Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1898-03-18

metallism asks no unreasonable or i'm
possible thing. 1t does not invoke
the fiat Of government to create value
but it does demand that the law shall
give the same uses to both gold and
silver; and it knows, with the assur.
ance OF common sense and the support
OF all previous history, that if you give
gold and silver the same rights, if you
fashion them into equally serviceable
instruments for the employment oil
mankind, you will create an equality
of use for them and therefore an
equality of value.
Abraham Lincoln declared, when the
war was about to close, that he fore.
saw experiences for the republic in the
presence of which the danger that had
threatened its life in the dark days oi
the Civil War was slight and easily
surmountable. He declared that he
foresaw the growth of inordinate cor.
porate greed and the formation of an
oligarchy of wealth, and that, consider
ing these things, he trembled for the
fate of his country. My fellow citizens
those conditions thus foreseen by the
unerring judgment of our martyred
President have come in the tide oil
time, even as he feared. The power oil
selfish, insatiate wealth is around about
us everywhere. While we wage nc
war against property, no war against
the rich as such, We do protest, in the
name of humanity, in the name OF
the liberty of our institutions, wherein
alone there resides any hope for the
future of the race, against the absolute
enthronement of plutocracy, entrench-
ed and fortified by the special privileges
and immunities granted by the laws
which it itself has made and justified
to involve the destruction of the pro-
ducers and the yeomanry of the coun-
try and, Herewith, the laws OF the very
birthright which the sufferings and
deeds OF our ancestors preserve to us.
The great structure OF the Roman
empire, with all its system of relatively
enlightened laws, its arts, literature,
its progress, toppled to the dust chiefly
because long continued appreciation
of money ruined the producers OF the
Roman world, put all the property
into the hands of the few, reduced the
yeomanry to slavery, destroyed the
great middle classes of society and left
a plutocracy poised unsteadily upon a
mob OF serfs and beggars, resulting in
a condition in which liberty never was
preserved and never can he.
1t sometimes seems to me that
these analogies from old-time ex-
periences of the world are overdrawn
and that there is no warrant for ap-
plying them to our own case. But,
my friends, we are not exempt from
the weaknesses of human nature; sell
fishness still. unfortunately, rules the
human heart, and if permitted to have
its way will destroy even the fellow
men OF those who cherish it. The
evils that have overthrown other
civilizations are menacing ours to-
day. Under different means, but on
precisely the same fundamental prin.
ciples, the same causes are working
out the same results. When Rome
fell, 1900 men owned all the property
in the Roman world. To-day, as
shown by the figures of our census,
and by the authority of men whose in
vestigations are unchallenged, 25,OOO
men own more than half of all the real
and personal property in this republic;
l per cent. Of the population owns
more than the other 80 per cent. and
4,047 families possess seven.tenths as
much as IL ,593, 1897 families. Looking
at the proposition from the national
standpoint the prospect is equally dis
couraging. It is agreed that our
foreign Indebtedness, public and
private, in the year 1869 aggregated
about 1,4O0,O 100000. The statistics
show that since that time we have ex-
ported in excess of what we have i'm
ported Of goods and merchandise and
gold and silver bullion colossal total
fat least 80, 100000. But so far has
this prodigious credit been from wip-
ing out that Indebtedness that COM
petent authority upon both sides of
this discussion comedies that our total
foreign Indebtedness, as individuals,
corporations, State and nation, can
not he less than five or six billions OF
dollars. We are exporting constantly
increasing numbers of pounds and
bushels OF products at almost con-
stantly less and less prices: and at
this rate it will be absolutely impos-
sible for us to wipe out our indebted
ness, or indeed to keep even with the
world. 1t is calculated that in in
tercst on our foreign obligations,
freight on products carried in foreign
ships and expenses of Americans who
travel abroad, we are under the necessity
of remitting to Europe every year not
less than from $35O,OOO,OOO to $780,
100000. This amount We must pay
year by year in the products we ex-
ports. If the prices of these products
are to continue to fall we can only
pay with increasing difficulty and
ultimate impossibility. Vassalage to