Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

IN THE SAME BOAT. INTERESTS OF COUNTRY AND CITY LABOR IDENTICAL. Moro Men Employed at Better Wages Means More Customers and Better Prices for the Farmer.s By John Davis, M. C. from Kansas. It is only expressing a well known truism to state that it is to the in terest of every farmer that his cus tomers be multiplied and enrichened so as to create a large and better market for his commodities. Hence, the more men there are employed on the railroads, in the mines, shops and factories, in all the professions, in every line of business, and in all the non-farming industries, the larger market the farmer has for his pro ducts. The employment of more men means shorter hours for wage, laborers in the non-agricultural in dustries. It is better for the farm ers of America that wage-workers have short time—that three men be employed ten hours per day instead of two men fifteen. It is better for the farmers that, in all industries where furnaces must be kept hot and wheels and machinery in motion, night and day, three shifts of men be employed eight hours each, rath er than two shifts twelve hours. It is also to the interest of farmers that the laboring men, agents and clerks in all the non-agricultural in dustries and employments receive good wages. All wages thus paid to the workers and operatives in mines, shops and factories, and on the railroads, enrich the farmer’s customers and improve his markets for all the products of the farm. In order to show the unity of interests in every nominal community, it may be added that short hours and numerous, well paid employes in crease the business of merchants and benefit every line of trade and every mechanical employment, because we are the consumers of each other’s wages. No sensible business or pro fessional man or intelligent farmer can conceive himself benelited by the oppression of labor through long hours and small pay. But, on the contrary, the more men there are employed (that means short hours) and the better the wages, the better it is for the farmers and for the pro fessional and business men who have laboring men for customers. This view of the case is plain and self-evident. But there is another phase of alleged antagonisms which must have further attention. It is claimed by the railroad corporations that farmers on one side and rail roads employes on the other have antagonism toward each other which can never be reconciled. They justly state that the farmers desire lower freights and fares on the rail roads, while the men operating the roads as employes are demanding higher wages and shorter hours. These demands, it is claimed by the corporations, are on each side earn est and persistent, and at the same time incompatible. There is enough of truth in this claim to give it a show of plausibility. It is claimed that lower rates cannot be permitted on the railroads without lowering the wages of the employes on the roads. On the other hand, it is not possible to grant the employes short er hours and better pay without rais ing the freights and fares which the farmers and the public must pay. Thus the corporations have drawn a picture of an irrepressible conflict with the public, including the farm ers on one side, and their employes on the other. They would have us believe that the farmers and the public generally are engaged in a war to oppress the men who operate the railroads and that this war is merciless and endless. So earnest and persistent are the corporations in pushing this view of the case that they have commenced organizing their mtn into clubs with regular newspaper organs to resist the grow ing unity and power of the farmers and people's movement! The corporations are the ruling power. They work with little noise or friction. They lay their plans carefully and secretly, and they carry them out with certainty and con scienceless precision. Laws, consti tutions, court decisions, and public opinions are brushed aside as cob webs by the hands of a giant. The men composing the corporations are usually millionaires, and are spoken of as “magnates.” Beginning busi ness sometimes on the mouse-trap plan, in a very few years their wealth is reckoned by hundreds of millions. The “coming billionaire,” it is pre dicted, will soon arrive by railroad, floated in by the floods and forgeries of his own watered stocks. Where did these millionaire corporations get their wealth ? They acquired it from the men with whom they have been dealing. They acquired it from the laboring men who operate the rail roads, and from the farmers and the general public! These magnates crowd their employes down—-down, down into the most merciless slavery, utterly unknown in the annals of our once peculiar institution, chattie slavery. They work men, it is said, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty hours at a stretch, as suits their own sweet will and pleasure, until, in orae cases, engineers and conductors are too much exausted to be proper custodians of a train. Many lives and much property have been sacri ficed by the inability of men to keep awake. The corporations do not drive men to their tasks with whips, shot guns and blood hounds, but through hunger, distress, lack of fair wages PEOPLE’S PARTY PAPER. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, FRIDAY OCTOBER 14, 1892. for fair work, and threats of discharge. That is the millionaire treatment of employes! On the other hand, as described by Mr. Garfield in June, 1874, “these modern barons, more powerful than their military prototypes of the mid dle ages, own our greatest highways and levy tribute at will on all our vast industries !” Senator Windom, in an official re port to Congress in 1874, described our present masters and oppressors as follows: In matters of taxation, there are to-day four men representing the four great trunk lines between Chicago and New York who possess and who not infre quently exercise powers which the Con gress of the United States would not ven ture to assert. They may at any time, and for any reason satisfactory to them selves, by a single stroke of the pen, re duce the value of property in this coun try, by hundreds of millions of dollars. An additional charge of five cents per bushel on the transportation of cereals would have been equivalent to a tax of $45,000,000 on the crop of 1873. No Con gress would dare to exercise so vast a pow er, except upon a necessity of the most imperative nature, and yet these gentle men exercise it whenever it suits their supreme will and pleasure, without ex planation or apology. With the rapid and inevitable progress of consolidation and combination, those colossal organi zations are becoming daily stronger and more imperious. The day is not distant, if it has not already arrived, when it will be the duty of statesmen to inquire whether there is less danger in leaving the property and industrial interests of the people wholly at the mercy of a few men, who recognize no responsibility but to their stockholders, and no principle of actiom but personal and corporate ag grandizement, than adding somewhat to the power and patronage or the Govern ment directly responsible to the people and entirely under their control. In all cases they act on the rob ber’s rule when he sets out to get rich by his calling. From the labor ing men who operate the roads, the corportions require all that flesh and blood can stand (and more) at the lowest living or starvation wages! Os the public they require “all that the traffic can bear,” regardless as to the financial embarrassment, the loss of homes, or the means of life by the individuals who compose the public. Having raised freights on the one side and suppressed wages on the other until the margin of profits is large, then comes the opportunity to swell “capitalization” by the sale of manufactured or forged stocks and bonds. These are known as “watered stocks.” An agent of the company orders printed blank stock certificates and blank bonds. These blanks, which cost merely the price of print ing, are then filled out with large amounts, signed, and sold for cash in the market at the market price—at par, more or less. If sold at only fifty cents on the dollar, the trans action is bold robbery. A bit of paper costing the company . only a cent may be sold for $50,000 (cash to the corporation). Then, after that sale there will be 8100,000 more of water. As the amount is increasing over half a billion annually, it is within the truth to call the present total burden ten billions. According to the best railroad authorities one-half of this incomprehensible fund is fraud—watered stocks! Five bil* lions of water! If sold at par it brought enough money to make five thousand new millionaires! At 4 per cent per annum the income is enough to make two hundred new millionaires each year from this wat ered capitalization, which represents no honest value. Letter of Acceptance. Washington, D. C., Sept. 21, 1892. Hon. W. R. Gorman, J. W. Wilson, and J. W. 11. Russell: Gentlemen —Yours of the 10th inst. is to hand notifying me of my nomination as a candidate for the Fifty-third Congress by the district convention of the People’s party of the Fourth Congressional district of Georgia. In reply allow me to thank you for the distinguished honor you have con ferred upon me. As you very well know, when I have been approached upon the subject of accepting this nomination I have declined the honor, for the reason that I could not well accept without great personal incon venience to myself, occupying as I do position of great honor and trust already in this reform movement; but feeling as I do that it is the imper ative duty of every citizen at this particular time, when the very exist of the republic is threatened, to faith fully discharge every trust commit ted to his hands, I can do nothing less than accept this nomination so generouly tendered. In accepting this nomination I feel it my duty to briily give you my reasons for so doing. I was one among the very first who joined the Farmers Alliance in Georgia, having joined the second lodge that was or ganized in the State as a charter member. I did not join the order through idle curiosity, or for the pur pose of self-aggrandizement, but from a deep-seated conviction “that the conditions surrounding the producers and business men of our country would have to be speed ily changed, or this republic would very soon resolve itself into an aris tocracy more exacting and tyramcal and a peasantry more degraded and humilating than ever cursed Europe. More than five years have passed since that time, and every returning season has proven beyond doubt that my .convictions were based upon facts, as the experience of thousands of wrecked business men and home less farmers will attest. It is true our plans have been ridi culed and denounced as visionary, yet our critics have failed to offer us anything better. We have gone upon our suppliant knees to both the old political parties, and when we asked for bread we have ibeen given a serpent. We have asked them in the name df justice to put us upon an equal footing before the law u ith the banker, the bondholder, and the whisky maker, and they have replied in solemn tones that it owould be unconstitutional. With, such treat ment of our just and reasonable de mands, in my opinion, there is noth ing left for the common people but to array themselves in ceaseless warfare upc-ix the existing conditions, as our forefathers did upon the con ditions of Seventy-six, ttntil every American shall be a freeman and no usurer will dare demand his pound of flesh. That which our forefathers accom plished with the bayonet can be ac complished by us with the bollot, if we are but to begin in time and make the'proper use of the means of defense feft us. We have been taught one of the old political parties high protective tariff would to every home; the other "ba j taught us just the reverse, while ftfeatfonly attempt ed to reduce Jbe If the tariff be the great robber as pictured by The party, instead of cutting Eidown seven per cent, every Vestige Os it should be blotted out have found the great trouble with this party on this subject (o lie in fact that the controlling element bf the party be ing in these protected in dustries, are just as Minch in favor of protection as the Republican i party itself. There is no perceptible dif ference, so far as theTecord goes on this subject, between an Eastern Democrat and an Eastejin; Republican. This sham battle over tariff has been going on for more than- a half cen tury. The people have been arrayed on either side, loyally, and I might say blindly, following their leaders with a devotion unparalleled in po litical history, while both sides have been systematically Tabbed by a sys tem purposely kept in the background and almost entirely Ignored as a po litical issue. I refer .- to the financial system which has : so ruthlessly snatched away the and hap piness of so many- 1 of our business men, and brought and ruin to the once happy homes of so many farmers and In proof of the above statement as regards the business men of the country, I submit Jie following from Bradstreet’s •' Con*merical Bulletin: “In 1865 fliere were 520 failures, with liabilities 817,625,000. In 1875, after sflyer has been demone tized and of the coun try had been contacted from $52.01 per capita in 1863 io $14.04 in 1875, there were 7,740 failures, with lia bilities $202,0.00,000, and in 1889 number of failures 13,277, with lia bilities $12,496,742.” These continually increasing fail ures of the business men of the country is a continual harvest for the money gamblers' 6f this country and Europe. As proof I submit that twenty-five years ago the million aires of this countiy could be count ed on a man’s fingers. Now they are numbered by £s e thousands. Os course thee above figures, coupled with the fsbt that cotton is selling at six cents per pound and wheat at fifty bushel, are not very reassuring,. to the busines men of the country, and do not make them; content with present conditions. lam -satisfied that when the business men of the country find time to investigate the true causes of the depressed Condition of their business they will be as willing as we are to lay aside their blind parti san zeal and unite;with the pro ducers of the country in one supreme effort to rid the country of the causes that have produced stich direful ef fects. Let us now examine into the con dition of the farmers and working people of the country. We find from the census bulletins of 1890 that there were 9,000,000 mortgages recorded between 1880 and 1890 on the homes of the peo ple. From statistics already given out, estimates fairly made show that from $9,000,000,000, to $15,000,000- 000 yet remain Repaid. This sum at 8 per cent interest would amount to $720,000,000 th'At" must be paid from the products of labor annual ly into the coffers of the usurer. Allowing 8,000,905. bales of cotton for an average'Mip, it would take three entire'crops of cotton to pay this interest'aloha. How long will the farmers hnd business men of the country continue to Vote to continue in power politieal? .parties that pro pose to present condi- tions? .w-diH nxtnr i .1 f>- John C.‘ said: “Why compel the people to pay interest on through the bank when said credit'could be extended direct to the people without in terest '• J£irn< L> tn Thomas Jefferson said: “Our only resource—an ample one for any emergency —Treasury notes bottom ed on taxes.” The financial plank in the People’s party platform is Calhoun, Jefferson and Jackson’s remedy for present conditions. I shall next “notice the land ques tion upon which the second plank of our platform f bears. The every day observations of every intelligent man must convince him that present con ditions are this coun try a landlord and ( tenant system more disgraceful, if possible, than that which purses Ireland. Os the lauds of the United States aliens own, outside of railroad grants, 61,900,000 acres; railroads corpora tions own acres which, added to the amount, owned by aliens makes 253,242,385 acres, a sufficient amount, if reclaimed by the government to provide a com fortable home for every man, woman and child in the United States who is to-day without a home. It is the home owner that develops the re sources of a country, defends its laws, builds its schools and makes society contented and happy. The history of all countries and times teaches us that when the lands of a country drift into the hands of the few and the many are made tenants and serfs, bloodshed and revolution have been the invariable results. Are the people of this country to stand idly by and permit their homes to be absorbed by aliens and corporations simply because the po litical boas says that it would be communism to offer a protest? If the people would not see their chil dren the tenants of alien landlords, let them put their protests in the ballot-box, which is the only remedy left except the musket. Both the old political parties are so -completely dominated by these corporations that they dare not open their mouths on the land question. Examine their platforms and see. The transportation question is one of the most vital that is now engaging the attention of the American peo ple. Railroad corporations have be come so exacting that almost every State in the Union has been com pelled to create a railroad commis sion, and the National Government an interstate commission, in order to protect the people, and they are still unprotected, as everyone knows who has endeavored to investigate the matter. According to the price the people are receiving for their pro ducts, the railroads are charging more to-day for passenger and freight traf fic than they ever did since there was a railroad m the country. It will take twice as many pounds of cot ton or bushels of wheat to carry a passenger one hundred miles or a carload of freight one hundred miles than it did twenty years ago. For example, it would then cost 5c per mile or $5 to ride 100 miles. The $5 would cost 25 pounds of cotton at 20c per pound. Now it will cost only 3c per mile or $3 for 100 miles. The $3 will cost 50 pounds of cotton at 6c per pound. It cost just as many days’ work to produce a pound of cotton twenty years ago as it does to-day, but a j pound of cotton then would buy i twice as much railroad service as it ; will to-day. Railroad control, as | now practiced, is a sham and a fraud, and the experience of some of the wisest railroad men in this country and the old country teaches us that the only way to control railroads is for the Government to absolutely own and operate them in the inter est of the people. “Poor’s Manual’' for 1892 is just out, and is recog nized authority on railroad statistics all over the world. It gives the number of miles of railroad in the United States to be 170,601 ; actual cost, $4,809,176,651; watered stock, $5,956,449,390; total valuation, $10,765,626,041. By fictitious or watered stock they are compelling the people to pay more than twice as much for service as they should pay in order thsA they may reap divi dends upon fraudulent investments. I find in the same manual that the gross earnings of the road is $1,138,- 024,459. Cotton at 6 cents per pound, it would take 42,149,054 bales, or about five entire crcps, to pay this enormous sum. Wheat at 60 cents per bushel, it would take 1,896,707.- 431 bushels to pay it. The net earn ings are $356,209,880. At the pres ent price of cotton, it would take 12,192,958 bales, or about one and one-half crops to pay these net earn ings. In other words, about 20,000,- 000 Southern cotton-raisers are re quired to produce cotton at a loss that a few hundred railroad magnates may become millionaires and squan der it going to Europe every year. I find from a thorough investiga tion of the management of the cor porations of the country that it is a mere matter of time until they will own the Government, unless an An drew Jackson rises up and lays the strong hand of the Government upon them as he did upon the national bank. The annual earnings of the four principal classes of corporations in this country are as follows: Railroads . . • . Insurance . * . . 115,453,258 Banks .... 75,763,514 Telegraphs .... 25,947,606 Total . . I . $573,374,348 A large amount of stock of those corporations is owned by aliens whose dividends and interest must be paid in gold, and this fact accounts largely for the heavy shipments of gold from this country to Europe. This vast sum paid in cotton at the present price would require 21,- 236,086 bales of cotton, or about two and one-half crops. The wheat crop for 1891 was, in round- numbers, 400,000,000 at 60c. per bushel, the price that the farmer is now receiving, would amount to $240,000,000. The earnings of these corporations paid in wheat would require 955,- 623, 913 bushels, or two and one fourth crop. If an entire cotton and wheat crop should be applied to the payment of the the earnings of these corporations it would lacksll7,- 374, 348 of paying it. I give these facts to show how the products of the country are being consumed. It accounts for the thousand of failures among the business men and the universal bankrupty among the farm- ers. Both of the old political par ties claim that it would be unconsti tutional for the Government to lav its hands upon these corporations, and have entirely ignored these issues in their platforms; therefore, I accept your nomination pledged, ii elected, to do all in my power tc remedy these evils and rescue the Government from the hands of these corporations and restore it to the people, if the Constitution has to be changed to do it. Yours truly, and fraternally, J. H. Tubneb. AN EYE-OPENER." All the way from San Diego, Cal., comes a little pamphlet, by F. A Binney, which is an excellent cam paign document. The silver argu ment he makes is first rate and very plain : The writer has made a comparison of the selling prices of wheat, corn, cotton and hay ia this country from 1873 to the present time, which shows that the prices have fallen, have been constantly below the average of previous years to 1873. These di minished prices just mean so much loss to the American farmers, and I have summed up the total loss to ten thousand millions of dollars. Is it any wonder that the farmers of America are over head and ears in debt, their farms mortgaged and themselves becoming tenants instead of owners ? That this is due to the Silver Bill of 1873, 1 can easily prove to you. Up to 1873 the French mint coined all the silver that was brought to them at a fixed price of fifteen and one-half ounces of silver to one ounce of gold, and France became wealthy on it. Why ? Simply be cause every silver mine-owner, know ing he could get that price for his silver, refused to sell for less else where, consequently the price could never fall, whatever silver he sent to France to be coined, he got in ex change five franc silver pieces. These coins he could not use anywhere out side of France, consequently he was obliged to take payment in French goods, and that stimulated French trade, and France grew rich on it. Up to 1873 we also kept open mint for silver, but when France closed her mint this country was foolish enough to do the same at the instigation of American, London and German bankers, who had cornered gold and who knew that if they could only exclude silver from com peting with gold, they would increase the value of their gold. No sooner did the mints close their doors than silver owners, having lost their best customers, had to lower their prices, and this is the why fore of the decline in t: „ Jlndia is a nation of 200.000,0 f people, using exclusively silver coinage.; Be fore 1873 their silver rupee was worth fifty cents (roughly speaking), and a five dollar British gold piece could only exchange for ten rupees, consequently could only buy ten ru pees worth of Indian wheat or cot ton. Now, when silver declined, the value of the silver metal in every rupee depreciated also until a five dollar gold piece was worth thirteen to fifteen rupees. Consequently a five dollar British gold piece could buy thirty per cent more wheat and cotton in India and all other silver using countries, like Russia, China, Mexico, Egypt, South America, etc. Finding they could get more for their money in India than in America, the British cotton and wheat buyers began importing wheat and cotton from silver using countries and the American farmer had to cut down his prices to suit this competition ! I hope I have now made it clear to every farmer why the fall in the price of silver has meant the fall in American produce and the ruin of the Amirican farmer. If this be so, do you not see that for this country to reopen our mint to the free coin age of silver would mean to raise the price of silver to its old level and keep it there—to take thirty per cent off the price of Indian and Egyptian wheat and cotton and add thirty per cent to the profit of our farmers and to stimulate trade with all countries who sent us their silver and would have to take our goods in return. If the old parties legislated to se cure the happiness of the greatest number instead of pandering to the selfish interests of a ring of million aires, the people of this country would be the most prosperous in the world, for the assessed value of the property is sixty thousand million dollars to a population of sixty mil lions, showing $4,000 for every family of four. Reader, would you like to have your share ? Are there not millions without ten dollars to their credit whilst millionaires are numbered by thousands? Perhaps you live in an irrigation district and have land that is unpro ductive waiting for water that you cannot get because the bonds can’t be floated. You may have read an article in the San Diego L T nion lately, congratulating us that British capi talists were on their way out here to investigate these securities. Now, I ask you, in view of the fact that the people of this country have the sup ply of money entirely under their own control, with abundant silver produced in their own mines, which the two old parties refuse to let them coin, is it not enough to make any American with an atom of spirit in dignant and disgusted to think that we should be such ignorant fools as to go, cap in hand, to British capi talists and ask them to be so good as to help us to that which we have abundance of within our grasp ? i Cannot you see that the ten thou sand million dollars onr farmers have lost in diminished prices on wheat and cotton exported to England is England’s gain ?—has helped to feed and clothe her workmen at less cost and helped her to produce cheap goods, and now forsooth we must beg them to be kind enough to loan us some of the#’. money our folly has helped them to make. Where is your patriotism ? Again, do not forget this import ant truth : Neither gold nor silver are necessary for our money. We have at the present moment three hundred and fifty million dollars in greenbacks in circulation, to redeem which there is not a cent in the treasury. They are as good as all the gold and silver in the world. Why ? Because they are backed by the credit of sixty millions of people. They are bills backed by Uncle Sam, and there is no earthly reason why we should not issue two thousand millions more of them. This kind of money would be the nation’s prop erty. The gold and silver we coin belongs to the mine owners. Do you see the immense difference ? No wonder they hate paper money and do all they can to frighten you against it. Think this great fact over. With this money in hand, the people could loan all the money we want to irrigate California; could pay off the national debt; could build a new railway to the Pacific and work it at one-fourth the present freights ; could employ the two mil lion tramps and bring the railroad thieves to their senses or buy them out at their real value. If we were to go in for free coin age of silver at a fixed price, and coined one thousand millions in the next five years, that would be so much profit to the mine owners after paying the miners’ wages. If the miners were in South Africa or Mexico, of course American work men would get no benefit from the wages spent there. Suppose these capitalists built a new railway, that would be their property, but there is no guarantee that they would invest it in this country at all. They might subscribe to foreign loans. If, however, the nation issued one thousand millions in paper currency, and built a railroad with it, we should make sure of finding employment for American labor and the people would possess a railway whose com petition would force down tho charges of all othc r lines, put thou sands of dollars in the pockets of every farmer on the line, and give abundant employment to any silver miners who might be injured by the disuse of silver money. Look at the national bank system. What is it in huge fraud on the people. If. people can make their own money, why in the name of common sense cannot the Government issue it direct to the people, as the People’s party propose, either in loans on good se curity (as the sub-treasury plan in tends), or in public works, buying the railroads and paying the em ployees, etc. ? Instead of this, what do they do now? They lend the money to tho national banks in big amounts on deposit of United States bonds security. They charge these bankers only one per cent interest [think of it], and the bankers loan it out to you at ten to fifteen or more per cent. And this is the people’s own money I Do either of the old parties propose to alter this? No, indeed. Wall street bankers sub scribe to their campaign funds, and they dare not. The Duly of the Hour. Farmers Light, Harlem, Gb. It is the duty of every People’s party man to renew his efforts and bring to bear all the influence he has to further the success of the People’s cause. But a few months ago the People’s party was organized, and to-day it is a leading political factor in the North and Northwest, and it is the duty of our people to make this new party a leading factor in the South; but how is this to be done? By united action on the part of the laborers of the cities and towns with the farmers of the country. The railroads and other large corpora tions that have men employed try in every way to make them subservient to their will on election day. But we are glad to know there are some men who do work for big money corporations who cannot be intimi dated or influenced against their con victions. Every laboring man should stand by and vote as his honest con science dictates, regardless of posi tion or esteem of any one The duty of the hour for the laborers and farmers is to unite their forces and vote solidly together. All persons wishing to correspond with the State organizer, Knights of Labor, will communicate with J. F. Foster, State organizer K. of L., Rox ana, Ga. THE’PEOPLE’S PROBIE A Whole Library of Political Economy on One Sheet of Faner. The New Declaration of Independence— The People's Problems Plainly Present ed. By K. L. Armstrong.* Colored Chart, 21x28 inches, printed on heavy paper, suitable for framing. Price, 25c. postpaid. Per dozen, by express, $2.00. This chart shows, in colored diagrams, the conditions which confront us, and teaches ata glance the whole situation—Labor. Land, Fi< nance and Transportation—and the remedies as outlined in the Omaha Flatform, which is printed in full in clear type. There tire also portraits of Gen. Weaver and Gen. Field. Al together, it is the most effective campaign ar gument ever devised. Agents wanted for this and other popular publications. Address E. J. SCHULTE & CO., Publishers, 298 Dearborn St.. Chicago.