Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-11-03
AN IRREpREssIBLE CONFLICT.
There Must Be Change in Our Finan.
cial Affairs and Silver Restored
to Its RightfuI Place.

Cotton is quoted at AIS cents per
1t was the promise of the republican
party that if it was given power so that
the money question might be decided in
favor of the gold standard, all uncer-
tainty would pass away, confidence
would be renewed and prosperity would
come swooping along as natural re-
suit. Advantageous circumstances
arose, following the success of Mr.. Nc
Kinley, to lend some plausibility to this
claim. With western wheat selling at
one dollar bushel, followed but few
months later by foreign war, the
certainty was felt that the people
would forget the hard times and that
the agencies of revival would go to
work at once.
The months of summer have passed
away, the war has become matter of
history, and we are now garnering the
second crop after the advent of Mr.. Nc
kin1ey into power. The result is that
western wheat, which had been so large
ly doomed owing to wheat corner and
Providential causes, has gone back to
its normal profitless price, and that
cotton has fallen to low-water mark,
thus threatening, not only the southern
planter, but the western wheat grower
with an indiscriminate ruin in which
there seems to be nothing ahead for
the agricultural class but condition
of serfdon as hopeless as that which
prevailed in Russia but without the
guardianship which even the Russian
system threw around its unhappy agri-
culturists.
The farmers of the entire wheat era
are now holding meetings pledging
themselves to hold their grain back,
and thus attempt to raise the price to
something like profit. The movement
has assumed such large proportions
that the metropolitan press is forced
to give it attention, which they denied
its twin movement in the south when
cotton was the subject of consideration.
It is held by the farmers of the west
that it costs fully so cents bushel to
raise their wheat. Yet the highest
price which wheat has reached in the
Minneapolis market has been SO cents.
The average price obtained by the
farmers throughout the wheat-growing
area has been even less than 60 cents,
SO that these growers who were so
prosperous under the spur of Russian
famine two years ago are now parting
with their products for less than cost.
Altogether these two agrarian move
ments mean much more than appears
upon their face. They mean that the
agricultural distress belongs to no sec
ton, and that there must be some COM
mon underlying cause for the destitu-
ton which has come upon the produc-
ing classes. It means that these pro-
ducing classes are arrayed against the
exactions of the single gold standard
not from hostility to the legitimate
functions of capital. but in protest
against the pernicious legislation
which has elevated the one at the ex-
pense of the other.
Let it not be assumed in the face of
these facts that the present decline of
populism throughout this country
means any decline in the earnestness
of the people for redress. It was in
their very desperation that they broke
away from the old parties several
years ago and struck out wildly on
new lines for redress which could not
come to them in such spasmodic eff
forts. That movement has recoiled,
and hereafter the toiling millions will
recognize the democratic party as the
only agency through which they can
obtain their wishes. That party which
had been the champion of the peoples
rights ever since the formation of this
government will continue to represent
those rights and to fight the cause of
the oppressed against the oppressors.
The masses are stirred up as they
have never been stirred before. In
the middle of the Mckinley admins
tration, from west and south, comes
the cry of nonproductive labor. It will
not do to turn deaf ear to the plead
ings of the men in whose strong arms
the greatness of our country rests.
There must be change; that change
must be a reform of our financial sys-
tenn, the reesta blishment of silver to
its constitutional function. This alone
can bring about the good prices for
which the southern planter and the
western wheat growers are now agi-
tating.
This is the fight of the future, and
it is just as well to look it in the face!
Atlanta Constitution.
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