Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-06-26

Whether this circular is genuine or
not do not know. But I do know, and
you know, that an immense debt was
made out of the war and that Wall
street now controls the volume or
money. You also know that this great
debt was made after the war was over
by issuing bonds and burning up the
green backs-the money that fought
the war.
Hon. Robert Toombs said:
when Pendleton got up his agi-
tation in Ohio in 1867 and 1868 by de-
claring that the bonds ought to be paid
in greenbacks, because they were
bought in green backs. the bondholders
got frightened and said we must get
rid OF these greenbacks. They went
to work and had their value destroyed
they demonetized them and got them
out of the way by an adjudication OF
the supreme court. Then the increas-
| ing production of the mines in this
country came in to swell their fears,
and so they determined that as their
bonds said they were payable in coin,
gold and silver, or its equivalent at
the present standard value, they must
get rid of silver"
John G. Carlisle, once the able cham
pion of the people and an honest DEM
ocrat, in a speech in congress in 1878,
denounced the conspiracy which, he
said, seemed to have been formed here
and in Europe, to destroy by legisla-
ton and otherwise from three-sevenths
to one-half the metallic money OF the
world as the most gigantic crime or
this or any other age. Said he: Ihe
consummation of such scheme would
ultimately entail more misery upon the
human race than all the wars, pesti-
lences and famines that ever occurred
in the history of the world" Now.
Carlisle is a gold-bug-but he has not
yet succeeded in answering his own
speeches.
But here I go drifting off onto the
money question. 1t is mighty hard to
make speech even to Sunday school
class nowadays without bringing up
the story of the golden calf.
J. take it as a good sign that the peo-
pie are waking up, thinking and pre-
pairing to throw off the yoke of an Eng
lish financial system in America.
The agitation of the money question
is to-day as bitterly sectional as the
slavery question in 1860. 1t is Wall
street against the rich Mississippi val
ley, the glorious wide West and the
Sunny South-gold gamblers against
a nstion of seventy million useful peo-
pie. The East threatens to secede.
Well, turn about is fair play-the
South will save the Union this time
but not with sword and gun. We
will shell the plutocrats from the
American fortress of Liberty-the bal
lot box.
There is work for the young men of
to-day-yea, and fighting, but not with
firearms, let us hope-as great as any
work our forefathers have done.
There are problems as grave con-
fronting US as confronted our fore
fathers.
This is a government of the people,
and the people are responsible. Every
one of you here present is responsible
for his part of the government, and 1t
is cowardce and treason that refuses
to-day TO uphold every principle of the
Declaration of Independence.
Such people as we here assembled
constitute the United States of Amer
lea, and our actions help decide the
destiny Of great nation.
1t is the personal duty OF each one OF
us to see that his part in this grand
peoples government is the part of an
honest, intelligent, progressive man
hood.
Washington and Jefferson and Lin
coin were great-because they repre-
scented great principles.
The principles are greater than the
men, because they live forever, and are
eternally right.
Truth and justice are greater than
statesmen, kings or countries.
And government for the people now
on earth is the noblest study of man
kind.
Let me close with a quotation from
Abraham Lincolns speech at the dedi
cation of Gettysburg:
'Tn larger sense we cannot dedicate
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hal
low this ground. The brave men, liv
ing and dead, who struggled here, have
congecrated it far above our power to
add or detract. 1t Is for us, the living
rather to be dedicated here to the I'M
finished work which they who fought
here have so nobly advanced. 1t i.
rather for us to be dedicated to the
great task remaining before us, that
from these honored dead we take in
creased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure
of devotion; that we here highly re-
solve that these dead shall not have
died in vain; that this nation, under
God, shall have new birth of free
dom, and that government of the peo-
pie, by the people and for the people
Il. . 1. l.