Brann the Iconoclast Volume 10 Part 15

A brother of "Silver d.i.c.k" Bland was nominated for Judge of the Court of Appeals. The Populists had nominated a candidate named North for the same place. It is in evidence in Mr. Bland's own letters that he gave $1,000 to the Chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee to get North of the track. North withdrew. Afterwards he was reported reporter of the Court of Judge Bland. He denied that he had received $1,000. The Chairman of the State Democratic Committee then said he gave the money to the chairman of the Populist committee. The chairman of the populist committee denies that he got the $1,000. And so the matter stands. The Judge bought off the Populist candidate. The $1,000 is unaccounted for. The $1,000 does not appear in the Judge's statement of expenses as required by law. This "boodle"

deal evokes the query whether if a candidate for Judge will buy his election he will not sell his justice. This deal, too, was consummated in the name of the ma.s.ses.

I am told that the Governor has given the best places within his gift to his relatives, or the men selected by his relatives. I know that he appointed a man manager of the Nevada asylum on condition that he would vote out the Superintendent. The Superintendent showed the manager a letter from the Governor in which he declared that the Superintendent's retention was his dearest wish. The manager voted for the retention of the Superintendent and the Governor promptly removed the manager.

This ill.u.s.trates the gubernatorial character beautifully. The Governor of Missouri was receiver of the Fifth National Bank of St. Louis. He gave out that the bank would not pay more than 50 cents on the dollar in all. Therefore, his brother-in-law and other relatives bought up outstanding claims at that figure and below it. They bought up at least $30,000 worth. The bank paid 50 per cent. in sixty days. It has paid ninety-six per cent. in ten years. The question is, how could a receiver say a bank, that was in position to pay 50 per cent. in sixty days, would only pay that much in all? The receiver's relatives made 46 per cent. on their speculation. This is one of the performances characteristic of this kind of "friends of the people." The popular cause of silver, with all its generous enthusiasm for the rights of the poor, all its just resentment against oligarchies, political bosses, gangs of "grafters," combinations of the few for the plucking of the many, was taken charge of, in Missouri, by politicians of the type which can be imagined from what I have stated here of simple fact and conservative deduction. The cause of silver may be my "pet aversion" as a political theory, but I have all respect for the honest mult.i.tude who espoused it. I am convinced that what there is of good in that theory of reform of our evils is not advanced toward embodiment in our law by the character of the men who make the Chicago platform an excuse to get the public confidence and carry out schemes of public plunder, political corruption and miscellaneous incivism.

A few days ago Judge Klein in our Circuit Court uncovered what we call "a graft" in the matter of building a.s.sociation receiverships. It was discovered that politics stepped into these affairs to get for certain political lawyers, good fees. There was a ring in the receiverships of these concerns. The commissioner in one case would be attorney in another. The attorney in one case would be receiver in another with the commissioner as attorney and receiver as Commissioner. There were fees for all. No duty in connection with winding up the a.s.sociations, to which there attached any compensation, was ever given outside the "charmed circle." Political attorneys got large fees for only going into court and asking that building a.s.sociations be wound up. All these fees came out of the money of the poor people, which happened to be left after the looting or failure of the concerns. Those whose savings were invested in the concerns had little coming to them after the failures. The fees of the ring left little of that. All this "grinding of the faces of the poor" is being accomplished by those politicians who were most vocal in proclaiming their allegiance to the Chicago platform as a new "Magna Charta of Mankind."

These facts have nothing to do with the righteousness or wrongfulness of the Chicago platform. The suggestion that a good cause may be advanced by bad men and mean methods, it may be retorted that such men are calculated rather to injure the cause by their prominence than to help it by their unique idea of practical politics. People are apt to believe that the New Democracy is the outgrowth of such men, or that such men are the outgrowth of New Democracy, when, in fact, the men have attached themselves to the movement only for their own selfishness. When we think that the men who are doing the things I have pictured are engaged in an effort to make Stephens the next Senator from Missouri, it is plain that the character of the organization and its purpose will react dangerously against whatever there may be of genuine merit in the propositions of the Chicago platform.

And all this is being done in Missouri and the rural press connives at it. To criticize the administration is sacrilege. The papers are slavering over the Governor. They declare that he is "the champion of the people" next to Bryan. They identify him with the ideal that Mr. Bryan gave voice for in his Chicago speech. Nothing is to be said of any administration peccadilloes or crookedness, for fear of hurting the party and delaying the triumph of the great cause. All the political corruption of the party when it was dominated by plutocrats is condoned because its perpetrators shout "sixteen to one!" The administration, at a breath of criticism, has its subsidized organs--subsidized by anything from two to ten dollars--declare that the critic is a traitor to the cause, that he is a gold-bug or a republican in disguise. The people seem to respond to all this and the honest country editor dares not express himself for fear of losing subscribers or advertisers. The party cry drowns the criticism of acts that impeach the party. Submission to the party fetich makes every and any deed acceptable because it is done by the party's men. Nepotism, falsity to pledges, the plundering of the poor, the squeezing of the saloon interests, the "skinning" of depositors in banks, the records of violation of trust,--all these things are jammed down the throats of the Democracy of Missouri, and if the faithful dare to gag at the dose they are told "You traitor, you don't believe in Bryan, or 16 to 1!" And they swallow it all. The papers are slaves of the administration.

They vie with each other in printing stomach-turning gush about these leaders. The country editors are forced into a conspiracy of silence and of support of a "machine" as vile as ever was worked under plutocratic auspices. The gang cries "silver, silver, silver," and so their jobs and schemes of personal profit are allowed to go on uncriticized. They have the faith. d.a.m.n the good works! The "push" in control of things in Missouri are Silver men, with about the same exalted purpose as Chilo, the Greek charlatan in "Quo Vadis" had in aligning himself with the Christians. It is a combination that is ready at any time to desert the cause of silver. It has been stated in Missouri time and again that the administration wants to "heal the breach" with the gold Democrats, that Governor Stephens has made overtures to ex-Governor Francis who, fortunately, is not much more of a gold bug than Stephens is a silver Democrat. The new party faith means nothing to the men in power and warfare upon them is not, in any sense, a warfare upon the principles they profess to represent, unless it may happen that the character of the men shall become confused with the principles. But these men were "in the push"

before the Chicago platform was an issue. They are what they were before. The new principles have made them no better. They are worse because they plot their infamy in the name of a political purification and a humanizing of economy.

In view of the almost unparalleled lack of independence in the Missouri rural press there does not seem much hope of reaching the people with a statement of the truth about conditions. The country editor in Missouri insults his subscribers by taking for granted that they are so prejudiced they will not take a paper that criticizes the man who sneaked into power as a bogus silver man. By keeping their readers in ignorance of the deeds of their officers and servants, by suppressing all unfavorable comment, the newspapers block the way to reform. There is no way to reach the people. They are kept in ignorance. They are fed upon "plate"

fake puffs of the administration prepared by the Governor's "literary bureau." Whatever he prepares is printed, and nothing else. The people are stuffed upon "taffy" and the men in power are thus enabled to deceive the people and strengthen themselves for the tightening of their grip upon the offices. The subserviency of the rural press in Missouri is something slavish beyond imagination heretofore. The papers, in the main, are edited by the political machine. The press, that engine of enlightenment, is industriously engaged in clouding the intelligence of the people and identifying a cause which in its abstract intention is good, with the selfishness of bad men.

Reform cannot come from the politicians. It cannot come from the people kept in ignorance of the need of it by prost.i.tutes of the press.

The matter with Missouri is that there is too much idolization of the party. There is no partisan independence. There is no courage in the Democratic press. The truth is suppressed rather than the evil about which a truth is told. The worship of party goes to the extreme of worship of all the moral ugliness of partisanism.

The men who know what is wrong, who know that the leaders of the New Democracy are in harmony with it only for their own ends, who know that in the name of political purity and economic honesty a lot of political jobbers and crooks are continuing the evils of the old political regime, remain silent. The St. Louis Republic shifts and shuffles and maintains a neutral att.i.tude. It is suspected of gold bugism and it dares not criticize the Governor that it scourged in cartoon and comment. The Post-Dispatch, that was the greatest silver daily and is owned by the millionaire Pulitzer, is now suspected of gold bugism. It makes war upon the Governor, but its position robs its criticism of effectiveness.

The Kansas City Times scores the Governor but its opposition is believed to be based upon the refusal of the Governor to appoint its owners' candidate to a position of importance. My criticism is denounced as the criticism of a gold-bug. But I am not criticizing the party policy s I am writing here about the men.

They would disgrace any principles they might profess. I am not opposing anyone because he was for Bryan. I am pointing out conditions and circ.u.mstances that are matters of public record, of common talk among silver men, of wide-open notoriety, that are flourishing in Missouri, under the cloak of a bogus devotion to Mr. Bryan and the Chicago platform. These things are true. If the people knew them, if the fact of the existence of these things were not suppressed, the fact that the men who are working the evil are silver shouters would not save them from the popular wrath.

"O Liberty," said Madam Roland on the steps of the guillotine,"what crimes are committed in thy name!" In the name of Silver, too, crimes are committed and the criminals flourish as prophets of a new and better time. Silver will have a better chance when the crooks who have identified themselves with it, in Missouri and other States, are repudiated. If free coinage be a good thing, it will never be believed while bad men conspicuously stand for it. If education will develop the mind to the destruction of our political and economic miseries, a gagged press is not the means to such education. How can a press be trusted in its a.s.saults on the old order when it suppresses the truth that the men and methods of the old regime are flourishing to the profit of the former under the new? What use is any platform, however n.o.ble in its aspirations or purposes, if the men who attain to power upon it continue all the meanness and nefariousness of the men who flourished under the old domination of the bosses, the corporations and the trusts?

The altruism of the Chicago platform--which I think mistaken--is admirable in so far as so many millions of people honestly believe its principles are for the benefit of the oppressed and unfortunate of the earth. This altruism is knocked and blasphemed by being made the means to the entrenchment in power in Missouri, of self- and-pelf seekers. The people are deceived. The press keeps them deceived. The Chicago principles are betrayed into the hands of men who have no principle but profit. A reform movement is turned over to the men against whom the movement is directed.

The cause of free coinage is committed to a national banker. The cause of honest elections is committed to the care of a professional ballot- eater. The cause of the people is made the means to build up a machine. The liberty of the press is advocated by paper subsidized by political pap. The "friends of the people" in Missouri, are "grafters." The "foes of the corporations" are the tools of these inst.i.tutions. The "enemies of corruption" are themselves corruptionists. The people are kept ignorant of all this under a false impression that the eradication of evil will injure the cause of Silver, under cover of which these men grasped power.

And that's what's the matter with Missouri. St. Louis, December 16, 1897.