Silas

The Nebraska State Journal ridicules Bryan for his attractive looks and youth, and sarcastically dismisses Populist-Democractic gubernatorial candidate Silas Holcomb as a local loan shark. The paper also prints a humorous poem mocking Bryan.

We cannot all be beautiful like Bryan, but we can be good, and handsome is as handsome does, don't you know?

SILAS.

Our populistic friends may consider their candidate for governor, Silas A. Holcomb, the chattel mortgage, 5 per cent per month shark, a representative man of the organization, but it is really a shame that they could not pick out a better one. The chattel mortgage shark, it is true, is always trying to keep cheap money out of the state, as a if a farmer can get a loan from one of these eastern real estate mortgage companies at 6 or 7 per cent per annum their occupation would be gone.

But only a pop deeply imbued with anarchism, not in the business himself, would have any sympathy with that sort of enterprise. The appearance of Edward Rosewater on the stump with Silas the evening of the day Mr. Holcomb's chattel record was exposed in the Fremont Tribune is quite significant.

There is a great deal of money in the shark business with a careful man like Silas A. Holcomb, who demands a cut-throat mortgage on a milch cow, a three-year-old spotted heifer and black boar pig weighing 125 pounds as security for a $25 loan for sixty days, at 5 per cent a month. Such a man may be relied upon to gather in the dividends hand over fist.

And certainly the "judge" took all proper precautions to get a cinch that would hold on the farmer to whom he loaned $62.50 for ninety days, when he got a mortgage on a yoke of two-year-old steers, one seven-year-old milch cow called "Whitey," one McCormick steel reaper and mower, one breaking and stirring plow, belonging to the farmer aforesaid, and one milch cow, "Speck," one Harrison farm wagon little used, and one riding cultivator, belonging to his brother. When the judge loans a princely sum like that at the low interest of 4½ per cent per month, he not only gets a mortgage on everything the man has, but on all that his relations can put up. This is something like business, and the judge is a business man from the ground up.

It is not to be wondered at that when the judge got on the bench as a reward for his industry and thrift, that he socked it to the "eastern money sharks" who were eating up the framers in his district with 6 and 7 per cent per annum mortgages on real estate. They were simply ruining the enterprise of Nebraska business men like himself.

But if you want to see these outcasts fairly kicked out of the state with their sordid money bags, just elect Silas governor and back him up with a legislature of the pop persuasion, and the purification will commence immediately. What we want is an "honest man" in the governor's chair like Silas.

Perhaps when the judge charged a workingman 10 per cent a month for a loan of $10 on his only cow he was a trifle too thrifty, but it is better of course to err on the right side, which is on your own side, in such matters.

With a cheek that would do honor to William Jennings Bryan, "Judge Holcomb," some of whose Italian chirography was printed in THE JOURNAL yesterday, "arraigned" at South Omaha day before yesterday "the republican party" for so managing the finances of the state that the floating debt amounts today to $637,000, the legacy of two pop legislatures that appropriated nearly $800,000 more money than their tax levies amounted to and left the treasury bankrupt. It was a very refreshing speech, if this is a fair specimen of the statements contained in it. The report however, is taken from Mr. Bryan's own paper, the Omaha World-Herald. That kind of a liar would certainly adorn the governor's office.

• Since people agree that his beauty
• Is elegantly unsurpassed,
• It should be our pleasure and duty
• To stand up for him first and last.
• Hereafter we'll gauge the election
• When in the convention we meet,
• And fight for the fairest complexion,
• Combined with immaculate feet.
• Thank heaven we now have a model
• More shapely than David B. Hill.
• Engraved on my heart is the noddle
• And form of our Beautiful Bill.

• It is not that blooming Machigan,
• The standing Fifth district disgrace,
• We all know the face of McKeighan
• Is tougher than any man's face.
• Bill Allen's attractive and comely
• When not on a bender bellbent,
• He's not really handsome nor homely
• To any alarming extent;
• Then who is this chief of all charmers
• Whose face can enrapture and thrill,
• The man who is farming the farmers,
• By posing as Beautiful Bill.

• Right now through the state he is stumping,
• Regardless of sunshine or storm,
• And swears by the powers he is bumping
• Himself in the cause of reform.
• And Rosey is with him, defiant,
• Disgruntled, disheartened and sick,
• And so is that other great giant
• The cloven-hoofed, horned Old Nick.
• The heelers and howlers and hooters,
• Each mouth a calamity mill,
• And all the bald fakes and freebooters
• Are cheering for Beautiful Bill.