The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1896-01-28

an end to such things. In 1857 the prOD
erty of the church was confscated.
The church party called in the English,
the Spanish and the French, and the
latter gave them an Emperor. But the
French have been driven out, the EN-
perOr has been shetland to-day through
out this great country, four times as
large al France or Germany, the Cath.
olic church does not own a foot Of soil
or a dollar of money. The very church
buildings, hoary, some of them, with
nearly four centuries of use, belong to
the government, and services are con
Quoted in them only by permission of
the authorities elected by the people.
Not a priest can walk the streets in his
official robes. Mexico remains Roman
Catholic in her religion, but when the
alternative was presented, whether the
church should own the country or the
country should own the church, Mexi
CO, In spite of centuries of generation
for religious authority and the infu
ence of consolidated wealth and the
ignorance and poverty of her masses,
was able to vindicate the rights of her
people. What this priestly monopoly
was to Mexico, the money power is to
the United States. The multi million
aires, the bond holders, the trusts and
mOnOpolies already Owl I'VE one-third
of the property of our country and are
reaching out for the rest. Many lead
ers they nominate and elect to office,
others they intimidate or corrupt. But
people, while patient, are not ignorant,
and If the course of the monopolies and
combinations continues unchecked,
they will wake up some morning to
EoI nC +hn GNo+h@1T1 aITrnaH @SI LN-@
that the sovereign people own the cCUn-
try and all that in it is. The Catholics
here venerated the church fully as
dividual ownership of any species of
property, but the welfare Of the people
is the highest law, and when that be-
comes imperiled, as it was in Mexico
by the money power in the shape of
States by the same deadly enemy in
the guise of multi-millionaires and mo,
~nopOlies, the manhood and the brains
and the honesty of the people will as
sert themselves and we shall not go
down under the same enemy that de-
stroyed Rome, and so many other ma
tions in the past. The world is older
and wiser.
Toe gold dollar in the United States
may well be called a mythical dollar.
Not one man in a hundred ever sees
one. 1t is not used to buy corn, or
wheat, or -four, or railroad tickets, or
dry goods. 1t is only for the sacred
use of the idle rich when they wish to
measure by a high standard, doubled
in value, the principal and interest of
bonds, which, on their face, by the con
tract, are payable in coin-i e in either
gold or silver.
In drawing these lessons from the
past experience and the present pros
perity of Mexico, there are those who
will say Mexico is inferior to the United
States in education, in civilization, and
in many other respects. And go it is
and 80 much the worse for the DIRECTORS.
For if Mexico, Notwithstanding all
these disadvantages, is prosperous and
going forward by leaps and bounds by
keeping her standard of values at the
same level, Sc much the greater is the
condemnation of the men who, in spite
of our great and manifest superiority,
have brought the curse and blight of a
long enduring depression upon us by
robbing the wealth producers in the in,
teresG of the wealth consumers, through
the device of doubling, by crooked
legislation, the value of the dollar. And
if Mexico, with $50 years of priestly
rule, 300 of which were also under q
foreign yoke, and 500 more passed
amid international dIssensions, could
assert themselves and throttle the gi-
gantic money power which oppressed
them, what cannot, and what will not,
rs millions of the foremost people of the
earth be able to do when satisfied that
they owe it to themselves and their
p~osterity to break the yoke which gals
them.
Much more might be said, and more
forcibly. WALTER CLARK.
City of Mexico, Jan. Is, 1896.