Cause And Effect

If one were to believe the repubpublican papers and some of the speeches being made in the United State Senate, one would be led to the conclusión that the hard times through which we have been passing were a dispensation of Providence visited upon American workingmen for their indorsement of Cleveland and the Chicago platform instead of Harrison and the Minneapolis platform. Even David B. Hill, the New York apostate, conveys this idea and voluntarily puts himself upon the republican side. Depressing times have their logical causes the same as those of unusual prosperity. Neither are brought about by a freak of fate any more than tney are by a dispensation of the Almighty. Cause and effect are prominent and easily .understood in the remarkable depression which affected the entire country last fall and winter. Remarkable because they illustrate as never before the power of the manufacturing and mining oligarchy, as represented by the McKinley bill and the Sherman silver purchasing act - two evils whose aim was the robbery of the producing classes. As soon as there was a prospect of both of these ner farious acts being repealed, they combined to forcé an industrial and financial panic. This rare and unfortunate convergence of influence brought about an unexpected and phenomenal order of things which grew in stature and potency, and succeeded so well in their efforts that hundreds of thosuands of workingmen were driven from work to idleness, proverty and destitution before the machinery of the government could be regulated to overeóme the conspiracy. The fact that several interests can combine and lay hands with such force upon the well being of every laboring man in the country is something never before realized. Snch a knowledge of fact may at least afford a premonition of impending evils and and enable the American workingman to form an approximate estímate of the possibilities and probabilities of the future if these several conditions should remain unchanged. The Sherman bilí has been repealed, but the greater of these two evils, the McKinley bill, has found a lodgement in the senate, notwithstanding it is said to be democratie, and the administration is being taunted as being unable to dislodge or remedy it. The monopolistic interests do not seem to realize that their prosperity depends entirely upon the prosperity of the farmer, and in view of the fact that the farmer must enter into open competition with the world for the sale of his products, his own prosperity demands an open market for the purchase of his necessities. The relation of the manufacturing interests to the laboring classes has been a drain upon their resources and a drain upon their energies. How long before full recovery from this paralysis, even after the passage of the Wilson bill, should it pass, is a question which depends entirely upon the recuperative powers of the laboring and producing classes. If, however, the republican plan should carry, and the Wilson bilí be defeated, the convalescence will be laborious and painful, and attended by much