of Wall Street, Henry Clews,
in his weekly letter, proclaimed the dis
position of Wall Street to destroy the last
vestige of free government in America.
He openly boosted that if the people
elect a two-thirds majority of congress
in favor of free coinage of silver Wall
Street will evoke conditions and events
that no congress has ever yet dared to
disregard, and that the cause of free sill
yer will be defeated when its success
seems most certain. Then like the
boasting edicts of a king he said: 1T
is on this reserve power that Wall Street
is now reposing."
In the name of labor I want to say
that we are willing that the gold gam
blers shall use their persuasive powers
among the people, but they shall not
succeed by threats, they shall not coerce
labor by any form of duress, nor buy the
presidency with Shylock's gold. These
gold gamblers come to labor from the
club rooms of the associated banks in
the form of sham angel with borrowed
robes of virtue and a stolen scepter of
authority, trying to persuade the world
that fortitude and submission combined
are lovely, that a suffering creature on
Bonded knees with teeth set to endure
every form of persecution is spectacle
worthy of sympathy and reverence. To
this counterfeit angel labor is asked to
write sad stories and pathetic poems and
yield up their lives with a martyr S
confident hope of reward but to the en-
treaties as well as to the threats of this
angel of greed and gold we reply that
submission TO evil is tacit encourage
ment of evil itself, to submit to the pain
is to sanction the torture. Submission
to wrong that cannot be righted is vir-
tue, but submission to wrong that can be
righted is crime. The working man
who is willing to sell himself into
slavery rather than suffer temporary in
convenience or incur. the displeasure of
this hybrid angel, deserves to wear the
yoke of bondage.
To the end that working people may
concentrate their forces to stay the hand
of this social robber and feel secure and
encouraged through the organized efforts
of their friends, have determined to
establish a campaign labor bureau at
Chicago. All labor organizations will
be equally respected. Able labor leaders
will be placed in the field and such lit
erature distributed as will treat our
sacred cause from labor standpoint, and
I most earnestly appeal to the friends of
labor, free silver and good government
everywhere to contribute financially and
otherwise to the support of this cam
paign labor bureau. I desire to place
one hundred or more labor speakers in
the doubtful territory and open COM
munication with the working people.
Let us meet the enemy on its own field
and steer the ship of state from the rocks
of monarchy and despotism against
which it is about to dash to pieces and
wreck the framework of a superstructure
that cost so much human sacrifice and so
much human blood to construct.
]. r. SOVEREIGN,
General Master Workman Knights of
Labor.