Gentlemen: Against you individually, or as a class of persons who have
accumulated more or less wealth, and who loan it at interest to those
who perhaps have been less fortunate, I have not the least prejudice. I
believe that yours is an honest as well as a legitimate business; that
great wealth may be, and often is, won by honest means; and that it does
not border upon the marvellous that the capitalist is often an honest
man, and the pauper as often a rogue. I believe that you are as honest
as other men are, and that if you fully understood the situation in the
West and South, and knew that a certain line of conduct would result to
your own advantage financially, and also be a great benefit to the whole
country, you would act as other honest people would act under similar
circumstances; and it is because I so believe, that I write this letter.
I write neither as a partisan nor in the interests of any party, but to
give plain facts which can be easily verified, and to show how these
facts are seen and felt by those who, like myself, have been born and
bred on the boundless prairies, and have had a varied experience with
the ups and downs of life on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. I
hope by so doing to help you to realize the extent of the disasters
which a continuance of the present financial policy will inevitably
bring to _you_ as well as to us.