Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-06-10
POWER OF WEALTH.
HOW 1T is CRUELTY ENSLAV-
ING THE RACE.
But the Parent. Competition. Will BE
Overthrown to Make Room for n CO.
operative Commonwealth PIutocracy
Is on Its Last Legs.

A feature of the New York World OF
Sunday, April 26, was page devoted to
a symposium by nine prominent econom
ic agitatOrs giving their views of the
nations ills, presenting at the head of
the page pictures in group Of the writ
ers. Senator Stewart wrote about free
silver and the goldbugs; Mrs. Mary E.
Lease advocated populism; Dennis
Kearney, of "sand-lot fame played
upon the old anti-Chinese string; Jacob
S. Coxey talked good roads and non-in-
terest-bearing bonds; Lucien Sanial,
socialism; Samuel Gompers, trades
unionism; Senator Peffer, more popu-
ism; Coin" Harvey more silver. The
following broad survey of the indus
trial problem is from the pen OF Eugene
V. Debs:
In answer to your interrogatory as
to what l consider to be the greatest
evil of the time, and what is tha remedy
for the complaints of the discontented
masses l have to say that l agree en-
tirely with Senator Tillman in his ter
rife indictment of the money power in
the Sunday World of March l, and in
declaring that power to be the monu-
mental evil of this age, in which all
others have their source and compared
to which all others dwarf to insignifi-
cance. The widespread poverty, misery,
wretchedness, squalor, degradation,
vice and crime in all their multifarious
forms, not omitting the venality, cor
ruption and rascality among what a
perverted civilization is pleased to call
the upper classes are directly or in
directly traceable to this money power.
This power, the outgrowth Of aggre-
gated and centralized wealth extorted
from the producing masses by processes
| no less reprehensible than those en-
ployed by Captain Kidd, Jesse James
and Bill Dalton on an incomparably
small scale, makes congress and legis-
latures, dictates national and state
legislation. appoints federal and state
judges, nominates and elects the presi-
dent of the United States and compels
all its spineless vassals to do its bid
ding.
This money power has reduced the
high office of the president to market
able commodity, the supreme court to a
nest of venality and the United States
| congress to den of treason. Only a
few days ago Prof. George D. Heron,
the eminent Christian scholar. declared
| that Christ had no more reason to
scourge the money-changers from the
temple at Jerusalem that the American
people have to clean out the United
States senate. This money power, ON
nipotent and omnipresent, has even en-
| tered the church of Christ, touched the
| robed minister at the altar. blotched
his soul and frozen his heart and sent
him forth traitor to his colsecrated
VOWS. This power grows more and
more arrogant and despotic as it plum
ders. crushes and enslaves the people
while it builds its Notifications of the
bones OF its victims and its palaces out
of its piracies, until purple and fine
linen on the one side and rags and
wretchedness upon the other side define
social conditions as mountain ranges
or rivers define the boundaries of ma
tions- palaces on the hills, with music
and dancing and the luxurjes of all
climes-huts in the valleys, dark and
dismal, where the victims of mans
inhumanity to man" crouch and shiyer,
and where the only music is the dolor-
Gus "song of the shirt" and the luxu-