our institutions. If this domination is due to the fact that the American people do not realize the manner in which their political independence is slipping from them, the danger will be overcome by the spread of intelligence; but if it is due to actual inability upon the part of the American people to control their own affairs, then, instead of being a nation, we are but a province. Foreign influence has not only contaminated those whose ears are habitually turned to receive instructions from across the ocean, but it has been directed toward the fears rather than toward the reason or conscience of the people. When foreign financiers have found themselves unable to defend an appreciating dollar; when they have recognized their inability to prove the gold standard a wise standard, they have threatened to visit a panic upon the United States if our people are guilty of the presumptuous sin of independence. This threat, operating first upon the money magnates of the metropolis, then upon the smaller bankers throughout the nation, then upon merchants and manufacturers, and, finally, upon the army of wage-earners, has been a potent influence in our elections. Will anyone defend foreign influence thus exerted upon the destinies of our republic? Most of these financiers live under governments quite unlike ours. With us, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; in Europe most of the people still hold to the doctrine that supreme power descends from the throne, and that the throne should descend from parent to child. The difference between these two ideas of government is so radical that those who believe in the former idea cannot safely entrust political questions to persons who hold to the latter. No European nation boasts of its willingness to allow its policy upon financial questions, or, indeed, upon any other questions, to be determined by the people of the United States; any party that would advocate such a doctrine in any European nation would be held up to public scorn and contempt; and yet there are many eminently respectable citizens in the United States who assert the helplessness of the American people to restore bimetallism, however much they may desire it, without an international agreement. But the European money-changer is not the only foreigner who is exerting an influence upon American politics. Foreigners hold a large amount of stock in our railroads and other corporations. A share of stock held abroad is equal in voting power to a share of stock held in this country. When a majority of the stock is owned abroad the foreign holders are able to choose the directors and, through the directors, to select the officials and other employees of the corporation. If a president of a railroad or other corporation owes his elevation to foreign stockholders, is he not apt to be influenced by them? And, if influenced by them, is he not likely to transmit that influence to his subordinates? May he not become so engrossed in his work as to overlook the injury which he is doing to his country? If foreigners continue to invest in American securities, and their interest in our politics grows with their investments, is it not possible that a time may come, if it has not already arrived, when foreign influence may be sufficient to decide elections, and ultimately to mould our institutions to conform to European ideals? Washington, in his farewell address, said: "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government." Has the name of Washington lost its charm? Was he a demagogue, seeking to play upon the passions and prejudices of his countrymen? Or has his advice, wise when it was spoken, become folly now? Has the struggle for the almighty dollar become so intense as to obscure the lofty purpose of our forefathers to establish upon the Western Hemisphere a govment "dedicated to the doctrine that all men are created equal"? THE WAY UPWARD. TH BY HON. GEO. FRED. WILLIAMS. 'HE downward path of industry is hard. The muscle and At the foot lie all the ills. Periods of business depression have ever brought physical misery, unhappiness, and moral decadence. Pauperism, crime, and tyranny do not flourish in the warm rays of prosperity. Liberty weakens when freemen are discouraged and desperate. It is, therefore, the first function of the statesman to set industry on the upward way; nor can the philanthropist or moralist progress in well-doing while mankind languishes. For five years our country has been in industrial straits. There is no one who does not desire a reversal of these conditions, and any man or party which in good faith assigns a cause and suggests a remedy is entitled not only to respectful but to eager hearing from suffering men. It behooves freemen who decide their own political policy to inquire of statesmen whether they have truly prophesied in the past in order that the value of their present prophecies may be rightly weighed. Statesmen themselves are bound to account to those who have trusted in their diagnosis of our industrial disease. The sufferers ought not to trust the physician whose remedies have aggravated the disease. This is the same land in which from 1850 to 1870 the cottages of the workmen increased in number, the farmer's acres brought him annual increase of wealth, and our population flourished even during the terrible years of civil war. For the last twenty-five years the sun has shone, the earth has been as fertile, and the waters have fallen, but year by year productive activity has yielded to the laborer less and less of the fruits of industry, until in 1898 two conditions confront us which vie with each other in their malevolent promise. First, the masses of the producers of the land are disheartened and poor; secondly, enormous aggregations of capital are taking possession of the industrial properties of the land. Labor languishes while capital is supreme. The more wealth, the more poverty-an unholy paradox. Within the last month the wages in the cotton factories of New England, already pitiably small, have been cut ten per cent. Also, in the same month, the milk trust of New York was organized with a capital of fifteen million dollars; the International Paper Company was organized with a capital of fifty million dollars; the coal-dealing trust was announced which is to combine all the great coal properties of the East; enamel-ware manufacturers capitalized a combination at twenty-five million dollars; and the American Steel and Wire Company started with a capital of eighty-seven millions of dollars. In our factory towns in New England gaunt hands are raised in prayer for pennies, while capital gathers the properties of the land with endless millions. The masses grow weaker, while the strong are massing. In this terrible divergence the props of our republican institutions are spreading. The strength of our whole superstructure rests upon the fair distribution of wealth and the equal opportunity of all men to obtain the just reward of their toil. Surely here is cause enough to alarm and to inspire the reformer and the patriot. Our republic can no more bear the rule of oligarchy than it can endure the exactions of the despot. There is one party in our country which looks with favor upon the supremacy of capital, and has no word in its platform to admit or to deprecate the misfortune of the developments referred to. It is the Republican party, which still beseeches the people to believe that these conditions are only temporary, and that its policy will revive industry and satisfy the suffering. During the depression of the last five years, a Democratic administration has not differed in one respect from the policy which is now declared by the Republican party to be of supreme, and indeed, exclusive importance. The administration of President Cleveland was conducted in support of the gold standard, and the administration of President McKinley follows strictly in this path. They must, therefore, stand together in their accountability. In testing their judgment we find that both have run vainly from one excuse to the other up to the present day. In 1893, when gold was fast leaving the country, the Sherman Act was repealed for the express purpose of stopping the drain, and thereby, as was confidently asserted, restoring prosperity. The repeal of the Sherman Act was an absolute failure. Bond sales were then resorted to for the same purpose of stopping the exportation of gold. A debt amounting in principal and interest to $500,000,000 was incurred, and still the exports of gold continued and the depression increased. In 1896 the Republican party attributed the depression to the ascendency of the Democracy, and asserted that its dethronement would restore confidence. The Republican party was placed in power, but the depression was not lifted an inch. It was then explained that the Democratic tariff burdened the country; a rank protective measure was passed without Democratic opposition, but not a ray of sunlight entered our dreary house. We now find the gold-standard followers of President Cleveland and President McKinley, the mistaken prophets of the past, combined in recommending for relief a new and radical policy, which was not suggested in any previous political contest. The people are now asked to retire the notes of the government and to turn over to the national banks the whole power of regulating the monetary supply of the country. The gold standard has accompanied, if it has not led us through the industrial carnage of the last five years, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury opens his address to Congress with the avowal that he wishes "to commit the country more thoroughly to the gold standard." It would seem that the Financial Reformer of Liverpool is not far astray when it says, "If there is a country in the whole world where the ruling powers seem desirous of causing a social revolution it is the United States." On the other side stands a party which for twenty-five years has returned a majority of its representatives to Congress, to insist that the gold standard has produced the distressing results with which the country is now afflicted. From 1877 down to the present day, the Congressional Record abounds in Democratic assurances that each year would bring added calamity unless the equal coinage of both metals, which pre |