Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1899-09-23
DEMOCRATS AND TRUSTS.


where they belong.
DEMOCRATS AND TRUSTS.
Our opponents denounce trusts. But
they propose not one remedy that would
not make the situation ten times worse
than at it's worse it now is. have read
through carefully the speeches of Mr..
Bryan and of his fellows to find out
what they propose to do. 1 have found
plenty of vague denunciation / have
not found SO much as an attempt to
formulate national policy of relief In
the democratic platform in Ohio just
two measures of relief are proposed:
first, that you should change the tariff
because it favors trusts; and the sec
ond, that you should coin silver in the
ratio of 16 to without regard to the ac-
ton of any other nation. They pretend
that the tariff favors trusts. They know
that the greatest trusts in this country,
the Standard Oil and the Sugar trusts,
are utterly unaffected by the tariff.
They know we'll that the trust with
which there is the most widespread and
deepest satisfaction. the beef trust, is
utterly unaffected by the tariff; and in
my own state one of the largest trusts,
the ice trust (Which is said to have as
its most prominent member and pro-
moter that ardent anti-trust champion
and advocate of Mr. Bryan, Mr.. Rich
ard Croker) is also wholly unaffected by
the tariff. Six years ago you We're un-
der the kind of tariff to which they now
ask you to return. And you We're suf-
fering from the threat of free coinage
the threat which they now revive. Are
the people of this country so short
sighted that they forget the miseries OF
six years ago? Do they forget the bread
riots, the poverty, the squalid want.
even of those able and anxious to work !?
surely the country has had enough of
tariff tinkering by the opponents of "a
protective tariff. The second great
remedy they propose for trusts is the
free coinage of silver at 16 10 1.-THE
coinage of a 4s-cent dollar. They aetu-
ally propose to the people. that, if the
trusts deprive certain men of part Of
their earnings, or throw a certain body
of men out OF employment. this shall be
remedied by decreeing that the men
who still have employment shall be paid
AS cents on the dollar for the work they
do.
THE utter unsettlement of values
consequent upon a complete upsetting
of our financial system would give a
great opportunity for gain to every un-
scrupulous speculator in the country,
and probably the people who would suf-
fer the least from it would be the very
people who by combination have Gre
ated the greatest trusts. The big capi-
talist, a large share of whose expenses
takes the form of wages. would be com
pensated to some extent for his losses
in other directions by the shrinking of
the amount he would have to pay out
for wages; but the man who received
these wages would not be compensated
in any way. If the wage workers act
with wisdom and with forethought, if
they show far-sighted prudence in their
combinations, industrial and political,
their ultimate welfare is assured. In
the long run only the American working
man can hurt himself. Whatever is
really for his welfare. for his permanent
and ultimate welfare, is for the welfare
of the community. And of all ways
most surely to interfer with his mate
rial welfare tampering with the curren-
cy in which he is paid is the surest. The
banker, the manufacturer, the rich mer-
chant the landowner could get along
after a fashion under the seourge of free
coinage, but the laboring man could not.
The laboring man would go down to the
level where you find them in countries
where silver is the standard metal. The
two remedies our opponents propose
altering the tariff and debasing the cur
rency-could have no possible effect in
abating the evils of the trusts and could
hurt those who profit by the trusts only
Ito the extent that they hurt every mem
Der of the American business conmuni-
ty from the capitalist to the day la
borer.
THE PHILIPPINE WAR
Make no mistake. In the Philippines
we are at open war with an enemy who
must be put down. 1t is absolutely im-
possible to save our honor except
through victory: and it is equally inn
possible TO win peace, to restore order in
the islands or to prepare the way for
there save through VIC
tory People tell you that the Filipinos
are fighting for independence. This was
exactly what the copperheads of 1851
said OF the confederates. Here in Ohio
the Nallandinghams ran on the issue
that the war was failure, and that the
independence of the southern states
should be acknowledged. The feeble
u. IL,