The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 25, 1897 Page: 1 of 16
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YOL. XVI., KO. 8.
N. R. P. A.
The Reform Editors' Meeting at
at Memphis—The Largest
for Years.
\
The National Reform Press asso-
ciation met at Memphis, Tenn., Feb.
22, with something over 300 delegates
in attendance. Texas, with her usual
push, had over thirty men on the
ground, and everj one of them, judg-
ing from their demeanor, was there
for business. As sooa as things were
settled down for business it was found
that the middle-of-the-road spirit had
the lead decidedly.
Mayor Clapp of Memphis welcomed
the delegates. The president res-
ponded briefly.
President Vandervoort's address,
which will be found in full below, met
with great applause. His recommen-
dation that Chairman Butler be de-
posed was received with especial ap-
proval.
Vandervoort declined to appoint
committees, saying he preferred the
convention name them.
Frank Burkett of Missit sippi was
unanimously elected president of the
association for the ensuing year.
Jas. A. Paiker of Louisville was ap-
pointed secretary-treasurer pro tem
in place of Roselle.
A committee was appointed to re-
vise the constitution and by-laws so
as to give the president and secre-
tary authority to strike from the
rolls any member of the association
advocating the cause of other par-
ties.
The following officers were elected
for the ensuing year:
W. F. Mays of Washington (state)
vice president, Jas. Parker of Ken-
tucky recording secretary and treas-
urer; J. N. Boyd of Texas correspond-
ing secretary; W. S. Morgan of Indi-
ana ready-print editor.
Members executive board:
J. H. Ferris, Illinois; N. H. Mort-
singer, Indiana; E. S. Peters, Texas:
P. J. Dixon, Missouri, G. S. Gessler,
North Carolina.
Committee on educational work:
J. R. Ferris, Paul Vandervoort, Abe
Steinbeiger, B. G. West.
VANDERVOORT'S ADDRESS.
We have just passed through a most
eventful year since our last meeting,
and it has been the hardest struggle
for the life of our party and for the ex-
istence of the Reform Press in the his-
tory of our organization. All of our
papers have suffered on account of the
mistake we made at St. Louis; many of
them have suspended, and our great
campaign oí education waa sidetracked
and our literature rendered useless. -
Wfceft VP fret met we were all wart
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, FEB. *25 ,1897.
iat a deep-laid conspiracy to ruin our The republican Dartv boldlv a
that a deep-laid conspiracy to ruin our
party and destroy the reform movement
had been inaugurated, and had secured
control of our party machinery and of
nearly all of those whom we had elect-
ed to positions oí honor and trust. But
with all their devilish skill in manip-
ulating events and men they have never
been able to seduce or destroy the pow-
er and influence of the great body of
the Reform Press. Some of them have
been deceived and led astray, but they
are opening their eyes to the true sit-
uation, and will rally as one man to
the defense of our sacred principles
when the slogan sounds for the great
campaign of 1900.
I will not dwell on the past nor in-
dulge in invective in regard to the man-
ner in which we have been assailed for
attempting to carry out our true prin-
ciples and trying to maintain and pre-
serve oür party. When I was honored
by you at Dallas, I knew that I would
be selected as the target for all the
vile abuse that could be vomited from
a venal fusion press. But I was aware
that when you conferred the position
you knew that I waa opposed to fttaton
with either of the old parties, and was
earnestly in favor of the nomination
of a straight ticket at St Louis. Every
word spoken and every act and deed of
mine has been performed with a firm
determination to preserve the people's
party and put it in shape to renew the
battle against the common enemy, who
belong to both the old-party organiza-
tions. I Issued a circular early in May
that wanned our people of this plot,
and gave them ample opportunity to
strengthen their lines and win the bat-
tle at St. Louis. If the democratic par-
ty had won the fight there would have
been no reform enacted, not even free
silver; all its power and its machinery,
all its office-holders, high and low,
would have been wielded to absorb
our party. This is now apparent to all;
and the supreme duty of the hour Is to
devise ways to avoid the dangers that
surround us, and march forward in
unbroken phalanx to win the people
to the true doctrines of our creed.
We should take no new departure.
We should not allow our name or plat-
form to be stolen by any band of band-
its on the face of the earth; for in
1900 we will hold our national conven-
tion first, if we have to meet on Jan-
uary 1st, 1900. We will stand by the
faith announced at Omaha, and 1 hope
we will make the chasm so wide and
deep between our party and the democ-
racy that the separation of the sheep
from the goats will at once commence.
"Choose ye this day whom ye will
serve:" dishonored, treacherous, false,
corrupt, ballot-box stuffing democracy,
or the true faith, to whose principles
we have converted half the nation and
•eared the balance out of their wH#!
The republican party boldly an
nounces the doctrines which we believe
destructive to our nation's best inter-
ests and fatal to its prosperity.
We predict there will be an
international agreement in favor
of free silver; everything indicates this
program. An emissary is sent across
the water even before the inauguration
of a new president, and a bill has been
passed to prepare for the conference;
and it is well known that the Roths-
childs and other powerful syndicates
have been buying silver mines for more
than a year. This is the sop that will
be thrown to the discontented masses;
and it will avail about as much in
bringing about prosperity as the en-
actment of a new tariff law differing 30
per cent In its provisions from the
present law. We have been living since
1894 under a tariff that is more satis-
factory to the manufacturers and trusts
than the MoKinley bill: and ruin and
desolation have been the result. The
silver panacea will add some $40,000,-
000 annually to the money volume of
the nation, and will in that sense do
good: It will employ more labor,
whilch will be a benefit, but it will not
solve the problem of employing all the
idle labor nor starting up the dormant
machinery. We have always advo-
cated the free coinage of silver as a
step in the right direction; but if we
accept the verdict of the election, and
the principles of the referendum, we
can now say that silver has been re-
jected, and march on in the true path
of educating the people in favor of
scientific money. More than half ot
the voters tor the democratic party did
not care one iota for free silver. The
very leaders who controlled their con-
vention and oursr had demonstrated
time after time that they were false to
that principle. It was a shrewd move
to save the democratic party, and to re-
tain control of the solid South. And
its object was twofold—to resurrect a
corpse and to bury our party in the
place of its putrid remains.
We will never never consent to
make another campaign with the silver
question as the vital issue; our thunder
would be stolen by the republicans and
we would be stranded by the roadside,
with the disorganized, broken-down,
spavined wreck of the democratic par-
ty. I want no affiliation with them,
alive or dead.
I recommend that if we continue to
retain silver as one of our cardinal
doctrines, we should declare in favor
of the true and normal ratio held by
two-thirds of the nations of the earth
—15% to 1.. France held that ratio for
eighty years alone. From 1792 to 1873
our ratio was: 15 to 1 to 1834, and at
16 to 1 to 1873. Yet the ra-
tio la the rest of the world always
ftood ni I5tt to J, or only varied two
$1 PER ANNUM.
or three points. At this ratio we would
be divorced from the democratic party
and throw ail their deceitful leaders
out of a job; break up a flourishing
lecture bureau, prospering at gold-
standard and prima-donna prices, and
set our party right before the educated
writers throughout the world, and
strike the only .ratio on which an agree-
ment would be possible; for the losses
upon recoinage for a higher ratio
would be so great that they would not
be borne by any nation in the world,
unless their rulers were idiots or in
sane or sold to the Rothschilds. I no-
tice that Japan is to go to a gold stand-
ard at 32 to 1. That would Involve no
recoinage—only two dollars instead of
one—and I believe that is the new ra-
tio that will be proposed by interna-
tional conference. I am satisfied that
the silver barons would accept a ratio
of 20 to 1, for the leading mine owners
were willing to do so in 1893, and it
waa only the firm stand of the people's
party that defeated the sell-out. The
chief conspirators in the movement to
deistroy us were these men, and the
great majority of the wealthiest of them
are interested in national banks and
bonds, and are in favor of no legisla-
tion but free silver legislation.
We are unalterably opposed to the re-
tirement of the greenbacks, and no par-
ty in this land will dare to do so. The
republican party would be overwhelm-
ed In 1898 If they accomplished such an
act, and the people would rise up and
restore the money of Abraham Lincoln.
I am in favor of people's money for
the people, issued by the general gov-
ernment alone, without the interven-
tion of banks of issue. I quote the lan-
guage of Marvin Warren's new book,
in which he gives what he caJls the
trio of cardinal measures:
No. 1. All money must be a legal ten-
der to pay all debts.
No. 2. Money must be redeemable
in government dues only.
No. 3. A just and constant amount of
money circulation.
"Whenever any lawful money of the
United States, whether gold, silver, or
paper, is received by the government
in payment of any dues, It is redeem-
ed."
It is untrue that the people's party
proposed to issue an unlimited amount
of irredeemable paper money; at no
time have they ever endorsed any prop*-
osition that would make a larger per
capita than the people of the North en-
joyed the last two years of the war,
during which we were blessed with
greater prosperity than at any time in
the memory of the oldest man in this
audience; and we had no gold nor sil-
ver in circulation, except on the Pa-
cific coast, and if a largs portion of this
money bad not been destroyed and the
CORÜAMd os rlffctfc ps|«.
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Park, Milton. The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 8, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 25, 1897, newspaper, February 25, 1897; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185699/m1/1/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .