The Colonist. PUBLISHED Daily-(Mornings). Nelson, Monday, Februrary 23, 1891. A POPULAR MOVEMENT.

Colonist, Volume XXXIV, Issue 6043, 23 February 1891, Page 3

The Colonist. PUBLISHED Daily-(Mornings). Nelson, Monday, Februrary 23, 1891. A POPULAR MOVEMENT.

In the platform of a new party just formed in the United States there is much that resembles the questions now agitating an important section of the electors in this Colony. As was to be expected from the diversity of conditionsr there are also matters deeply interesting to the Americans that do not immediately concern us here. Thus the coinage of silver, the misdeeds of grain gamblers, and the extortions of railway syndicates may so far be said to be outside our experience. The main peculiarities of this new movement are, that it originated in the Farmers' Alliance, which in all the Southern and Western States threatens to transfer power from the Republicans, who now hold it, to the Democrats, who accept some of the leading doctrines of the Farmera, and that it is to embrace the Knights of Labor and industrial organisations and reformers of all kinds. So far has this portentious combination advanced, that at the Convention where the platform was agreed upon, the General Master Workman of the Knights of Labor and his committee delivered sympathetic addresses in full accord with the movement. The • • National Union Party" is the name adopted, and the first general Convention is to be held this month in Cincinnati. The first objeot is to put into the field candidates for the Presidential election of 1692, who can he supported by all the bodies that represent the farmers and the laboring classes, in opposition to the "money power." As it is expressed in the summons, the Convention will be " preparatory for a united struggle for country and home in the great political contest now pending, that must decide who in this country is the sovereign, the citizen or the dollar." Unquestionably this rings in harmony with our own troubles. And if as yet a close alliance between farmers and workmen of all classes has not been brought about, their grievances have so much in common as to suggest a similar course being entered upon here as in the United States. The questions involved are so numerous, and cover such an extensive area, that for the present it must suffice to refer to some of those entering into our own daily experience. Thus the demand for the prohibition of alien ownership of land corresponds to the proposals made among ourselves for a special tax on property held by absentees ; while the prompt action required to be taken by Congress in respect to all lands now owned by " aliens and foreign syndicates" is on the same lines as the complaints loudly made as to the pernicious effect on our prosperity of enormous estates being in the possession of foreign money-lenders. Then again, " a just wad equitable system of graduated tax on incomes," which is called for, represents precisely the one fiscal reform that can even approach the ideal "equality of sacrifice." Some part of the ills under which the Americans suffer have been met with us by State interference in matters that some of our purblind politicians convict themselves of ignorance and folly by proposing to alter. Thus against the proposals for selling our railways, and possibly telegraphs, is to be set the demand of this Convention, that the means of public communication and transportation shall in all cases be at least controlled, and wherever possible owned by the Government. Enough has been said to show how much bur troubles are akin to those afflicting the Americans. And what is of perhaps still more significance, it is made clear where the materials are for forming a union of irresistible ; strength. In several of the States the Farmers' Alliances already command ' all political power, arid with the "added strength of the Labor organisations they will be able to redress: all wrongs that arise from bad goverrfliie™ " r '-' ■ "' ;; - ; - ;