Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1900-06-13
FOR HANNA'S BARREL.
REPUBLICAN SCHEME TO RAISE
CAMPAIGN FUNDS.
It Is Proposed that tho Ways and
Means Committee Sit During the
Summer Ostensib1y to Consider Means
for Abatement of War Taxation.


or the peanut order at every turn of
the Wheel. There Is widespread de-
mand for legislation to reduce the war
taxes which are piling up surplus Of
several million dollars month. 1t has
been known since the beginning of the
year that the revenues were excessive.
The Republicans are In supreme control
OF every branch of the government.
Millions OF dollars of government funds
have been loaned to favored banks
without interest, and Secretary Gage
has declared that there is danger Of
draining too much money from the
channels of business and locking 1t up
In the Treasury. Yet the Republicans
have not made the. slightest effort to
reduce the revenues.
Now they propose to have the Ways
and Means Committee sit this summer
after the adjournment of Congress and
consider plans for an abatement of tax
alton. This is intended to have several
results very useful to the Republicans.
They will be able to make pretence
that they are really going to, consider
the matter. With the whole range of
governmental revenue they will he in
position to force scores of special in
terests into contributing to Hanna's
campaign barrel on theory that the
proposed legislation which they may
formulate will benefit or injure the par
tcular interests toward which Hanna
shall extend his predatory paw. 1t is
q great scheme, and if cajolery doesn't
fetch the funds a threat may be quite
as effective.
Having got the national banking sys-
tenn continued indefinitely by having
practically all the four per cent. bonds
extended another thirty years at two
per cent, Secretary Gage now begins
to call in the two per cent. bonds which
Secretary Window extended years ago
with the privilege of calling in Mt any
time. Secretary Gage doesn't like to
have these bonds outstanding now.
They form a living evidence of the
crime which was perpetrated against
the people in placing the payment Of
the two per cent. bonds for thirty years
out of the reach Of the people.
Secretary Gage has done other things
besides standing in with the Standard
Oils City National Bank to the enor-
nous profit Of that institution. A few
days ago he appeared before the House
Banking and Currency Committee and
favored a change of the National Bank.
ing act, which would permit the direc-
tors of such institutions greater free
dom in borrowing the funds which had
been Entrusted to them by confiding de.
positors. There is a very strictly drawn
clause of the National Banking net ms
1t stands now forbidding directors and
other officials of national banks from
borrowing these funds and forbidding
the loaning of over ten per cent. of the
banks capital to any one individual.
These salutary provisions Secretary
Gage calmly declared to be eobsolete, !"
This is Cages way of stating that prac-
tically every National bank in the coun-
try violates the fundamental law of Its
organization. Not content with having
the law SO fixed that 1t places the
finances of the country in the hands Of
the national banks, these favored in.
situations violate with IMMUNITY the
few safeguards thrown around their
management And this Republican
Secretary of the Treasury, whose duty
it should be to see that violators Of the
law are prosecuted, has the audacity to
go before Congress and declare that q
living law is obsolete. But with this
administration other things are obso-
lete-one Is the Constitution and an