Bryan Explanations

Bryan has made 325 speeches sinee the Dhicagu platform was adopted and he was nominated. ín only one of tbem - hat delivered in Madison Square Garden - did he attempt to justify bis demand hat existing contracts, based on lUO-ccnt dollars, must be paid in his 50-cent dolars. In that speech he informed the 4,800,X)0 of savings bank depositors in the United States that the naaintenance of the gold standard would make it imposlible for the banks to pay.them anything. Tlierefore he proposed to take away half the 1800 millious saved up by thein, and asked them to elect him bo it could be done. In that speech he told the holders of life insuranee policies that the gold Standard must be of more benefit to the compaoiea than the policy-holders. ïherefore the jatter ought to be vvilling to deprive their families of half the provisión made for their support. But the miserable futility of these "explanations" must have struck Bryan when he read his speech the next day. It must have occurred to him that he could not reconcile the people to the immedinte and Certain robbory of half thi?ir property by the silver standard by assurances that they might be deprived of all of it in the dist;mt future by adhering to the gold standard. Therefore, since August he has not attempted-to explain why the silver standard at the ratio of 16 to 1, which he proposes to introduce, should apply to contracta made under another standard - why his free coinage law should be a retroactive law. Bryan has not endoavored to shnw why the man who borrovved a gold standard dollar should be allowed to pay back a 50-cent silver standard dollar and cali it square. Or why the workingman who put in a bank the gold standard dollar be had sa ved should be cotnpelled to accept a silver standard 50-cent dollar when he drew out his money. Or why the family of a life insurance policy-holder, who paid gold standard dollars as premiums to secure the paynrent of such dollars when he was dead, should reeeive the face of the policy in silver standard dollars worth 50 cents apiece. Instead of explaining what men to whom money is owing have done thpy should be fined one-half of it for the benefit of tho?e who owed the money, Bryan has confined himself to lavishing coarse flatterj on thosewhom he calis the "plain people" and endenvoring to make the employé believe that the eruployer is his natural enemy. "The employer wants the gold standartl. Therefore the silver standard must be best for you. The employer objects to anarchy. Therefore you should be Anarchists." That is the argument Bryan uses. He might with as much logic advise employés to diacard elotb.es, since employers wear them. If clothes and the gold Standard are good for the latter they must be bad for the former. Bryan explains nothing. All he does is to seek to sow the seeds of hate - to "rub the dog's ears." In every audience he áddresses there are workingmen whom his policy would rob - whose savings would be confiscated and the value of whose wages would be cut down onehalf. Bryan tells these men they are the salt of the earth and their employers are oppressors. If he can stir up hatred, envy and malice among the employés he faneies they will not ask him why he (Bryan) is proposing to cheat them out of half they have. Bryan poses as "the friend of labor." His eyes fill with tears when he dilates on its "wrongs." But he is in reality merely the representative and spokesman of the desperate debtors of the United States, who would much rather cheat a creditor than pay him. He cannot concoct a plausible reason why the dishonest men should be legislated for at the expense of the honest men. Therefore he says nothing. He must be made to speak out. During the last four days of the month he will be busied making speeches in tbis city- a city which would lose more by the adoption of the silver Standard than it did by the fire of 1871. He will make about twenty speeches here and in each one of them he will teil the "plain people" how much he dotes on them. At every meeting some of the "plain people" should cali on Bryan to justify the attempted spoliation of a majority of the people of the United States for the benefit of a minority by means of his silver Standard. They should ask him why 4,800,000 depositors in savings banks should be robbed of $900,000,000. They should ask him why the men interested in building and loan associations should have the value of their investments reduced one-half and why he does not propose to compénsate thtm for their losses, even in fiat scrip. The questioners must insist on an answer. They are entitled to an answer. Bryan asks Chicagoans for their votes that he may cut down their wages and their savings. "Why do you want to do it?" "Why do you think it is right to do it?" It is his duty to reply to those