Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1897-03-19
MCKINLEY AND HIS CABINET.

w ucu ulcu are Chllcu W pACoAN0 OE0A
the destinies of great nations, and ere we
can judge them by their acts, we must
measure them by the councillors they
summon around them. And so It IS that
we turn to the selection of Mckinley s
cabinet as throwing light upon the char
acter and future of his administration.
We find the light shed upon the pur-
poses of the new administration by the
selection of this cabinet quite unmistak-
able, for it all shines in the same direc-
ton; but the rays of light thus shed are
not rays of brilliant promise. They
point into a gloom which they do not dis
sipate and in which they are lost, and it
is along these lines that we are Fastening.
We are suffering from low prices, and
prices are to be forced lower. We are
groaning under the increased burden OF
debts resulting from the rise in the value
of the dollar and the fall in prices, and
this burden is to be made heavier. We
are witnessing confscation of the prop.
erty of debtors, and the process Of confis.
cation through still further enhance.
ment of the dollar is to be continued
1t is of all this that the selection Of
McKinley's cabinet gives promise.
At the head OF the cabinet stands John
Sherman. He is to guide over our rela-
tions with foreign states, though he has
won his fame, such as it is, from the part
he has taken in shaping the financial
policy Of the country. He started in a
generation ago as the exponent of Amer'
canism. He deprecated the policy of
currency contraction lnaugurated by
Hugh McCulloch. He stood as the pro-
tector of the interests of the producing
classes and the opponent Of the schemes
of the creditor classes for their self
ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
But change soon came over Sherman.
From the opponent of a policy of contrac.
ton calculated to enhance the value Of
the dollar. depress prices and unduly add
to the burden of our national, to say
nothing of all private debts, he became
the earnest advocate of contraction, Of
contraction not for America alone, but
for the whole world. Thus it was at the
Paris monetary conference in 1867. that
we find him urging, going out OF his way
to urge-for he was not delegate-the
demonetization Of silver. Indeed, he was
instrumental in inducing that.conference
to declare for the narrowing down of the
worlds money to the basis of gold, and
thus paved the way for the demonetiza-
ton of silver by Germany in 1S7l-73, the
restriction of silver coinage at the French
mlnts IN the latter year, and the closing
of our mints to free silver coinage during
the early part of the same year,-the
closing of our mints being directed by a
measure purporting to be mere codifica-
ton of our mint laws, fathered by Sher-
man. and put through the senate, practi-
cally without debate, on his assurance
that it made no change of moment in
existing law.
Then, as Secretary of the Treasury
under Hayes, the same Sherman who
had, but decade before, held that we
would fulfill all our obligations to our
public creditors by paying our bonds IN
paper currency and do more than full
justice to our creditors, the paper cur
rency having much greater value at the
time of the maturing of the bonds than it
had at the time it was paid to the govern
ment by the purchasers of the bonds,
strove to have all our bonds made pay
able in gold. In short, as Secretary of
the Treasury. he became the full-tledged
advocate of everything desired by the
moneyed interests, and after his return to