Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

the money question. According to the New York Tribune. - James G. Clark in lowa Farmer’s Tribune. Mr. R. G. Horr has lately been giving the readers of the New York J ribune the benefit of his dazzling “headlight.” In the issue of July 6 he assumed to answer the following questions which he claims have been pro pounded to him in a “large number of letters:” “In a country where the govern ment is managed by the people for the benefit of the people, why should not the government furnish sufficient money for all the people of the coun try? “Why should not the government loan money on farms to farmers at a low rate of interest?” Mr. Horr is sufficiently thoughtful to submit that this is the “substance” of the questions involved. His an swers to these two questions fill two columns of fine type. When a man starts out with a settled purpose to avoid telling the truth he always multiplies words unnecessarily in or der to escape detection. It always requires more time and greater waste of energy to side-track a car than it does to carry it aloag. Hence Mr. Horr’s effort embodies a series of dodges from beginning to end. Sometimes he hides his head leav ing the rest of his person exposed, and sometimes he reverses the situa tion and pecks cautiously out of his hole, winks at the question, and then slips back into the hole asd out of sight. The first question, as originally formulated and asked, had no refer ence whatever to giving money to “all the people of the country,” and Mr. Horr knows it. It related solely to the amount of paper as well as silver printed or stamped and put into circulation by the government through ordinary and legitimate channels. It is a notorious fact that there is not sufficient gold in circulation with which to transact ten per cent, of the business. Hence it is the duty of government to supply its citizens with means to this end. The question as thus stated is be ing constantly asked, especially now when the banks are cornering the gold. But Mr. Horr’s dishonest statement of it, and his still more dishonest answer, both imply that “a large number” of people are silly enough to ask w r hy government should not measure and feed out money to its citizens as it does ra tions to its Indians. The minister ing angels of mammon have done their utmost to level currency to this absurd notion, that the People’s party platform includes, or at least implies, the demand that the govern ment shall print money and furnish it to the people, without equivalent, so much per capita to every man, woman and child. There is not only no “large num ber” of men but there is not a single lunatic who has been discharged as “cured” from the asylum capable of seriously contemplating the proposi tion. The question as propounded in “a great many letters” was, no doubt, innocent of all ambiguity until Mr. Horr wound it several times around his serpentine moral standard and crooked it to meet the following re p'y: “My answer to the first question is this: It is not the province of any government to furnish money for its people. All kinds of nations depend upon the people to supply them with funds.” Then as if to add to the solemn farce he repeats his profound answer near the middle of his effort with slight variations in the following sen tence, “Do not forget this one point, it is not the businese of the govern ment to supply the wants of any class of its citizens. It is the business of the people to supply the wants of the government.” But let us follow’ up this logic. Let us suppose that government should prohibit the use of wheat sacks not sufficiently stamped by government officers. Then let us suppose that the “issue” of sacks should be limited to 20 per cent, of the number needed for marketing grain and even this number should, through the mere fact of “being lim ited, be subject to the control of speculators who demanded a big “bonus” on them. Then would it not be the “busi ness of government to supplv the ■wants of the farmers by stamping more sacks ? And if the govern ment refused on the ground that an “inflation in the sack issue would be bad for farmers,” and especially for city speculators, would there not be a revolt among the farmers and a new wheat sack party organized to right the wrong? And would not the latter day “philosopher of the Tribune,” if at all consistent, arise and say: “Do not forget this one point. It is not the business of the govern ment to supply sacks to farmers. It is the business of farmers to supply tracks to the government.” And could not the farmers answer, “Certainly, what we demand is the government stamp on a sufficient number to use in harvesting our grain.” This illustrates the present situation. The people are ready to furnish paper and silver to the gov ernment. What they demand is the government stamp on a sufficient amount of the raw material for the unembarrassed transaction of busi ness. Mr. Horr and the Tribune seem to have no suspicion that the people have outgrown their financial foibles and can no longer be fooled with chaff, and that “great newspapers” have, as educators, been supplanted by a reform press. What the Peo ple’s party claim is that, primarily, money is only representative in its character, the type of something rather than the thing or substance itself, and that legitimately it has no independent value but derives its value altogether through its medium ship between men in the transactions involved in human activity and pro gress. In other words, money, being a necessary tool for the accomplish incnt of certain common ends, and as government assumes and monopo lizes the sole right to manufacture this tool, or at least to make it law ful by affixing the government stamp or signature, it is the duty of govern ment, as a matter of impartial justice to citizens, first to issue a sufficient amount for the transaction of business on a cash basis, no trust basis, and second to be absolutely impartial in the methods of distribution in the natural channels through which money reaches the people. And right here could Mr. Horr’s “answer to the second question,” which is doubtless a genuine one and not like the first, a premeditated perversion, “But as government has never loaned a dollar to the national banks why should it loan to the farmers any more than it does to the national banks?” Mr. Horr’s answer to this question il based on two things. First on duplicity and deliberate in tent to deceive, and second on the presumed ignorance of his readers. Senator Stanford, whose experience in statecraft and finance renders his testimony as valuable at least ,as that of Mr. Horr, but wdiose immense wealth relieves him of the temptation to sell it, declares in plainly recorded English that the government does loan money to the banks. In short, that the United States government employs, in dispensing tools for its citizens to work with, a species of “middlemen” whose essential qualifi cation is neither character nor hon esty, but the possession of $50,000 and upwards; in other words, of sufficient wealth to make them al ready independent and able to live without work. These rich men are thus granted the exclusive privilege of trading and sub-loaning money, on govern ment credit, and this credit and back ing are all that give stability to the issue of the banks. It is true the loan is not made in the ordinary form, but the banker gets the “accommo dation” all the same, then sub-loans the government “image and super scription” to still other and fre quently meaner middlemen, who in turn loan it out to farmers and other real estate owners where it takes the form of high interest, mortgages and where through various ingenious ma nipulations it gets astraddle of the people’s backs and necks, forcing producers to pay the bulk of our “national debt” while the banks grow rich. Mr. Horr is well aware of this and so is every other well informed newspaper liar who, under the pat ronage of Wall Street, propose to “enjoy the pleasures of sin for a sea son” by hood-winking and mislead ing the public. For several decades this knowl edge of the mysterious workings of the national banking system was confined to the few like John Sher man and his partners in the iniqui ly. Os late it has; through the dis semination of a new literature such as always precedes revolutions both violent and peaceful, been revealed and made plain to the people and to the non-“experts” in the financial theft. The result is the Farmers’ Alli ance and the People’s party. The people are past being deceiv ed by men like the editor of the New York Tribune and its corres pondents. They are not asking Mr. Horr to invent foolish questions in their name and to answer at his leisure, but they would like to have him ex plain why it is necessary for the government, in dispensing tools for everyday business operations, to go around by the way of a man already worth $50,000 and upwards to es tablish its credit when the banker himself is required to lean upon the government for credit and sup port. They w r ould like to learn of these “Wise men of the East” why it is necessary for a note, which bears the stamp of a great and healthy re public, to give up its legitimate em ployment and mission as a sign and guarantee of exchange between the citizens of that republic, and go smelling, doubling and sneaking around in foreign lands in search pf redemption, so long as its character and credit are good at home. The reason for the present finan cial ievolt is that common sense is taking the place of sly professional mystery, circumlocation and chican ery on the money question. People are learning that whenever a certain form of exchange ceases to accom modate itself gracefully to the end for which money was created and ordained,’cease to act as the obedi ent servant of the people and is made to serve the interest of a small special special class, and be comes an instrument of obstruction and oppression, it must and will be exchanged for a form that responds to the needs and will of its creator the people. All the combined sophistry of forty centuries of shy locks rule cannot refute or weaken this proposition upon which hinges the present conflict between money leaders and human liberty, between retreating darkness and increasing dawn. The people are in no condition to be trilled with by men like Messrs. Sherman, Heed and Horr. The People’s party demand that the backbone of the single gold stand ard shall be broken right here in the United States. They insist upon a medium of exchange that will not be subject to the caprice of bankers and gold gamblers who drain the country of its money, who withdraw it from its lawful channels where it is most meeded and pile it up in city banks and usury vaults where it is least needed, where it is held captive by bonus bandits and financial des peradoes in whose hands it becomes a positive meanace instead of a blessing to the people. At this very time, when money is more scarce and hard to obtain for all ordinary transactions in the country than at any other period in the last quarter of a century, or at least since the demonetization of silver, the east ern city bankers are openly boasting ing that they now have more idle gold heaped up in their faro dens than ever before in the history of the nation. Mr. Horr is not ignorant of this fact, and he is well aware that it is an outrage and ought to be reme died. And it is this very knowledge that makes him guilty of treason to his trust as an educator. The trouble is he knows that he is not even trying to tell the truth, but rather to avoid telling it. If he w r as a fool, there would, through the mysterious workings of mental evo lution, be some hope for him. But like John Sherman and every other hired embassador of Wall Street, he is intelligently, deliberately and hopelessly dishonest. “Verily they have their reward.” Mr. Horr’s essay is a total failure and dreary waste of words, unless we regard it as an effort to conceal meaning, in which case it is a shin ing success. It fails to show one gleam of light on the main ques tions. It does not explain why a coun try containing unrivaled resources of all kinds should in a population of sixty-five millions have 2,000,000 unemployed men asking for w r ork at the end of thirty years of unexam pled prosperity, during which time our list of millionaires has, accord ing to Mr. Horr’s own Tribune fig ures, increased from four to more than as many thousands. It fails utterly to explain why the whole country is suffering from a lack of currency, when banks are full. On the other hand the reformers have learned the reason for this state of things. They know the underlay ing cause to be a blood poisoned system, and that its original source, no matter whether it breaks out in labor troubles or in a mortgage leprosy that is eating up the world’s producers soul and body, or in lock outs whose chief end is the humilia tion and degradation of labor, is usury, cruel shameless, relentless, ever aggressive and everywhere, damnable usury. Until Messrs. Horr and Company should at least suggest some practi cal remedy they must hang aside and make room for those who can and will, for the people have no use for their opinions and utterances. Let me say to Mr. Horr and other prime ministers of mammon, “Do not forget this one point.” Money is of no use whatever . except as it furnishes the breath of life to the lungs of trade. It is not created to be confined in national banking “bot tling works.” When it ceases to be living, acting, vitalizing breath in the body politic it ceases to be money, and becomes unhealthy and unlawful plunder; and the lungs of commercial progress being deprived of their legitimate supply of oxygen, collapse and become consumptive and diseased. It is now about time to discharge the old family physician and em ploy 7 a new one, even if nothing but a quack, now that the regulars are at a loss for remedy. But, as a sample of Horr-ible financial eluci- dation the following is unrivaled. For argument void of both face and logic it is entitled to a chromo: “Before closing this article I want to say just another word about the real money of the world. Real money must always be some sub stance which is the result of human labor. “It must of necessity be same arti cle which, in its crude state, is the product of nature, but which has had added to it human w r ork. “A ton of steel rails costs to-day S3O, simply because it costs about S3O wmrth of human toil and materi als to take the ore in its raw con dition as it lies untouched in the surface of the earth, and carry the ore up through ill its proceses until the result is reached of a ton of steel rails.” Every school boy know T s that the commercial value of gold is not and cannot be measured by the original average cost because we have no other consistent rule to apply and the factors of good or ill luck are of necessity excluded from the general estimate. If we were to attempt to sub-di vide into days jobs the enormous about of time and energy that have been exhausted in the search of gold and then pay the bill out of the product it would probably not pan out two cents per day. Edward O. Leach, director of the United States mint, ought surely to be as good authority as Mr. Horr. He says in the Forum for June, 1892, “Undoubtedly the cost of pro ducing the precious metals was originally the basis of their measur ing value, but their continued use as money metals for so many centuries has given them a value out of all proportion to, and having no possi ble connection with the cost of pro duction except as the cost of pro duction affects the amount produc ed.” He then adds: “If gold is to be the sole money of the world, not only will the ex tensioa of business and foreign in vestments be seriously crippled, but the immense fabric of credit already is liable to totter. The truth is the total supply of the precious metals is not more than sufficient to keep pace with the increase of the modern trade.” Now these are facts that Messrs. Reid, Horr and other newspaper men must be familiar with. Yet they are in the inteiest of party suc cess and of commercial robbery, constantly and persistently denying them. This being the case they are nothing less than convicted mor al criminals. In refei’ing to, the greenback ques 7 tion, Mr. Horr makes two admis sions that give away his entire argu ment and turn his part of the dis cussion into a barren plea for un necessary bondage to the world’s shylocks. He admits that the issue of greenbacks was all right, in a time of national “life and death,” and that the Supreme Court has de cided that such an issue of govern ment promises is legal and the bills may be legally retained in cir culation at the present time.” Many of us, and the number is fast increasing, think we have again reached a like emergency, and that the issue is a “life and death struggle between industrial freedom and a slavery as wide as civilization itself. Surely the recent labor upheavals indicate this if they mean anything. We propose to administer the saving remedy as a preventative and not wait till the patient is struck with death before resorting to simple hygienic treatment that would have saved it from sickness at the start. Mr. Horr concludes his perform ance with some loftly tumbling in the effort to climb over “that bank of Venice.” But he does not dis pose of the vital fact that for sever al hundred years the best money of the world was fiat money, and that it was good as long as the govern ment lasted, which was four times longer than our government has had an existence, and that it would have been good at the present day had not the Corsican Jay Gould wreck ed the Venetian dynasty in quest of golden plunder that he never found. He also gave us a valuable sug gestion in the statement that the government of Venice “compelled some of its wealthy citizens to loan money to the bank of Venice, and then passed a law prohibititg the depositors from presenting their certificates for payment.” No doubt the renowned shy lock was one of the depositors. Venice was decided ly wise in taking the golden heifer by the horns and compelling her to give down and pay for her pastur age. Note the Change. The People's Party mass meeting of Telfair county is changed from the 6th to the 18tn of August. There will be public discussion upon the political issuer of the day. Our Democratic friends are cordially invited to meet us in discussion if they desire. All aie invited to come and bring well filled baskets. The meet ing will convene at Cobbville schoo house. J. M. Smith, Ch’m, J. E. O’Nkel, Sec’y. Bailroads in Germany. Professor Richard T. Ely, of John Hopkins University, Baltimore, now traveling in Europe, has contributed to the Congregationalist an article on “Means of Communication and Trans portation,” which deals with the rail way problem in Germany. Follow ing is a quotation : German railways are frequently discussed in American newspapers, but seldom dispassionately. They are owned by the various German States, for the most part, and are un derstood to be an example of what might be expected under nationaliza tion of railways. Many persons are so opposed to government ownership and management of railways that they are unable to see the actual facts, but look at German railways through colored glasses, which at the same time distort their vision. Several things ought to be borne in mind in a discussion of the railways of Germany. First of ah, perhaps, we ought to bear in mind the gen eral character of the Germans. They are, compared with Americans, a slow, easy-going people, who accom plish a great deal but accomplish it in a different way. The character istics of the Germans must be mani fest in the management of their rail ways, whether these are operated by private corporations or by the gov ernment. The German is not in so great a hurry as the American, and he does not perceive the necessity for so great haste. A distinction must always be made between the railways of Northern Germany and Southern Germany. The two great railway owning and managing States are Prussia and Bavaria. Southern Germany exhibits the characteristics of Southern coun tries. The difference between the railways of Southern and Northern Germany is somewhat akin to the difference between the railways of out own North and South. What probably first impresses the dispassionate observer in Germany, and must deeply impress him, is the regard paid to the safety alike of passengers and employes. The fol lowing figures show the relation be tween the number of accidents to passengers in this country and in Germany: In the years 1888-89 in Germany the number of passengers carried for one killed was 11,110,000; in the United States the number carried for one killed during the year 1889-90 was 1 727,786. In other words, in proportion to the number carried, over six times as many were killed in the United States as in Germany. In the year 1888-89 the number car ried in Germany for one injured was about 2,775,000, and the number car ried for one injured in the United States in the year 1889-90 was only 203,064; in other words over 13 times as many were injured in the United States. I have before me as I write the statistics concerning accidents to em ployes during the year for which the report exists in Prussia and in the United States. The number of em ployes injured in Prussia during the year 1890-91 was 1,760, and of these 310 were killed and 1,450 were injured. The total number of em ployes was 277,686. About one out of 899 employes was killed and about one out of 191 was injured, but not fatally. In the United States for the year ending June 30, 1890— that is to say the year 1889-90—the total number of employes killed was 2,451 and the total number injured was 22,396. The number of em ployes was 749,301. One was killed to about 306 employed and one was injured to 33 employed. There are, therefore, nearly three times as many killed in the United States as in Prussia in proportion to the num ber employed and nearly six times as many injured. This all represents a needless sacrifice of life. It is a sacrifice made because money is pre ferred to human life, because, indeed, it is regarded as more sacred than human life. / A well-known American professor recently wrote an article about Ger man institutions, and spoke of the “creeping express trains” of Ger many, which he attributed to govern ment management. This reminds me of a short railway journey in Prussia when my companion was a German professor, who complained because my countrymen were always talking about the slow German trains and fast American trains, although, as he claimed, the speed of German trains was greater than that of American trains. It is certain from calculations which have been made that the average speed of German trains is faster than the average speed of trains in any other country on the continent of Europe. I have made calculations of the speed of the fastest trains in that part of Ger many where I spent the summer. The fastest train from Berlin to Hamburg makes the distance in three hours and twenty-four minutes, with an average speed, including all stops, of 52.28 miles per hour. This is faster than any train in the United States, and is, according to the En- gineering News, the fastest train in the world. The fastest train from Berlin to Cologne, according to my official railway guide, makes the dis tance in nine hours and five minutes, with an average speed of 39.6 miles per hour hour, a better rate of speed than that of the fastest limited be tween New York and Chicago un less there has been an improvement since I last looked at the time-tables of these trains. From Wiesbaden to Cologne, I made 35.48 miles per hour, all stops included, and my average speed from Cologne to Bre men, likewise including all stops, was 30.86 miles per hour. I might give other statistics, but there would be nothing gained by so doing. It is very doubtful if in traveling North and South, East and West, in this country, one could make as good time. Os course, in considering average speed in the United States, we must not only take into account the express trains between great cen ters like Chicago and New York, New York and Boston and New York and Washington, but the trains running North and South, the trains in the South, and those in the far West —the trains, for example, cross ing the plains, which do not make as good time as a fast ocean steamer. We must also take i»to account the fact that German trains are on time, while ours are often hours late. The general improvement in rail ways in Prussia since the nationaliza tion has been immense, and has con verted practically the entire people to nationalization —not that there may be no opponents, but that they are few and rapidly diminishing in number. Every well-informed man whom I met in Prussia, without one exception, considered the test of ex perience as demonstrative of the superiority, in that country at least, of the government ownership of rail ways, and I did not see one person who would like to go back to the old. system of private ownership. Our Rotten Railroad System. The New Nation. The railroad record for the first six months of 1892 has been tabu lated by the Railway Age, w r ith the result of showing that the railroad system of the country is tumbling toward general bankruptcy at an ac celerating rate. During the period referred to, there were 14 fore closure sales of railroads, with a total mileage of 1,183 miles. The funded debt of these roads was $43,360,000, and the capital stock $24,484,000, representing a total of $68,000,000 of so-called “securities.” In addition to. these foreclosure sales, 24 roads with 9,179 miles of track were placed in the bands oh receivers. The bonds issued on these roads represent $132,402,000 and the stock amounts to $177,401,- 000, a total of $310,000,000 of “se curities.” The Railway Age states that this six months record of disaster ex ceeds both as to the mileage and capitalization involved, any previous 12 months record for many years back. In the whole of 1891, for ex ample, only 2,159 miles of road, rep resenting $84,479,000, and m 1890 only 2,963 miles, representing $105,- 007,000 capitalization, passed into receivers’ hands, being only a fourth to a third of the trackage and capi talization which have gone that way in the past six months alone. To make this exhibit even more startling, the Age points out that in a number of instances so-called con solidations of roads have taken place which practically amounted to con fessons of bankruptcy. There could be no greater mistake than to imagine or represent national ization of the railroad system as a step likely to be injurious to the in terests of persons holding railroad stock stock and bonds. It would be on the contrary a measure of pro tection for their investments, without which they must continue to be at the mercy of speculators and wreckers. The only people w’hose business will be interferedwith by national ization are these same speculators and wreckers. Why did slavery ever exist ? There was money in it. A fat retainer in the hands of the lawyer will secure bridiant and learned councel and acquittal in a case in which if truth and justice be regarded the accused should go to the gallows or the peni tentiary. Why ? There is money in it. Thousands of people may faint under the lash of oppressive legisla tion, and drag out a miserable ex istence under tyrannical rule, and this at a time when so-called patriots are squeezing the tail of the Ameri can eagle until he screeches. Why ? There is money in it. We have been suffering for twenty years because of the iniquitous act of 1873 which de monetized silver ; and yet we can get no redress from those who have the power to grant it. Why ? There is money in it. Yes; there is money in it; but it is for the few, while the many may toil and sweat, and sweat and toil, and then die in poverty’s hut and be buried in tbe potters’ field.—Silver State,Winnemucca, Ne vada.