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Show The Yellow Peril THE prudent mine owner, when he has his mine opened and his mill built, always keeps his development work going on, that he may keep his ore bodies opened some months in advance of the mill's reduction. In the same way a prudent nation tries to so conduct its affairs as to make sure that its laboring labor-ing men, skilled and unskilled, will always be sure of employment. Our nation has failed in this several times, once in 1837, once in 185, once in 1873, once in 1893 and once in 1907. The first was due to the fact that the Government was trying to perform the impossible task of exchanging its raw material ma-terial for the finished goods and wares of foreign countries. No country ever has, no country ever can, keep even at this, except that it has a monopoly mo-nopoly on some great staple article which the world must have. The southern states had this monopoly in cotton, produced by unpaid labor, and they insisted that they should have the right to purchase what they needed in every mart of the world without restriction. It ended in draining drain-ing the whole country of its money and in stuffing stuf-fing every warehouse with foreign goods. It was the Cobden idea, working as he intended that it should work for England. Canada, Australia, Southern Europe and some of the Latin states tried the same experiment, and all with a like result. re-sult. England in those days might have made the refrain of the song of the old sexton a national na-tional air, and every day, with uncovered heads, have sung it, after "God Save the Queen," as a doxology, "We gather them in, we gather them in." It was the same way in 1857, though that panic was put off perhaps five years by the influx in-flux of gold from California. But the same causes were at work, and when the panic came, it was found that of the $500,000,000 received from California, Cali-fornia, all but $57,000,000 had been sent away across the sea. The panic of 1873 was due to the supreme stupidity of the American Congress. When the war came on in 1861, gold, as it always does in time of danger, fled under cover. The government govern-ment was forced to issue paper representatives of value, with nothing behind them but the faith of the people, and bonds drawing heavy Interest. It was able with these to buy enough gold and silver to meet Its interest, and so the greenbacks regained a value to steady the government and give the people somthing to do business on. It was all the money the people had. As greenbacks green-backs fell in value, property increased in value correspondingly, of course. So men gave notes and mortgages on that basis. When the war closed the greenbacks began slowly to appreciate j in value, but not very fast, for those were the I so called reconstruction days, and a great many I of the omens were not of a peaceful future. Af- ter seven years, congress, forgetting, apparently, I that things had adjusted themselves to this irre- I deemable currency, decided that the way to en- $ hance the value of the greenback, and to give a I grand example of the integrity of the govern- I ment, would be to call in some tens of millions J of dollars' worth of this paper and destroy it, d never, apparently, thinking what the effect would" be on the business of the people. It was dona and the panic naturally followed. In 1893 congress again, in its wisdom God' save the mark deliberately destroyed one-half the money of the land. We all remember what ' followed. In 1907, some of the big combines of the east decided to crush certain other combines and take in some coveted property, and in doing that frightened the people into another panic in New York, and New York being the heart of the na- tion's flnnnolfll nvafom wlion flmf l,n..t .i .,.j..x,.i., it ucu ium, ucui t uuiiasu to beat there was heartfailure everywhere to the I utmost extremities of the nation. All these panics have been most severe upon the laboring hosts of the country. The one in 1857 caused the skilled workingmen of the east, for tho first time, under the American flag, to eat free soup. Now everyone seems confident of the future. The annual product of farm and mine and factory is given; the cities 'are booming, land values are increasing the confident ones say, "There is not a cloud in the sky." But it is true ' that our export trade with half the world Is killed. i It is true that even now off across the Pacific pig f iron and steel rails are being produced at one-fifteenth one-fifteenth the cost in the United States, and woqlen and cotton goods are being produced at half the cost in the United States. And these works are being extended. Two hundred millions mil-lions of the most patient and imitative workers in j the world are awakening from the lethargy of ' three thousand years, to engage in extending their manufactures. What will our skilled la-borers la-borers be doing ten years hence, if no check it ! put upon this work in the orient? What will become be-come of our exports to civilized countries? When these, too, stop, what will the railroads do? And what will the farmers' crops and lands be worth? I What is the government doing toward insuring the laboringmen employment ten years hence? Will a fight over the house rules, or an investiga- I tion of whether this or that government official is a thief or an honest man, settle the matter? I Suppose when the water-power on government j land is conserved, there shall be no use to which ! the power can be applied, who will be the gainer? . Suppose the miner with the mine and mill ran ' his business just as the government just now is running its business, how long before he would be out of ore and be obliged to close down his mill? i And the workingmen, the labor unions, what are they thinking of that they are not demanding, f In the names of their wives and babies, that the government shall interpose and ward off the danger dan-ger that threatens to convert our people into a race of which a few will be a moneyed aristocracy, aristoc-racy, and the rest a great host of serfs? |