The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-09-22

men of character, and capacity' skiIlful. canning, and knavish dema- gogues, and an ignorant and supersti- fious following. and up springs a polis., ical party. This anti Masonic layout was as absurd as Lord George vordonh @ h rioutous following, but 1t kept the pup lie mind in a fever for years; Wasn- ington. Franklin, and Lafayette were all Masons, but thousands or patriotic men of the succeeding generation came to believe that Masonry was hurosr @ in secret reonclave, plotting the es- e termination of all men not or the brotherhood.
 The next political frenzy. was the Know Nothing movement that sMsps over the North in 1854, and Iound Judgment as far south as M-:yiana aho sh Potomac and hurled 1t back; Andy Sonn,
 son expelled it from Tennessee, ana stephen A, Douglas successLohy
 held Illinois against It's invasion, Ias Y
 Breckinridge, Joseph Holt, Elijah Hise and Beverly l.. Clarke. but It's victory was due to the butcheries ana Lne arsons or Bloody sss Mon9hs' Ths following o % year the party died. when It's candioate for President carried but one state- Maryland--with the aid Of the nerce ana ruthless Rn,E Piag ugi'es made war on the Catholic Church. and pToIessed "a believe that the Pope of Rome nag malevolent designs on the liberties oI the American people. More than SLY centuries earlier Catholic archbishop of Canterpury had wrested from King John the liberties of England ana lt was fruit of the tree stephens spdshmsy shnS that afforded this very Know Notnils party the right to exist. Nay, the very first authentic declaration of liberty ot colony of Maryland. But frenzied pol flies is not only Ignorant, but incapable of % reason. The efaze swept oyer State after State, and Protestant Cnurcnes sent their thousands to swell the mem bership of Know Nothing lodges. LOCK smiths reaped rich harvests, securing the doors of brave men against tns Pope of Rome. one or the ,,isi1 Kin1i,sSs ,SSo wished no more harm to the continent of America than he did to the planet Mars.
 The next section of crazy-uuilt poli- tics we had was the Granger movement of the earlier '70s. It's basic oeieI Wes that men, women, and children or tne Atlantic slope, who subsisted on tne food products of the Mississippi val lev, were in the dark and goddess con spiracy to make fruitless the ens, of the Western farmer who Tea tneiu. At the time the Treasury Department was busy paying off the floating deot evidenced by greenback promises to pay. Demagogues taught the farmers that the greenback was the people money" whereas it was most ruinous debt this people ever had saddled on them. Not only that, 1t had been the instrument of private repuolation to and had wrecked the public credit un- til 1t was less than 40 per cent oi par Congress had insulted the public lhi- telIigence, and debauched the pupnc conscience by enacting that an irre- deemable promise to pay printed & on worthless scrap of paper was Iegai tender for debt in esse,. and contracLeo when coin only. was legal tender. n morals a fraudulent discharge In bank ruptcy would be no more disnonesL A greenback party was organized, whose basic principles was repudiation' ano tens of thousands Of honest men join ed if. pusillanimous Congress. at its dictation, made perpetual an issue of unconstitutional and fiat greenpachs
 to the amount of $S4e,Oo0,00o. Then the people were taxed on the interest ol $100, ,000, 900 gold coin idle in the Treas | ury, to keep the stuff at par. When the | panic of 1898 caTns further taxes were levied on the people to maintain the | integrity of the currency. Indeeds IL l is not at all extravagant to say li're | If. in 1878, when the greenback, that l ought not to have been born at all, was | made immortal, by the act of Congress.
 every every dollar of 1t then in existence | s346. 900 OOO-had been collected In a warehouse made of pitch. pine and 2
 thousand miles from water, ana tne l torch put to it, the American people
 would have made millions by the trans. action-if Congress had had sense
 enough and honesty enough 10 pro EnRIfsh people then enjoyed. An un' sound currency affects public posperit I as inturious1y as. an epidemic of crue disease affects the public health. Fla
 fn the circulating medium works on the business system exactly. like ma
 iaria in the atmosphere works on the
 physical system. ,S<