who would see mankind
elevated and the wealth of the nation preserved and increased, should
favor this great palliative movement for maintaining self-respecting
manhood, for enriching the nation's resources, and for insuring
prosperity in the quickest and most healthful manner possible.

AN OPEN LETTER TO EASTERN CAPITALISTS.

BY CHARLES C. MILLARD.

Gentlemen: Against you individually, or as a class of persons who have
accumulated more or less wealth, and who loan it at interest to those
who perhaps have been less fortunate, I have not the least prejudice. I
believe that yours is an honest as well as a legitimate business; that
great wealth may be, and often is, won by honest means; and that it does
not border upon the marvellous that the capitalist is often an honest
man, and the pauper as often a rogue. I believe that you are as honest
as other men are, and that if you fully understood the situation in the
West and South, and knew that a certain line of conduct would result to
your own advantage financially, and also be a great benefit to the whole
country, you would act as other honest people would act under similar
circumstances; and it is because I so believe, that I write this letter.

I write neither as a partisan nor in the interests of any party, but to
give plain facts which can be easily verified, and to show how these
facts are seen and felt by those who, like myself, have been born and
bred on the boundless prairies, and have had a varied experience with
the ups and downs of life on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. I
hope by so doing to help you to realize the extent of the disasters
which a continuance of the present financial policy will inevitably
bring to _you_ as well as to us.

THE ACTUAL CONDITION.

In 1886, the chief clerk and trusted agent of a great loan company, who
has since been in the employ of Jarvis Conklin & Co., said to me: "There
is plenty of money to loan, but the securities are practically
exhausted." Everything "in sight" was covered with a mortgage. The few
who had escaped the mania of speculation did not want any mortgage on
farm or city property. Loans since then have been mostly renewals, and
for a time one company loaned money to be paid to another; but, with a
few exceptions, the Eastern money borrowed since 1880 has not been paid,
and anyone familiar with the facts does not need the gift of prophecy to
foretell that, under the present conditions, it nev