Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-02-10

| creasing army of barnacles, is causing
taxation under the British Empire to
| approximate to that under the Roman
Empire. Lastly, Mr.. Hodgkin points
to the fact that the nucleus of sturdy
| British soldiers is disappearing from
the British army, just as the nucleus
of Italian soldiers disappeared from
the Roman army. Il Mr.. Hodgkin and
other eminent British authorities are
right. that Empire exists as parasite,
and decay and dissolution must follow.
On the night of January 9th the
National Association of Manufacturers
of the United States gave a dinner at
| the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in honor of
the President of these United States,
at which that distinguished gentleman
made a speech. The occasion was
| conducive to oratory. The viands and
the wines must have been superlative,
for no man was allowed to partake of
them unless he could first put up if
teen dollars of the currency of the
realm. The President was in fine fet-
tie. As he glanced about him at a
scene resplendent with light and color;
as he looked upon the banks of roses
overlooking the air with sweet odors
and dazzling the vision with a warmth
of color to be found nowhere else save
in Fairy Land; as he raised his eyes to
the bOxes-the room had been fitted
for theatrical purpOses-flled with the
beauty of great metropolis clothed
in silk attire and blazing with jewels;
as he beheld the sumptuous feast
spread in his honor-his heart was
lifted up as was the heart of Belshaz-
Ear in the midst of a like scene so
many centuries ago that chronology
loses itself in trying to keep track of
them. Why should his heart not have
been merry? Were not his henchmen,
the trusts, at his side? Were not the
Factory Baron and Money Lord in
obsequious attendance? Was he not
their Napoleon who was to continue to
conquer uncounted millions from the
dull clods that till the soil, delve in
the mine, or wear their lives to
premature ending In the factory? No
wonder that his countenance glowed,
that his spirit leaped forth, and that
speech was easy to him! 1t was emil
Dently appropriate that on such an oc-
casion as this, with the irrefutable ev-
licences of prosperity pressing about
him on every hand, he should declare
from a full heart: That nothing
should ever tempt us-nothing ever
will tempt us-tO scale down the sa-
cred debt of the nation through a legal
technicality. Whatever may be the
language of the contract, the United
States will discharge all its obligations
in the currency recognized as the best
throughout the civilized world at the
time of payment" 1t would have been
surprising, indeed, if such oratory be-
fore such an audience had not been
crowned with the laurels of long and |
continued appliances. To the expatri- |
ated New England farmer with memo
ries of an abandoned home rotting |
among the Massachusetts hills. around |
whose fireside his boyhood and early |
manhood were spent, and whose pre-
cincts he had to leave, not because the |
common mother had refused food to |
her offspring, but because a thieving |
system of finance had diverted her
bounty into the pockets of an unscrup-
ulous few, many of whom constituted
the applauding audience of William
Mckinley on that January night. his
Oratory will bring mixed feelings. The
shout of exultation that rises to his
lips may be restrained by the thought
that the sacred public debt has been
scaled up until it will now take many
millions more of the products OF him
self and of men like him to discharge
it than it would have done at the close
of the war prosecuted for the Union.
The reflection that if the sacred value
of his ancestral home had not been
scaled down to accomplish this until
be haG to leave it, unsold, and move
away from it, he might now be dwell
ing among the hills of his beloved New
England, instead of on a bleak Dakota
prairie. may cloud the mirror of his
loyalty to the party of the trusts and
the robber metal. The locked-out New
England mill hand will not throw the
crown of his hat quite so high on read
ing this speech as he did in 1896 when
be was periodically fighting Bryan and
Free Silver, for since then his sacred
wages have been scaled down until