... No. 2 LEGION SERIE’s. APRIL, 1895.
Subscription $1.00 per Year. Single Copy, 5 Ceuts.
AN APPEAL
THE PEOPLE,
PAUL VANDERWOORT




The duty that has devolved upon me in assuming the position
of Commander-in-Chief of the Industrial Legion has been the most
burdensome of my life. I spent a quarter of a century in building -
up the Grand Army, holding all its offices, of every grade, and gave
after my term as Commander-in-Chief, several years in assisting in
developing the Woman's Relief Corps, which was organized under a
call issued by me, and in all these years I never had the load to carry
that has been crowded into the last two, in doing the work put into
my hands by the National Executive Committee of our party. I have
had more anxious days and sleepless nights than I care to number.
It is well known that I never wanted the place, endeavored to re-
sign at the close of the campaign of 1893, but have been compelled
to bear the burden.
The Legion was organized by the National Executive Commit-
tee of the People's Party, acting unofficially at their meeting at
Memphis, Tennessee, on November 19th, 1892. In conjunction with
them, about one hundred of the leaders of the Farmers' Alliance
and other industrial orders became its charter members.
The notification of my election came from Hon. H. E. Tauben-
eck and Geo. F. Washburn, and the formal notice from the secretary
of the National Committee. J. H. Turner, who had also been made
Adjutant General of the Legion. I at first declined the position,
but when earnestly urged from all quarters, I insisted that if I ac-
cepted the constitution should be revised, secrecy eliminated and a
simpler form adopted. A meeting was called at Indianapolis, on
December 29th, 1892, and Messrs. Taubeneck, Rankin and Turner,
and a large delegation attended. On the distinct understanding
that the National Committee would endorse this plan and hold up
my hands with all their power and push the work, I accepted, and
the officers of the National Committee issued the following appeal.
“We kindly request that the People's Party state, county and
local committees in every state in the Union do allin their power and
lend a helping hand to organize the Industrial Legion. "Push the
organization into every state, county, precinct and school district in
the land. -
H. E. Tauben Eck, Chairman.
J. N. TURNER, Secretary.
M. C. RANKIN. Treasurer.”

ºrgºs, ºr * 3...e., F.º:
At the meeting of the National Executive committee at chica-
go, Aug. 2d, 1893, the committee again renewed that request. At
the meeting of the full committee at St. Louis, Feb. 22, 1894, the
following resolution was adopted as a part of the report of the cont-
mittee on address.
“Resolved, That we renew our recommendation adopted at the
meetings of the National Executive Committee at Indianapolis and
Chicago, and earnestly urge every state and county committee to or-
ganize the Industrial Legion in every voting precinct in the land.”
At a meeting of the full committee at St. Louis December 29th,
1894, the following resolution, reported by the unanimous vote of
the committee on organization, was adopted.
“Resolved, That, while we do not attempt to dictate to any
state as to the plan of organization it shall adopt, we renew the rec-
ommendation of the National Committee in avor of the organiza-
tion of the Industrial Legion in every precinct in the land; and,
further recommend that no dues shall be exacted, excepting from
Legions that operate the rebate plan, and that in all cases where
members are able, they be urged to send to cents per annum to
headquarters; that all clubs or other orders that wish to change into
Legions shall send zo cents for supplies, and that original Legions
shall send so cents, but that no Legion shall be denied a chart r
when it is unable to pay for it, and that these organizations shall be
called People's Party Clubs, People's Party Legions, or Industrial
Legions, in order to suit the conditions in each state, and that Rule
15, of Instructions of the Industrial Legion be drºpped, and that all
People's Party Clubs or Legions shall report to the same headquar-
ters in order to avoid confusion and to perfect a systematic organi-
tion.” -
So that, including the meeting at Washington, February 23d,
1893, the National Executive Committee have endorsed the Legion
three times and the full committee twice. At Chicago August 2d,
1893, Messrs Donnelly, Strickler and Rankin were added to the Ex-
ecutive Council, making the entire Executive Committee of the
People's Party.
In addition to the above, many state conventions, a great ma
Jority of the state committees and other important delegate bodies
our party have approved it, and to further demonstrate the accept-
ance of this form of organization, we bear on our books the names
of over 12co of the best and brightest workers of our cause, who
have taken formal commissions as Legion Recruiting officers; and we
have mailed thousands of constitutions and instructions in respon-e
to requests from individual members of our party in every state.
From the very beginning we have had the constant aid of the
Reform press. They have published all our circulars, also made












-º- 17 y2.
4.
editorial appeals and we have had the service of the ready print
Populist columns, and W. S. Morgan, the efficient and alert Senti-
nel of the National Legion, sent a special edition of his paper to
all the Legion members, and all Recruiting Officers, at his own ex-
pense, and has constantly kept the Legion before the people. I cor-
dially thank the People's Party press everywhere for their potent
help, they represent a gallant band whose sacrifices will never be
known, who cannot be bought, sold or bartered, and whose unself.
ish and unrewarded labor for our party is beyond all praise,
The Legion will and does fill the long-felt want of a compact
political body. It interferes with no other organization; it is simply
the partisan club, and its method of organization has met with the
cordial approval of our party and is even admired by those who
differ from us. All the valid objections that have been made are
covered by the resolution adopted by the National Committee on
December 29th, at St. Louis, and all the clubs and Farm and Labor
olders can be chartered by sending names of members and twenty
cents, without change of officers or their titles. This was the idea
of the National Committee and Reformers who made the Legion,
who provided in the original constitution that all Farm and Labor
Orders should be chartered free.
I have many and sore grievances that I could air; I have re-
ceived treatment that I have a right to resent during my life, and
send a vendetta down to my tribe, but I here and now bury it all and
consecrate myself anew to the work. Realizing the deplorable con-
dition of our nation, that men are nothing but the dust of the earth,
and that if we would hand down liberty and free government to
coming people, we must bear our burden and faint not. I forbear.
I deem it my duty to speak plainly in reference to the difficulty of
organizing the People's Party. The forces that compose it have
been organized to death, and scarcely a week passes but that some
versatile genius evolves some new plan to band the people together
and still further divide our forces. We have hundreds of discordant
emps and scarcely one of them holds a national meeting but days
are devoted to charges and counter-charges of corruption and fraud.
These organizations, united, cost a vast sum of money, pay large
salaries, and are generally firm in the opinion that nobody should
he allowed to organize but the peculiar forces that unite with them
From all of the organizations in the cities the People's Party has not
yet received in the nation even the number of votes that are claimed
hold membership in one. If we received these labor votes we

-
º
could carry every city in the United States. While labor forces
willingly pay large dues and assessments to all the different orders,
they object to the small dues of the Legion and the charter fees, and
these we have cotinually reduced, and yet the members have left me
to bear the burden and pay the bills, and besides, to contribute office
rent and the clerical labor of myself and family free of charge. In
other words, they have thousands of dollars for non-partisan or-
ganization and not a cent for politics, and leave the National Com-
mittee and the National Legion headquarters bankrupt and cramped
even for postage for the enormous correspondence which comes from
all the people. In addition, we have a dozen Farm Orders, who are,
to say the least, not prosperous, who have graduated their members
largely into the People's Party; have wasted two years of effort of
the best organizers in the nation, trying to revive or resurrect while
their members have simply marched on to the front and demanded
partisan organization.
All the above orders feared the Legion would interfere with
their work, and hence we had, if not the open and active, the nega-
tive opposition of the governing forces, of all of them, who have
simply said, wait and see if we can not resurrect our own. I have
always been a firm believer in labor organizations and unions, and
when I accepted my position I said in the address: “I am assured
that the Legion does not interfere in any way with any of the Indus-
trial Orders, which have so grandly done their part in educating the
people, but simply fills the long-felt want of supplying a -compact,
political body, in which all can unite in one common creed and the
only test of membership be loyalty to the platform of the People's
Party. If I deemed we should in any way conflict with any of the
great industrial or labor organizations I should have nothing to do
with it.”
If we propose to have any organization worthy of the name for
1896, we must all bury selfish interests and unite all the organizing
force we have in the party to band all the people in sym-
pathy with us in one organization, and that one the
one endorsed by the official voice of the party. The
machinery is all ready, the workers duly commissioned. We have
made a beginning in all the states but eight, and if, added to the
patriotic appeal of all the great leaders of labor the Reform press
will still further continue their noble work, we can win the battle.
If the two millions voters of the People's Party, with the women
and noble youth, who are our inspiration and our hope, would all

B
meet on a given day and join the People's Legion, it would send
dismay among the money changers the world over.
I think all the labor leaders are now convinced that it is folly
to strike; they do not even support each other, and in every one
that is inaugurated the plutocratic forces have wild-eyed bands of
anarchists to commit depredations that prejudice the masses. If
Mr. Debs had been supported by all the labor organizations in the
United States, he could have won; but how many stood off, cold-
hearted and said to themselves, if he wins it will disband all of our
orders and make his the great labor order of the world; so they let
his fail and showed more sympathy by resolutions than they did by
actual aid. When I contemplate the provocation of organized labor
I wonder at their patience and submission; trampled under foot,
robbed, shot down like mad-dogs, turned into the street, their
places taken by a horde of scum, shipped here from off the streets
and amid the slums of Europe, hurled into jail by dishonest, tyran-
nical judges, they submit to the majesty of the law, though its ex-
ecutors degrade its holy teachings and use their power as an engine
of oppression. The only place to strike is at the ballot box, and the
way to get there is to organize the people into the People's Legion;
it covers every situation, it answers every purpose, it fills every
want, and if the plutocratic agencies determine to use force, we can
be ready if we are wise in the present hour. If we do not rally now
we deserve to be enslaved, and Ifirmly believe that the only hope of
settling the tremendous perils that confront us as a nation is in
the immediate organization of all the people who demand emanci-
pation from foreign rule.
The development during the past two years must convince the
masses that dangerous elements are at work and that the foes of
liberty are enthroned in the ve citadels of the republic. They
own the president, his cabinet, the great newspapers, and control
the leaders of bott the old parties. If the spirit of the men that
raised liberty poles in New York and threw the tea in Boston harbor
was not dead in this nation, the whole people would resent the for.
eign influence exerted on American soil. On the one hand, the
King of the Jews, Rothchilds, dominating the financial affairs of the
nation; on the other, a potentate who does not speak the English
language, ruling with an iron hand the spiritual and meddling with
the temporal affairs of six millions of our people, and the politicians
of both the old parties afraid to murmur for fear they will lose votes.
an opposed to foreign dictation and will join hands with any re-




-
form force to get rid of it at once and forever. I would brush away
the aggression of Great Britain, which from the very beginning has
been the open and secret enemy of our republic. I would adopt a
vigorous foreign policy. Let the nation cease to be a cypher on the
map of the world; we can afford to be independent. We produce 95
per cent of our raw material, and Great Britain is compelled to buy
90 of hers, and why we should be chained to her chariot wheels is
because our rulers are shameless traitors to our interests. Oh, for
the spirit of the fathers of 1776.
It is not what we have in our platform that creates so much
criticism, but it is largely what men in our party advocate outside
of it, for there is not a vital doctrine in that platform that does not
appeal to the commou sense and patriotic instinct of the whole
American people. We stand with every patriot that helped found
the Republic, and make the constitution on the money question.
We stand with Jackson and Lincoln. We are in favor of the money
of the constitution. The cardinal doctrines of the graduated income
tax, postal savings bank, and ownership of railroad and telegraph
systems, is advocated by millions outside of our party; there is
scarcely a country in the world but ours that does not enjoy the
benefits of these blessings. To-day the European holders of our
railroad bonds are demanding that the strictest possible federal
supervision shall be inaugurated before they will invest another dol-
lar or even protect what interests they have. The leading German
and English financial papers have declared that such must be the
case. One of the boodle agents of the administration, Congress-
man Strauss of New York, declared so in a speech in Congress a
short time ago, and Senator Vilas, another spokesman of the admin-
istration, made a desperate fight to have the government own and
operate the mail cars, when the postoffice bill was pending in the
senate last week. Recently Carroll D. Wright declared in a public
address, that in a few years the government would operate at least
the railroad system of the country. The National Tribune, the
organ of the Grand Army, urges a postal savings bank, and that
system and a government telegraph have been advocated by the
postoffice department under all anministrations, ever since the days
of John A. J. Creswell.
The men who deprecate an income tax cannot fly with their
property to a country in Europe where they will not be compelled
to pay one. I have no prejudice against men who have amassed
millions honestly. I know some who are noble in every way and
8.
who favor this tax; but, generally speaking, I am in favor of taxing
the stolen millions, aggregated in the hands of insolent, shoddy
aristocrats, while they are alive, with an income tax, and after
they are dead with an inheritance tax. It is a strange thing that the
very planks in our platform that are the law of the land in the
nations of Europe, whose method of government our plutocratic
citizens so thoroughly admire, are the very ones that are singled
out as the most terrific wild-cat doctrines that were ever advocated
by the lunatics of the world.
The People's Party is the only straight silver party in existence.
Had it not been for the devoted, unselfish labors of its two thou-
sand newspapers, ten thousand orators and two million voters, the
cause of silver would have been entirely lost. During all the time
that we have made this fight without a dollar of aid from any
source except the contributions of the people, we have been con-
stantly opposed, ridiculed and vilified by some of the men and ot-
ganizations claiming to represent the very essence of the silver
cause. While they have squandered thousands of dollars in useless
efforts, they have, by adhering to the two old parties, or trying to
create a new one, and thus divide the silver forces, been a constant
hindrance to our progress.
The mass of our voters are not mine owners. They represent
the industrial classes, and have lost more in one day by the demon-
etization of silver than the mine owners do in a year. By Senator
Jones' estimate, the wheat growers lose one hundred millions a year,
the cotton planters two hundred and fifty millions, and the wage
workers, since 1873, enough money to build and equip all the rail-
roads in the United States. We will continue the battle for the free
coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, without the con-
sent of any Jew or Gentile or any foreign nation on earth, and we
extend fraternal greetings and the warm hand of fellowship to all
who advocate the vital doctrines of the People's party on the money
question, and invite them to join with us in this great struggle, with
the full assurance that the People's Party ſetters the conscience of no
human being; that we are simply moving on educational lines until
we can all meet in 1896, and prepare a line of battle to meet the
enemy. There is no hope from either of the old parties: the Peo
ple's party polled the second highest vote in 22 states. The Demo
cratic party is dead in the west. It is reeking with fraud and odious
with ballot box stuffing, and if we had an honest election it could not
carry a southern state.












































It deserves to die, and both it and the Republican party, as rep-
resented by their leaders are in the grasp of the money power, and
each want to preserve the clutch of the banks over the nation. If
four thousand national banks were not fighting silver, the battle
would soon be won. Their power to issue money must be destroyed,
and on this line, that the government shall issue the money, we will
wage the battle, inviting all the forces who favor this doctrine to
unite with us.
All the attempts made to change our platform are premature and
unwise; no new or old party was ever called upon to change its platform
between conventions. Each state, at its convention can formulate
their ideas, and when we meet in 1896, God will give us wisdom to
agree on some sound principles that will unite all the reform forces
and lead the people to victory. No conference, no self-constituted
dictators, or imaginary statesmen or would-be political bosses have
any right to assume the power to obliterate the grand document
that has marshalled two million voters in line, and I resent the
dictum, that because a man stands by the platform, he is a traitor
to the People's Party.
When I left the Republican party, I burned the bridges behind
me, and I never will be sold or delivered to the Democratic party,
whether it is labeled silver, gold, nickel or brass, and if our so-
called leaders will stand firm, we will gather in all the reform ele-
ments and elect the next president. All we have to do is to hold the
fort, educate the masses, open our doors North, South, East and
west, and wait for the “Coming of the Lord.”
Every plan submitted in Congress by the money power is ten
times more dangerous to the people than contagious disease. Every
one of them has all the vital principles denounced and ridiculed in
the S-b-Treasury plan. Every one of them is class legislation of the
vilest kind, and the leaders of the Republican party have endorsed
the frauduleutissue of bonds and both the old parties seek to lead
the nation, with bonded indebtedness, payable in gold for a genera-
tion to come. Cleveland and Carlisle should be impeached and
hurled from power. No more rotten and corrupt men ever ruled
over a nation. They usurp more power than any king or czar; they
override Congress, defy the people, and trample law and constitu-
tion under foot. The Rothschilds bond transaction is the most
shameful page of our history. General Banks once said: “The
Treasury Department is British ground.” So it is to-day, and un-
der this administration the pawn-broker's sign should be added.








There is not an an anarchist or communistin the People's Party; not
a bomb thrower in our line; the men who rob and plunder the peo-
ple, who evade the law, who purchase, and bribe, and steal the
“livery of Heaven to serve the devil in" are the real anarchists and
have brought a horde of that class from across the sea. More than
So per cent of our voters were born on American soil, and these who
were born abroad are the very best element in our nation. The rank
and file of the People's Party, though poor in purse, mortgaged,
and many of them destitute and out of employment, are honest,
patient, law-abiding people, and of the thousands of letters received
at my office, there were not one hundred in all that contained mis-
spelled words, or illiterate or incendiary expressions.
We polled our largest vote in the West, where the Union sol-
diers are the most numerous, and we have a great army with banners
of the men that wore the blue marching with us. The gun holderis
waging war on the bondholder, who robbed him of his pay-during
the war, and who has assailed the pension roll eversince. We have
another army who wore the Gray. They have shaken off the 'man-
acles of Bourbon Democracy; they stand for a fair ballot and an hon-
est count, for “Equal rights to all and special privileges to none.”
They bury the past, and with the Stars and Stripes waving over
every line, they join hands with their brothers who wore the Blue to
save the nation and preserve the flag forever.
Senator Davis, of Minnesota, once said in a speech: “That this
nation may yet be saved by the 95 per cent of American born pop-
ulation who live in the Sunny South.” The greatest event in this
whole political revolution is the magnificent conflict for the rights
of the people waged in the South, and in 1896 they will emancipate
all their states and help plant the People's. Party candidate in the
White House. Let us all consecrate ourselves anew.to the holy
cause. A great orator recently said: “It has been demonstrated
that great wrongs may be righted and great reforms achieved with-
out the shedding of one drop of human blood.” Let this be our
aim; an army of peace, moving in a resistless tide upon the ballot
box, with this pledge in the words of the immortal. Lincoln written
upon all our hearts: “We here highly resolve that this nation under
God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of
the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.”