Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1900-11-01

their labor in a market artifcially re-
stricted; to purchase in market
where free competition has been t-irot-
tied by law for the benefit of certain
favored classes The result is a rob-
berry of labor; it is compelled to accept
the terms and conditions offered by
the benefciaries of the restrictive
law.
The Democratic party stands for
free competition and for the right of
all men freely to exchange with each
other the results of their toll 1t is
therefore opposed to trusts and to all
devices for the killing or even the re-
striction of trade. A protective tariff
is declaration of war against trade;
it is an invitation to combination and
monopoly; it puts a premium upon
engrossing and forestalling; it is the
handmaiden if not the mother of
trusts
The appalling manifestation of mod
ern industrialism is the Capitalization
of wealth in the hands of the few. 1t
has come about in the last generation
and it is the shining product of Re
publican legislation. All the forces of
privilege have been conferred on the
effort to secure larger privileges; and
the Republican policy has been that of
consistent fSvoritism; it has never
failed to give to those that had and to
take away from those that had not
even that which they had. 1t gave
boundless territory to favored rail-
ways; it granted monopolies to iron
and coal and lumber and stone; it gave
bounties to sugar and protection from
competition to mills and factories and
shipping; it has smut out foreign goods
while letting in foreign labor; it has
loaned its credit to favored bankers
and changed the terms of contracts for
the benefit of bondholders; it has dis
credited silver in order to vest mo-
nopoly in the hands of owners of gold;
and in every instance it has enacted
laws and administered the government,
not for the common welfare, but for
the enrichment of special classes.
Democracy opposes all this. 1t wants
to strike the shackles from trade and
to relieve labor from the leviss of
privilege. Its whole spirit runs in
the direction of freedom and its can
didates stand pledged by the platform
and by their own records 70 promote
the ends of liberty and Of righteous
ness. The party makes appeal to the
heart and the conscience of the coun-
try. 1t opposes foreign conquest both
because it is a wicked wrong to alien
peoples and because it is n direful
threat against our own rights. For
this country cannot be half republic
and half empire. Imperialism will not
be satisfied with foreign subjugation;
it will hunger and thirst after the sub
jugation of those at home from whom
tribute can be wrung. Already the
entrenched forces of Imperialism are
levying tribute upon American labor;
labor's opportunities have been mar
rowed to a choice of masters; armed
men in the service of plutocracy war
against the right of men to seek bet
ter conditions from those who have
cornered industrial chances; and if
Mckinley shall win in the great fight
now in progress it will mean further
restriction, further narrowing of op-
portunity, further aggressions of priv
ilege and still harsher exactions from
those who work for the aggrandize-
ment of those who toll not.-Warren
Worth Bailey in YOUNGSTOWN Democrat.