POPULAR LIBERTY ENDANGERED.

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lose our liberties as paradise was lost to Adam and Eve? I will here quote Macaulay, to prove that liberties have been lost in the past:

"It was not only in England that national assemblies were coming into beng in the thirteenth century. In Castile and Arragon, town representatives were appearing in the Cortes. In Sicily, Frederick II. was instituting something similar to the English shire-moots. In Germany the cities appeared by deputies in the imperial diet. In France the states-general were first summoned in 1302. The national councils were scarcely less proud and powerful than the one at Westminister. All were destroyed or sunk into insignificance except the English parliament."

The daily newspaper press-too many of them-have joined in the conspiracy of the oligarchs of wealth-special privileged interests to destroy the liberties of the American people. Iowa, it seems, is the first state in the north to be overreached. The confiding many shake their heads and cry "Alarmist! Alarmist!" as in 1860, when told that the south meant to destroy the union. But the firing on Sumter put flesh on the dry bones. May we look for history to be repeated? God forbid! Yet the rights of our fathers bequeathed us are dearer to us than life, and the present conspiracy is as bad as was that of the rebel south in 1860.

YE 273D LESSON.

Popular Liberty Endangered.

The signs of times reveal the fact that popular liberty is endangered. A simple exercise of intuition clearly establishes this fact, and intuition is but the perfection of reason, and its pronunciaments the unerring finality of induction as true as the Euclid. The disparagement of popular rule of cities is the initiatory step for the bringing in of arbi trary rule the Russianizing of America in the interest of the billionaire trusts and of the millionaires that own all the means of enlightenment and control of public opinion-the press. Not only is the press theirs, but also, as a rule, the pulpit and the bar; and, furthermore, the school. What is left to the people? Only history and tradition and biography. From these three sources alone may we learn the lessons that our fathers have taught, to preserve to us the ideals for which they fought at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg.

If our cities come short, an appeal to the people puts all to rights. Who are grafters? Men that stand cheek by jowl with the great syndicates, the tools of franchise holders doing their dirty work, and the franchise holders own the metropolitan daily newspaper press, as a rule, and the great magazines. The denunciation of the time honored system of popular government of cities is bottomed on conspiracy a deep-laid plot to do away with free institutions and bring in kingly rule-in a word, autocracy.

It is time to call a spade a spade and a falsehood a falsehood when the editor of a great metropolitan daily journal says that Indianapolis, Indiana, is under one man government, and that the city legislature is only an "advisory body," as the czar of Russia would have the legislature of Russia be. The humble writer of this brief paper has the proud distinction of being a native of Indiana and he indignantly resents the calumny. And if the new charter of the city of Indianapolis, or the legislature of the state of Indiana, has taken the election of city officers out of the control of the people the political status of the Tory legislature of Indiana ought by all means be immediately changed. To say that the capital of Iowa is not reasonably well governed is not true. Of course a mayor was elected once who, after the expiration of his term of office became a saloon-keeper. But was not this man twice nominated and twice elected superintendent of schools of

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THE END OF POPULAR RULE IN SIGHT.

the county by the great party of moral ideas? And may not that same party place him agan in the mayor's chair when the city legislature is made by that same "grand old party" merely an "advisory body" to the autocratic mayor? Or may he not be elected a member of the "Commission," by that same glorious old party, and made mayor by the triumvirate when the "Galveston plan" has been substituted for popular rule?

The Galveston plan! Who were its authors. It is the spawn of the ex-southern confederacy now "playing possum." Four years of bloody war to break up and destroy freedom has not sufficed to satisfy hellborn desire! A covert effort to destroy the free institutions that our fathers shed their blood to give us must be resorted to. We want no king to rule over us, and we want no three men to make and execute the laws for a city of eighty thousand or of a dozen people. Our fathers in the Mayflower had no love for kingly (one man) rule or even commission (three men) rule. They prepared the model government for cities, states and nations, and the attempt, in the interest of trust syndicates and millionaires, to set up arbitrary rule in America of cities states or nation, will meet salutary defeat and the authors of the attempt gain merited oblivion, if not eternal infamy like Benedict Arnold.

YE 274TH LESSON.

The End of Popular Rule in Sight.

President Roosevelt has made a most significant revelation to the American people. It is that there is a conspiracy afoot to substitute for government of the people, oligarchic rule. "He believes that the success of the conspiracy which has been hatched would be a blow to the very existence of the republic.

"It would mean rule in the United States by an oligarchy. It would mean the end of rule by the people-by the majority."

During the last ten years the great moneyed interests of the United States have become infinitely more powerful and more swollen in their wealth than they were in 1896, when they contributed $10,000,000 to Mark Hanna to defeat rule by a majority vote. They could, and willingly would, contribute two or three times that amount today to establish and perpetuate their power.

The president knows better than any private citizen how powerful is this secret and insidious force made up of allied dollars. He has had to fight it ever since he started his career as a public man, and more than ever since he became President. The advance of honesty and a square deal had been inch by inch, and by daily and nightly striving. It has been in the face of tricks, threats, flattery, abuse and financial thuggery. If ever the interests get their clutches on the White House and the other departments of governmnt again it will take a revolution to shake them loose.

This hateful oligarchy of wealth has undertaken to rule the city of Des Moines. Every step taken to substitute the bureaucratic for the popular form of government has been to shut out the people from a hearing or a vote or a voice. A club of about fifty rich men-franchise holders and their paid attorneys and a few others of their dependents. the "300" have done all underhandedly. Plates are set for fifty cents apiece at the "popular, political meetings" and only those who belong to the "300" are admitted-a cave of robbers! They shut off all discussion through the daily press excepting on the side of the oligarchy. Here they have hired a lawyer to present the beauties of the Galveston plan to the admiration of the many. His arguments are smoothe as a highly feed lawyer's may be and would be on either side of the case, if hired to plead-making the "worse appear the

better reason." Not a word does or can he say in favor of the bureaucratic system that might not be said by Wittie in favor of the Russian system of rule, both of cities and state, which is admittedly the "Galveston plan."

Now the initiative, referendum and recall have been tagged on to this plan of tyranny merely to sugar-coat it so as to make it go down the gullets of the populace-the one side only presented by the press. As they will have foisted this onto the people so will they carry it outthey the few-the "end of rule by the people-by the majority." Who does not see that this revolution is not in any sense a movement of the people? Only the "300" have had a hand in it and only the "300" will rule Des Moines after the adoption of the "Galveston plan." That is the purpose of the movement. If it could have been made legal the governor would appoint the majority of the commission as the Governor of Texas did three out of five the Galveston commission. The "300" would abolish popular government entirely if they could.

It is a fact that Des Moines is well and economically governed-better than is any Texas city governed bureaucratically. But for the past year, ever since the legislature of Iowa sat down on the Galveston "plan," the daily papers have made a continual howl. The city government has been accused of everything that could be thought of to disparage it. But no specific charges have been made of graft or wrong in any way. For none could be made. No city officer has been arraigned before the court for wrong-doing, which would have been done if any wrong or "graft" had been committed. Will the people be hoodwinked into voting for a king? Have they forgotten Aesop's fable of the frogs?

YE 275TH LESSON.

An Open Letter.

To the Governor and Legislature of the State of Iowa: Patriots-The "Galveston Plan of Government of Cities of the First Class" is not republican in form. In spite of what Pope, the English poet said, who was a hanger on of aristocracy, the "form" is the essential of government. The form is the constitution per se. It was for the form of government, that their ancestors had bequeathed to them, the Greeks battled against Xerxes. All conquered states and cities under Persian domination were goverend on the "Des Moines Plan," as are the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico and Cuba governed by the United States. While the United States guarantees to every state of the Union a republican "form" of government, the states themselves are left to grant "charters" (forms of government) to cities. Fortunately the written constitution of Iowa has placed beyond the power of the legislature to grant other than republican government to her cities in its providing that legisla tive, judicial and executive powers may not be centered in any one body of officials collectively. They must be kept separate and apart, each from each.

But these powers the "Galveston plan" expressly centers in a council" of five, the majority exercising the three prerogatives-a triumvirate with powers as great as were those exercised by Mark Antony, Caesar and Lepidus. The power given the triumvirate in this "Des Moines Plan" is omnipotent. They cannot be controlled by the people or dethroned; for the whole machinery of government is in their hands and the hands of their appointees. They are "it" as was Napoleon, Augustus Caesar, and as is the czar of all the Russias. They may ignore every provision of the law that enthrones them and hold their office for life or until the legislature repeals the law. It is defacto the same as martial law-the same as was exercised by our generals over Manila.

This form of city government will not be tolerated in time of peace in any northern state of the Union. The working class will not submit to disfranchisement. The people electing autocrats to govern them would show an amazing degree of degeneracy. Of course privileged interests and plutocrats want it. The attorneys in their pay, and editors and clergymen who look to the rich for their bread and butter are all favorable to the "Galveston Plan."

And the plutocratic enemy of popular rule expects, through the press, the pulpit and the bar to hoodwink the toilers into accepting slaveryto vote as did the people of Norway, for a king and so resign their blood-bought right to rule. I mean no disrespect to lawyers as a class, nor to clergymen, nor to editors. The leading patriots that formed our free system of government were lawyers-men whom no amount of money could "employ" to take the side of tyranny. And the great lawyers of our country, not bound by golden chains to privileged interests are, as was Jefferson, Lincoln, Henry, Sumner and others without number, "tribunes of the people." And the clergythey as a class are the conservators of civilization, but I am sorry to say not many of them are found in the van of moral and economic reform. The people move first, the clergy holding back. It was so in temperance and anti-slavery reform; and even today, petitions for liquor hells do not always lack signatures of clergymen. And the daily press-now often controlled by privileged interests, instead of the palladium of liberty it has become in many instances the batteringram breaking down the strong walls of popular right, as in the present instance in the capital city of Iowa the daily press is the leading factor in the endeavor to establish oligarchic tyranny-the "Des Moines Plan.” But the lawmakers of Iowa will do well to go slow in seconding this unpatriotic and entirely mercenary movement of the "300." Samuel J. May was once assured by a slaveholder that the Bible upholds slavery. Said May, "I cannot see that it helps slavery any; but it is a hard blow on the Bible." Reactionary laws are a hard blow on their makers. No demand was ever made by either the republican or democratic parties for the Galveston Plan in convention. This backward movement toward an old-world, obsolete mode of governmentabsolute rule-will prove to be a hard blow on its instigators-franchise owners, and the lawyers and clergymen won to its support. It is nothing to say the Galveston Plan brings with it the referendum, appeal, etc. We already have these. Was not the question submitted to the people by referendum: "Shall the city own the waterworks, telephone lines, and the gas and electric light plant”—a large majority voting "Aye"? What came of it? Nothing.

YE 276TH LESSON.

Patrician vs. Plebian.

The Galveston plan is a move on the chessboard by the patrician in the game that he has played with the plebian since society first beguna shrewd and important move as was the murder of the Gracchi. A triumvirate, under the name of "commission elected at large," displacing a legislative "council" elected by wards, as are state legislatures and a national congress elected by districts, appointing all subordinate officers, with power to dismiss them at will, paying out public moneys, making laws and saying truly, as did the great Louis of France, "We are the state"-even the simple proposal to set up such a system, inspired by the example of cities of the ex-confederate states that have disfranchised the bulk of the toilers of that section of the union and solidly nullified the war amendments of the American constitution in violation

PATRICIAN VS. PLEBIAN.

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of their plighted faith, pledged on the occasion of their rehabilitation as states, forcibly brought back under the flag, after four years of rebellion and civil war, costing a half million of lives and billions of money-waged on their part to hold as slaves millions of their fellowmen-I say the simple proposal to so follow in the footsteps of faithless men, disloyal to constitutional liberty and the inalienable rights of man, and set up such an arbitrary and undemocratic system of rule in this age is madness worse than the firing on Fort Sumter. By that the doom of slavery was sealed. Stand from under, O legislature of Iowa! Let a considerable vote of your body be recorded in favor of the so-called "Galveston plan" of tyranny and the doom of commercialism is sealed.

The arguments that would lead to the legislatures of cities becoming triumvirates, apply equally well to the states and nation. Cities hitherto looked back upon as ideal in government, were democracies -instance Athens and Rome. Once was Athens ruled by "thirty tyrants," thrice was Rome ruled by "triumvirates," and once by decemvirs tyrannies. A triumvirate once enthroned, will so hedge themselves in that they can never be dethroned except, as in Russia, by assassination. This tendency toward autocracy is the fruitage of a universal conspiracy of reactionaries whose purpose it is, by swamping free institutions, to head off society's betterment and labor's emancipation. Vain effort! Worse than disunion! "Liberty and union," said the great Webster, naming liberty first, as it is first in importance. Liberty dwells only where the people rule, not where they are ruled. A triumvirate will rule the people as arbitrarily as does the Russian A workingman can never approach them except on his knees, or abjectly with hat in hand. The rights of the many cannot be safeguarded under such a system. A "commission" of three, making laws, voting men into office and place whose terms of employment expire with that of the triumvirate-proxies for a population of 80,000 in one city of Iowa at least, casting the votes of all, as the czar of all the Russias casts the only vote of more than a hundred millions-a limited suffrage indeed, below that of Mississippi-fixing salaries of all the officials and employes, discharging them at will, etc., etc.-nothing short of disfranchisement of the whole people, the abrogation of popular government entirely. And it would be so interpreted in Europe, and absolutism would be strengthened greatly everywhere by this retrograde movement in America-literal commonwealth-suicide-a wedge driven into the heart of the tree of liberty and the triumvirate compelling their own re-election at will.

czar.

All the wrongs we suffer of "boodle" and "graft" (but no formal or legal charge has been made of these in any city of Iowa), may be righted in one way, and that one way alone, that is to say, by an awakening as in Philadelphia-not of labor's exploiters-wealthy men of any sort, but of the people who work for a bare living and the opportunity to send their little ones to school. Upon their broad shoulders rests the republic. They build the cities. They have made the world what it is in greatness, beauty and worth. Ought they not to rule it? They are the "people." Government of cities, states and nation is destined to become more and more democratic, not less and less. The initiative and referendum will be installed universally along with public ownership. We are on the eve of the breaking up

of the present order of society.

The American republic will not follow in the footsteps of ancient Rome and fall as she did. True, the patrician is as "wise in his own conceit" today-as ready to "reach unlawful ends by unlawful means" as ever before. But the toilers are no longer slaves. are freemen organized into guilds that speak with one voice.

They