county bondholders, city bondholders, town bondholdersall go into the ark and are saved from the rain.

Why should not the holders of the hundreds of millions of city bonds help pay the war tax? Can anybody name a reason that wouldn't make a mule blush, or a ward-heeler weep?

Under this bill everybody's note must pay tax, excepting the note of the national banker. He's the only man in the crowd who gets rich on what he owes, and draws interest on his own debts, and yet his notes are too sacred to touch with a tax. And yet these lawmakers hunted around, with a microscope hunting up things to tax, and couldn't see as big thing as Andrew Carnegie's steel works, the cotton mills of Lowell, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, nor the mines of silver nor those of precious gold.

Neither would they levy a tax on the building and loan associations-the most ungodly usurers that ever fleeced a brother under the pretense of loving him. Can any sane man tell me why Congress should tax a yearly tenant (or the landlord) when land is rented, and not tax a building and loan association? Why should statesmen tax tobacco, medicine, tooth-powders and hair oil, and not tax holders of municipal bonds? Why should the boyish girls and girlish boys be taxed on chewing gum (the only mental exercise they take) and no tax be put upon the manufacturer of gunpowder and guns? Under this act you can't swallow a pill, without the aid of a revenue stamp. If the pill doesn't move your liver the stamps will.

When you buy a plaster, the Government is there with its revenue stamp to aid it in raising a blister.

If you want to use a dressing on your head, other than plain soap and water, you must pay a tax to do it. If you want to oil it or grease it, on goes the stamp. If you haven't got your share of hair and want more, you can't use restoratives without paying war tax to do it.

If you don't like the color of hair which your Maker selected for you at the time he made you, you can't change it until you pay a part of the Spanish War tax.

Who gets the benefit of the war? Those who pay no tax, mostly. The railroads have already made fifty-five million dollars, it is said, by hauling the troops and the equipment.

They will make as much more hauling it all back. Do the railroads give the Government cut rates? Not at all. They won't even treat the Government as well as they treat a negro excursion. You know what a negro excursion is. It's a frolic at one end and a funeral at the other.

The excursion gets cut rates, and politicians of the right sort get free passes, but the Government is railroad meat, and they charge full fare and go by the longest route.

Bond-seekers will profit by this war. We howled the buttons off when Cleveland issued less than three hundred millions of bonds in 1896. We lick our lips and say "well done," when Congress authorizes four hundred millions in 1898. We gave these bondholders sixty million dollars in premiums to call in the bonds, not due, in 1888, and we now issue bonds again to get back that sixty millions and other squandered money. That's finance, isn't it?

National bankers will profit by this war. The new bonds give them the basis for new banks, and their power is prolonged.

The privileged classes all profit by this war. It takes the attention of the people off economic issues, and perpetuates the unjust system they have put upon us.

Politicians profit by the war. It buries issues they dare

not meet.

What do the people get out of this war? The fighting and the taxes.

The last Congress, directly and indirectly, spent thirteen hundred million dollars of your money. You need never expect to see these war taxes abolished. They are here to stay. The navy must be increased, the army will stand at fifty thousand or more, and your annual expenditures will, in my judgment, reach nearly one thousand million dollars. How, then, can the War Revenue Act be repealed? The Government will need funds which the Dingley act will not furnish. Under this excuse war taxes will last, even when peace returns.

Would that our government had never gone into this war! The Spaniards were not bothering us. They were oppressing the Cubans, just as England oppresses Ireland, Egypt and India; just as France oppresses Siam and Madagascar; just as Turkey oppresses Armenia. It was none of

our business. Our fathers warned us to let Europe alone and attend to our own affairs.

Did we go to war with Spain because a Spaniard sank the Maine? The Declaration of War doesn't say so. We said that Spain had been fighting and starving Cuba long enough, and that it must stop. There is no principle of the law of nations which authorizes us to say this. The Spaniards and Cubans were bushwhacking one another, and killing from three to five men at a battle. We have gone down there and killed more men in three months than they would have killed in thirteen years. If they were starving before, who feeds them now? Famine has killed its thousands where, before, it slew its hundreds.

All honor to our brave soldiers-no man glories in their spunk more than I, but who doubted that Americans would fight? What are we going to get out of this war as a nation? Endless trouble, complications, expense. Republics cannot go into the conquering business and remain republics. Militarism leads to military domination, military despotism.

Imperialism smoothes the way for the emperor.

Populists! never doubt that I am with you, heart and soul! Your creed was never dearer to me; your cause more sacredly just. Keep the faith, and feed the fires of your hopes. Your time will come. Wrongs may multiply, but we must not abandon the right. Stand to your principle; stand by your nominees; give Hogan and his ticket your zealous support. A stancher man has never been called to lead you. He did not seek this nomination. It sought him. He is an able man, a pure man, an experienced man, a Godfearing man! Stand by him; do your duty as he is doing his.

Comrades, it will all come right; it will all come right! Somewhere in the economy of the universe there is honor for the champions of right. Somewhere there is honor for the brave men who will not worship the wrong, who will not cease battling for the right.

We found the tree of human liberty planted here when we came into the world; let us see to it that we leave it standing. We found the sacred torch of freedom burning; let us keep it lit, and pass it on. Let the sower die,-it must

be so; but let him scatter good seed first-then leave the harvest to Time and to God.

As firmly as if my feet were on the rocks, I believe in the final triumph of right-believe that justice will yet rule the earth, believe that the white banners of universal peace shall supplant the blood-red flags of war. Parties may come and go, force and fraud may rule the day, but yet and ever yet, I believe that right shall sit on the throne of the world, and rule the hearts of all men.

The clouds gather, I know, and the storm and the darkness come upon the land. The weaklings perish; the birds of the day fall and flutter and die. But the eagle-he of the ages-strong of wing and dauntless of heart, rises against the storm, beats his way through it, and beyond it, and gives a fierce cry of joy as he bathes his wings in the sunlight above the cloud. Oh, spirit of Populism! Be thou the eagle-to rise against the darkness and the storm, and to live in the sunlight beyond, when the tempest is passed and gone.

On Child Labor.

Report, by Josiah Carter.

In his address, Mr. Watson began his argument by saying that he was no enemy to manufactures. He recognized and believed in the old Jeffersonian doctrine that the prosperity of the republic depended upon the three great industries of agriculture, commerce and manufactures. He asserted that he is a Jeffersonian Democrat, that he had always been one and would always be one.

He would not be willing to advocate any law whose purpose was to cripple that industry or to interfere with it without just cause. Nor would he take part in any attack upon the character of our Southern mill owners. Many of these gentlemen are known to him personally and he knows them to be citizens of the highest type. He does not question the honesty and sincerity of their conviction in opposing this bill.

Nor would the speaker cast any doubt upon the purity of motive of legislators, or private citizens who antagonize the measure. He cheerfully conceded to them the same honesty of conviction he claimed for himself.

THE BILL.

What does the Hounton bill seek to do, and what are the arguments in its favor?

I. It proposes to have the sovereign State give its protection to those who sorely need protection and who otherwise are helpless.

If child bondage be wrong, it is obvious that unless the State acts, the bondage will continue. The same conditions which caused it will perpetuate it unless the higher power steps in.

2. It proposes that modern commercialism shall be told in language it must obey, that our twentieth century civilization will not allow the children of the land to be thrown into its hopper and ground out into dividends.