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| William Jennings Bryan. |
Cortland
Evening Standard, Tuesday, August 11, 1896.
THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY.
Silver-Tongued Bryan Invades the Golden
East.
FROM CANTON TO PITTSBURG.
The Boy Orator Addresses Huge Crowds at
Every Stop Along the Way.
Big Meetings Held In the Iron City.
PlTTSBURG, Aug. 11.—The reception to the Democratic candidate in this
city has proven a fitting capsheaf of the day's triumphs. It has excited the
amazement of the people of Pittsburg, and the joy that it has afforded Mr.
Bryan and the redoubtable Silver Dick has manifested itself in their beaming
features since they struck the city limits.
The
exceptionally long train on the Pennsylvania Central, which it was almost
impossible to traverse during the last 100 miles owing to the numerous committees
and enthusiasts who had boarded and spread themselves out over the
conveniences, ran into the Pittsburg depot at 6:50 p. m. It was immediately
surrounded by acres upon acres of frantic people.
When Mr.
Bryan emerged from the train, in spite of the efforts of the large local
committee to carry out its program, the crowd closed around him. Through the
various streets traversed no available spade could be discerned. Every foot of
ground along the way was occupied by enthusiasts.
While Mr.
and Mrs. Bryan were supping with a committee of ladies and gentlemen at the
Central hotel, the streets resounded with the continuous clamor from thousands
of throats. Many marching clubs pierced the stubborn crowds amid showers of
pyrotechnics and a roar that would have rivaled Niagara's thunders.
The evening
meeting had been announced to
occur at 8 o'clock in the Grand Opera House and the Penn avenue theater. Each will
seat between 2,500 and 3,000. Long before the hour for opening the doors the entire
street front of these structures were packed full along the entire block, and
after the doors had been opened and the structures were filled, the crowd
outside had suffered little perceptible diminution. There was an incipient
riot, in which one man was severely beaten, and some of the officers had their
brass buttons torn off.
At the
meeting Mr. Bryan was introduced by James Mills, editor of the Pittsburg Post,
and spoke as follows:
Mr.
Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Citizens—I thought it might be necessary
in coming so far toward the East to bring a few of our people to keep up the
enthusiasm, while I presented the truths set forth in the Democratic platform
(loud cheering), but after I have seen a few audiences like this, I wondered whether
I might not take back a few of
you to set an example of enthusiasm to the people of the West. (Laughter and
cheers.)
There is
no more "wild West." It is the wild East. (Tremendous cheering and
laughter and cat calls.)
A
voice—You're a brick.(Cheers and renewed laughter.)
Mr.
Bryan—"When I left home, I told them that I was coming upon a campaign in
what was now considered the enemy's country and which we hoped—(a voice:) "Go East, young man, go East!")—but which
we hoped would be our country before the campaign closed. (Right! right!) Therefore,
I have been more gratified that it was not necessary to open the campaign in
the East; it has already been opened there, but I shall promise you this, that
in the progress of this campaign, not a single private in the ranks will stand nearer
to the enemy's guns than he in whose hands is the standard. (Cheers.) We are
prepared to defend our platform. It presents, as we believe, those policies
which are for the best interests of all the people, and we are not terrified
because our enemies have sought to apply to us epithets and hard names when
they find it impossible to oppose the positions which we have taken.
(Applause.)
"They
shall not be permitted to put us in the attitude of opponents to government, but
we shall show them that there is a difference between defending a government and
defending the vicious legislation inaugurated by the government for private
ends. (Cheers.) The worst enemy of this country is the man who seeks unjust legislation
or defends unjust legislation after it has been obtained. He is the best friend
of the government who, in the first place, seeks to prevent unjust legislation,
and if unjust legislation has been enacted, seeks to erase it from the statute
books, who loves his government so well that he would make it so good that it
would deserve the love of every citizen in it. (Applause.) My friends, in this
campaign there is only one great issue. If that is settled it will not give us
a government perfect in all its details, but that one question must be settled
first before other questions can be settled.
"A
nation that is not able to adopt its own financial policy is too impotent to legislate
on any question where the people are concerned. (Cheers.) We do not say that
our opponents are insincere; we do not say they are less honest than we, but we
do say that when they attempt to say to the American people that we must be
dependent upon the legislative act of some other government, we say it matters
not how honest they may be, we dare not entrust legislation in their hands. (Loud
cheers.)
"I
have said that in this contest we have a repetition of the contest of 1776 and
that in this campaign, as in that, a line will be drawn between the patriot and
Tory, and when I say it I do not say it to criticize the man who believes that
this nation is not great enough to legislate for its own people.
"He
believes it honestly, and I recall your attention to the fact that in the struggle
of our forefathers for liberty, there were those who honestly believed that we ought
to continue in this land the political supremacy of Great Britain. (Loud
eheers.) In this they were but mistaken; and if you go to the cemeteries you
will find no monument reared by a grateful people to commemorate the names of those
who thought English domination should continue. (Applause.)
"I
desire to thank you for the interest you have shown in the very beginning of this
campaign. I have no fear that your interest will be allowed to die—not a bit. I believe that the toiling masses of this country—those
who have achieved and who must achieve its greatness, are willing to risk their
all in this republic, and rise and fall with it; and that to them we can appeal
in this campaign with a confident assurance that when the vote is counted, an
enormous majority of the American people will declare in favor of the
American system of finances for the American people administered by
Americans." (Loud and continuous cheering.)
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
Old and Tiresome.
It begins
to be painfully clear that the Bryan campaign is to be conducted on about the
same plan as the Cleveland campaign of four years ago. Then the voters were
assured by Democratic orators that it was a fight of "the masses against
the classes," of the poor against the rich, of the oppressed mechanic and farmer
against the "robber barons," the trusts and the monopolies, and especially
against the Republican tariff, which was "making the rich richer and the poor
poorer." High wages, low cost of living and "four years of
clover" were promised everybody if Cleveland and free trade triumphed.
What did
we get? Four years approaching nearer to an industrial, agricultural and
financial hell on earth than any other four years in the history of the nation.
The country having been turned into something not at all like the thing
advertised. Bryan and Free Silver are now guaranteed to do what the last quack
political remedy failed to do, and the old appeals to jealousy, hatred and
prejudice are made, just as they were in the last campaign.
Civil
Justice Wanhope Lynn of New York City, at a meeting of the Tammany association
in his district last week, delivered himself of the following:
"Fellow
Democrats, you have a bitter fight
before you. Yon will be called Socialists and Anarchists, it will be a fight of
the rich against the poor, the so-called cultured against the illiterate. But it
is a fight that we must bear. In God's name keep to it and protect the
liberties of this grand republic! I feel that some panic will follow. I think
that financial ruin will ensue in some quarters, and I hope it will. I am
prepared to see Wall-st. swept from its foundations."
Should free silver triumph, as free trade did
in 1892, Justice Lynn could lay aside his
speech, and in 1900, after the nation had
been through an experience which would
make the last four years seem like a
heaven in comparison, he could trot out
the same old chestnut of "the rich
against the poor, the so-called cultured against the illiterate,"
and if the gudgeons hadn't all died in the meantime some of them would again rise to his bait.
The man
who attempts to array class against class, the rich against the poor, capital
against labor in this country, instead of discussing public questions on their
merits is a traitor. The party leader who does not know that closed factories,
idle wheels, silent spindles and ruined business do not make rich or poor,
employer and employed, suffer alike, should be sent to a political kindergarten
or handed over to the fool killer. If he knows better and still talks riot and
anarchy, he deserves to be jailed.
The hope
of the nation just now is in the fact that all the people can't be fooled all
the time. The fooling of 1892 ought to last for a generation.
"Plenty
If You Manipulize It."
Mail Carrier Pat Lyon rides a wheel known as
the Silver King, but which, since the agitation of the silver question has been
going on, he has been wont to call Free Silver. A STANDARD man came upon Pat
the other day industriously pumping up his tire and asked him if he was trying
to make use of a little free silver wind. "Begorry! an' there's plinty of
it around if yous could only manipulize it," came the answer quick as a
flash, and the questioner walked away wondering if Pat had not hit the nail
more squarely on the head than many who have given more study to the problem.
A LIVELY
SCRAP.
Darkies
Create a Disturbance on Homer-ave.—Police Called—No Arrests.
Shortly before 8 o'clock last evening the
residents of Homer-ave. in the vicinity of Madison-st. were startled by loud
screams and cries for help. As the cries continued, people hurried from all
directions thinking that some one had been run over by a street car or that
some other serious accident had happened. The cause of all the disturbance,
however, proved to be an altercation between some colored people who were
trying to settle some real or fancied grievance by force in the street rather
than resort to more peaceful and quiet means for redress.
The colored people of Cortland are making
preparations for a grand concert to be given Wednesday evening for the benefit
of their church and it was while Miss Lena Furman, a colored girl about 14
years old, who is to take part in the program, and her grandmother, Mrs. Van
Schoich, were on their way to rehearsal that the difficulty occurred. Lena has
lived with her grandmother since she was five or six weeks old. Her father is
dead and now that Lena is getting old enough to help about work, her mother,
who is now Mrs. Fred Stout, wants Lena to live with her. The grandmother is
equally anxious to have the girl remain where she is.
Last night as Lena and her grandmother were
on their way down town they met Mr. and Mrs. Stout. Mrs. Stout seized the girl,
threw her to the ground and threatened her. A lively fight between the mother
and grandmother followed as to who should have possession of the girl, the
mother threatening to kill the girl unless she would come with her.
The cries attracted to the scene, not only
all of the people of color in the vicinity, but some of the white people as
well, among them a STANDARD man who helped to separate the combatants and to
assist the girl who was thoroughly frightened as well as somewhat hurt, into
the house of Sam Bolden where the two angry women followed and continued their
lively discussion. It was some time before they could be quieted, and peace was
not restored until Policeman Smith appeared upon the scene, escorted Mrs. Van Schoich
and her granddaughter to their destination and warned Mrs. Stout that unless
she kept perfectly quiet, she would have to go with him to the lockup.
ELMIRA
REFORMATORY.
Riot
Among Second Grade Prisoners—Keepers Injured.
A company of twenty prisoners in Elmira
reformatory who were taking exercise yesterday attacked the two keepers in
charge and pounded them hard. They were all lower second grade men and about
the toughest fellows in the reformatory. In the melee one of the prisoners was
shot through the leg. An alarm was sounded and twenty-five keepers armed with
Winchesters arrested the rioters.
The prisoners created the disturbance in the
hopes that they would be transferred to Sing Sing as incorrigibles, where they
are permitted the use of tobacco and given definite terms of imprisonment.
BREVITIES.
—Mr. L. B. Rowlingson has closed his bakery
at 85 Groton-ave. on account of failing health.
—The Cortland County Beekeepers' association
will hold a basket picnic at Elysium park on Tuesday, Sept. 1. All are invited.
—The Susan Tompkins harp orchestra took the
train for Trumansburg this morning to play a concert engagement at that place
this evening.
—The Bryan and Sewall bi-metallic league
hold an adjourned meeting in the Knights of Pythias hall in the Martin building
to-morrow night at 8 o'clock.
—Mr. L.
L. Gillett has settled his claim with the Five County Insurance Co.,
represented by Pierce, Cone & Bates, for the recent fire at the Novelty shop
for $380.
—Mr. A. H. Watkins of Homer-ave. claims the
championship on spring pullets. He says he has a Plymouth Rock that began
laying the last of July and has now laid a dozen eggs.
—Patrons of the United States Express Co.
are to-day wondering what is the cause of the unusual broad smile of Driver
Charles H. Miller as he delivers or calls for a package. The explanation may be
found by referring to the column of vital statistics on page eight.
—An extra passenger train on the Lehigh
Valley road running from VanEtten to Elmira last night at about 6 o'clock
collided with a handcar with four section men on it riding down Swartwood hill
going home from their day's work. The men hadn't expected the extra and when they
saw it coming jumped off and tried to remove the handcar from the track. There
wasn't time and the engine threw the car on top of them. All received painful
but not serious injuries.
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