|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
Debating the Income TaxAmerican Nonconformist, June 7, 1894 It is funny how very popular the Populists are in the senate just at this time and what particular attention and deference is paid to them throughout the discussion now going on. It is quite the “fad” for a republican or democratic senator to say, in the course of his speech, “I wish to call my Populist friends’ attention to these facts and figures.” No wonder Senator Allen refrained from announcing what his vote would be on the tariff bill, and no wonder he succeeded in having his amendment putting all lumber on the free list passed as well as his amendment on barbed wire.1 The vote stood: Yeas 35; nays 24. The farmers all over the country can be proud of such a senator. Walsh of Georgia2 made his maiden speech on the tariff bill. He is a good speaker. He favored the income tax and free silver, and gave Cleveland3 two or three “puffs” during the course of the speech. Sherman made an unusually elaborate speech on the tariff.4 It took him three hours and his secretary sat by his side receiving the sheets of his speech one by one as he delivered them. Now I will put it to my readers, whether the speech of such a man is worth reporting, and I will state why I ask the question. Senator Walsh, who spoke before Sherman, quoted from a speech delivered by Sherman in 1870, in which Sherman gave his opinion on the income tax as follows: “I repeat that the maintenance of the income tax is an absolute necessity for any system of internal taxes. If the Senate and house should determine after full consideration to repeal the income tax I shall favor the repeal of all taxes upon consumption that bear upon the great masses of the people. I do not believe there is any such complaint about the income tax. If I had my own way I would retain the income tax at 5 per cent making such modifications as would afford the proper exemptions; I would maintain the income tax at 5 per cent on all incomes about $1,000, and then throw off these taxes upon consumption that do oppress the poor and do take dollars out of the coffers of the people who earn them by their daily work.” Yesterday Sherman attacked the income tax. He said it was a war tax and there was no necessity for it. It was a tax on classes. The idea of taxing a comparatively few because you can reach them and because they live in large cities was an act of agrarianism and injustice. If they legislated for classes in this country then the system would break down. All men were alike under the law and the same rule should apply to all. They had no right to tax a corporation because it was a corporation. When a tax was levied it was so much taken off the stockholder, and it was a matter of gross injustice. The English did those things better. They classified incomes carefully. The idea of taxing a savings bank was enough to make his blood boil. He was going to say for God’s sake—he would say for the sake of humanity—do not attempt to tax corporations, who are the custodians, the depositories of the poor. Now which of these two statements of his are we to believe. Pettigrew,5 of South Dakota, made a rather odd speech on the tariff, but as usual with the silver men the latter half of it merged into the money question. I think at heart he really believes in free trade, but he kept insisting and trying to prove that protection and free silver must be combined together to bring prosperity to the country. How these western silver men do hang on to the their republicanism! It is hard work trying to reconcile logically two irreconcilable things. The senator believes in “protection” because that is republican, you know, but he says he would repeal all duty on sugar and binding twine. He warned democrats that “if this bill passes the farmers of the West may join with the South and do that which will injure them and ruin you, and collect the revenues to run this government by a tax on luxuries and an income tax.” Your threat of what “may” be done is exactly what “ought” to be done Senator Pettigrew. You say you favor having everything free which is the subject of a “trust.” What article of nature or manufacture is there that isn’t the subject of a “trust” or monopoly? Peffer6 is slowly educating the senate up to his own advanced position by his frequent and numerous resolutions. He introduced one the other day that a committee be appointed to consider the constitutionality of the government ownership of all the coal beds in the United States and the best way of accomplishing that object. I suppose the only way to get the senate used to advanced ideas is to do it slowly and gently by degrees, as it were, and these resolutions of Peffer’s seem to be just the thing. Notes 1. Senator William Vincent Allen was a Populist senator from Nebraska. The second session of the Fifty-Third Congress had taken up debate on protective tariffs when it convened on December 4, 1893. To address the economic woes of the Panic of 1893, President Cleveland had called for and obtained repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act but he also wanted tariffs lowered. The bitterness engendered over the silver issue made the debate long and tedious. The House passed the Wilson Bill, which placed raw materials such as iron ore, coal, lumber, wool, sugar and others on the free list, reduced duties on cotton and woolen goods, iron and steel products, silks, linens, and others, and replaced a bounty to domestic raw sugar productions which had been provided for by the McKinley Act. To make up for the lost revenue, the Wilson Bill placed a 2% tax on incomes of $4,000 or more. The Senate ultimately passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which included 634 amendments to the Wilson Bill, aimed at protecting favored goods and products. In reality it retained many of the protective tariffs of the McKinley Act and did little to reduce tariffs. 2. Senator Patrick Walsh was a Democrat from Georgia. 3. Grover Cleveland won the presidential election of 1892 for a second but nonconsecutive term, having also been elected in 1884. President Cleveland was a Democrat. 4. Senator John Sherman was a Republican from Ohio. 5. Senator Richard Franklin Pettigrew was a Republican from South Dakota. 6. Senator William Alfred Peffer was a Populist from Kansas. That Rotten Old SenateAmerican Nonconformist, July 5, 1894 During the past two weeks the hot weather struck us at the same time with Hill and the income tax. 1No wonder the poor senators couldn’t keep their little tempers. They squabbled and called each other all sorts of “names.” Our Allen called Chandler a “baboon” and told him as plain as he could that he lied, and Chandler retorted that Allen was no “gentleman” before he entered the senate, and said that when he (Chandler) wanted to say mean things he said them in polite and “parliamentary” language.2 Harris said he would like to “lay” Senator Hoar “on the table.” 3 I wonder if he meant by that, that he would like to “spank” him. Hill sneeringly alluded to Harris’ “plantation manners,” and said he would not submit to them, and Harris said something about the “manners of the slums of New York.” Call of Florida4 tried to cool himself off by taking his shoes off and putting his shoeless feet on the desk in front of him, thereby shocking the sensibilities of the entire polite world, and Aldrich and Gray5 nearly went frantic over an amendment to the effect that the books of corporations should be kept open for the inspection of the internal revenue officers or agents, and broke into fiery denunciations of the income tax and the injustice to the “poor corporations,” and Vest6 sarcastically accounted for the explosion, by the near approach of the Fourth of July. Teller,7 as usual, administered some “soothing syrup” in the shape of a modified amendment, that when a collector thinks that a corporation has not returned a true account he shall file an affidavit to that effect with the commissioner of the internal revenue, and the commissioner shall make a request of the corporation to allow an examination to be made, and then if they refuse the collector shall make an estimate and add 50 per cent, thereto. This amendment was passed. Teller said that he hoped the income tax would become a permanent feature in the monetary system of this country, as it was fast becoming a part of the monetary systems of the world. It will be remembered that Sherman8 said something a while ago about its making his “blood boil” when they talked about taxing the poor little corporations of the poor honest hard working people who put their “little savings” into them, etc., and Cullom said9 that the president of a railway company had told him that a great many people owned a very small amount of stock in that railroad and had asked him to secure their exemption from an income tax. Teller said that there was a good deal of nonsense in that sort of talk, and it was absurd to talk of the poor people of the country owning the railroads, and the poor people of the country owning the banks. When there were any small stockholders in a corporation they were usually swallowed up by the big stockholders. What a pity Senator Teller is not a Populist. He is good enough and level-headed enough to be one. He is like the grain of wheat in the load of chaff of the republican party, and the grain of wheat is the only thing that makes the load of chaff worth anything. The democratic party seems to have no grain of wheat at all; that is why it has all scattered to the four winds of heaven. Hill fought with desperate fire and energy, worthy of a better cause against the income tax. He disputed every foot of the way, inch by inch. He wanted the exemptions placed at a much lower figure than $4,000 and to humor him the democrats brought in an amendment placing it at $3,000, but when Hill instead of being grateful “pitched” into the democratic party right and left by enumerating all its sins in detail, the democrats lost their good nature and withdrew the motion, and Hill lost amendment after amendment. As fast as he lost one, he offered another. His pluck was admirable, but for what a cause! At last he turned the vials of his wrath loose on the Populists and particularly on Allen, our standard bearer, for his denunciations of the corporations and the money power. He taunted the Populists by calling them Coxeyites and said that Populism was socialism and socialism was Populism only a little more so. It was Peffer10 who brought him down from his “high horse” by reading to him the denunciations of the republican party in the democratic platform of 1884 and vice versa, of the republican platform in 1880, and said that “if there was anything harder, uglier, dirtier and meaner than that in the Populist platform, he was entirely willing that Hill should read it.” Hill answered, “Oh, well that was meant in a Pickwickian11 sense, and that the political parties always exaggerated each other’s evils during the heat of the campaign.” He ended by saying that for each and every one of the members of the Populist party in the senate he had the greatest respect. There is this significant thing about the whole incident, and that is that Hill is too much of a politician to have made all that row about the Populists, if he didn’t think they were gaining in numbers and influence. It was a curiosity to see Hill, the materialistic politician, and a “new York Politician,” at that, and Peffer, the idealist, whose sole defect is that he is fifty years in advance of his age, facing each other. There seems to be a sort of subtle attraction of utter unlikeness perhaps. After all it is the idealist who will win. Not all the materialistic Hills or the sophistical John Shermans, can stop the progress of an “idea.” And what is the Populist idea? It is to put into daily practice and daily living the great central idea around which all the teachings of Jesus Christ revolve—that love is the fulfilling of the law. Love put into daily practice and daily living is the only key that will solve all the social and political problems of the world. This idea has been slowly developing from generation to generation since Christ first gave it to the world, and the germ of it has been kept alive by the best men of each generation, as witness Thomas Moore in his: “Utopia,” Robert Burns in his “A man’s a man for a’ that,” in Shelly’s poems, in James Russell Lowell’s earlier poems, in the works of Victor Hugo, in the lessons that Dickens taught the privileged classes of England in his novels, and Wickliff in his translation of the bible for the masses. 12 The war against slavery was a part of the development of the idea. All history, when you bring it down to its last analysis, simply depicts the development of the idea. It has been “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.” That which the poets have only dreamed, the Populists are trying to put into action. They have hold of the key in that they know and feel that this high ideal can be put into practice, that it is possible to live it. Ideals are worthless and nothing if they can’t be acted on. That is what the creator put them before us for; to be lived up to. In the past the poets have been too few and far between to work in concerted action for the benefit of mankind. There seem to be enough of the same way of thinking now to form a party to begin with. Our leaders may make mistakes of judgement now and then but that ought to make them press on all the more eagerly. No one has made more mistakes of judgement than Gladstone but that didn’t make him stop. 13 He only kept pressing on toward the right and no man is more highly honored in the world today than he. Even the democratic party made a step toward the right when the retained the income tax in their bill and the best men of the republican party joined them. It goes without saying that the Populist party did the same. The vote, which was on Hill’s amendment to strike out the income tax, was as follows: Yeas—Messrs. Aldrich, Allison, Chandler, Cullom, Dixon, Dolph, Frye, Gallinger, Hale, Hawley, Higgins, Hill, McMillan, Manderson, Merrill, Murphy, Patton, Perkins, Platt, Proctor, Sherman, Smith, Washborn—23 Nays—Messers. Allen, Bate, Berry, Blackburn, Blanchard, Brice, Caffery, Camden, Cockrell, Coke, Daniel, Faulkner, George, Gibson, Gordon, Hansbrough, Harris, Hunton, Irby, Jarvis, Jones of Arkansas, Kyle, Lindsay, McLaurin, Martin, Mills, Mitchell of Oregon, Pasco, Peffer, Pettigrew, Power, Ransom, Roach, Shoup, Teller, Vest, Vilas, Voorhees, Walsh, White—40 Notes 1. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Bill, under debate here, would ultimately pass the Senate. President Cleveland was so displeased with the bill that he refused to sign it. It became law without his signature, and within a year after its passage, the 2% tax on incomes was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. David Bennett Hill was a Democrat from New York. 2. Senator William Vincent Allen was a Populist from Nebraska. Senator William Eaton Chandler was a Republican from New Hampshire. 3. Isham Green Harris was a Democrat from Tennessee. Senator George Frisbie Hoar was a Republican from Massachusetts. 4. Senator Wilkinson Call was a Democrat from Florida. 5. Senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich was a Republican from Rhode Island. Senator George Gray was a Democrat from Delaware. 6. Senator George Graham Vest was a Democrat from Missouri. 7. Henry M. Teller was a Republican senator from Colorado. For La Flesche’s biographical sketch of Teller, see her article “The U.S. Senate” below. 8. Senator John Sherman was a Republican from Ohio. 9. Senator Shelby Moore Cullom was a Republican from Illinois. 10. Senator William Alfred Peffer was a Populist from Kansas. 11. That is, suited to the particular occasion. 12. Sir Thomas More, [not Moore] (1478-1535), English statesman and author; Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scottish poet, whose line appears in his 1795 poem “For A’ That and A’ That”; Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet; James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), American poet; Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist; Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English novelist; John Wycliffe (1320?-1384), English religious reformer. 13. William Ewart Gladstone served four terms as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Made a MistakeAmerican Nonconformist, January 4, 1895 Senator Stewart made a mistake.1 Everybody makes mistakes, but it is not everybody who is willing to acknowledge his mistake. Senator Stewart acknowledged his. What is more, he acknowledged it before the whole senate, and what is still more he had it all put in full in the Record, so that it could be recorded permanently in the history of the country. Reader, could you or I do more to make amend when we have made a mistake? Senator Stewart made his mistake while making a speech during the silver session last September. It was all about Senator Sherman, too.2 Senator Sherman had the bill passed demonetizing silver in 1873, and he worked for years to bring it about. When the repeal bill was passed during the extra session people around the capitol said: “Sherman has triumphed. He has worked for twenty years to utterly destroy silver and make the country adopt the single gold standard, and he has accomplished his object.” On the night the repeal bill was passed triumph was visible in his face, air and demeanor. Now I will give you the whole of Senator Stewart’s mistake(?) and you can judge for yourselves whether he has made the “amends honorable.” Remember that what Senator Sherman did say was said just at the opening of the campaign in Ohio, when he wanted to carry the state: “Mr. Stewart—Mr. President, I rise to a question of privilege. In a speech which I delivered on the 5th of September last I made a misquotation. I quoted what I am about to read as having been said by the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Sherman), whereas it was said by the senator from Missouri (Mr. Bogy)3. In the hurry of the debate I did not observe in the print that the speakers were changed. In looking over the speech of the senator from Ohio I did not observe that I had reached the end of his remarks and I quoted the passage from Mr. Bogy as coming from him. I wish to correct this error. The passage from Mr. Bogy, which I ascribe to the Senator from Ohio is as follows: “‘Our coinage act came into operation on the 1st of April, 1878 and constituted the gold one-dollar piece, the sole unit of value, while it restricted the legal tender of the new silver trade dollar and the half dollar and subdivisions to an amount not exceeding $5 in one payment. Thus the double standard previously existing was finally abolished, and the United States as usual was influenced by Great Britain in making gold coin the only standard. This suits England, but does not suit us. I think with our large silver-producing capacity we should return to the double standard, at least in part, and this will constitute one of the means by which we will be enabled to resume specie payments.’ “This speech was delivered on the 5th of September last, and I make this correction and will prepare it for the reporter. “In this connection I would say that the honorable senator from Ohio delivered a speech on the 12th of August, 1876, at Marietta, O., which was reported at length, with subheadings, in the Cincinnati Gazette of August 14 1876, in which he said: “‘I do not now, fellow citizens, enter fully upon the great question of the restoration of the old silver dollar, as the money of account, for it has not yet assumed a party aspect. I have given the subject the most careful consideration, and was the first to propose the recoining of the old silver dollar.’ “Again, in the same speech, the senator is reported to have said: “‘I was a member of the conference committee of the two houses on the silver bill. I am not at liberty to state what occurred, except as is shown by the action of the two houses. Both houses were in favor of issuing the one dollar—the dollar in legal existence since 1792, containing 412 ½ grains, and only demonetized in 1878, when it was worth 2 per cent more than the gold dollar. It was then, and for twenty years had been, only issued for export, and was not in circulation. Still, it was a legal standard of value, as well as gold, always had been, and it was the right of any debtor to pay in silver dollars as well as gold dollars. It was his legal option.’ “‘The relative value of the two metals had often varied before, and still the right remained to the debtor to pay in either dollar, and, therefore, in a cheaper dollar. The mere disuse of the coinage of the silver dollar could not, and ought not to affect pre-existing contracts. And now, when all our domestic contracts have been based upon depreciated paper money, made a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except customs and duties and interest on the public debt, it would seem not only legal, but right, in the broadest sense of the term, that we should avail ourselves of the rapid and remarkable fall of silver bullion to recoin the old silver coins, including the old silver dollar, the oldest of our coins, and with them pay our depreciated notes and thus restore the old coin standard.’” Reader, have you noticed that Senator Stewart seems to be a “one ideaed” man? It is the “one idea” men who have succeeded in moving the world and bringing about the reforms in it. John Brown was one, Garrison was one, Luther was one, Wickliff was one, Christ was one, and so on all through the ages, and the “one idea” of all these men was to benefit humanity, and some of them lost their lives in the doing of it.4 Notes 1. Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada was a Silver Republican. 2. Senator John Sherman, a Republican, represented Ohio. The “silver session” refers to first session of the Fifty-Third Congress which met from August 7 to November 3, 1893. Silverites referred to the Coinage Act of 1873, as the “Crime of 1873,” because it dropped the silver dollar from the list of official coins. However, a coalition of Western Republicans and Southern Democrats had helped pass the Bland-Allison Act (1878) which authorized the Treasury to purchase two to four million dollars worth of silver bullion per month and to coin it in dollars. 3. Senator Lewis Vital Bogy was a Democrat from Missouri. The remarks in question were from an earlier speech in the 1870’s. Senator Bogy died in 1877. 4. John Brown (1800-1859), abolitionist, executed for his raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, to encourage slave rebellion; William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), abolitionist newspaper editor; Martin Luther (1483-1546), German religious reformer; John Wycliffe (1320?-1384), English religious reformer and translator of the Bible into the vernacular. Our UniversitiesLincoln Independent, November 8, 1895 People do not seem to realize to what an extent our universities are being run to suit the views of the millionaires and corporations of the country. It is a subtle danger and it is to be regretted that the trustees and presidents of these institutions should think it necessary to curry favor with and cater to the views of such men as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Russell Sage in the fear that they may withhold pecuniary favors for endowments to the institutions under their charge.1 This leads them to discriminate in their choice of professors and teachers and those are likely to be chosen who lack the faculty of original thinking and full intellectual development and highest culture. Men subservient enough to regulate their utterances and smother their convictions of righteousness and truth to suit the views of a multi millionaire are not apt to be of a very high order and we need the very highest and best material in teachers for the coming generation if the nation is to be saved from the consequences of past and present mistakes in the management of affairs. There is no need of any starvation in a country teeming with plenty, or of striking workmen or of men out of work in a country full of undeveloped resources such as this. These things are not inevitable as so many people seem to imagine. These things can be prevented, together with the existence of multi millionaires by right management. To discharge a professor from a university, one acknowledged to be a man of culture and whose talents as a teacher were recognized by his associates in the university work and by the students and the president himself to be of a very high order, because his views on the subject of a railroad strike and municipal ownership of public needs did not coincide with the views held by the president of a railroad corporation and manager of a gas trust company, is an outrage on the intelligence of the nineteenth century. Prof. Bemis,2 the teacher in question was not only all that we have described but also a man of high personal character and yet he was discharged from the Chicago university. Prof. Bemis is not a socialist; he is not even advanced enough to be a populist, but he thinks it would be wise that our cities should gradually come to own in the interests of the people the street car lines, water works and gas works as is done in the cities of Glasgow and Birmingham. For this utterance “the then president of the so called gas trust refused in 1893 to render a financial favor to the university because Prof. Bemis was on the faculty.” For writing a monograph on this subject in the Review of Reviews the manager of the largest aggregation of gas works said to him “If we can’t convert you we are going to down you.” When Prof. Bemis asserted that “the university ought to be in close touch with the labor question and monopoly problems.” President Harper replied: “Yes, it is valuable work, and you are a good man to do it, but this may not be. This is not the institution where such work can be done.” 3 Prof. Bemis gave an address in the First Presbyterian church of Chicago July 15, 1894 and in that address occurred the following: “If the railroads would expect their men to be law abiding they must set the example. Lot their open violation of the interstate commerce law and their relations to corrupt legislatures and assessors testify as to their part in this regard. I do not attempt to justify the strikers in their boycott on the railroads; but railroads themselves not long ago placed an offending road under the ban and refused to honor its tickets. Such boycotts on the part of the railroads are no more to be justified than is a boycott of the railroads by the strikers. Let there be some equality in the treatment of this things.” The rest of the address was a criticism on the strikers. A prominent railroad president who was present said “It is an outrage. That a man in your position should dare to come here and imply that the railroads cannot come into court with clean hands is infamous.” President Harper wrote to Prof. Bemis that this address had caused him (Harper) much annoyance and that in the future he must be more careful in public utterances on questions that were agitating the minds of the people. President Harper also said, “It is all very well to sympathize with the workingman, but we get our money from the other side, and we can’t afford to offend them.” A wealthy and leading trustee of the university spoke on one occasion of “our side”. When asked as to his meaning, he answered, “ Why the capitalists’ side of course.” Are our universities adopting the policy of barting out the best thought, moral character and intellectual development of the Nineteenth century because they clash with the ideas of men of such doubtful character and morality as the multi millionaires of our country who have made their money through dishonest speculation and gambling on change? Rockefeller has given to the university of Chicago $3,000,000. The intellectual advantages that the students may gain through the money will not offset the detriment to moral character, and the object lesson taught the students in the affair of Prof. Bemis and the Chicago university. It is humiliating. Notes 1. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and Russell Sage (1816-1906, American oil magnate, industrialist, and financier, respectively, who sought to repair their public images as monopolists and ruthless businessmen through philanthropy. 2. Edward Webster Bemis earned a Ph.D. in history and economics at the Johns Hopkins University in 1885. He had taught in a number of colleges and universities before going to the University of Chicago in 1892. 3. William Rainey Harper (1856-1906), a Hebraist, had become the first president of the University of Chicago in 1891. The University had been established by the American Baptist Education Society with the financial help of John D. Rockefeller as a “Harvard of the Midwest.” Rainey had stated some time before the firing of Bemis that, “No donor has any right before God or man to interfere with the teaching officers appointed to give instruction in a university.” The U.S. SenateLincoln Independent, October 18, 1895 Contrary to the belief, which is quite common among populists and which seems to be derived from reading socialistic doctrines from irresponsible papers styling themselves populistic, the entire body of the senate does not consist of plutocratic thieves and corporation sharks. There are in the senate some as good, honorable and patriotic men as have ever been known in that body from revolutionary times down to the present. In the general convulsion and breaking up of parties, which will take place during this year in connection with, and preceding the coming presidential election, these men will emerge from the furnace tested and tried and as bright as silver, with the refuse burned away so that all may see for themselves the qualities of which they are made. I have had rare opportunities during the past two years of observing for myself the course pursued by many of these senators and it has been an interesting study, as all studies from active human life are, and much more so than studies from books. During the past year the congressional representatives of the various political parties have been slowly disintegrating, evolving and dividing themselves from their own bodies politic, and the dissolving question has been the money question. In the school of economics it is beginning to be scientifically understood that the money question represents the welfare of the people, physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual. The money question then finally resolves itself into a question of, for the people or against the people; for the welfare of the many, or for the welfare of the moneyed few, who, to use an expressive American phrase, want to “hog everything in sight.” In enumerating and slightly sketching the senators who are likely to stand by the people when the final test comes at the presidential election of the coming year, I will give the names only of the populists, who, it goes without saying will be true, because they stood for principles rather than for office. These are Win. V. Allen of Nebraska, Kyle of South Dakota,1 William A. Peffer of Kansas and Marion Butler of South Carolina. John P. Jones and William M. Stewart both of Nevada, left the republican party and joined the populists during the silver session when they found, as shown from repeated votes, that the republican party, with Cleveland and Sherman 2as its leaders would hang on the skirts of the moneyed few, and stand up for the privileges of millionaires, railroad corporations and monopolies rather than for the people. John P. Jones has the head and calm peaceful face of a philosopher, and is one in reality. He is nothing of a politician and concerns himself little about politics, hardly ever troubling himself to make a speech, but when he does speak, and it is usually on the principles regulating money, the whole senate pays him the honor of close and undivided attention even thought the speech may occupy several hours of several consecutive days. Friends and opponents alike listen. Since his celebrated speech of the silver session Senator Jones has been considered the acknowledged authority on all questions relating to the subject of money, and the laws and principles regulating its use. Senator Jones was born in Herfordshire, England, in 1830 and came with his parents to this country before he was a year old. He was engaged in mining during the California excitement and since living in Nevada to which he moved in 1861, he has interested himself in the development of the mineral resources of his state. His early life was spent in Ohio, but he is essentially a western man. His term of service expires in 1897, this being his fourth term of service in Senate. William M. Stewart is Senator Jones’ colleague in the senate. He is so well known that any description of him seems superfluous. He has a beautiful long silvery beard and is so identified with the cause of silver that the two words “Stewart” and “silver” seem synonymous. He was the first senator during the silver session who gave public voice to the almost universal indignation at the arbitrary acts of Cleveland toward the legislative department, and his shameless use of patronage in order to defeat or forward the passage of bills on the money question. Conventional senators who hardly dared call their souls their own, gasped at the audacity of the brave and fearless “Silver Knight” as he stood alone sounding forth denunciations and charges against the president of the United States. The sight was worth seeing. Senator Stewart was born in New York in 1827. He was in New York when, attracted by the gold discoveries in California, he went to San Francisco in 1850. He tells with pride of how he engaged in mining with pick and shovel, in 1860 he went to Nevada where he became interested in development of the Comstock lode. At the present time he has no financial interest in any silver mines, his heartfelt interest in silver being due to his interest in the welfare of the people in his state and of the people at large. His term of service expires in 1899. Henry M. Teller of Colorado aligned himself with what are now called the silver republicans of his party and during the last two sessions became noted as the leader of that wing of his party. He is a plain blunt man and apparently a man of the people, and has repeatedly declared, both in public and private, that when the time comes, if the republican convention nominates a gold bug president, he will withdraw from that party and vote for any presidential candidate who is for free silver no matter by what party. It is such a foregone conclusion that the republican party will put up a gold bug nominee that one only wonders why Teller does not leave his party now and fight with all his might and main politically while there is still a chance to do something effective, rather than wait till the last moment No one who ever heard Teller’s impassioned appeals in the last two sessions on behalf of the people can ever forget them, and one cannot help having strong hopes of the man as a futures lease of the people, when one remember how he stood up for the rights of the people in the very faces of the old leaders of his party, and how he charged the head of his own party, Sherman, with untruthfulness on the floor of the senate. The only dissatisfaction that could be felt during his whole course in the last two sessions was when at the close of the last session, he yielded to the importunities of his colleague Wolcott and voted for the resolution for the appointment of a $1,000,000 commission, by the president to attend an international conference in Europe. Imagine Cleveland, the gold bug president sending commissioners to attend an international conference if it was likely to report favorably for silver! Wolcott gracefully waved his right as member of the commission in favor of Teller! Ahem. But then one can’t expect perfection in such a world as this I suppose. Senator Teller was born in New York in 1830; moved to Colorado in 1861, and his present term of office expires in 1897. He was first elected to the senate on Colorado’s admission as a state, and was secretary of the Interior under President Arthur’s administration. Edward Oliver Wolcott, of Colorado, the colleague of Senator Teller is also a silver republican. He is a fiery and enthusiastic speaker and he did declare in the last session that he would devote his life to the service of silver, but alas! must there always be a “but?” He is so plutocratic both, by instinct and association to his finger tips, that when the test comes one doubts as to what his course will be, whether for the people or against them. On the one hand is his state, all for silver; on the other are his associations and life long habits, besides which, he is even charged with being a corporation attorney at $50,000 a year. By the by, there should be a law passed forbidding corporation attorneys seats in the legislatures and halls of congress. It does not seem possible that a man can be a friend of the people and represent them, and be a corporation attorney too. Senator Wolcott was born in Massachusetts in 1848, moved to Colorado in 1871; is a lawyer, and was reelected last March 1895. Among other silver republicans are Fred T. Dubois of Idaho, John H. Mitchell, of Oregon, and Richard C. Power of Montana. These men representing a strong silver sentiment may be depended on to vote on the side of the people. Of the silver democrats, some of these who made the most noise and professed the greatest regard for the welfare of the people, among whom were Harris of Tennessee, Jones of Arkansas and Turpie of Indiana,3 have since declared, when asked the question as to what they would do if the democratic convention failed to nominate a silver president, that in that case they would have to vote for a gold bug president, so that we will consider them out of the question in the fight for the people. Among those who stand true, we will class Joseph C. S. Blackburn of Kentucky, that fiery Southerner who has just been distinguishing himself in the eyes of the nation, by the heroic and single hand to hand fight with the leaders of his own party in his state for the rights of the people. Whether successful or not, he has won the admiration and esteem of all lovers of liberty. Senator Blackburn was born in Kentucky in 1838; served several terms in the house before his election in the senate and his present term expires March 3, 1897. Another whose instinct will lead him to stand by the people when the final test comes, is that “Grandest Roman of them all” John T. Morgan of Alabama. He has a worldwide repute as a statesman and his attention has been directed mostly to international questions, having several times been selected as delegate to represent the United States when questions of international import arose in Europe. His vote was ever on the side of the people whenever the money question was up for discussion, and the legal points he made as to rights of silver to free coinage equally with gold made a decided impression on the whole senate which is composed almost entirely of lawyers. The most decided hit made by any one during the session and which created laughter wherever it was mentioned, was made in what is called his “cuckoo speech,” in which, alluding to the subservient obedience of the gold bug republicans and democrats to Cleveland's commands, he said, “The trumpet had sounded, the forces were marshalled, the clock had struck at the White House, and the cuckoos have all put their heads out of the boxes and responded to inform us of the time of day.” Senator Morgan was born in Tennessee in 1824, moved to Alabama when nine years old, has served five terms in the senate, has just been re-elected and his term of service will expire in 1901. Notes 1. James Henderson Kyle was a populist from South Dakota. 2. John Sherman was a Republican Senator from Ohio. The “silver session” refers to the first session of the Fifty-Third Congress, August 7-November 3, 1893. 3. Senator Isham Green Harris was a Democrat from Tennessee. Senator James Kimbrough Jones was a Democrat from Arkansas. Senator David Turpie was a Democrat from Indiana. These men Merry EnglandLincoln Independent, November 29, 1895 England is a gold standard country and has maintained the system for a much longer time than the United States. What are the results of that system there? One is in the habit of thinking of England as a rich country. So it is, but the wealth of that country is in the hands of only a few men. In 1819 the bill was passed placing England under the gold standard. At the time the bill passed the land owners of Great Britain numbered 160,000 persons. At the end of seven years after the passage of the act the number had fallen to 30,000 in consequence of falling prices caused by the gold standard law. At present time, according to the statement of the distribution of land ownership in England and Wales, from a work on political economy by Prof. J.S. Nicholson, of Edinburgh:1 “England and Wales total area is 37,000,000 of acres. A body of men not exceeding 4,500 own more than one-half. Less than 280 people own one sixth of the enclosed land. Sixty people own one eighteenth part, or 2,000,000 acres. One man owns 186,397 acres.” The following on the concentration of wealth in England is taken from the speech of Senator Jones of Nevada: 2 “The concentration of wealth in the country is illustrated by the distribution of the national debt, amounting to over 83,500,000,000 which a short time ago, the official returns showed to be held in the hands of only 126,331 persons thus averaging 830,000 to each person owning the debt.” France is not a gold standard country and this is what Senator Jones says of France: “The greater prosperity of the French people is illustrated by the wider and more general distribution of the public debt of that country. Even so long ago as 1867 that debt was held in the ownership of 2,095,683 persons, averaging but 82, 000 each, and since that time it has obtained even a wider distribution.” This is what John Ruskin says of the condition of his own country: 3 “Though England is deafened with spinning wheels, her people have no clothes; though she is black with the digging of fuel, they die of cold, and though she has sold her soul for grain, they die of hunger.” Now we will take the statements of some of England’s most noted citizens. Again I quote from Senator Jones’ speech: “Gen. Booth,4 then enters upon an estimate, based, upon an actual industrial census of East London, of the conditions of the people throughout the country as a whole. Counting the houseless and the starving, as well as the criminals and the members of the pauper work houses all who get relief, whether indoors or outdoors, as well as those who get neither and including England only, without reference to Scotland or Ireland, after enumerating the actual figures upon which this estimates are based, he sums up the case as follows: “This brings my total to 3,000,000 or to put it roughly to one tenth of the population. “According to Lord Brabazon and Mr. Samuel Smith,5 between two and three million of our population are always pauperized and degraded. “Mr. Chamberlain says I am still quoting from Mr. Booth’s book: ‘There is a population equal to that of the metropolis that is, between four and five million—which has remained constantly in a state of abject misery and destitution.’6 “Mr. Griffen is more moderate.7 The submerged class, according to him comprises one in five of manual laborers, or six in 100 of the population. Mr. Griffen does not add the third million which is living on the border line. “Between Mr. Chamberlain’s four million and a half and Mr. Griffen’s one million eight hundred thousand, Gen. Booth says he is content to take three million as representing the total number of the destitute. He continues: “Darkest England it may be said then, to have a population about equal to that of Scotland. Three million men, women, and children, a vast despairing multitude in a condition nominally free but really enslaved—these it is whom we have to save.” One may read statistics upon statistics without realizing their force. When I went to England a few years ago, I had never given a thought to the money question. I did not even know that England was the greatest of all gold standard countries. I was curious to see her people and compare them with the American people. I judged of England through her literature and thought that the people would be in keeping with the literature. The first thing that struck me in the streets of London was the poverty stricken appearance of the masses of the people. I am a small woman. Walking through one of the crowded streets of London I found myself head and shoulder above the majority of the pedestrians. Physically they looked as if they had been stunted in their growth. Such specimens of deformity as there was among them it did not seem as if such creatures could be human beings and they were to be met with everywhere in the broad well lighted streets as well as in the degraded portions of the city. One met faces constantly that looked as if they had never known better conditions, did not even know that better conditions existed and therefore could never even hope. New York is bad enough but London is worse. In the congregations of the churches and in the audiences to be seen anywhere the exception was to see a well dressed person. The contrary was the case here at that time. I did not wander afterwards when some Englishmen who had come over here and were taking in the streets of the city of Boston asks, “have you no poor people, here?” All the people in the streets seem to be well off. Our country has not been under the gold standard as long as England has and it has the advantage of being a new country with undeveloped resources. The masses of the people as compared with those of the United States were poor, ignorant, and uneducated. I heard an argument at an English dinner table between an English lady and an American. The English lady commented that it was not good for the masses of the people to be educated that it made them aspire “above the station in life in which God had placed them.” I found that the education like the wealth of the country, was concentrated, the comparatively few being very highly educated, while the masses of the people had almost none. I was continually surprised at the cheapness of everything. So many things could be bought for a penny. Penny prices or low prices mean cheap workingmen. Can a workingman earn living wages when the products of his labor are held so cheap? Low prices are caused by an insufficiency of the circulating medium for the needs of the population. The insufficiency of money is caused through evil legislation, and this evil legislation, makes millionaires on the one hand and tramps on the other. Evil proves the existence of goods as darkness proves the light. Such conditions as are described in “Darkest England” are produced by evil legislation. Gen. Booth’s remedy for those conditions seems to be charity. Many believe such conditions to be inevitable. They are not inevitable. We populists contend that they, multi-millionaire and tramp, being produced in this country through bad legislation, the conditions can swept aside through right legislation and through the abolishment of the gold standard system of finance. Men made the laws, therefore the conditions produced by them are inevitable. Notes 1. Joseph Shield Nicholson (1850-1927), a well-known economist, whose Principles of Political Economy, consisting of several volumes, began appearing in 1893. 2. Senator John Percival Jones was a Republican from Nevada. 3. John Ruskin (1819-1900), English writer and critic turned reformer, who criticized laissez-fire economics. His work Unto This Last (1860) promulgated a theory of the responsibility of employers to their workers. 4. William Booth was founder and General of the Salvation Army (1878). His book referred to here is In Darkest England, and the Way Out. 5. Reginald Meath, 12th Earl of Brabazon (1841-1929) and Samuel Smith (1836-1906), a member of Parliament and author of a number of works on bi-metal monetary systems. The references are probably to Prosperity or Pauperism? Physical, Industrial, and Technical Training, which Meath edited in 1888, and Smith’s The Bi-Metalic Question (1887). 6. The reference is probably to Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), member of Parliament, who wrote and spoke extensively on tariff reform. 7. This source has not been determined Who is Responsible?Lincoln Independent, December 12, 1895 It is a fact that cannot be denied that the republican administration of the finance affairs of the country, under the gold standard and since the demonetazation of silver, has resulted in the making of multi-millionaires, and of an ever increasing number of men without work. This, too, in a land teeming with boundless harvests and full of undeveloped resources, which await only the energizing influence of a sufficient circulation of money to start into life. The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen. The law holds some one responsible if a horse is turned out to starve or is cruelly treated. The law holds no one responsible if a hardworking farmer and his still harder worked wife are turned out of their homes after years of toil and labor, because they have failed to pay the mortgage on their home. The maintenance of the gold standard by the moneyed class of the country in their own interests, has caused the low and ever lower prices for the products of the farm. The man who has served his country most faithfully is he who to the full extent of his strength and ability has performed his portion of the daily labor of the world. What more cruel than to turn such a man with the wife and children who depend on him, out from under the shelter which they have failed to maintain from causes beyond their control? Yet no one, not even the financial manipulators of the country, are held responsible. The law protects the man who enriches himself through the foreclosures of mortgages. It does not protect the sacred right of the farmer to live a decent life and to earn a decent living. A struggle for existence is not a decent living. A man or woman or child may die of starvation in a city teeming with plenty. Only human life is concerned. The people of the United States based their laws on those of England. It is not many generations ago, that in England, the law exacted a life for the theft of a loaf of bread. It is nothing to the law. A human being to sustain life steals a loaf of bread or lump of coal. Immediately the power of the law is invoked to protect the rights of property but it did not protect the right of the human being to live. Through the protection of the law, Rockefeller put up the price of one of the necessaries of life. The poor widow with her children struggling for a bare existence, the farmer hoping in spite of ever lowering prices, (caused by financial legislation) to keep his home and educate his children; the working man whose wages are ever trembling (through financial legislation) in the balance: all are compelled to pay the tribute exacted by the millionaire. Rockefeller hands over three millions,1 a portion of his ill gotten gains to a great university on condition that the faculty shall permit nothing to be taught which shall clash with his own views of the rights of monopoly, and that no criticism shall be made of the legislation which allows of such a deed. The dominant ideas of the law being the protection of property as against the right of human beings to a decent living, it becomes easy for men of the Wall street stamp to manipulate the legislation in favor of the money owners as against all other classes by contracting the volume of money and thus, through lower prices taking away the right of the producing classes to a decent living. Note 1. This reference is to John D. Rockefeller and the founding of the University of Chicago. See La Flesche’s article “Our Universities” above.
[Home] | [Bibliography] |
[Digital Library]
© UALR American Native Press Archives 2002-2007 |
|
|
