The Peoples Voice (Norman, Okla.), Vol. 8, No. 47, Ed. 1 Friday, June 15, 1900 Page: 1 of 8
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The Peoples Voice
VOL.8
NORMAN. OKLAHOMA, JUNE 15, 1900.
NO. 47.
DillllMtlUin
[Continued from Last Week.]
MONEY.
Our money has not maintained a
Stable value but has fluctuated con-
stantly to the loss of producers and
profit of speculators. We have a
mometary barometer, to take license
with a word, in which the mercury
the measure of values, has not kept
the same height in the tube. For a
quarter of a century prior to mid-
summer three years ago it crawled
higher and higher, with slight drops
now and then, until it was a hundred
per cent, higher at the end than at
the beginning of the period. So
debt burdened producers sweat
more and more. During the last
two years the value of gold, as
shown by the price barometer, has
shrunk by twenty-five per cent.
And now the speculative cliques, in
place of this gold barometer by
which to measure the value of prop-
erty, demand a bank currency baro-
meter on which they may blow hot
and cold by turns.
VVe proclaim that it matters not
to the people whether this currency
barometer is based on national
bank notes — Republican plan
—or on state bank notes--Dein-
ocratic plan. The question is shall
we go backward or forward, shall
we establish a monetary system less
honest than gold, more injurious to
the producing classes, more to the
profit of the speculative cliques bent
on despoiling the wealth producers,
or shall we establish a system more
honest, that will do justice by the
producing classes, by all classes,
and stop the robbery of some men
by others through the instrumentali-
ty of our banking and monetary
system?
The speculative cliques want a
currency that by expansion and
contraction they can make cheap
and dear and prices high and low
by turns. The people want a cur-
rency that will expand with their
needs, which will grow neither cheap
nor dear but maintain a stable value
thereby securing the equites of debt-
ors and creditors and placing bus-
iness upon firm foundations, free
from the ups and downs in prices
over which men not in the cliques
have no control and against which
no business forsight can guard, yet
which may strip them in almost the
twinkling of an eye of the profits of
a year, of the savings of a lifetime
throw them from hope into despon
dency, cut off the promise of sue
cess, open the way to bankruptcy.
This currency that will maintain
a stable value it is the duty of the
government to give. It is its duty
to regulate the volume of money in
a way to accomplish this. The
amount of money needed to ac-
complish this, the times when
more money must be issued to pre-
serve the stability, the times when
smaller issues are required can readi-
ily be ascertained. We have in the
general level of prices our guide, our
currency barometer. 1 he mercury
in that barometer, the general index
number, should always register the
same. So long as it registers the
same it means that prices are stable,
that the purchasing power of money
is unchanged, the equities between
debtors and creditors undisturbed.
If it fails it means that prices are
lower, money dearer, the debtor be
ing despoiled for the creditor s ben-
efit. It means that justice requires
the issue of more money. If on the
other hand the index number in this
currency barometer rises it means
that the prices are rising, that mon-
ey has departed from the level of
honesty with the result of benefitting
the debtor at the creditor s expense
and that in the name of honesty, in
the interest of industry and business,
the issue of money be diminished.
By watching the currency barom
honest money, a monty the volume
and hence the value of which would
not be subject to accidents of pro-
duction as is our gold money to day,
a money not subject to the whims of
bankers as the speculative cliques de (
sire,or of legislators as the unfriendly
critics of Populism assert, but a
money established upon rigid lines
of honesty.
This is the basic principle of
sound and honest money, the mone-
tary principle of Populism.
And now as I cannot string new
words to better express my thoughts
I take two paragraphs from The
American of last week: "Back in
the civil war this nation borrowed
much money and ran much in debt.
It ran into debt when money was
plentiful, prices high. Indeed mon-
ey had a much different value then
in the years just before or after-
Money was cheap and tVie products
of labor dear. In the last years of
the war, when money was plentiful
and prices high, when the govern-
ment was getting deepest into debt,
industry was active, the earning
power of labor measure*! in dollars
and cents large, the payment of
debts comparatively easy. Labor
was in demand and held in growing
esteem. But the nation deep into
debt anil the country doing business
on this basis of high prices, the com
mercial death rate lower than ever
before or since, the war over and the
demand for money increased by the
bringing of the Southern states back
into the Union, Lincoln, the guard-
ian of the people's interests, assas-
sinated and stilled in death, his Sec-
retary of the Treasury, chosen as the
friend of the greenback currency,
turned to Wall Street, took his que
therefrom, inaugurated a policy of
violent contraction. As a result mon-
ey doubled in value an<l prices fell
by one- half. Of necessi ty the burden
of all debts, public and private, was
doubled as with the fall in prices
it took double the quantity of pro-
luce to pay them as be fore. Indus
try was paralyzed, the commercial
death rate jumped up alarmingly, the
country was bled for the profit of
the holders of its debts, and of oth-
er fund holders whose debtors were
strong enough to stand up under the
increased strain. In response to
popular outcry Congress halted the
contraction inaugurated by McCul
loch. But it was not long before a
second step, finally resulting in a
further doubling of the value of
money and a further halving of
prices, was taken. Silver was de-
monetized. Gold was made our
standard. And step by step money
grew dearer and the products of la- j
bor cheaper until very recently, when
the greatly increased outpouring of
new gold, outpourings trebled within
a decade, began to tel ieve the strain
ed situation. Before such outpour-
ings made themselves felt we had a
unit of value that ascompared to the
unit of civil war time had been (
quadrupled. |
"Thus was our monetary system
made an engine of despoilment,
['he Peoples party has ever entered
its protest against such monetary
system, ever denounced it. And it
ever will, so long as it stands for
justice and is true to itself, denounce
a monetary system in which the unit
of value is a fluctuating one; ever
will it stand for a system in which
the unit will be stable. And as
standing for such a system, as not
blind to the teaching of common
sense or ignorant of the monetary
history of the world it realized that
two commodities, such as gold and
silver united, are likely to make a
standard of less flu ctuating value
that a standard based on either alone
as has stood and still stands for the
free coinage of silver, not as a solu-
tion of the monetary question but as
a mere temporary step looking to
the bettering of the situation. For
it realizes that a money system rest-
ing on gold and silver, a system in
which the volume of money must
necessarily be dependent upon the
' supply of precious metals, must be
' must change with any change in
the relation between the supply of
| and demand for money, it sees,
, therefore, that the only money that
| can be kept of stable value is one
j the volume of which can be increas-
ed by government in accordance
with the growing demands of trade.
And this necessitates that the money
be made of a substance the supply
of which is not restricted. Further,
as the value of money is dependent
on its quantity not its quality, it is
economy to make our money out of
the cheapest possible substance that
will serve the purpose. And that
substance is paper. Thus it is that
the Peoples party stands for paper
money, for a currency the volume
and hence the value of which can be
absolutely regulated by the govern-
ment, a currency that can be issued
directly to the people for public
works, that may be redeemed and
retired out of the revenues of such
public works, and reissued for the
creation of new works of earning
power, a continual cycle being thus
kept np and the nation ever growing
rich in public works while the coun-
try would ever be supplied with the
best of currencies."
TRUSTS.
To talk of licensing trusts is to
trifle with evil. The trusts have
come—some as the product of in-
dustrial evolution, from the fact that
great combination have made possi-
ble the introduction of economies
in production; some as the product of
special legislation, largely the grant-
ing of franchises exclusive by their
nature; some as the result of rail
roads discriminations forbidden by
law but which the law has been pow-
erless to prevent. And so arising
the trusts must be treated with some
regard to the manner in which they
have arisen. 'I hose that have aris-
en in the third way, in railroad dis-
criminations can be dealt with ef-
fectively, properly by the govern-
ment taking possession of the rail-
roads and putting an end to the
evil of freight discrimination so de-
structive of the first right of the
American people—the right to an
equality of opportunity. Those that
have arisen in the second way can
be successfully treated only by the
national, state and municipal gov
ernments taking back the public
franchises they have given away and
which they have a common law
right to do; those that have arisen
in the first way and that abuse theii
power, the power that comes with
concentration and that ought to ben
efit the general public, must be tak
en by the people as they see the
necessity and that they may enjoy
the benefits of the industrial evolu-
tion going on around them.
So do we declare that where trusts
and monopolies are not the artificial
creation of transportation and other
discriminations, and that can, there-
fore, be destroyed by the removal
'of such discriminations, but are the
growth of natural conditions, are
I and must continue to be monopolies
J because of the very nature of their
| being, that the nation, the state, the
| municipality must be the monopo-
list in order that the people may be
protected in their rights. Where
monopoly cannot be destroyed, or
where, being a natural grow th it is
not to the interest of the people to
destroy it, the government must be
the monopolist. Private monoply
must be a bane, government monop
olization of natural monopolies must
be a blessing.
eter as our guide we can establish a
perfect monetary system that will
give us currency of practically in-
variable purchasing power and hence
lacking in stability. It realizes that
the unit of value under such a sys-
tem must be a fluctuating one, it
recognizes that the value of money
In the words of a still living Re-
publican statesman, Galusha A.
Grow, uttered half a century since,
"If a man has a right on earth, he
has a right to land enough to rear a
habitation on. If he has a right to
live he has a right to the free use of
whatever nature has provided for
his sustenance—air to breathe, wat-
er to drink and land enough to cul-
tivate for his subsistence. For these
are the necessary and indispensible
means for the enjoyment of his ina-
lienable rights of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. . . . And as
the means of sustaining life are de-
rived almost exclusively from the
soil, every person has a right to so
much of the earth's surface as is
necessary for his support. To
whatever unoccupied portion of it,
therefore, he shall apply his labor
for hat purpose, from that time
forth it becomes appropriated to
his own exclusive use, and whatever
improvements he may make by his
industry becomes his property and
subject to his disposal. For the on
ly true foundation of any right to
property is man's labor. That is
property, and that alone, which the
labor of man has made such. What
right then, has one man more than
another to an acre of uncultivated
land to which not a day's nor
hjjur's labor has been applied, to
make it more productive and ans
wer to the end for which it was cre-
ated, the support and happiness of
the race? It is said by the great ex-
pounder of the common laws in his
Commentaries that ' There is no
foundation in natural law why a set
of words upon parchment should
convey the dominion of land.' The
use and occupancy alone gives to
man, in the language of Commen-
taries 'an exclusive right to retain
in a permanent manner that specific
land which heretofore belonged gen-
erally to everybody, but particularly
to nobody.' "
So do I affirm my belief that use
and occupancy of land are of right
requisite to make good title, that
when a parcel of land ceases to be
used and occupied it of a right re-
verts to the state' that the holding
of lands by aliens, by non resident
landlords, should be prohibited.
taxation.
That men should contribute to the
cost of government, in proportion
to their means we hold to be a self
evident truth. But in the raising of
the Federal revenues this truth has
not been followed. One per cent of
our people own one half of the na-
tional wealth, and while they pay
approximately one-half the local
taxation they pay but an insignifi-
cant part of the national revenues.
For those revenues are largely raised
from taxes on articles of general
consumption, articles of which the
rich consume no more than the
poor. As a consequence we have
the dollar of the poor man taxed
more heavily than the dollar of the
rich. Indeed, such taxation on con-
sumption amounts to per capita tax-
es. With such taxing we have a
taxing of the man and not the dol-
lar. It is not equitable, it is not
fair. We have the poorer of the
nation's citizens required to pay of
their income from accumulations.
It is not right. We should tax the
dollar not the man. Justice de
mands this, we stand for it.
USURPATION OF OUR COURTS.
The usurpation of our courts
have recently been so pronounced
in the conflicts between labor and
capital that they can no longer be
permitted to pass unnoticed. The
function of the courts is to interpret
laws not to make laws, yet we have
seen them enforcing self made law,
seen judges sit as prosecuting attor-
ney, judge and jury, all in one.
Their function is judicial, not execu-
tive, much less legslative. The les-
son of their usurpations, of their en
croachments on the rights of the
people, is that in order to conserve
our liberties we must discontinue the
system of life tenure of office, either
elective or appointive in our judic-
iary, and make our judges elective
and their tenure of office short so
that they may be held to accounta
bility by the people.
^Concluded next week]
The Influence
••••* . m
Home
«••••
***** n
••S**1/# very ^Powerful
-f
The furnishings need-
n't be expensive, but should be
artistic, pretty and cheerful.
Art and beauty in the home mould the character of boys
and girls, awaken and educate their finer nature. They're not
slow to bring their friends to a pretty home, and if uncongenial
they spend very little time there, ouu fuunitlkk,cahi'KTS
MA IT IN OS, Kits tillK all tli« r« qnlreiii«MitM, combining <lural>ility,
neatness ami litoro especially PltlCKS HKLOW OOMI'LTITION.
REED SHAFFER,
LEADERS OF FU RN ITU RE, CARPETS. AND U N DERTAKING.
May Day Bargains
Every Day this Month
WE propose to give the public SPECIAL BARGAINS;
we have a splendid assortment in all lines that constitute a
First-class Dry Goods Store, if We keep the very latest in all
Dress Fabrics, at prices that will astonish you.
Just received, a beautiful line of yard-wide fast Per-
cales, from 5c to 12Jc. A beautiful line of Dress Dimi-
ties in white and figured that can't be equalled for making
a dainty summer dress. And we're showing a large and
attractive line of Shirt ^X^aists, with the latest collars.
Our Shoes are the latest style, and can fit any foot. If
you want a stylish, good shoe see us. Large line of
Gent's Furnishings.
Always the Largest and Freshest stock of Groceries
in Norman.
Phone 50. ELLEDGE & PHILIPS.
THE PALACE DRUG STORE
WANTS TO KNOW
why you will pay $1.50 a gallon for Paints, ^
when you can equally as good for $1.00 •
For Pure Drugs, Patent Medicines,
Stationery, and everything in the
Drug line, call at the Palace
=Prescriptions carefully filled
Blake & Reed,
West of Citizens Bank
Norman, Okla
BON TON MEAT M ARKET
on EAST MAIN STREET,
you will find to be One of
. w ^ the best Meat markets in
the city. All kinds of FRESH AND SALTED MEATS always on hand, and
delivered free anywhere in town.
If you have Good Butcher Stock to sell,
Bon Ton Meat Market.
(jet prices.on the same at the
the goods you need at the right prices.
W. M. Russell & Co.
Walter Phelps took in the Demo-
cratic convention held at Ardmore last
Monday, returning home on Tuesday
afternoon train wearing a new linnen
crash suit. "Majbe you don't think
we had a warm time in the convention
trying to represent an Indian Territory
constituency" was the only explanation
Walter would make of the new crash
suit.
Plenty of shirts, work punts and
overalls, jumpers and gloves for har-
vest times. W. M. RUSSELL & 00.
in all my life. When I came down to
work this morning I felt so weak I
could hardly work. I went to Miller
& MeCurdy's drug store and they
recommended Chamberlain's Colic,
Cholera and Diarrha i Remedy. It
worked like maftie and one dose fixed
I me all right. It certainly is the finest
] thing I ever used forstomaohe trouble.
I shall not be without it in my home
hereafter, (or I should not care to en-
duse the sufferings of last night again
for fifty times its price.—G. H. Wilson,
Liveryman, Burettstown, Washington
Co., Pa. This remedy is for sale by
Blake & Reed.
Write your friends that Ilomeseek-
ersTickets, via Santa Fe Route, are
on sale at all points in Illinois, Iowa,
Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska to
points in Oklahoma; Rate one faie
plus $'2, for round trip, and limited to
return twenty-one days. Date of
sale, .lune 5and 19th, July 'id and 17,
August 7th and 21st.
Work shoes, light and heavy, and all
kinds of fine shoes. Prices are right.
w. M. Russell & Co.
W. C. T. U.
The ladies of the W. C. T. U. will
have a temperance mass meeting
next Sunday nightwt the South M. K.
church. They will have a nice pro-
gram of recitations, songs and etc.
Everybody cordially invited to be
present. Mrs. M. E. Blake, pres.
Mrs. A. W.Rogers, sec'y.
"Dick" Pearce, jailor at Tecumseh,
was in Norman last Wednesday. He
brought over a patient to the Sunita-
We make a specialty of ladies', men's
and children's shoes and men's hats;
City Scavenger, John A. Fox, would
like for the people of Norman to
understand that his duties as city
scavenger are limited to tile streets
of the city and does not include the
cleaning up of every ones back yard
and alley. Those, however, willing
to pay for the cleaning up of their
hack yards and alleys will find Mr.
Fox ever ready to do the work.
Buy one of those lawn wrappers of
us and keep cool.
W. M. Russell & Co.
Would Not.Suffer So Ajjalu For
Fifty Times Its Price,
I awoke last night with severe pains
1 in my stomache. I never felt so badly
lhe Great Reform Newspaper
The Northwest.
REPRESENTATIVE
EDITED BY
Igriatious Donnelly,
peoples Party Candidate for V IcePresident,
and Author of "Atlantis," "liatpiarok. Ill®
Great Cryptogram," ,,Ctt"4ar s Column, nr.
lluguet, tin- Golden Bottle," "American
' People's Honey," etc.
! Circulation national and rapidly Increasing.
Contains in each issue, literary gems trenchant
criticisms, realistic pen pictures, terse logic
mnl original thought .-xpresheil in pure'diction
I that command* the admiration of every
reai I nr.
I As the best way to reach those who are not
; Populists, (for from them we must Incrras©
our votei we have arranged an unprecedented
clubbing iitti* « ill! th. Mnni.mpcm-li'illylrh-
line, leading llepnbllciin paper of Minnesota.
I whereby we will fiirnl-ll "The ItcpresentllUve"
I anil the H-paiie Tribune, or
three pipers In ..II until the w of .hinuarv,
p.Kil, for the small sum of80cents for ail of
j them.
We will reply each week 10 the argument*
of the Tribune, and they will rep'v to ours;
unit thnw WO Will keep up M l ,HK.;l; 'ITII«
I AMI'Atli'. V C "M INI >M s DK1IA1K on the gteat
Issues ot i he day, which cannot fail to enllglK-
en and educate ttie voters.
We .believe Unit we can bold op our end of
the dlseusilon, and Increase the populist vol*
everywhere.
'I'll K 11 l-.l'U US KMT A TI V E
Mi, Iloston lllock. Minskaivi.is, Miun.
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Allan, John S. The Peoples Voice (Norman, Okla.), Vol. 8, No. 47, Ed. 1 Friday, June 15, 1900, newspaper, June 15, 1900; Norman, Oklahoma Territory. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc117177/m1/1/: accessed April 23, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.