The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-04-27
Ehe aieta Daily eagles Thursday gor,1ime april ~ 1899
ss.OOO.OOO in Kansas City and s2.OOO.oOe in

what are the loans?'
Most Of our bank loans are on cattle,
at and per cent, and they are difficult
TO obtain because eastern banks and in
surance companies are offering plenty of
money for and So per cent
Yes continued Mr.. Breidenthal, "the
credit of Kansas has been completely re-
stored. There never was any intention or
desire to repudiate honest debt. God never
made better set of debt payers. and
where they have failed to meet their obi
cations II has been due to inability and
not 10 indisposition. In the boom DAYS
millions Of eastern money was invested IN
wildcat enterprises and was sent up IN
balloons, but it was borrowed mostly by
eastern adventures and not by genuine
Kansans who were interested in the honor
and the welfare of the state. Millions of
this money was stolen; millions was in
vested in the stock of companies that
never existed outside the imaginations of
their promoters and the articles of incor-
poration. Townsite companies were or
ganized in the east, which issued millions
of bonds for water works, gas works,
electric light plants, paving sewerage,
court houses, school houses, street rail-
ways and other public Improvements.
Many Of them were never undertaken;
many Of them attempted and failed. The
plains of Kansas are strewn with the evil
dences of mistaken enterprises, and when
the boom collapsed the bonds were only
worthless paper. The people who issued
them went back to the places they came
from, and Kansas was compelled TO bear
the blame of their INSTRUCTED zeal OF
but the money lenders have found that
honest debts are always paid in Kansas;
that the credit of our people is just as
good as that of Massachusetts, and are
ready to trust US for any amount. But
now we have money of our own. We are
lenders as well as borrowers, and have
large balances, as I told you, in the
banks Of the east. In a short time Kan
sas will be Independent of outside capital
If the present prosperity continues and
We have two or three more good crops
we shall not have to ask odds of any
body"
To illustrate the honesty of Kansas, Mr..
Breidenthal called my attention 70 one of
the legislature exempting nearly so per
cent of the property of the debtor class
from attachment in enforcing payment of
their obligations. These exemptions, in
cluded farm utensils, teams, wagons, a
certain number of cattle and other neces-
sary appurtenances of a farm. Not one
man in ten, Mr.. Breidenthal asserts took
advantage of the law, but 80 per cent of
the borrowers paid their just debts dollar
for dollar.
I asked Mr.. Breidenthal how he as a
Populist and silver man accounted for all
this prosperity without the aid of free
coinage at 16 to l, etc. He remarked with
a sly smile that there were not half so
many people working at that trade in
Kansas as formerly, and added that the
PopulistS of this state were not entirely
welded to free coinage. They had never
held that the world could not prosper and
be happy without ii, All they demanded
was a sound and sufficient government
currency.
1--WE are opposed to private or corporate
banks Of ISSUE" he said. 1--WE demand
that all money in circulation shall be
issued and guaranteed by the govern
ment; we want government notes in place
of national bank notes. We are original
and genuine greenbackers.'
''Are you in favor of Bryans renomin-
ation?'
yes replied the Populist leader of
1.-THE west will stick to Bryan
There is no telling what will happen,
however. The east is opposed to him and
there is a middle country that is so uncer-
tain that you never can tell what the
people will do"
Mr.. Breidenthal is the only one of the
active Populist leaders to survive the
wave of prosperity and the fickleness of
human nature. Prominence in that party
seems to be fatal. The path Of the politi-
cal cyclone that swept over Kansas is
strewn with the skeletons Of statesmen,
editors and reformers of all persuasions,
and those who have survived are conceal
ed under the shadow of oblivion.
William A. PETER, whose wonderful
whiskers gave him national fame, who
was lifted into the senate by the tidal
wave of reform, who pointed out to the
country so often the only path to pros
perity and contentment, and whose pana-
ceas for all ills and evils were offered !
as freely as salvation. is now receiving
q salary Of 80 a week to write editorials |
for the Star and Kansan, a weekly Popu-
list organ at Independence. He started |
4 paper of his own when he returned |
from the senate, but the people were tired |
Of him. He proved a false prophet and |
being driven out by his old political as
he accepted a nomination for |
governor on the Prohibition ticket and |
got 1000 votes.
Mary E. Lease, being what they call |
an almighty smart woman" repudiated /
her party before it got a chance TO re- |
Dudiate her She is no longer a resident /
IF Kansas, although Charley" her hus-
1and, still remains as a clerk in that drug |
store at Wichita. Mary has not returned /
since she went to New York as a Bryan |
spellbinder during the campaign Of 1895. /
She is now supposed 10 be lecturing on /
loan Of Arc somewhere in the east-a
character she would like to emulate. Her /
laughter, who had a good deal Of dramat- /
C power and used TO recite poems at
Populist conventions and was expecting /
to make fame and fortune on the stage
n the great Populist play The Curse % I
Cold is now the only comfort OF her
deserted father. The son is in the east
With the mother, acting as her business
agent.
Jerry Simpson has come out Of the
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