Show SOTIIIXG TO LAUGH AT The Herald has never treated the industrial army movement as a joke Nor has it favored the forwarding of masses of men to the seat of government govern-ment either to threaten Congress by their organized presence or use any extraordinary influence in the nature of attempted compulsion to procure legislation that would not be voluntarily volun-tarily enacted The right of all citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition for redress of grievances real or imaginary cannot be reasonably disputed dis-puted Whether that covers the course taken by the socalled armies which have taken up the line of march to Washington for the purposes declared is a rather doubtful proposition We do not believe the constitution guarantees freedom for anything of that kind The conditions existing which have occasioned this uprising are very deplorable de-plorable The causes which have led to them are various have long been in operation and have extended over a period of many years The panic and troubles of 1893 were the bursting of an ulcer that had been forming for a least a couple of decades and in the very nature of things could mot be a sudden reverse of abundant prosperity Therefore when we hear through the press of Republican conventions in I which resolutions are framed charging all the woes of the country on Grover I I Cleveland and the Democratic party I passed with great unanimity and I I enthusiasm our pity for the ignorance I displayed by the bodies of those conventions I con-ventions is only exceeded by our contempt con-tempt for the deceit and demagoguery of their political heads Some of them trace the source of existing labor and financial troubles to the treatment of the silver question by the national government and with characteristic lack of reeson and of honesty charge the wrong on the party which has come into possession of the government at a time when the effects of thirty odd years of Republican misrule are overspreading the land And yet they know that if one Republican Re-publican President and Congress since i jI > r SR 41 1873 had desired to rehabilitate silver it would now be equal with gold at the former ratio as the standard money of the United States In charging the woes of the times on Cleveland and the Democracy because of the movement for tariff reform they are equally dense or deceitful f When the Wilson bill is a law the tariff schedule will be higher in its rates of duty than those tUat were in force when there was little turmoil in the land Anybody who has ears to hear and eyes to see must perceiye that present evils are the culmination of a steady growth and not a cataslysm originating in a moment Fear of free trade was a Republican Republi-can bugaboo The paralysis in business was not caused by them re prospect of reforms which the country had several sev-eral times demanded at ithe polls It came upon the country because of the contraotion in money circles Everybody Every-body almost was in debt beyond the power to pay The money lenders called in their loans banks refused accommodations because of the run precipitated upon their resources failures fail-ures followed because of inability to realize upon property Business was arrested employment fell off the lack of money in circulation prevented enterprise en-terprise Nobody wanted to invest in projects that would require labor because be-cause of the inability to obtain money on fair terms and because of the risks of all ventures and the instability of general affairs The notion that the government can cure all his and that the march upon Washington now in progress will force the action desired is the wildest kind of a chimera It is being fostered and encouraged by Republican influences Under cover of a desire to rid certain sections of the country of the unemployed unem-ployed the lazy and > the vagrant elements ele-ments they are urged to press on toward to-ward Washington where the Democratic Demo-cratic Congress and administration will be put in a hole and forced to face the situation produced by Republican control of affairs for over thirty years It is shameful work and only trouble can grow out of it The pretext that these men are to be helped to the east from whence they came so that they may obtain work is shattered by the fact that field and farm laborers are wanted along the route over which the armies are passing but it is not present labor they want Prospective money without labor by some process which they cannot exactly define and I I the assurance that food in plenty will be provided for them no matter what I happens is better in their eyes than toll on day wages There is nothing funny about the movement it is rather a source of the gravest concern to the thoughtful mind The authorities of the various I I states and municipalities would have been more consistent in endeavors to I disperse the armies by endeavoring to find labor for the men and leave them without excuse than by crowding crowd-ing them forward to the seat I of government where unless I great wisdom and forbearance I are exercised a conflict may be precipitated pre-cipitated which will end in bloodshed I and prove the beginning of difficulties so great and so terrible that the mere I contemplation of them is a horror |