The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1900-10-19
ADDRESS TO FIRST VOTERS:

congratulate all or you on hav-
ing reached your majority !; congratu-
late you upon having entered into full
possession of sovereignty in the best
government of the world. Applause.
Born in the seventies, you have
enjoyed the most marvellous advan-
tages of the nineteenth century. You
have witnessed the greatest progress
of science. mechanics, and material
development of any period in our
history. You have enjoyed the ad-
vantages of the free and higher schools
of learning. You have lived in
period of the greatest opportunity for
moral and intellectual growth, and
enjoyed most favorable conditions for
forming right opinions. You have
escaped the extreme bitterness of party
divisions and the passions of a fratri
cidal war. You carry none of the
scars of the past party conflicts.
You witness only as you come to
your sovereignty, a reunited country
under the old flag, blessed in natural
resources beyond any other country
and suffering only because of the I'M
wise policies already inaugurated,
and the dangerous policies yet threat
ened. You approach the exercise of
your sovereignty, therefore, under the
most advantageous circumstances, free
from any past predictions, and pre-
pared in calm judgment to consider
without bias the issues on which parties
are divided. You have, in this cam
paign, as in no former campaign, the
advantage of the most exhaustive dis
cussion
perhaps some of you, who have
already started out for yourselves
have had in the last three or four years
some valuable personal experience.
which is quite as good school in
politics as in anything else. You come
to your majority at time when the
people are engaged in a national con-
test that will settle some of the most
important questions which ever con-
fronted us, and settle them for long
years to come. You are given the bal
lot at time when its use for good or
evil to country was never greater.
You assume this responsibility at a
period fraught with as grave problems
as were ever presented except in time
of war. 1t is of little moment, young
gentlemen, that the union was saved by
the dread ordeal of war if it cannot be
continued in peace with honor.
Great applause and cries of "Good I"
"Goodp')
"No nation can hold it's standing
before mankind that will depreciate its
own currency, any more than a nation
can stand before the world that will
not defend its flag and honor. ZAP
plause. No nation can hold its posi-
ton that will violate plighted faith or
repudiate any part of it's indebted
ness under any guise whatsoever. No
nation can command respect at home,
or abroad, if it does not at all times
uphold the supremacy of law and in
volatility of it's own sacred obliga-
tion. 1t cannot be denied that free
coinage under the conditions proposed
by our allied opponents will result in
debasing our currency, deprive us of
the use of gold and all paper money
based on gold, thus contracting our
currency, and leaving us upon a silver
basis alone. It's result would be to
give us poorer money and less volume
of circulation than we..now have. . ..-.-...
s"Free silver--would depreciate in
vestments; shake public confidence
destroy values; cheat labor impair
the savings of the poor, and produce a
commercial revulsion, the like of
which this country has never known.
Our first voters surely will not want
to use their ballots to bring about such
a result. (Great cheering and cries of
''No. sir p ''Never Ply.
''Surely every young voter, who has
his spurs yet to win his career to
make his fortune to build, will hest
tate before he will give his ballot to a
party which seeks to create hostility
between classes and sections; between
the rich and the poor between the
mechanic and the manufacturer be-
tween the farmer and the banker
Great applause. He will cast his bal
lot to continue the equality of citi-
zenship, of privilege, of opportunity,
of possibility, which has been the
boast of our citizenship, and is the
very cornerstone upon which our free
institutions rest. Applause.
:'No young man will want to place
weights upon his own shoulders, or
raise barriers to his own progress,
which hitherto have never impeded
the progress of the industrious, honest,
clean. ambitious young man. Tire
mendous applause. Away with caste
and classes Such a doctrine in I'M
free people. Loud and continuous
cheering. J. He who would inculcate
that spirit among our people is not the
friend of the poor but honest young
man, whose soul is fired with a worthy
ambition for himself. Great APP
plause.
"How would Lincoln, Grant, Gar
field and Logan have stood. if in their
time, they had accepted the doctrine,
which some now teach, that because
they were poor and of humble sur
roundings, they must go off by them
selves and shut the door of opportunity
to the best impulses of her souls, and
the mobiles aspirations of her minds2
Continuous applause. The ballot of
the young man, as well as that OF the
old man, the ballot of the first voter,
as well as that of all voters, should
always express the voice of truth and
conscience 1t should represent the
calm and unbiased Judgment of the
voter. 1t should embody the highest
welfare of himself, his home, his COM
munity and his country. 1t should
never be false to his convictions or OPP
posed to justice and honor, either in
public or private concerns. It should
express on its face his best hopes and
highest aspirations as an individual
citizen, and always represent the
greatest good to his fellow country
men.
May you votes, young gentlemen,
be always given to preserve our unity,
our honor, our flag, our currency and
our country, and to save our blessed
inheritance always from lawlessness,
dishonesty and violence May your
votes always be given for policy
that shall give us the widest develop
ment in our unmatched resources the
widest incentive to the invention,
skill and genius of our citizens the