Show lION n J PHELPS LETTER ExMinister to England Hon Edward J Phelps has addressed a letter to a friend giving his reasons why he cannot support the Chicago platform and candidates can-didates and why he will support Mc Kinley The letter is bound to be more or less quoted during the campaign especially by the advocates of the single gold standard and monopolies Mr Phelps starts out with the rather extraordinary statement that he regards re-gards the pending presidential election as presenting the most dangerous crisis that this country has ever encountered It does not in my judgment he says involve any political controversy nor any question of the supremacy of party for such considerations are lost sight of in the far greater gravity of the situation situa-tion The real issue is one upon which all patriotic men and all who are Interested inter-ested in the prosperity and welfare of the country should find themselves upon one side and opposed to a common enemy en-emy The attack that we have to resist re-sist is not upon the policy but upon the life of the nation For they would take its life who destroy the means by which it livesthe business of many thousands thou-sands and the industry of millions If the life of the nation is involved it has been placed in danger by the establishment es-tablishment of the gold standard and the insistence upon its maintenance by those who established it Like all wj o take the same view of the matter that he does he assumes that the advocacy of free silver is an attempt to array class against class Upon this subject he says There is therefore in my judgment no manmore criminal or who is a worse public enemy than he who engages in or countenances that infamous and destructive de-structive attempt And he is tenfold a criminal who seeks success in it by playing upon the prejudices and the passions of the less intelligent and stimulating a warfare of classes that most desolating confliQt that comes upon any nation Well knowing for he has all the experience of the world to teach him that he is not compassing the destruction de-struction of one class but of both since those whom he dupes into serving his purpose must inevitably be the earliest and the worst sufferers by its I I consequences because the less a man I has or the less he earns the more necessary neces-sary it is to him that the value of that j I little should be maintained and made I sure and that the few dollars in his I pocket should be as good dollars as I there are As well might the steerage i passengers in a vessel ill midocean weary of their privations be incited by some mischiefmaker to scuttle the ship in order to drown the inmates of the more luxurious cabins unconscious that they themselves must be equally the victims of the common calamity It is the gold advocates not the silver sil-ver advocates who are talking about arraying class against class He declares he will vote for McKinley I shall therefore vote forMcKinley says Mr Phelps I am not a Republican Repub-lican and I never shall be I do not believe in protection and I shall never be converted to it But in the throes of a deadly malady I cannot afford to reject the only physician who Is in a situation to help me because his political politi-cal opinions are different from mine or even because I think there are better physicians than he if they could only be had in time I shall go further and shall vote at the September election for the Republican candidate for governor gov-ernor Having decided to vote for McKinley and against the candidates of what was his party he does the logical and consistent con-sistent thing In determining to vote the Republican state ticket |