Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1904-07-20

having burst the poison of speculation.
boom values and credit operations was
released from the system. 1t went on
until agriculture, the basic industry, re-
vived. In the midst of the panic all
the wise men, and chief among them the
republican leaders, told US that lit was
lack of confidence in the money of the
country" that had brought on the panic.
The democratic administration, with
sufficient number of votes of both par
ties in the two houses behind it took
that view of the situation and demand
ed and secured the passage of the act
repeating the purchasing clause of the
Sherman act. thereby, for the first time,
practically establishing the gold stand
ard in the United States. Without either
free or limited coinage of standard sill
yer money, the country was, Immediate
ly after the passage of that act, neces-
sarily and actually as it has been since,
and as it is now and as it is destined
to remain for. length Of time beyond
my power of computation, on gold
basis. 1 was. not one of those who
thought the legislation adopted wise,
but, wise or unwise, the result is an ac-
complished fact, plain, palpable and
obvious" to all men who have common
sense, and like many another step in
history it is beyond recall, or hope OF
recall. This accomplished fact was the
fact of gold basis then, not by the re-
publican party, but by the logged per-
sistency and indomitable will of Grover
Cleveland, aided it is true by republican
| legislators, who thought they saw in
| it the final disruption of the democratic
party. That was in the main their mo-
tive. Now they would "steal his thun-
DER and this republican platform
boasts that it was the republican party
which established the gold basis. More
over, they would now eat their words
and their votes of 1893 and tell us that
| the panic was not brought about, as
they then said, by lack of confidence in
| our money and too much silver" but,
| forsooth, by a tariff act which was not
| passed until more than year after, to-
wit: in 1894, when the panic. that is the
| acute and fright stage of depression, was
| virtually over. Do not misunderstood
me. A panic, of course, is not succeed
| ed all at once by the golden hues of
prosperity. Industrial depression must
follow it for awhile, as depression must
| precede it. So depression continued I'M
| til when?
AS l have said, when the boil bursts
and the poison is eliminated from the
body commercial the flesh begins to
heal. 1t cannot begin to heal one min
ute earlier. The process of recovery
was aided by many, for us, fortuitous
| circumstances. The first of these was
| famine in India-no Indian wheat to
compete in the European market with
| urs-simultaneously with an immense
American crop of wheat and small crops
elsewhere. Wheat rose from about 48 to
about 70 cents in a few weeks during
the Bryan-McKinley campaign while
Cleveland was yet president. There is
not man within the sound of my voice
that does not remember that. With
70 cent wheat farmers could pay the
retailers the debts due them and the
retailers could. buy more goods; the
retailers, with empty shelves or shelves
becoming empty by sales, could order
from the jobbers; the jobbers, who had
been over-stocked, were enabled then
to order from the factories When the
factories got orders then they had a
reason for making goods and they pro-
ceeded to make them, and then the
wheels of industry went round. The
farmer in the wheat country, with 20
cent wheat could pay "the baker, the
butcher and candle-stick maker and
then they could pay others and they in
turn could buy more goods. This end
less chain of human relationship in the
| world Of commerce is no mysterious
thing to anybody except a platform
making politician.
But wheat going up had another effect
When wheat went up during the cam
paign, while silver bullion went down,
there was therby furnished a SEEM
ing object lesson of the inaccuracy of
the contention of Mr.. Bryan and his
followers, Of whom was one, that there
was necessarily connection in price
between the two. Western and border
state farmers in the wheat belt, who had
originally been republicans anyhow,
and who had gone off from the repub-
lican party because of their belief in
|
Bryan column and join the Mckinley
column, first by the dozen, then by the
score, then by hundreds and then. in
shoals. Thus it came about that Mr..
Mckinley was elected, because wheat
went up and because the going up of
wheat and the consequent increased de-
mand for other things, leading to higher
prices and a better volume of trade,
promised to their minds prosperity,
without free silver A greater falsehood
was never uttered than that wheat, or
anything else, went up because Mr..
Mckinley was elected" Things had
i struck rock bottom and had begun to
i revive before Mr.. Mckinley was elected
and the first index of that fact was the
rise in the price of wheat, followed by
the rise in the price of other agricultural