Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1903-02-21
SOME COMPARISONS
AMERICAN PROSPERITY AND
EUROPEAN HARD TIMES.
Industrial Conditions at Home and
Abroad Good Proof That Our People
Made No Mistake When They Voted
for Repubiicanism and Prosperity.

Advices from abroad show a sad
state of affairs in the countries that
are the principal commercial competi-
tors of the United States. When this
country brought to successful con-
clusion its war with Spain there was a
notable expansion of industrial and
commercial activity, such as was wit
messed in Germany after her encounter
with France in 1870, and such as usu-
ally follows victorious military cam
paign- But in Great Britain, notwith-
standing that the result of her conflict
in South Africa was the vanQuishment
Of the Beers, there is anything but
flood of prosperity in trade. The num-
Der Of persons unable to obtain work
within the limits of the kingdom is
conservatively computed at half a mil
lion, and the report comes from Lon
don that it has been found necessary
to place police guards at the gates
of the dock yards to prevent violence
among the crowds assembling there
to struggle for the chance of earning
days wages. The London County
Council is considering plans for re-
neving the widespread distress, and
newspapers have started subscriptions
for the same purpose. There are bad
times in England.
Germany is faring even worse. What
is the meaning of the Socialist upris-
ing in that country, which has grown
SO powerful that the leading journal
istic organ of the movement is daily
boarding the Emperor? Socialism in
Germany, as was Populism in the
United States, is largely a product of
the desperation induced by hard times.
&c ,nf a
sounded to the crash of topping
banks. She has gone through financial
throes almost equal to those which
shook the United States in 1893. She
is now in a political and economic
crisis not far different form that which
in this country led to the nomination
of Bryan for the presidency in 1896.
During the recent political campaign
in the United States Democratic news
papers and orators blatantly asserted
that American prosperity was not the
result of American fiscal policies, but
a thing that came of itself. Business
in this country was prosperous, they
said, because business everywhere was
prosperous. The same oracleS as
serted while Cleveland and Democracy
were enthroned at Washington that
the panic and the depression which
followed the panic were caused not
by Democratic folly, but by wide
spread natural laws affecting business
in general, though at the very time
when Coxey's army and Ke1ly's army
of unemployed men were rampaging
in Ohio and Iowa, factories in Great
Britain and Germany were advertising
for help.
The fact is that the Republican leg
islation enacted under the administru-
ton of President Mckinley produced
conditions which opened avenues to
employment for all the men in the
United States willing to work. The
fact is that the American protective
tariff is doing the good which it was
expected to do-keeping American
workingmen at work at good wages,
at time when workingmen in COM
peting countries are walking the
streets looking for jobs. The fact is
that Democratic free trade newspa-
pers are blind teachers, who would
undoing.
Happily the American people are
intelligent and cannot be easily mis-
led. The contrast between industrial
conditions abroad and industrial con-
citions here is a demonstration that
when the American people vote for
Republican Congress they made no
Observation-Disclosures Wisconsin.