Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-06-24

The proposition that the Peoples
Party attempt to make the coming ma
tional campaign upon the single issue
of free coinage involves the very ex-
istence of our organization. Populism
was born of the dire necessities of the
great common people. 1t voices the
protest of millions against a long
series of expressions and usurpations,
that, If continued, will compass the
disruption of the republic, the down
1all of self-government, and the de-
struction of constitutional liberty.
Like all great reforms, it sprang
from the so-called sub-stratum of our
social fabric, those who from long suf-
tering have developed a marvellous
power to feel rather than to reason
to see rather than to grope blindly.
The so-called higher classes-the rich
and educated, with here and there a
rare exception-are conservative. Fa-
Vorltes OF fortune and the recipients of
countless unearned blessings, they de-
sire no change. They are above the
terrible grasp of extreme necessity or
the appalling sense of utter destitu
tlon that burns like consuming fire
INTO the very vitals of the suffering
poor They realize little, and many
care less, of the burdens that gall and
bow and crush our common people till
the pathos of their heart cries becomes
the fountain of a peaceful but far
reaching and utterly resistless tide of
reform, or the bitterness of their indig-
nant protests crystallzes into curses
that form the battle cry of bloody rev.
olution.
The Omaha platform was evolved
from such conditions. Its preamble
volses the dire extremity of millions
who have suffered till they feel and
know. It's demands embody the high
est wisdom born of the terrible eXpe-
riences of adversely and intuitively and
unerringly grasp the solution of prob
lens that have baffied the most pro-
found philosophy. 1t is not a mis-
take. 1t is not an accident. 1t is the
vox populi that will be written as the
voice of God in American history. It
must be needed in its entirety and
without one jot or title of diminution.
To ignore it is to turn back for half a
century the hand of political progress
upon the dial of reform. To cast away
all but one of its sacred principles, and
that by no means the most important
one, is a surrender that will be stig-
matized as cowardice or treason by an
indignant and outraged people. A VIC
tory at such cost would be but dis
astrous defeat-a degrading and de-
spicable scramble for spoils. 1t would
result in the utter disruption of our
party and it's absorption by the old
parties. that would then, as now. be
under the complete domination of the
enemies of actual reform
What has the Democratic party ever
done that we should consent to be
swallowed up by it, or any part of it,
and become the mere tool of tricksters
and spoilsmen who would sell the peo-
pies birthright for political pottage?
Why should the silver kite, with its
ponderous tail of old party prejudices
temporarily concealed by a free-coin-
age attachment, expect the Populists
to furnish string with which to fly it
to victorious attitudes, merely for the
sake of routing an enemy that is no
more wicked and not as despicable as
we would be after discarding all our
principles but one, at the dictation of
political leaders who have always de-
nounced US as either fools or fanatics?
The single plank advocates tell us
Napoleon always whipped his enemies
in detail. True; but was he ever guilty
of the supreme folly of surrendering
every strong. strategic position to the
foe on the eve of great battle? Free
coinage is important as an index that
an obstruction has been thrown across
the destructive current of contraction,
but the people demand more than this.
They demand justice, and justice re-
quires not only that contraction cease,
but that expansion begins The dis
ease that has prostrated the nation re-
quires stronger and more active rem
edies than free coinage more
immediae in its effects.
When a cord is drawn so tightly
around human throat that death is
imminent, it is not enough that il he