uniformly, the farmer would gain but little. For the only means he would win toward paying off his mortgage would be the surplus of his income over his outgo, and this he could only apply year by year as he won it. If, then, the whole scheme could be made to work smoothly provided the victims of it would submit to it without resistance, does this afford any probability of realizing the great hopes which are built upon the scheme?
Social War the Consequence.
But victims would not submit without resistance, and once more we come to the result that no effect can be expected from this undertaking but social war, and a convulsion of the entire social system, whose consequences defy analysis or prediction. If a man says that he "does not see" what great difference going over to the silver standard will make, it must be that he is little trained to understand the workings of the industrial system in which he lives and on which he depends. It is a monstrous thing that a free, self-governing people should join a political battle, in this year of grace 1896, over the question whether to debase their coinage or not.
The Exploded Booms.
The third class of debtors is by far the most important in this matter — those who are caught in exploded booms. The peaceful and honest mortgagors of farms and homesteads are not the ones who have gotten up this political agitation. The jobbers, speculators, and boom-promoters have been one of the curses of this country from the earliest colonial days. They are men of the "hustling" type, jobbing in politics with one hand and in land or town lots with the other. It is they who, at the worst periods of
