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Show M Was It Sentimental Bosh? IN very many respects the New York Times Is one of the world's great newspapers. And still H our 'belief is that this country would now be better H off had the Times died on the day that Its great H editor, Raymond, died. H For had it been originally owned and controlled H by English and American capitalists it could ont H have1 been a -more faithful servant to them than H it has been for the past thirty years. H It has done more to prevent the United States H from having a real American merchant marine H than any other newspaper. H Trusting to the ignorance of the people, for H years it insisted that all that was needed to re- H store our flag to the sea was to amend the laws H and permit Americans to purchase and register H foreign-built ships, when the writer of those H articles knew that were an American company to H he presented with half a dozen fine steamers and H have them delivered in New York harbor there H was not an oversea trade in all the world that H they could be run in and pay expenses. H Whether suffrage should be given women was H a direct question this year in the state of New H York. The Times has always opposed giving the H ballot to women. The week before the late elec- H tion this year the Times published an article H under the heading "Poetry and Business," the Hi opening paragraph of which was as follows: Hi "Suppose free silver -were 'the paramount Is- H sue' again. The sufferings of humanity crucified H on a Cross of Gold, the oppression of the poor, H the nefarious practices of the Money Power, all H the sentimental bosh poured out by Mr. Bryan in H 1896 is repeated. Wo know what danger there was H in the tendency of too great a part of the elector- H ate to treat a sober question of financial policy H and political economy us a moral, emotional, and H humanitarian question. Would this tendency, only H too visible, not be increased by adding to the H electorate numbers of women voters, habitually In- H cllned to look at ovents and measures in a tender, B poetical, sentimental way?" B That recalls the part which the Times played H in 189Q. Its political editor knew these facts: H That the movement to demonetize silver orlgl- H nated in the brains of a few Bond street, London, H andWall street, Now York, thieves, at a time H when, the interest-bearing debts of the United 1 States and United States corporations amounted to $6,000,000,000, a sum greater than all the world's money at that time, and that the object of the movement was to compel the people of the United States to pay the interest on that sum forever. for-ever. That there was no public demand for the demonetization de-monetization of silver. That the legislation of 1873 was framed by fraud and pushed through congress by a sneak. That the seeming fall in the value of silver was but the inflation of gold as measured by any kind of property values, and that it was due not to any surplus of silver, but to the withdrawal by the government of recognition as primary money from the white metal. That the specious arguments put out by Edward Ed-ward Atkinson and Professors Sumner and McLaughlin, Mc-Laughlin, reversing all the established facts of political po-litical economy, were but transparent plagarisms of the style of argument advanced by shyster lawyers law-yers when defending in the police courts men accused ac-cused of all manner of crimes from petty larceny to rape. But the Times suppressed all the facts and endorsed en-dorsed all the falsehoods. WiIioti the crime was ilnally consummated the Times saw those same thieves compel Mr. Cleveland Cleve-land and Mr. Carlisle much to their enjoyment to issue and sell $250,000,000 in bonds, which the people are still paying, interest on the principal, not having been reduced one penny. And the Times approved it. And was what Mr. Bryan said "sentimental bosh?" Let us see. Every man who owed 40 per cent of the value of his property lost it all. Every man who owed anything had half his capacity ca-pacity to pay taken from him. The closing of the India mints was part of the conspiracy, and while Mr. Bryan was talking in 1896 and in the following two years two million men, women and children starved to death in that distressed country, more than half of whom, according ac-cording to the testimony of English officers who saw them, died not for the want of food, but because be-cause they could not have their hoarded silver coined into rupees. And the Times was unmoved by the dreadful fact. It knew that in 1896 those same thieves supplied sup-plied Mark Hanna with so much money to corrupt, frighten and 'bulldoze the voters of the middle west that, try as he did, he could not spend it all. An outside failure of food crops brought to this country in 1897, '98 and '99 more than $2,000,000,-000 $2,000,000,-000 In gold. An undreamed of reinforcement of the world's gold came from Cripple Creek, South Africa and west Australia. But as Mr. Bryan predicted, all the surplus gold in the country drifted to that same Wall street. There a struggle between two great houses brought a panic upon this country from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. And the depression caused by it has never been lifted. More, toy the reverse action of that same law of 1893 our export trade to half the inhabitants of the earth has been killed, and were the war in Europe to suddenly stop the business of this country coun-try would be prostrate in a fortnight. Meanwhile the inversed pyramid which rests on a point of gold has in Europe had piled upon it during the past fifteen months sixty billions of debt. How long before that pyramid will topple and fall? Was Mr. Bryan's talk "sentimental bosh"? |