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

PiCdO IOI COutiuudLlOu VI INC Single
gold standard. The wage workers have
seen their wages go below the living
point, their homes taken from them,
and they crowded into the army of en-
forced idlers or driven to the squalid
quarters of the tenement districts, while
the gold power has amassed untold mill
lions and grown naughty and despotic
on the necessities and misfortunes of the
poor. Yet the money power holds up
gold alone as the only hope of labor.
Every reader of the worlds history
knows that gold when it stands alone is
coward in war, robber in peace, and
a villain all the time. Through the
medium of single gold standard the
subjugation of labor and the concentra-
tion of the wealth of nations in the
hands of the few has been accomplished.
The system has desolated every country
and impoverished every people it ever
infested. There is not single exception
to this rule. Let labor glance at the
money centers of this country from
whence comes the demand for a single
gold standard, and there will be found in
the forefront of the agitation for gold a
few arrogant, naughty, domineering
aristocrats who despise the name of
labor and scorn the hand of an honest
toiler. Go on Wall Street, the nucleus of
the gold agitation in America today.
and like their prototypes in the Old
World they believe that workingman is
born with a saddle on his back and them
selves with boots and spurs to ride him
by the grace of God. Let Baron Roths-
child, the Gar of Russia and all the
oppressors of the poor in England and
Europe come to America during this
campaign and would they call on Mark
Hanna? Would they be received by the
Belmonts and the Morgans, the Wander
bits and the Sages7 Or would they call
on and encourage that matchless cham
pion of the people, w. ]. Bryan? The
natural answers to these questions ans
wers for labor all the argument the
advocates of a single gold standard can
make during thousand years.
The quality of principles and policies
in politics are never above the business
and character of the men who originate
and propagate them. The principles of
single gold standard can never rise
above the character of Wall Street. It
can never rise above the selfshness and
greed of the plutocratic combinations
behind it. The clamor of the avari-
cious Shylocks and usurers of the world
for single gold standard is the true test
of its virtue and the only measure of its
character. The agitation for a single
gold standard did not originate with
labor. On the contrary it originated
with the supercilious millionaire classes
who have for years maintained an organ
lied brigandage on labor and the honest
business interests of the country. Why
should labor be dragooned into the SER
vice of an avowed enemy on false prom
Uses and delusive theories?
The money power wants a single gold
standard for purely selfish reasons.
They know that if they can destroy sill
yer as money metal no other legislation
will be needed to change the payment
of the outstanding government bonds,
both principal and interest, from coin
to gold, and with the scarcity of gold
the government will never be able to paw
its bonded debt, and with the gold of
the country in their control they can
lock it up or send it to foreign country
and force the. government to increase its
debt at their will. The same is true of
all private debts. This scheme of the
money power, if successful, will change
all debts to gold payments. The aggre-
gate Indebtedness of the American peo-
pie is reported to be forty billion dollars,
but for the purpose of this illustration
cut it down to twenty billion, and sup
nailed by the Democratic S