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.