Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-05-01
POPULISM.

The cardinal principles of the Peoples party
contained in these planks of the Omaha
platform relating to finance, transportation and
land. Soundness and ample volume are the
corner stones of the financial policy.
Upon this foundation it is proposed to rear
superstructure of general business activity, be-
ginning with work for the unemployed, thus
incre asiny their ability to consume, which by
enlarging the demand for labor's products will
increase the price of commodities, make indus
try 1emuneratve and prosperity and progress
not only possible to the few, but universally
attainabe.
How admirable is this plan contrasted with
the old party policy of contraction, with its
diminishing values, business prostration, un-
employed millions, poverty, starvation, insan-
ity, suicide and avalanche of crimes
The idle rich who would increase the value
traction thereby shrinking all other values,
should alone oppose this policy. Their only
allies can be the densely ignorant, the preju
dice-buded and the spokesman. Sad indeed
would the humane and intelligent citizen feel
i'll such company.
Government ownership of railroads and tele-
graphs is perhaps the most important economic
question of the age. Once in practical oper-
alton the benefits would be almost incredible, to
a people who are accustomed to submit un-
thnkingly to corporate extortion
Unimpeachable statistics demonstrate clearly
that present freight and passenger tariffs could
be cut one-fourth, and then yield net annual
profit sufficient to run our government without
taxation, or with duties undisturbed. A small
profit could be realized after reducing fares
from Boston to San Francisco to ten dollars
first class, and from New York to Chicago to
less than two dollars.
Think OF such saving in freights as would
enable the consumer to buy the necessities of
life more cheaply, and the producer at the same
time to realize more for his productions.
Express and news lines would bear parallel
reductions. Such are the demands of the
Omaha platform, and who should antagonize
them but a swarm of railroad Officials, whose
princey salaries are pauperizing the producers
and consumers of our land?
American soil for American home-seekers
and not for alien landlords or domestic monop
olies, is so eminently just, so purely patriotic,
that only some fossiiferous petrefaction of the
dark ages would think of offering opposition.
But greater than any single principle, ,grander
than the published creed and charter of our
political faith, is the heroism with which our
rank aud file brave ridicule, social ostracisnl,
and loss Of employment, rather than renounce
their convictions, while NO less admirable in
this age of crngng sycophancy is the lofty
hunantarianism voiced by every prominent
apostle Of Populisln, and their unselfsh efforts
to substitute the helpful hand of cooperation
for the baleful effects of co npetition; and to
liza stem the era when the merciless trampling of
the weak beneath the feet of the powerful
IN II give place TO the noble uplifting of all
mankind into the sunlight Of Intelligence and
rrogress-of peace and universal Brotherhood.
Garnett, Kansas. w. H. MELLEN.
--Norton's Monthly Sentinel, Joliet, Ill.