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Show NOT A HOPEFUL OUTLOOK. - Former Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw ha been making a tour of the country, and thinks it not impossible that at the close of President Presi-dent Taft's presidential term there may be more idle men in the country than there were at the be-Kinning be-Kinning of President McKinley's term in 189f. There has been no failure of crops in all those sixteen six-teen years; there has been no direct blow at any industry except silver mining, which the government govern-ment hss canned to lose thousand millions of dollars since then ; there have been tremendous sclvsnces in some leading industries; the revenue reve-nue of the nation in those sixteen years have been greater than of any other nation since the beginning be-ginning of time ever enjoyed. And still there is universal depression in every state, and o many idle men that to consider them is a heartache lo generous people everywhere. In the meantime, too. we have lost our export trade with one-half the people of the earth. There are just two way in which a nation cati accumulate money one is from the mines, the other through a favorable balance bal-ance of trade. Our nation began by changing one of our products', which since- long before" the day of Abraham had been "current money among the merchants" and the more reliable of the two metals which the nations throngh the age recognized as money metals, into a commodity. It wa done through deception, fraud, chicanery and bribery, and waa attended by almost unparalleled" losses. From sources never dreamed of the awful void atle by the destruction of silver money wa filled i by a reinforcement of gold at the direct cost of ", outside nations; but when it was discovered that tbu same legislation was destroying our export ; trade with half the world, the marvelou spectacle , was seen, that neither the president of the United States nor any member of either house of con-gi-ess, nor any leading journal of 'the east, dare , mention the fact., nor demand that there ahould bt an effort to arrest the mighty injury which it msi working upon many of the vital industries .f the people. " , Again, that same legislation makes it possible not only for the pauper nations of the earth to shut out our exports, but to bring in to our ho"9 their own products and sell them to us in our money at a discount of 60 per cent under what they sold them to us twenty years ago, which is the most direct blow ever aimed at American labor. Then, although the bulk of our export ia composed com-posed of agricultural products, instead of sending send-ing them away in our own ships we pay a large percentage of their value to foreign ship owners, pay it in what is equivalent to gold, which goes into foreign coffer and is lost to this country forever. By the same process we force quite 300.- 000 skilled laborers, who should be employed in mining coal and iron, in furnacea, shipyards and rolling mills, into other employmenta. What could : be the conclusion of any intelligent ' foreigner, atlcr studying what has been the policy of our . government for the paxt sixteen years, except that, while our country ia the roost wonderful ever known, our so failed statesmen have not the ability to govern it in the interest of the people! Is it not true that the failure of one crop would overwhelm the country in the worst panic, ever known f Has not all our supposed surplus for six-(Ma six-(Ma years been paid out in fares and freights and interest to foreigners? Mr. Shaw ascribes' the . present condition to warfare made by the government on railroada for the sins of former owners. The trouble is much deeper, and we suspevt if will require one more universal panic to open the eyes of the people to the' real causes and to needed remedies. . |