The Philipsburg mail. [volume] (Philipsburg, Mont.) 1887-current, 1898-07-15
C0UNYRY'S GROWTH
Judge Goodwin Talks on Territorial
Acquisition.
HE SEES NO DANGER WHATEVER
Tho Country Increases from a Few
settlements on the Atlantic tO In
600, 900 People--What Is the
Reason For Retrograd,ng?

1t is one hundred and twenty two
years since the declaration of indie
pendcnce was signed. Since then O
few settlements along the Atlantic
coast have stretched all tho way be-
tween the seas Indeed. they have
gone so far beyond the western ocean $
boundary that the central point from
east TO west OF our country is found
outside the Golden Cato in the Pacific
ocean. Under our institutions one.
fourth of the world s wealth has gravi.
tated to us; our people have increased
from 3,0O0,O 900 to 70, 900, 900 inhabi
tants and it has been a perfectly natu-
raj expansion. There has suddenly,
however, sprung up great ear that if
we Go not now stop within the cir
cumsclibed limits of our great DOS
sessions we shall be lost. A great
class of so-callcd statesmen, and a
strong array Of so-called wise editors,
are just now churning the air with
words to prove that it we permit lit
tie group Of islands ont in the western
ocean to be annexed there will come.
so to speak, chemical change in the
constituents OF our government; that
we shall never again be as we were
before; that there shall be strychnine
III our political coffee, and thenceforth
we may look for commissions at every
moment Some Of these people are
honest just as a brake on a wagon to
hold 1t back is rs honest as the wheels
on which it is propelled some have
no positive opinions of their own, but
adopt the theory just as caucus
pound slave votes with his party. The
master spirits in tho movement are
doing their work for pay, and they are
the ones whose chief argument is that
they are seeking to defeat All infam.
Gus conspiracy.
Without discussing that question
directly it is proper, now that the ma
ton has passed anofh mile-snnt in
its life to look back little and see
what the nation has passed through
what its dangers have been, and to try
to reach a conclusion as to where we
now stand.
The fathers believed in the divine
rights of man, in the truth of the the
Dry that every man, no matter how
had the right to have opened
to him every opportunity to labor and
the right to have voice in the gov
he helped to support To es-
tablish this, they in their purity and
feeble numbers, dared to challenge to
mortal combat the greatest of nations.
They won. A few years later to
some supplementary rights
OF citizenship they challenged again
that power and once more won. Later
still, accepting the petition of a fee
BILE state for admission they thereby
became involved in another war and
again won. Then came the crucial
test. A civil war lighted the whole |
land with flames; kindred passions
hot enough to consume any other land,
and when, through exhaustion, the
fires burned ont, mighty debt was
left upon the country and so many |
graves that almost every house had |
one dead. But the principles OF the
fathers triumphed the perfect integ-
rity of the republic was not only main
talned but made more secure. And |
strange as it may seem. through all |
these upheavals the material progress
Of the nation increased. But the war |
had introduced new system of tinan-
ces into the country and those who |
fattened upon the debt left |
by the war, conceived plan to never
again permit the nation to be out of |
debt; to forever after keep the people
Of the country paying interest on that
debt. 10 accomplish this the plan
was to destroy one half the standard
money by which the worlds values
were estimated with the result of dou-
bling the value of money, or, which |
is the same thing, to reduce property +,
values onc-half and to take from the |
debtor 70 per cent of his capacity to
pay. This they accomplished they !
ruined millions of people. took from
millions more the opportunity to earn
their bread, increased the vices and
crimes of the land 300 per cent, and
before this would have kindled civil
war, except for the failure of crops in
other lands and the increase in the .
production of gold.
The lesson taught by all this is that
it is contraction of business and |
Of wealth in a few hands