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Show ' The Political Outlook np HERE are many pronounced candidates for the Presidency In our country just now. f " Many others who, remembering the coup in the Democratic national convention in 1896, are wondering if it is not possible that the lightning v may strike again. Most of these are hoping for a nomination on the strength of the reforms they are promising. And the chiefest cry of all is to picture the men 1 who are toilers in the land, as an abused class, borne down by the tyranny of trusts and soulless r" corporations, who are drawing to themselves so much more than their share of the nation's wealth, that "the poor laborer is perpetually oppressed." This has been going on for several years and the objects of attack have been mostly the great industrials, the companies that pay the great majority of laborers their wages. It has to be admitted that they are paying higher wages than were ever paid in any other land, or in this, in any ago of the world. But is is said, in response to that statement, that the rates of wages have not increased as much as has the cost of living. That is doubtless doubt-less true, for it is an inviolable law that it should be so. When times grow hard, everything else falls before wage rates; when times improve everything ev-erything else advances before wages do. i But the government is prosecuting these in dustrials in a dozen states, and demagogue politicians and newspapers are doing what they can to fix an impression upon the minds of the g. people, that these great corporations are all dis-I dis-I honest and that their chief delight is in oppressing ' - the poor. We see in a current magazine a picture I of J. J. Hill of the Great Northern and North Pa-i Pa-i ( ciflc roads as one who has rown rich in corrupt t. ing courts and grinding the faces of1 the poor. Now, J. J. Hill has added more to the value of the property of the United States and has given more thousands of men profitable employment employ-ment than almost any other man between the seas; we do not believe that he ever wronged any man out of a dollar; and in addition, he has l given his fellow citizens and the government i above him more clear brained, useful advice than f fy any other man whose name we can recall. One result of all this clamor has been to cause the majority of the working men to lose I I that old intrepid tenacity which led them to be-' be-' lieve that they could work out a 'competency all by themselves. Another result has been to It Sfyjgg)MB3SSM3'''',''t'Wl't'l' -i i itth? ir - is to .get something for nothing and to work themselves up into the belief that in a country with as much wealth as this, some of it belongs to them. But the one thing needed, the complete revision re-vision 'of the present system which makes the masses, of the men in the United States mere servitors of the great money combines of the East, is not attmpted. With a great flourish of trumpets the Democrats Demo-crats the other day made the bluff that they meant to investigate it; they clamored loudly for a little while, passed the resolution with a shout, and then referred it to a committee, where It will probably sleep in peace until after election. elec-tion. In their appeal to the prejudices of the masses the politicians have overlooked what the country really needs, and hence on the different platforms as so far outlined, it will not much matter who may be elected, provided the man is known as a real American and an honest man. |