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The Two Per Cent. Loan

The Two Per Cent. Loan image
Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
March
Year
1891
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Editor Argus: - I have read Mr. Ball's paper before the Farmers' Institute, as reported in your paper and with your permission I would like to say that T think it would have been just as good and more effective had the stab at the "Two Per Cent. Loan" been left out. Therc is no danger of this government taking upon itself functions it is unable to carry out or that willbe unbecoming to it as a great nation. One of its great fundamental principies is that it is by the people and for the people and the fact that any great measure for the benefit of the mortgaged masses is instituted or championed by any one person, be he rich or poor, high or low, should not weigh against it. It is true that any great reform movement for the people's benefit has few sustainors or champions among the wealthy classes. As a rule they are directly opposed to them because their opulence and strength depends upon a corresponding oppression of the peopla. They think any relief the mortgaged oppressed farmer gets must come through closer application and harder toil. No class legislation! No-1 That would not do. It would establish a pernicious precedent that must not be tolerated. We must continue, however, to allow the gilded national bankers to continue right on pumping in or out all the money necessary to opérate all the immense commerce of this nation withja strict regard for their own profit and never for the welfare of the people. It is all right for them to have this money at an annual two per cent. It is not class legislation in the one case because the law does not say to the farmer you must not go into the banking business but it is compelled to place the necessary qualification and restrictions in the way to keep him out were he competent; but it is class legislation in the other case because it is proposed to help a class that in all probability must lose their homes and see their wives and children turned into the Street unless they get aid from same source. These farms can never pay the debt with the interest that has accrued in spite of all effort during the past few years which have been so very unpropitious. Mr. Ball's remarks on the "two per cent, loan" read very well to the mind of the average man, with a snug bank account and a well placed mortgage or two on his neighbor's farm, but how will it read to the man on whose efforts success from different causes has not smiled; to the millions of honest toilers all over this western world who have ventured to secure for themselves and family a home in which to pass the reclining years of life? It seems to me, Mr. Editor, that a farmer who attacks a measure that proposes to do so much for his many deserving brothers and thus individually securing actual benefit to all in many ways must be stepping on a spring that will recoil to his detriment. It is snatching away the straw the drowning man is reaching after. The time is not far in the future when the "two per cent, bilí" will be the popular document to support. It may not be exactly in its present form and it may be with greater limitations, which I would favor. I believe I would make it a little more classy, in other words, I would confine its benefits strictly to the mortgaged class. I would have its chief objects the offering of opportunities to save the home and fireside and I firmly believe the masses of the American people would appreciate the relief. .. The time is also coming when thi government will pose as a gigantic railroad and telegraph company with full power to carry at cost and thuL allow the producer a chance to live easier. ' This excessive freight and toll tax to pay dividends on stock that is three-fourths water is going to be a matter of history or there will be war. We want the republic of Washington, Jackson and Lincoln a government which was truly of the people, by the people and for the people, a government for the greatest good to the greatest number. Dexter, March 14, '91.