FullReads

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 prostitutes 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 attitude. 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 circumstances 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 assaults 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 noble 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 institutions. 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.