It may be that there is no remedy, but that will not prevent us from
trying to find one. During the last ten years we have experimented. We
have tried Democratic rule and Republican rule; the "McKinley bill" and
the "Wilson bill"; "tariff for protection" and "tariff for revenue
only"; a Treasury "surplus" and a Treasury "deficit"; yet none of these
things have sensibly affected the squeezing process. We have lost our
faith in the tariff and in tariff-tinkering, as well as in the leaders
who recommend it. We have dismissed our old political leaders and chosen
new ones; and as your "gold-standard" squeezing policy is the only
rational cause "in sight" for the origin and continuance of our
condition--to use an expressive Western phrase--we are "going for it."
We are willing that you should own and control the property which was
ours, and in which your money was invested, but when you attempt to
force upon us your financial policy, your politics, and your religion,
we object. You may own and control the property, but not us; here we
draw the line. This is what Marsh Murdock had in his mental view when he
said at the St. Louis Convention, "You want to own the country and run
it too." But the veteran editor of the _Eagle_ has changed his mind and
consented to being "run."
You have bought the leading papers, caused our editors to "change their
minds," flooded the country with a trashy literature that is an insult
to our intelligence, and provided funds to pay third-rate preachers for
preaching to us a religion which we do not want. We are not rich, yet we
are able to pay for our education and our religion--if it is a kind that
will be of any use to us.
We do not fear the result of our experiment. If we fail, the same old
squeeze will continue; if we succeed, there is a prospect of relief.
Without variation, there is not even a prospect of bettering our
condition. If we should succeed in creating that financial paradox, a
fifty-three-cent dollar, we are such political heretics as to prefer
that kind of a dollar to none, or to "confidence." We have unbounded
confidence in the dollars which jingle in our pockets, but very little
in those which exist only in the imagination, and are represented by
stocks, bonds, checks, drafts, clearing-house certificates, and other
devices, which always fail to perform the function of money in the last
extremity, when money is most needed.
Do not allow yourselves to be terrified at the ghost of a silver dollar,
for the ghost of it is all that will ever trouble you. In the event of
free coinage, the trains going East will not be loaded with silver
dollars to pay off old mortgages. I have seen a statement in Eastern
papers to the effect that we wanted cheap money with which to pay our
debts. It is a base slander; every intelligent Western man knows that,
whatever happens short of the miraculous, only a small share of our
mortgage debts will be paid.
All the holdings you now have in the West, new and old taken together,
are not worth fifty-three cents on the dollar; and you cannot now in any
way realize that much from them; and if your present policy is
indefinitely continued you have no prospect of ever realizing
fifty-three per cent on your investments. If, then, you should be paid
in silver dollars, or if a larger share of the loans should be paid
under the new conditions, you would be a gainer and not a loser by the
change. It seems to me that an increase in the volume of money and
rising prices are the opportunity for you to realize from your holdings,
for without some favorable change you will hardly realize twenty-five
per cent.
You can test the truth of these statements. Take twenty holdings, not
selected, and try to convert them into cash. Or offer them to some
capitalist who has travelled extensively in the West during the last
five years. Time will convince you, if nothing else will; but the
knowledge may come a little too late for practical purposes. You ought
to be with us in this free-silver movement, and you would be if you knew
what we know. We are not fools, although we may appear so to you; we
know what we want, and we are trying to get it.
You threaten "to draw in your money from the West." If you have any
money in the West which you _can_ "draw in," the sooner you do it the
better; it will be an heroic remedy instead of misery long drawn out. A
"panic" will return like a boomerang upon yourselves, and make _your_
property still less valuable. You can cause a panic, break our business
men, make more idle men and tramps, and, in short, concentrate three or
four years of squeezing into a few weeks or months; but what benefit can
_you_ hope to derive from it?
Whatever adds to _our_ prosperity will increase the actual value of
_your_ holdings; our interests are identical, then why should _you_
desire the continuance of present conditions? Have the present
conditions done anything for you, as far as Western investments are
concerned? Is not your increase of capital simply an increase "on paper"
which you can never realize? We cordially invite you to join us in our
effort to bring on an era of prosperity; forsake your political leaders,
as we have forsaken ours, and use at least as much common sense in
politics as you do in business.
Save this article; it will be good reading after the election is over.
It is not politics, it is business; it is the naked truth. The writer
does not want to borrow any money; he seeks no office, is not a
politician, has no axe to grind, and expects no reward, except to share
in the general prosperity, as he has shared in the general adversity, in
the capacity of a humble citizen.