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Show A DANGEROUS SUGGESTION Now cornea do less a personage than j J. R. Sovertgn, chief of the knights cf labor, who Btates explicitly that last summer during the big railroad strike at Chicago, he and Eugene Debs had a proposition which they entertained, to lead a rebellion agaiuet thej government. govern-ment. It eeenis a plan had been submitted sub-mitted to him and Debs, but thsy finally fin-ally concluded not to embark in so hazardous an enterprise This is in one sense a veiy important bit of news. ! It deeply concerns the nation that the knights of labor; dr any other body of workingmen or citizens of any degree of importance could entertain a treasonable treas-onable proposition from any one, especially bo powerful a body as the laboring la-boring masEee of the people of the west. But it was not carried out and in that way an immense evil was averted. Doubtless this wicked suggestion sug-gestion had its origin, like the Etrika mentioned, in the distresses, deep and widespread which had proceeded from the scarcity of money occasioned in the first place by demonetization and in the second place, by the nearer injury caused by the repeal of the Sherman " purchase law. For twenty years the industries of the west have lain prone in the dust by reason of the fact that there is no money and no demand for the products of labor. There is a deep andhopeleBS distress prevailing, whtre there should be activity, good wages and prosperity, as a part of the plan submitted to cuerce the people into the adoption of the jrold etandard and the utter destruction of tbe money functions of silver. Just how near we were to a dreadful revolution revo-lution when the Coxey armies were marching and the strikes were on, perhaps per-haps we will never know accurately; we do kuow enough to warrant the conclusion con-clusion that the country came yery close to the verge of an abyss, compared com-pared with which the rebellion of '61, was but the merest of a mere bagatelle. baga-telle. In the new rebellion, which is surely and steadily coming upon us, there i wlil be no blessed Mason's and Dixon's line. The rebels of the new revolution will be found sitting at our very hearth-stones, in eyery nook and corner : of the land. They will be our hard-handed hard-handed brethren of tdiJ, made hopeless and infinitely desperate by many years of oenury and cruel want occasioned only by the greed of the gold barons of the east. In the rebellion of '61, desperate, des-perate, bloody and destructive as it was, the American ideas of universal liberty and the brotherhood of man entered en-tered largely. In the revolution threatened last Bummer would be found the victorious heroes of the struggle which closed in the epring of '65. The universal diffusion of the seasoned, hardy and intelligent men over the entire west, their acquaintance with affairs, their desperation des-peration and the many madening circumstances" entering into the uprising up-rising would have in the briefest time taught this once happy and prosperous nation what real rebellion and revolution means. In that of '61 it was one intelligent and chivalric nation fightirg another, its full equal. It was Indeed civilized warfare upon international rules. This one, had it come off, would have been only rebellion rebel-lion against the national authority A cruel, bloody and inhuman battle would have raged on every plain, in every valley and on every hill top in all the wide west, and the national government gov-ernment would not itself haye been an unit against it as it wa3 when it bravely brave-ly fronted the rebellion of '61. May the good God avert revolution and rebellion for all the future of this nation. But while we make this prayer with the sincerest candor, we cannot ehut our eyes to the many causes which operated then and exist now with equal force. The unequal chances given and assured by the national na-tional policy of piling up the yellow gold in the laps of the speculators and government favorites of the east, while the rrocesb of the impoverishment of the west, by the same power, goes on and on steadily and relentlessly. It Is time to pause and consider the weEt if the government would turn its face away from revolution. |