The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-09-09
REID AND SMITH.
Two WelI-known Editors on Features
of POpOcracy.s Platform


REID AND SMITH.
Two WelI-Known Editors on Features
of Popocracy's Platform.
CANTON, o.. Sept. 8.-The Republican
Editorial Association of Ohio met here to-
day. Hon. Charles Emery Smith editor
OF the Philadelphia Press ard ex-minls-
ter to Russia, delivered an address. Hon.
Whitelaw Reid, of the New York Tribune,
sent a letter of regret to President Brown.
Mr.. Reid's letter follows:
Dear Sir-The remembrance of nv
birthright among you touches me and l
am grateful to the Ohio Republican ed
than for your friendly persistence in re-
quiring letter when you found I could
Mr. Charles Emory smith. viii do the lat
ter SO acceptably that sou will need nei-
ther from
we nave had the four years in clover
which our friends, the enemy, promised us
in 1892. The people quite satisfied that
| they had enough of it. On the old lines
this campaign was already won. Voters
were absolutely resolved to go back to the
point where they turned off four years ago
and get into the path again. which, from
1888 to 1892, had led them to the greatest
and most widely-diffused prosperity this
country ever enjoyed Asserting the power
of the common people, they put forward as
their candidate the man whose name
meant to every one of them the policy of
those four prosperous years; and the work
was practically done.
linen DuTSt out the AGuIIanteS, Every
unthinklng and unscrupuloEs man that
was in distress, and every Jnat was in
debt, and every one that was discontented,
gathered themselves together, not unto
David, alas! but unto AItgeo They cap
tured the national convention of a his
torical party and degraded it and humil-
lated the country by asking the American
people to vote that they would not obey
the eighth commandment.
Now, when a question is submitted to
a popular vote people must infer that there
are two sides to it and that they have
ri o. m CffT n
ment or their interest inclines But there
are no two sides to the moral law. No
man. no party, has the right to put the
eighth commandment TO a popular vote to
decide, through an expression OF popular
desires at the polls, whether this Nation
debts at the rate of So cents on the dollar
and whether every private debtor shall be
at liberty to cheat to the same extent the
man who has trusted him. To propose
such vote and such decision is itself
a crime, but, having proposed it. the plain
commandment by a vote which will sur
prise those who would break it.
WICKED AND IMMORAL.
IT hope you Ohio editors will deal with
this matter in a Straightforward fashion,
and call spade a spade. Many of our
opponents are as sincere as we are and
mean to be as honest, but the thing they
have done is the wickedest and most i'm
moral public act since secession. To pay the
rs tional debt iE silver, to ray private debts
in silver, to nullify and declare invalid any
contract, however freely and honestly en-
tered into, for paying gold and to turn
53 cents worth of silver into dollar at
our mints as long as any silver mine own
erS at home or any SiiVer-burdened China
man or Hindoo from Asia chooses to bring
it to us-the effect of all this is simply
robbery. To ask intelligent and honest
men 10 vote for it is to insult them as well
as to declare that the American people
have the right to overrule Mount Sinai at
| the polls and reyeISe the moral law If thew
| want TO.
Dishonesty never paws. There are a
| dozen ways of proving it in this case. But
| first, - make the moral nature of the pro-
posals clear. to the average voter, and
! the verdict this honest and Christian Ma
| ton will give han there is of tomorrow 5
to go further and show, for instance that
real nation, not mere colony isolated
province, cannot get on with what our New
York candidate for Governor called cur
TcnCy that can't stand salt water.
I'VE sell now more than fifteen times as
much of our products to gold countries as
| take the pay for this wheat beef, pork
| cotton, corn. etc, not as row in geld or its
| equivalent, but in silver bullion to be given
| free coinage at our mints? This becomes a
question, not SO much of paying silver.
but of taking silver. Is the great Ameri,
Europe such a financial relation as India
now holds toward England. a worse
| cDe? Surely a fresh-water currency is only
fit for a people contert with fresh-watar
| commerce.
You can make free-silver men see from
| the financial history of every nation that
| ever tried, that while making more money
does initiate prices, it works both ways 1t
raises prices for what they have to buy
well as for what they have to SELL and
is apt to raise the former first and highest
The grocer raises his, figures long before
| the day laborer can have his wages ad-
vanced; and the laborer never really
catches up till the inevitable crash comes
and both tumble together. Cheap money
never did cheaper the necessaries of life
but it cheapenS the men. Look at Mexico
| China and India. Silver men can be made
to see, too that making more money does
not put it in their pockets The bullion
| owner may get hundred times more sill
| yer than is stamped into dollars but
| he viii not be any more willing TO give the
| wheat raiser a single dollar of them with
out getting a round hundred cents worth
| OF wheat for it. An ignorant voter thinks
| that when more metal is stamped at the
mint he can some how get a dollar. for
| less than what the open market calls a
| hundred cents in value
FIAT-MONEY CRAZE IN NEW FORM
The real authors of this movement have
/ Il further view. What they want is to
find some way of paying something with
nothing. 1t is merely the old unlimited
| greenback fiat-money craze in new form.
| 1t has been tried at one time or another
| by nearly every nation, and has always
| led to their ruin. 1t met it's first great
| defeat with us in an Ohio campaign led
/ made President. This time ii will be final
| ~ crushed under an Ohio soldier who will
| become President by the largest popular
majority of this generation. Vermont
| points the way.
Next to the attack on the eighth com
mandment in formidability is the attack by
/ our opponents on the Constitution and
4 courts of the United States. The protest
against the use of constitutional power for
the suppression OF riot, the proposal to
pack the Supreme Court, the attempt to
destroy the validity Of contracts-these are
| not mere demagogiSm. but they are the
formal naturaliza5 ZION in the United States
| of Russian anarchy. Little better is the
| demand that every thrifty commercial and
prosperous citizen shall be Disseminated
| against and taxed not merely once like 9TH
| er people. but twice, first on what he has
| and then what it earns. Let us be as
/ considerate as you please OF our erring
| countrymen, who have been honestly mis-
/ led, but let indulge IN disguises as
| TO the unpatriotic, un-American and revo-
| iutionary character of this whole pro-
| gramme.
There has been an in-considered appeal
| to Republicans 10 keep our distinctive prin-
l Continued ON Fourth PageD