Page images
PDF
EPUB

paramount, and they nominated me; and every man who is supporting me is willing to say why he does so.

After describing the manner in which bonds were issued to obtain gold, and gold drawn out to pay for bonds, I said:

That is what they call financiering on Wall street. I believe that the only thing in the Bible which some of these financiers ever read is the passage which says that about 1800 years ago certain wise men came from the East. They seem to think that the wise men have been coming from that direction ever since. Speaking of that plank in our platform which condemns gold contracts, I said:

We have usury laws saying that a man cannot collect more than a certain rate of interest. The theory underlying the usury laws is found in the Book of Proverbs-that the borrower is servant to the lender. In these transactions men do not always stand upon an equal footing, and, therefore, the Government steps in to protect the weaker from having his rights trespassed upon.

If it is right to say that no man shall be permitted to collect more than a certain rate of interest, it is right for the Government to say when it has declared a certain kind of money to be legal tender, that no man shall write a contract saying that that law is a lie.

They talk about gold as if it were divine. It is, in the sense that it is their god. But it is not divine; it is matter. Instead of being a real god, and a thing to be worshiped, we are told that, when the children of Israel made it into a calf, and began to worship it, it displeased God, and he ground the calf into powder.

An outdoor meeting was held some blocks away, but the crowd was so large as to be unmanageable. The Item, one of the best silver papers in the East, was largely instrumental in making the Philadelphia meeting a success. Hon. Wharton Barker assisted the Democrats in arranging this meeting, and I may add here that his paper, The American, supported the ticket with great earnestness and intelligence. I met here Mr. John J. Maloney, City Chairman Curley and others, with whom I first became acquainted at a Jackson Day banquet some years before.

National Committeeman Johnson Cornish, of New Jersey, a colleague in Congress, met us at Philadelphia, and took charge of the party through his State the next day. Senator Daly was also one of the party. On another page will be found a snap-shot taken at Phillipsburg, where a large number of railroad men were collected. One of the largest crowds of the day was found at Washington, the home of Mr. Cornish. Here I met ex-Congressman Fowler, who was one of the few Eastern silver men in the House, and exCongressman Dunn. Washington is quite a manufacturing place, and

I found that many of the employes were working only a portion of the time, which led me to suggest that under the gold standard, the laboring men worked half time and the farmers worked double time-the laboring men not finding employment for the whole time, and the farmers being compelled to work overtime in order to keep up with taxes and interest. We passed through Morristown, where we met one of the most fashionable audiences encountered on the trip; evidences of wealth were apparent on every hand. The train only stopped for a moment, and my speech was brief:

Morristown Speech.

Ladies and Gentlemen: In a city like this, where there are so many evidences of plenty of money, I do not know whether you understand or feel the need of more money. But I want you to remember that all the wealth of this country is first derived from those who toil, and that you cannot destroy the prosperity of those who produce the wealth without undermining the foundation upon which all society rests.

Remember that a financial system that commends itself to the wealthy only is a curse to any land.

Remember that until wealth is produced it cannot be divided, and that if you make it unprofitable for people to invest their money in enterprises you lessen the production of wealth.

At Orange, Mr. Thomas A. Edison took a picture of the crowd and moving train; the views secured have since been exhibited throughout the country by means of the vitascope.

Passing through Newark and Hoboken we reached Brooklyn before dark. Here I was the guest of Mr. Willis J. Abbot, of the New York Journal, whose splendid editorial work during the campaign would have endeared him to me, even if he had not been an old-time friend. The first meeting was held in the Academy of Music, and the audience was full of enthusiasm. I quote from the speech delivered here:

Brooklyn Speech.

Before addressing myself to the money question I desire to say something in regard to the planks of our platform which have been assailed by the enemy. I only speak of them because persons high in Republican councils have called attention to them and sought to twist them into a meaning never intended, and to give them an interpretation which they will not bear. Let me read to you the plank of the Democratic platform against which so much abuse has been leveled.

We denounce arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and a crime against free institutions.

That is the part which they say is bad. When did that become bad? Let

me read you a plank of another platform, and see how this plank which I am about to read compares with the one which I have just read:

That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the State, and especially the right of each State, to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power upon which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

Do you know from what platform that plank is taken? (A voice—“Abraham Lincoln's.") Yes, it is from Abraham Lincoln's platform. That is a plank in the platform of the Republican party in 1860. And when you compare our plank with that, you will find that ours is mild in language. Abraham Lincoln ran for President on that platform; he was elected President on that platform, and in his inaugural address he quoted that plank in full and gave it his approval. Now, my friends, if our platform is wrong, I want these Republicans to repudiate Abraham Lincoln, and if they take Abraham Lincoln from the Republican party they take from it its most sacred memory.

Now, let me call your attention to another thing which they complain of. They say we criticise the Supreme court. Let me read you what we say on this subject:

But for this decision by the Supreme Court (speaking of the decision on the income tax), there would be no deficit in the revenue under the law passed by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that court for nearly one hundred years, that court having in that decision sustained Constitutional objections to its enactment which had previously been overruled by the ablest judges who have ever sat on that bench. We declare that it is the duty of Congress to use all the Constitutional power which remains after that decision, or which may come from its reversal by the court as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its their Government into the hands of the eminent tribunal.

We call attention to the fact that the court overruled the decision of a hundred years. That is a fact. Have we not a right to mention a fact? We declare that Congress should use all the Constitutional power which remains. Let them insist, if they will, that having taken away a part, we dare not use what is left.

We demand that Congress shall use such power as may come from a reversal by the court as it may hereafter be constituted.

Has no court hereafter a right to reverse the decision of this court? If not, what right had his court to reverse former decisions? The Supreme court changes from time to time. Judges die or resign, and new judges take their places. Is it not possible, my friends, that future judges may adhere to the precedents of a hundred years, instead of adhering to a decision rendered by a majority of one? When did our opponents find that a decision of the Supreme Court was so sacred? This decision would not have been rendered but for the fact that the men who had to pay the income tax attacked the decision of the Supreme Court, and asked this court to overturn a former decision. Every time a lawyer goes into court and asks for a reversal of a decision of the courtand it is not an infrequent thing-he attacks the correctness of the decision which he desires to have reversed. Let me read to you what the Republican platform said about a decision of the Supreme Court in 1860:

We brand the recent opening of the African slave trade under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age.

That is what the platform said. It declared that a certain decision of the court was a perversion of judicial power. There is no language in our platform which is so severe on the Supreme Court as that Republican platform.

On these two questions we are assailed by the Republicans today. We have not taken as emphatic a stand as the Republican party took in the first platform on which it elected a President of the United States. Let me read to you now what Abraham Lincoln said about the Supreme Court. This is not a party platform, nor is it an extract from a speech uttered upon the spur of the moment. I read to you from a State paper-from the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln:

I do not forget the position assumed by some that Constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to the suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government on vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal action the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned heir Government into the hands of the eminent tribunal.

Mr. Lincoln says that if it is meant to be asserted that the Supreme Court has a right to determine the policy of the people on great questions, then the people will have resigned our Government into the hands of the Supreme Court. Nothing in our platform is as harsh as the language of Abraham Lincoln. We do not criticise that court as he criticises it-and remember that when he used the words which I have quoted he was President.

I quote these authorities, my friends, that you may see how far-fetched is the criticism which is directed against us. I quote these things to show you that the people who use the criticism against us must, in order to do so, abandon the Republican platform upon which Lincoln was elected. But I must apologize for having quoted Abraham Lincoln as Republican authority. He is no longer a Republican authority. Abraham Lincoln believed in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and that is not Republicanism in this campaign.

Our opponents say we are opposed to the enforcement of the law, but the fact is that many of our opponents are afraid that the law will be enforced. They remind me of the man in court. He seemed to be uneasy, and when the judge assured him that he would get justice in that court, he replied: "Great Heavens, Judge, that's what I am afraid of."

Let me read to you what a distinguished Democrat once said:

They say that we are trying to destroy our institutions. We, who now address you, have been the peculiar objects of these imputations. We pause, therefore, for a moment to repel them. We entertain no sentiments adverse to social order; we seek not to destroy, but to preserve in their purity the institutions of our country.

Whose language do you suppose that is? That is the language which Samuel J. Tilden used many years ago in addressing the farmers, workingmen and mechanics. They accused reformers then of being disturbers of the

peace, and he asserted then as we now assert that the purpose is not to destroy, but to save the Government which we love.

They had just such a contest in those days as we have now. Let me read again from Mr. Tilden's speech:

A powerful moneyed corporation engaged in a death struggle with a government to whom it owed its existence assailed the purity of our press. A mighty combination of politicians and moneyed interests is again in the field to control elections, to change the administration of government, and to re-establish the supremacy of the great moneyed corporations over the business of the country.

My friends, if he had lived today he could not have described the opposition to the free coinage of silver in more accurate terms than he then described the moneyed interests. He also said that by their control of the currency they spread far and wide dismay, misery and ruin, in order to extort a renewal of the powers and privileges which they then enjoyed from the fears and necessities of the community. That same moneyed power exists today, and it is doing the same work today that it did then, and business men are terrified. Men who owe money are threatened with bankruptcy unless they sell their citizenship. If a banker dares to have an opinion of his own, he is menaced with ruin. Your banker tells you what you must do, and his banker tells him what he must do, and you can trace it all back to the great money center in England, and from that center those who corner the money of the world reach out and threaten to lay a paralyzing hand on all the industry of the world if the people dare to have opinions of their own. Tilden said that the patriotic firmness of a virtuous people prevailed in that struggle. I believe that the patriotism and firmness of a patriotic people will prevail in this struggle. To think otherwise would be to despair of a government like this. We cannot have a free government unless the people are free to act. If a majority of the people must obtain consent from a few people before they can act, then they are agents, not sovereigns, and we have a democracy merely in form-and a plutocracy in fact, which is the worst form of government.

Let me read another extract from Mr. Tilden:

Banded together by the same unity of interests, arraying them in an organized mass which acts and operates through all the ramifications of society, constituting property by monopoly and perpetuities, and binding to it political power, it has established an aristocracy more potent, more permanent and more oppressive than any other which has ever existed-such is the dynasty of associated and privileged wealth, which is the ruling power at present in nearly every civilized nation.

I repeat his words today. A government by associated wealth, a government by corporation, is the most tyrannical government that any people can suffer from.

Judge William J. Gaynor presided at this meeting, and Hon. James G. Bell, chairman of the Kings County Democratic Committee, Hon. Bernard J. York, and many other prominent citizens occupied seats on the platform.

After a brief speech at the overflow meeting, just outside of the hall, I went to the Claremont rink and addressed a large audience of

« PreviousContinue »