Populist Meeting

The fifteenth annual picnic of the farmers of Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland and Livingston counties was held on the fair grounds in this cityon Wednesday. It threatened rain all the morning, but in spite of this fact a thousand people gathered on the grand stand and the addition covered with awning, to hear General Weaver speak. At the time for the meeting to open the clouds were very heavy, and soon burst into a torrent of rain. The awning leaked so that those on the addition crowded over under the water-proof roof. In point of attendance, considering the weather, the picnic was a suc cess. So also was it in the interest shown in the speech of the day. But the features of a basket picnic were nearly lost sight of. It looked and sounded more like a populist political meeting than a farmers' picnic. As a political meeting it was a decided success. Those who had rented privileges on the grounds had little or nothing to do. The crowd assembled only to hear the speaking, and dispersed as soon as it was over. President Wood, of the organization, was absent, and the meeting was called to order by R. C. Reeves, of Dexter, the secretary, at half past two, who asked President Wood, if present, to come forward. After a moment Mr. Reeves announced that he had just been told that Mr. Woods' wife was sick, so that he would be unable to be present. So Mr. Reeves presided. Mayor Thompson made the address of welcome, saying in substance that there was something more than the cordial greeting the city alwavs extends to those who visit it. The greeting had the flavor of that old friends extend to one another. Ann Arbor recognizes her old friends in the great body of men assembled. There is an old rule that times change and we change with them. But it sometimes happens that we fail to keep in touch with the times. Something like that has happened to some of the farmers of Michigan. You have been plowing and sowing as your fathers did before you, and have failed to recognize fully that the market conditions of the world have changed and you have been suddenly overwhelmed with the great harvests of the west. The Michigan farmer with land worth $50 an acre cannot compete with land in the west worth $ 10 an acre, which raises wheat put down in Liverpool at a cost of only two cents a bushei more than it costs the Michigan farmer for transportation. Less than a generation ago, the farm er 's success depended almost exclusively upon his industry and economy. The man who was industrious and economical was certain to succeed. But today there must be something besides work and frugality to bring success. The successful farmer must not only till his broad acres, but he must forecast the markets of the future. He must know what to sow, in order to sell profitably. Today the farmer must manure his land with the costly manure of brains. Scarcely a factory fifty years ago called for mechanical supplies and skill that the farm requires today. Now, the wit and wisdom of the intellect is more surely polished by rubbing and polishing against other intellects. Henee the advantage of these meetings, and frequently more is learned by an intellect holding adverse views coming in contact with yours. The mayor said he was not present to discuss the financial question. The money famine had struck him years ago, and he didn't know but what it was a little unkind to remind him of it on festive occasions of this kind. He had been told that the government could make a treasury note for two and three-tenths milis. The question is, how can we exchange five milis for a five dollar treasury note and make the other fellow take it at par? How can we obtain money at less than it is worth, and make the other fellow take it at par? He said, I give place to a man whose attention has been given to these questions for years, whose ability, genius and eloquence may throw some light on this question: Gen. James B. Weaver, the populist candidate for president at the last election, who polled 1,300,000 votes, was then introduced. He had but begun his speech saying that it was the first time he had ever been in the city of Ann Arbor, but Ann Arbor's fame had gone abroad; her institution of learning and the enterprise of her people were well understood throughout the republic, when the rain carne down in 'torrents and interrupted the speaking. In a few moments after the General and some of his hearers had got in out of the wet, he mounted the reporters table and proceeded, his speech being in substance as follows: I am glad to have the opportunity of talking to you to day. I come in the spirit of patriotism and charity for all. I concede that there are patriotic people in all political parties of the county. I have learned in my brief political career that other men can be as honest as myself and still differ with me in politics and religión. Now let us consider what is for the best interest of the whole country and what has brought it into the calamitous situation in which it now is. I feel the same now as I did when I stepped to the front in the late war and said, take my life to save my country. This is the spirit in which I ask you to-day to approach this subject. The only thing I am afraid of is human prejudice. It has done more harm than pestilence or famine. It is said that we have a great country and so we have. It will be conceeded that we have more people and more wealth than ever before. There is as much property and as many people anxious to sell as in any other period of the history of the country. But you can't convert your property into money. Your products are being sold at less than cost of production. It will be conceded that God has done his f uil share in throwing the harvests of the world jnto the laps of the people. It will be conceded that the_Jarmers are industrious, frugal and economical. Now what is the matter? Every man says something is wrong. I hate to hear a man say it is above my powers of comprehension. God made you with a head. What for? To follow some one's lead ? Oh, no; Had He intended you to be led He would have put a handle in place of the head. Such a man is afraid to inquire what is the matter. He is afraid one of his idols will have to be taken down. What is the matter? Is it the election of a demorcratic administration? I can prove that it is by every republican editor. But how can it be when every law in :orce is a republican law enforced n the same manner as before. Then how is it possible that this has cursed the country and brought on business paralysis? Then, on the other hand, it is said that it is the result of the Sherman law and that is purely and simply a republican picnic, passed }y a republican congress, signed by a republican president and fathered 3y Sherman, a republican leader. President Cleveland says its the Sherman law but I don't believe that President Cleveland believed that when he said it. How can the Sherman law produce the ills under which we are suffering to-day? Why: there it is, a little innocent looking :aw less than three years old. It simply provides that the secretary of the treasuary shall purchase 4.000,000 ounces of pure silver each month and shall issue legal tender notes for it payable in coin. The third section says he shall coin up enough of this bullion to redeem these notes when presented. Notice that these notes are payable in coin and not in gold. Now, how could that bilí take a single gold dollar out of the treasury, for the secretary can pay it in silver if he sees fit. The notes and the silver dollars are worth a hundred cents on the dollar, lts a fraud and a lying pretense to pay these notes in gold. Foreigners presented three million and a half of these notes and demanded of the republiean secrctary of the treasury that they be paid in gold. Had that republican secretary of the treasury stood up for the people and said these notes are payable. in silver, take that or nothing, you would have had a republican president tö-day. He allowed foreigners to come here and demand gold and repudíate the contract. The government nies into a panic and cried things are going to the bad because we issue silver dollars. It isn't possible that the Sherman act has driven a single gold dollar out of the country. Now if the panic is not the result of the election of a democratie administration or the Sherman law, what is the cause ? Go back with me to that blessed period in our history when the Angel of Peace folded her wings and cried aloud to both armies: "Put up your swords, the war is over." How many people had we living in the northern states when the war closed? Less than 25,000,000. There were 10,000,000 in the southern states or 35,000,000 all told. Where was the money in circulation when the war closed? Every dollar of it in the north among 25,000,000 people. The south hadn't any money. Their money went down in a single day. What kind of times had we in the North at the close of the war? Never since man became civilized were times so prosperous, money so plenty, prices so high. People were out of debt and paying cash as they went. I take my witnesses with me. I hold here a document that caused me to leave t he republican party. That same document kept me from going into the democratie party. It's no populist document. It's a republican document, the report of Hugh McCullough, secretary of the treasury in 1865. I quote from page 183. "Notwithstanding the ravages of the war, the condition of the country is far in advance of what it was in 1857. The people are now comparitively f ree from debt." On page 186. "It is undoubtedly true that trade is carried on for cash much more largely than in 1861." How much money had we in circulation among the 25,000,000 people of the North ? John J. Knox, the great comptroller of the treasury, about four years after the war, stated the public debt to be 2,907,000,426, of which $1,540,000, were treasury notes. Besides these was the temporary loan payable in thirty days which would bring the currency up to $1,707,000,000. Then there was $168,000,000 national bank currency, $78,000,000 state bank currency and $190,000,000 specie, making a total circulation medium of $2,143,000,000 or over $85 per capita for every man, woman and child in the North. No wonder times were good when the war closed and that wheat was worth $2 a bushel. That was your condition then. There was more joy around the fireside of the farmer and laborers of the north then there ever has been since. When Lee and Johnson surrendered, 10,000,000 of Uncle Sam's prodigal sons came home without a dollar in their pockets. There was 40 per cent increase in population in a single day. Your money had to be taken away from you to be sent down South, and they needed it more than you did, because they didn't have any. They took away $700,000,000 of our money. They were entitled to it. This very McCullough said: There is an immense volume of paper currency in circulation. There is so much money that it is undermining the moráis of the people. There is so much money they won't work. The only rernedy is to contract the currency. Destroy the currency, and in three months one billion of it was taken out of circulation and put into interest-bearing bonds. What was the result? Why, the panic of 1S73. That was it that introduced the rara avis, the tramp. Here we are now in 1893. Hard times all the way' between, and a panic at each end. If after the populists or any other party shall have been in power thirty years, and shall have cursed the country with two panics, don't you think it about time for them to retire? Suppose my friend has a family of ten children, who grow up, marry and have thirty more children, and finally lose their money and come home. Would he take his wife to one side and say: "Wife, we have some greenbacks in the bank and have been getting along pretty well, but here are forty of our children we must feed? Uncle Sam in the same circumstances burned up his greenbacks. What's good for Uncle Sam is good for my family. Let us burn up the greenbacks and put a mortgage on the farm." That's what your secretary of the treasury recommended at the close of the war. How much money have we now in circulation? We have 65,000,000 people, 40,000,000 more human beings added to our money using population, over 150 per cent increase. That increases the demand for money over 150 per cent. Now 1 want you to remember that the demand for money is equal to the sum of the demand for all other things. When a lady wants a dress she first demands the money to pay for it. The reporter who wants a hat demands first the money. Now, cording to the books, for this 65,000,000 people we have $1,600,000,000 money, or $500,000,000 less than 25,000,000 people had. What's the matter? It's the empty pocketbook. That's what's the matter. Not a dollar's increase in circulating medium, but an actual decrease of $5cfo,ooo,ooo. Then if you take out what is lost and destroyed, what was used up in the fine arts and what is hoarded, wbat have you left? Grand Senator Plumbin congress said: "Idefyany agent of the money power to show that we have over $600,000,000 in circulation. " The national banks are not willing to let us have another dollar unless the government will give it to the banks. Your land isn't worth more than half what it was. Who has got the difference in the value of your farm? You may be sure it hasn't been destroyed. But you haven't got it and your son hasn't got it. You will find it piled up in the brown stone fronts in Boston and on Wall Street. The curse that has come over this entire country is a money famine. The gold bugs concede it when they want to let the banks issue more currency. These farmers say when they get into power they are going to put more money in circulation, gold, silver and paper, all issued by the government and not by the banks, and all legal tender, and no man is to be allowed to make a contract to be payable in one only. They are going to give you free and unlimited coinage of the good old-fashioned Andrew Jackson silver dollar. The old politicians say: "My God! the country will be ruined. Europe will dump all her silver over on us." They have got no silver to spare. If they should dump it over on us, they wouldn't give it to us. They would take our wheat. But they say they would dump it over and take our gold away. Is there any gold dealer here? Who has got the gold? The banks. They won't part with it unless they get something for it, will they? The government can't trade, so that the government will not be called upon to pay the balance of trade with the gold in the treasury. The balance of trade implies that somebody has bought more than he has sold. Let's not buy more than we sell. Then how can they get our gold away from us? But they say your silver dollar hasn't got a dollar's worth of bullion in it, and it won't go in Europe. We don't want our money to go to Europe. The people are going to make money that will stay at home and transact business here. That is what's the matter with gold. When we want it, it is gone abroad. Gold is a coward's money. Here is the Bland silver dollar, containing 412 grains nine-tenths fine, and I assert that I can buy as much with it as I can with a gold dollar. The bullion in it is only worth 60 cents in the market, but the dollar in it is worth 100 cents. Which do you want, the bullion or the dollar? Now suppose you doublé the bullion and make it 825 grains, it would still be a dollar. What a spectacle a man makes of himself who wants a dollar's worth of bullion in his dollar. I can strike this dollar a blow with a sledge and knock the dollar out of it without knocking a cent's worth of bullion out of it. Here are two half dollars containing only 365 grains, and I can buy as much with them and pay as much as I can with the big dollar. The value is there, because the law says it shall be a legal tender. Where is the dollar? It isn't in the metal. It's in the law. Aristotle said centuries ago that money was the creature of law, and not the product of nature. God nevermade a dollar. Put a dollar's worth of bullion in your dollar and it will go away from home when you'want it. The world brings her goods over here in boats, buys our producís and ships them back. The world will take anything that will buy our producís. During the war we hadn't any specie. Yet the world was glad to buy our products and bring things over here. Great Britain for twenty years had nothing but an incontrovertable paper money, and during that time she built her empire around the world. Our greatest need is an independent American system of finance. If we have a foreign system, the old world dominates our finances. It is a long way from Jackson to Cleveland. I never will give my voice to any system of finance where a nonresident alien interferes in its administration. [Contiimed on fiftli page.l POPULIST MEETING. [Continueá from first page.] These bankers are fighting the free coinage of silver because it will let the people control the currency. The peoples party is the only party that points out a remedy. The country got tired of the republican party in '84. You turned them out and put in Grover. Four yéars later you turned Grover out and put in Benjamin. Then you turned Benjamin out again. There was no remedy - no change except a change of postmasters. All you have done is to change drivers. The devil is the chief financier and he has been secretary of the treasury three or four times. All the power of the government is conferred upon congress by the constitution and yet money "Is issued by private corporations. Money and transportation is taken out of the control of congress and put in the hands of corporations, so that practically all that is left to the control of the government is the pólice forcé and that is used to hold up individuals to let corporations go through their pockets. Let's expand the currency until we get enough. At the conclusión of Gen. Weaver's speech he called for questions and promised to answer them in a fair and candid manner and not attempt to turn a laugh on the questioner. A number of questions were fired at him which he wittily evaded answering. And in several cases he attempted to get the laugh on his questioners. A speaker always has the advantage by such tricks as several of our citizens found out. After the questioning he announced that he was the editor of a paper in Iowa and any one who wished to subscribe could do so. A half dozen members of the society gathered together after the crowd had begun leaving and elected George S. Wheeler chairman of the meeting. Henry C. Waldron, o] Salem, was elected president of the association for the ensuing year Russell C. Reeves, of Dexter, secretary and Amos Phelps, treasurer A blanket motion was made to re elect all the old directors and unanimously carried.