Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1900-08-24

tive benefits, they have been given the
following:
Habeas corpus.
Courts of justice composed of Porto
Rican magistrates.
A modern free school system.
Uniform currency.
Regularity in exchange.
Autonomous municipal rule.
Increased right of suffrage.
Native police force.
Free justice and quick procedure.
Representation in the executive
council.
A house of representatives to legis-
late for the island.
No people were ever treated more
generously, and under the new regime
business has doubled in volume in two
years. Burdens have been lifted, lib
erty has been extended, education has
been advanced, business has increased,
and the people are prosperous and
grateful. In a short time their loyalty
to the United States government will
put to the blush many of those who
try to blind truth by calling the best
government on earth an imperial des-
potism.
The silver orators from Bryan down
are never tired Of reiterating that the
gold standard is established solely in
the interest of the creditor class, who
want whatever is due them paid in the
best and highest kind of money. They
assume that the debtor class is the
poor who owe money, and that the
creditor class is the rich to whom
money is always due. On this ground
they endeavor to foment hatred and
bitterness among the poor against the
rich, and to array class against class
and employe against employer. 10
stir up such jealousies and hatreds
opens the road to anarchy, and anarchy
leads to the destruction of govern
ment.
But it is not true that the poor are
the debtor class, and the rich the cred
itor class. AS matter of fact the
great majority Of people belong to
both classes, having money coming to
them from one direction and having to
pay it out in another. 1t is, therefore,
difficult to draw any hard and fast
linie to separate the debtors from the
creditors. But if there is creditor
class in this country, set of people
to whom that designation is peculiarly
applicable, it is not composed of the
men who handle large sums of money
and who are engaged in carrying on
great enterprises. They, for the most
part. are debtors.
The real creditor class is composed
| OF working men and women, of en-
ployes in every walk of business, of
salaried people, and Of depositors in
banks. especially depositors in say
ings banks. These are the men and
women to whom money is always due
and who are entitled, if anybody in all
the world is, to the best and most
stable money that can be devised. A
fiuctuating money, varying in value
from time to time, is to them a con-
demnation of poverty and loss.
A working man, no matter what his
labor may be, who starts to work on
Monday morning, is creditor at
nightfall for the amount of his DAYS
wages, and at the end of the week he
is creditor for six days pay. Whether
man works by the day, by the week,
by the month, or by the year, he is al
ways creditor, for he must give his
services first.
But above all it IS the savings bank
depositor who is the chief of creditors.
and who in laying by his money for "a
rainy day" should, when he comes to
draw it out, have just as good money
paid as he deposited. To these cred
itors who are saving day by day their
hard-earned wages and salaries, Bry-
anism and IL to would be disaster.
ruin and despair.