Appeal to Reason from Girard, Kansas • Page 1

il mCWC TTttWMCATAMrrlA VC "Srtf VJ BID) Entered Second-class Matter at the Postofflce Ealku Cliy, Kansas. THIS ISSUE OP THIS PAPER IS NO. 61. OH VvM vv PUBLISHED XY. YEAR.

5.t CENTG i'i i'i Three Mori! the Producers of Is a all wealth should paper sent on credit'visor longer than tie timepa'd for. Li g-ifjss tr.fv; VrC jfro" Wr4 i-vU-" V. VC- Oi -V KANSAS SATURDAY, 24, 1896. For 5i belong. A4 .4 4VVv' vV VWi 5 VV 4 J.

A. WAYLAND, Oxe-Hoss Editob. NO PEOPLE CAN BE SELF-GOVERNING WHO ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE "YES OR ON EVERY LAW BY WHICH THEY ARE TO BE GOVERNED. HARRY L. BE VAN, Publisher.

A (Q) 1 -Jl OCTOBER tries they are poor, in low tariff, or free trade (I NO PAPER NEXT WEERV How often have I met the argument of wage-slaves that what was good for their employers was good for them! This i a type of intelli for each bushel so offered the sum of sixty pounds of wheat! Nothing more, nothing less. And yet this" is called financiering! This is the scheme that has made England the financial mistress of the world! Any other nation could have done the same thing with silver and knocked out John Bull. But the nation that will give its citizens an irredeemable paper currency in sufficient quantities to do all business will knock any gold or silver standard country silly. ple? Do they think they will not have to work for wages after Bryan is elected? And do they expect their employer is not going to get them as cheap as possible or that any will employ them if a profit cannot be made out of their hide just as the plantation slave master-made out of the hides of his chattels? What use have these laborers made of their votes in the past that they should now esteem them so highly? Have they not been drilled in the party shutes like so many cattle, to create nabobs who have robbed them? Most MacKinley will not rob them any more than the men they have voted for in the past. So long as the workers vote for men who believe in having property held in private so that the Crawfords, Pullmans, Rockefellers, Goulds, Astors, Vanderbilts, Hunt-ingtons and others may own the great plants, they might as well vote for Mac Kinley as Bryan.

If they want to change the conditions they will have to throw over all such quack remedies as free gold, Qr free silver or tariff for protection or tariff for revenue, and vote for Socialists who want to take all the monopolies and make them public property for the equal benefit of all instead of the men who pocket the profits and try to drive their employes into becoming voting chattels as well as profit-chattels. Vote the Socialist Party ticket and if none is in tin know of no free trade country) countries they are poor, in monarchies they are poor, and in republics they are Only by the public ownership of property with' the private owner ship of income will the working people be rich (but not rich enough to live in idleness) and the idlers be poor. Is Mr. Bryan in favor of that? That will abolish all trusts and monopolies from American soil except the monopoly of, by and for the whole people. If a robber breaks into my house and I kill him, the law recognizes it as justifiable homicide and does not punish me.

Now if the robber had succeeded in taking away my property, I would have the privilege of working and getting moreas I got that. The loss might be burdensome, but would' not interfere with rhy making a living. But if I am blacklisted by the corporations so that I cannot secure employment, and my wife and babies starve to death, the loss to me is infinitely greater, the crime dgainst me infinitely worse, than that committed by the burglar or robber. One is a temporary injury, that can be repaired the latter is a permanent injury that is irreparable. If I should kill the manager who blacklisted me I should be hanged, yet his crime is the greater.

The law or custom that kills for a small crime and honors the greater criminal is illogical. But then it has always been that the king could do no harm and the laws were only for the purpose of making the poor obey the dictum of the rich. But we are a free people If you are to have a rtller, what is the differ ence whether you elect him every four years on let them rule during life? Freemen cannot be ruled they must rule themselves, must themselves make the laws they are to obey. That can not be done by a monarchy or a representative government like this. It is only possible by and through Direct Legislation the people voting yes or no directly on the law.

The plutocrats are taking Debs' advice: They are saving their money and buying school children guns. I wonder what for? Is it belter to arm and drill children to fight and have millions of unarmed, undrilled men idle? Perhaps this is what Congressman Lauterbach of New York meant when' he said in a speech in New York on the 10th: "You are fighting just as important a principle as did those brave men in 1861. But it is a bloodless fight. NMaod will be shed-: at least nut yei, uui 11 tney auempt ro suovert your Court, it they should succeed, by any chance, in foisting upon you these horrible doctrines anarchistic, socialistic and communistic which that platform, adopted by this Pop-ulistic brood, contains, we will not abide by that decision." Going to rebel against the decision of the majority, eh? Better not you'll get licked. If the revolution agamst the people is so near, the working people had better borrow the school children's guns.

The 'national bird," the eagle, was the em-blerw of Rome, is the emblem of Russia and of the United States. Of this bird the great Erasmus wrote: "Of all birds the eagle alcne has seemed to wise men the type of royalty a bird neither beautiful, nor musical, nor 'good tor food, but murderous, greedy, hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing harm only surpassed by its desire to do it." Is it not strange that the misses of this country look upon it as a "bird of freedom" and the masses of Russia to look upon it as the bird of royalty? "What fools these mortals be." The publishers "Caesar's Column" notify us that the edition is exhausted, but orders will be filled by new edition shortly The Academy of Social Science, Junction City, Kansas, passed resolutions of congratulations to Rev. F. F. Passmore for his letter to the Denver clergy.

The capitalists deny there arc "classes" in this country, that all are equally free and independent. In the next breath they denounce the Socialists (and even the Democrats) for trying to array the masses against the classes If there are no classes how can they be arrayed agamst each otlier? If there are classes as in Europe, the masses should array themselves against them. There is no room in a republic for classes. Vote them out of existence by voting for Matchett and Maguire. A great howl is going up about Crawford, a dry goods merchant of St.

Louis, who called up all his employes, asked them how they were going to vote, and discharged all who were not for Mac Kinley. I can't see what there is to kick about. Working people only exist for the profit of their employers, and I see no difference between jwojrking for the prcfifTof ah employer and voting for, the profit cf an emplo3-er. Why, "men are anxious and consider themselves lucky jto be employed, all their lives piling up pVofits for their masters by the most studious labor and then to get mad because the master wants his cattle to vote for his interest is ridiculous. Is the profits of "a life's labor of less worth to a man than the fun of voting for his choice of men to put taxes on him? What sudden spasm of vir tue or new.

light has struck these working peo Tfii next issue of the Appeal Reason will not appear until November 14th- In the meantime it is to be hoped tahat friends will make an effort to build up its circulation and put it on a self sus'ining basis, if they desire it to continue in thi feld. j. A. WAY LAND. Kansas City, Oct.

22tL I would like to impress on you the meaning of the words "bond" and "bondage," and yet I hardly know how to make them more forcible than they are. You have a more nearly correct impression when you use them in relation to black men held in bondage slavery but the words do not impress you the same way when used in relation to white men. Yet they are eternally of the same-meaning. Wherever there is a bond, a legal instrument, some matt or men, women and children are deprived of all; or a part of their rights. Why do you not hate a bond when it applies to yourself as when it applied to the black men of the South? If to get them out of bondage was worth so fierce a struggle why do you vote to have that identical same bondage fastened on to yourself? You don't? But, my dear sir, you do, for you have been doing the voting and you do have the bonds and your labor is paying them.

Let me explain a little clearer, and see if you cannot understand. You will admit that he negro was in bondage in the Southern states forty years ago. Now that bondage consisted in what? Was it not in producing wealth cane, etc. all of which went to the master except what the bonded people needed to live. on? The mere possession of the bodies of these bonded people would not have been wanted if they could not have produced a profit for their master, would they? Hardly.

No master would keep slaves if he had to work to help sustain THEM. Xow understand what bondage means? the legal right or might of a rhaster to compel others to produce for his profit or pleasure. Is that fairly stated? Now if the getting of profit and pleasure out of the labor of others' is slavery, the real essence of and purpose of bondage (and there is no other view of it) will vou show me wherein the man who holds a bond on your body (a personal note) or a bond on your farm or home, or a bond on your school district county, state or nation, differs from the-slave owner? Do these holders not put their money sucn bonds, tor the same rea- son tne slave owner put 111s money in a siave-r to make a profit out of them Now don't youf labor pav the interest on these bonds? And die you ever get any benefit from these bonds? In every essence of bondage, slavery, the white po-ple of the land are held in bond, are not free and while they work and produce an ever-increasing amount of wealth, the bonds increase fast enough to absorb all that wealth, leaving them just as much in most cases as the negro slaves got a hut, some rags and coarse food and no more. Every dollar's worth of wealth-it takes to pay the interest, received or paid in the United States (as well as elsewhere) is that much of labor taken from the workers without any more equivalent than the planter gave his slaves for the cotton he sold and applied the proceeds thereof to his own use. You working people, you are in bondage, the bonds are issued by public officials, they are as real as the slave owner's, and you are too ignorant to realize your miserable condition.

You work and the products of your labor somehow gets into the hands of the men who hold these various bonds, vet you s.e it not. I know you do not like to read long articles, and for fear of worrying you I will cut this short here. But at another time I will explain to you some othef relations in this matter that ought to set you tq thinking. If I call you hard nanies, mind that it is for your good, and that you deserve them for your stupidity. (V What builds bank buildings? Interest.

What builds bankers' palaces? Interest. What pays the bankers' salaries? Interest. What pays the banks dividends? Interest. What pays the bank: expenses? Interest. What is the cause cf interest? Now are you silly enough to believe that bankers ivant a change in the financial system that will ielieve the people so they may get out of debt and thus destroy the said bankers' business? Do you think the bankers want to destroy their own busi ness? Do you think they employ lobbyists at Washington and the state capitals in the interest "of the people as against themselves? At well expect a king to recommend laws curtailing his power and enlarging the liberties of the peopled If the people had their blinds pulled from their eyes, they would elect men who woulq mako laws for them, instead of voting for men whom ihc bankers like so well.

"VThe bankers work fon own interests just as other, business n. They "are hotso much to be blamed. So Vc. as the multitude "remain ignorant and veta irantly, the bankers' might Just as well skin tfisnr as anybody. One; thing certain, some-' If: them "so" long as they believe ir and vote for the present.

system. If they do not want to be fleeced by bankers, they ill have to vote for men who wraiit government banks arid governnr ent money. Until this is done, all the power oe men who profit by usury will be used to have laws that benefit the lenders who are feV against the payers who ate many. The lenders are enjoying life pretty welL How are you fixed? gence lower than the slave plantation exhibited. Ignorant as he was, he knew that a big crop of cotton brought him no good.

High priced cotton benefitted him none, unless he found a pleas ure in seeing his master buying more slaves with the surplus. The interests of employer and em ploye are antagonistic, whether they recognize it or not. Jt is to my interest to get all the work out of employes for the least money possi ble, and their interest lies in getting the most money for the least work possible. This does not mean it is to their interest to do bad work, for the habit would injure them more than the sooner reproducing bad work would benefit them. If the working people were to do all they could, they would only create the necessary goods demanded by society in a shorter time and their number would be lessened by their em ployers or their employment be of fewer days.

In other words they would be working them selves out of a job." Nor do the other evidences go to prove the assertion that laborers prosper when their masters prosper. Is there any like of prosperity in the conditions of the people who compose the coal trusts, oil trusts sugar trusts and the few hundred other-trusts? Well, hardly. Are their wage-slaves prosperous? Well, read the daily press of how they are starving. Look at their hovels of homes, look at their dress and their miserable lives. Some wage-slaves may believe they are prosperous when they are gettinj enough 'pay" to keep soul and body together and raise children to be slaves for the next generation of masters but I don't.

No intelligent man or woman will be satisfied to work for wages for any man or firm, no matter how high or low such wages may be. That people do not know there is a better, more elevating, independent way of producing wealth than by "wage-slavery" process, is evidence of their lack of intelligence on social-political economy. A robber is punished because his act is an injury to his victim. The silent dagger of the rich assassins, known as the "blacklist," is of infinitely greater injury to its victims than any act of burglary could possibly be. The courts show no single instance where any rich man has been punished for this crime.

And the fool working people vote for men who believe in allowing the rich to own the monopolies instead of taking them by law and making them public, property "where no blacklist mortals suffer until they quit being, political bigots and dupes. In his speech in New York Mr. Bryan said he favored driving every trust off of American soil, and i( it could not be done by enforcing existing laws, then he wrould recommend laws that would, even to changing the constitution. This sounds very well, but I wonder if Mr. Bryan comprehends the remedy? He can't mean that he favors driving the "trusted" industries out of the country, surely? We need them here.

Nor surely does he believe any law can prevent two or more men from agreeing to pay certain wages or selling goods at certain prices Any such law would be insane and could no more be enforced than a law could prevent, men from thinking. Behind these trusts, monopolies and combines is a principle, an economic thought, and that principle is present in the conduct of a peanut vender or retail grocer just as much as in the greatest aggregations of capital- that principle is PROFIT, buying as cheap as possible and selling as dear as possible. Does Mr. Bryan propose to recommend laws that will prevent men making profit? Does he propose to favor laws that will say to these capitalists, "you may sell your goods at any price you see fit, you may produce as much or little as you see fit, but you shall not agree on prices to charge the public!" Wouldn't that be a great law telling them they can sell as they see fit but cannot sell as they see fit? Or does he propose to make all the great industries divide up their plants into many small ones? Or does he propose to confiscate or condemn under right of eminent domain all the trusts and monopolies and operate them in the interest of the people? If so, who is going to decide what is a trust or monopoly or combine? Is the agreement of two partners a combineor does it take two thousand or two million? Or does he propose to have the nation build competing industries, operated at cost, with no interest, dividends, tax, stocks, mortgages, bonds, advertising, lobbying and corruption expenses, and by such competition drive every trust from American soil? If Mr. Bryan will explain his theory of protecting the people from the robbery of the rich thieves, so it may be examined, there are many who might vote for him if his theory be sound and a larger number who would not, of course, because they get their living off the people, in a small way, just as do the trusts in a greater way Now the postofficevisa bust; a combine' of all the people, a complete monopoly Mr.

Bry an does not say whether if is one rr .1 A triTJ'' L-'A-vW-H1 Will anve on uie nraencan son or not. i-pr thousands of years the rulers or would-be rulers have promised to do great things for the benefit of the workers, but they never specify just how they propose, to do it, and how the said benefits are to be given and the working, masses, in gold standard countries are poor, in silver stand ard countries they; are poor, in high tariff coun What do working people get for their labor? Food, clothing, shelter, amusement and mis-instruction. Who creates these things? Other working people, of course. Then where does the capitalist come in, that he should be recognized as owning everything? Why the fool working people have been taught to believe that the man who pays them a few pieces of money orders on the products of their own labor owns the whole earth. We need not irretrievably commit ourselves to the principles of the nationalization of the mines and raihoads of the country, in admitting that it is very obvious that were they so nationalized public bodies in the west would not be found, as they art this buying corn for fuel consumption, while Ohio coal operators are asking miners to dig coal for 45 cents a ton, thousands of whom not produce more than two tons a day, which would give them from 50 to 60 cents a day after the expenses of powder, tools, tool sharpening, squibs and other necessary expenses are deducted from their earnings, not to say anything about exorbitant house rent, and equally exorbitant prices for goods bought under coercion in company stores.

Neither does it require a very ercat stretch of the imagination to understand men on whom these conditions are imposed growing desperate and willing to try any means suggested to them as a remedy. And more than that, what about farmers who have to raise corn for fuel in competition with miners working for 50 cents a day! The very heart of the nation must have froze up if it sympathy for men so placed by the unnatural economic system, or want of system, which it brings about. United Mine Workers' Journal. For heaven's sake don't explain to the poor slaves that the nationalization of the mines is the only way out of their slavery. If this were done there would be no good living for a lot of labor fakes who thrive by dealing in the misery and degradation of their fellows.

No, no. Do not irretrievably commit yourselves to a policy that might incur the displeasure of the masters and shut off the possibility c. trading on the political influence you wield over the. poor jlevils in the black bowels oi motbetcarth. Had the teachers and leaders of the working people taught them the equal1 right of all to nature's bounties, and how-by having all own and operate them there would never be any master but themselves, years ago the coal mines would have been mada public property, and miners would have been receiving as steady work and as good pay as the postal employes and the public would have been buying coal at half what it now has-to pay.

A coal millionaire or combine would be as impossible as a postofflce millionaire or combine a thing never heard Men "who, knowing these things, will not or daiejnot advocate them, in season and out of season, are traitors to their race. Nationalize the muies and roads, and the miners and railroad men will then receive the three to ten dollars a ton the consumers have to pay for the coal. Poverty and even starvation has not taught the woikers this simple problem in all the distress they have suffered. It must be told to them, iterated and reiterated, explained and analyzed, before their minds will comprehend it. When some schemer gets a corner on wheat he squeezes those who have agreed to deliver wheat which they havnt got.

Now when a man gives his note or buys on credit, he agrees to pay so many dollars which rie has not got, and take3 his chances on the money market of getting those dollars in time to meet his obligation. He is exactly on the same plane as the gambler in wheac. He sells money short just as the wheat dealer sells wheat short. The whole commercial tystem is a gamble, be cause people have not learned that there is a better way. The United States pas never raised a hand to help any colony or Section to throw off tha shackles of a monarchy.

She has forgotten that 1776 was only successful because France assisted her. Sh is now seeing little Cuba tortured and robbed by the Spanish gandees, battling for life and liberty, as complacjmfij as if human liberty were something to throttle. And such it has be- come in this United Stktes of "Monopoly. How proud of our boasted Ibve of liberty Americana should be. A few worcs from the United States would free Cuba, but tie words will not be '-'Vf See lhat mansion opr.

th'ere? Wh'af has the occupant MADE and uren to the many people who built and equipped his elegant home? "He fplildt'tlieni money? tsrfcut jcrhat did he nruce. and jnoriej cI2ase.1t hit zi far is you will and yotiwill find in almost "every; instance that he alwajs got it from somebody, else, and at no stage did he make and give an equivalent. Somebod7 else always made the equivalent. Just how the hocus pocus game is played will be explained to you if you will read one book on social! the science of the social field, write "Socialist Labor Party" right over the ticket and vote it blank. Enter a protest against the social system.

If you do not vote for what ou want how do you expect to get it? It was formerly the method of getting the honey out of a hive to smoke the bees out. Now the streets are swarm-ng with voters, gesticulating, jawing and pawing about being robbed, while among them the five dollar a day talkers are blowing smoke in their political eyes to keep them from seeing who is robbing them and how. They remind me of a swarm of bees being driven out of their hive. They will be robbed on November 3d to a queen's taste. The butler of a New York bachelor millionaire has been stealing the valuable bric-a brae of his master, whereat there is a great noise.

The master steals from soclciy, legally, and the butler did the same thing i'legally. Of the two the butler is the better for he may need what he got for the trash, while the master takes when he is in no need. Some fine large day these things will be reversed. -The interstate commerce commissions' railroad statistics for the year ending Tune 30, 1895, show that the roads carried 507,421 ,362 passengers for which they received $313,578,218. That is the average price of a railroad ticket was 62 cents, regardless of distance.

As the average rate per mile was only 2 cents, while the paying pas-sengeVs pay 3 cents, it would appear that fully fifty million dollars is annually given away in passes to corrupt press, politician and pulpit. The Engineering News of New York, of Oct. 8 gives an account of the electric light plant at Johnson, a village of 600 people. The total outlay for the plant was $5,600. The charge for 16 candle power incandescent lights is: For first light, $3 per year; for extra Tights in same room, $2 per year; for lights in bed rooms, $1 per year! At this price, after paying all expenses, including interest in bonds for the plant, the village, which owns the plant, has 6b street lamps of 30 c.

p. free, and there was a net profit paid into the local treasury last year of From these figures, one can arrive at the cost of a lamp. If the town had the bonds paid so no interest account would be necessary, and the town paid pro rata for its-lights, the actual cost of furnishing a 16 c. p. light WAS LESS THAN 50 CENTS A YEAR! How does that compare with the prices charged by thieving, lying corporations? That is all it is actually costing the people of Johnson, Vt, for their electric lights, because the village owns the plant.

I would advise those interested in municipal socialism to get a copy of this issue and good work can be done with it. Prof. S. H. Emmens, in the same issue of thq Engineering News, says that the conversion of silver into gold is an accomplished fact, but he is not going to prove it because that would give away the secret.

The cyclones, earthquakes and fires have been a boon tc the laboring classes it has compelled the masters to feed a few more slaves for a longer or shorter period to repair the damages. Can you think of a more idiotic system than one which starves part of the "working people unless some property is destroyed by catastrophe? How long will superstitious slaves hunger and wrant in plain view of great stores of wealth which their labor has created? The law of England is that tHe Bank of England shaU buy all the gold offered it at the rate of nearly four pound sterling to the ounce. rKow that looks like' a reasonable! trania'ctionTcioa'rttf But what is four pound sterling, according to the prevailing usage? It is nothing more or. less than abont an ounce of gold. Then the proposition amounts to The Bank of England wall give you an ounce of gold for an ounce gold, or will give you a bank obligation to give you the ounce of gold any time you want it.

It is equivalent to a wheat elevator, company adver tising to Lux all the wheat offered to it and pay i.