A little perspective on the long slog toward real change...
This speech could have been given yesterday rather than over 100 years ago. However, you wouldn't be hearing it from the current Republican or Democratic politicians. That says something about who both parties really represent...
It's amazing how cyclical this elite/classicism issue is. Or more accurately, it's just less obvious during 'prosperous', peaceful periods.
January, 1895
... Mr. President, with sorrow, not in anger, I express it as my deliberate conviction that, considering the present condition of this country, brought about by legislation, combined with executive action, for which the Republican and Democratic parties are solely responsible, the People's party is today the only national party whose policies will perpetuate the government founded by the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson and brought by the blood and privations of our fathers and mothers in the war of Revolution, to establish the principle of "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none."
Sir, the time has gone by when the dangers that menace the welfare of the people and the very existence of the government, can be dismissed with a sneer, or be made the subject of jest. History but repeats itself. The man of today is the same creature, with like desires and ambitions as those for whom, in the far distant past, Draco made laws in Athens. Like causes produce like effects. Every student of history knows that, from the days of Draco to the present time, whenever the wealth of a nation has passed into possession of a privileged few, and the mass of the people became miserably poor, that nation sank into ignoble slavery, or, by bloody revolution, righted its economic conditions.
Sir, the American people will never be slaves. They are patient, are long-suffering, but when the cup of their misery is full, to the running over of a single drop, there may be precipitated a condition of things, the thought of which makes my blood run cold. We are traveling the same road traversed by the French people preceding the great revolution of 1789. There, the governing class, the privileged few, with three-fourths of the wealth in their possession, turned a deaf ear to the prayers of the down-trodden millions. That governing class, arrogant from long immunity, sneered at and derided the advice of Turgot, drove Necker into exile. The starving people who cried for bread were hanged on gallows fifty feet high, in order to deter others form the disturbing festivities at the royal palace. But the day of retribution was at hand; the cry of the poor and oppressed had gone up on high. A just God, who is no respecter of persons, poured out the vials of his wrath on the heads of the oppressors. Who can say that punishment was not deserved? They would not listen to Turgot; they would not listen to Necker; they would not heed the admonitions of LaFayette, nor of the Girondists, B but were forced to hearken to the inexorable logic of Robespierre, Marat, and the guillotine.
So today, in our own beloved country, the money power, which Mr. Ingalls characterized as having "No politics but plunder, no principles but the spoliation of the human race,@ acting through gigantic corporations, arrogant in assurance of security afforded by vicious legislative, executive and judicial action, turns a deaf ear to the cries of distress going up from every city and town and from almost every fireside. The cry for bread is answered by volleys of musketry or by imprisonment. Surely, a day of retribution will come. The just God, the omnipotent Jehovah, who as the foundation of political economy for his children in all ages and in every climate, said to each and everyone of Adam's race, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," and "Thou shalt not steal," will ere long, loose the thunderbolts of his wrath, unless the wrongs of his children are righted. It is the mission of the People=s party to avert that wrath. Like Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, the most profound thinkers, the most ardent patriots, eminent men and women in every walk of life, have raised their warning voices.
Mr. President, the time is past when the cry of "calamity howler" is sufficient to close people's ears to the truth. Facts are stubborn things and events are forcing the truth home to the understanding of immense numbers. It is not only the "impracticable cranks" of the People's party, but the most eminent scholars, statesmen, and jurists, have sounded the note of warning. Listen to John J. Ingalls whose ability and orthodoxy no Republican will dispute; speaking from his place in the national senate, he said:
"It is useless to deny the fact that we are on the verge of impending revolution," -- the principle cause being -- "a financial system which allows 31,000 out of a population of 63,000,000 to acquire, mostly within twenty years, over one-half of the immense wealth of this great nation while a million Americans citizens are walking the streets and highways seeking work by which to procure food, NEEDS READJUSTMENT," Again he declares: "Society is becoming rapidly stratified into the superfluous rich, and the people who are becoming hopelessly, miserably poor." -- From: The Principles of Populism
Speech Delivered by Senator J. E. Doom (!!) in the Oklahoma Legislative Council,
http://clio.missouristate.edu/wrmiller/populism/texts/documents/principles_of_populism.htm
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