The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 9, 1893 Page: 1 of 16
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"Or/aniz*, cducat . Co-Opuet ." } Officii1/ Journal of the Farmers State Alliance of Texas. { "u^nr. jui¡n. equam,.-
VOL XII, HO. 6. |
DALLAS. TEXAS, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1893.
WHOLE HO. 677.
THE SEAL CAUSE.
A. o'LIARY, M. D.
In all the wide world is no oth-
er land so favored by nature as
ours—none Of as many fertile acres,
rich in all products of farm, and
field, and forest, and sea, and
shore, and all to ourselves, far
from any foe capable of working us
harm, or causing us any uneasi-
ness; the longest navigable rivers
to carry our commerce inland and
outland, and of seacoast with har-
bors opening to all the oceans; and
lakes of the purest waters, and
bays and sounds wide as the seas
known to the Flotillas of Rome
that sailed to the conquest of the
world, or to the Armada of Spain
when the nations trembled at its
thunders.
We have a climate mainly geni-
al and salubrious, embracing every
variety, irom the languid airs of
the tropic gulf to the eternal ice
and sn9ws of Alaska; limitl¿ss sup-
plies of forest products of every
kind, and ot minerals, and of met-
als—more than the gold of Ophir;
the diamonds of Golconda, and the
silver of Peru; coal, copper, iron
lead, zinc, tin, beyond anything
ever known elsewhere. Every-
thing that nature could give, ex-
cept the wit to manage well, she
gave us in lavish abundance, and
as if in dirisive sport to see what
waste we could work of it all.
Now, in less than six score years,
we have slaughtered nearly a mil-
lion of our bravest and best in use-
less, intercine, and unnecessary
wasteful war; broken millions of
hearts, and destroyed millions of
homes, and desolated millions of
lives, and expunged wealth to the
amount of billions, and allowed
ourselves to be tricked and cheat-
ed by foreigners out of billions
more, simply by being fools and
managing our affairs unwisely, as
we still continue to do, and are
likely to, until some greater ca-
lamity teach us greater wisdom.
Like him of old, we sold our
birthright for a mess of pottage,
squandered our patrimony, gave a
large part of our wide domain, and
all our best franchises, to greedy
cormorants, under the names of
corporations and syndicates, com-
posed mainly of aliens, whose in-
terest was not ours. They slashed
and culled our forests and left the
rest to the fires that consumed
¡,. vastly more than was used, until
fel now they are nearly gone, where-
as, had they been wisely econo-
mized, they would have supported
the expense of a prudent govern-
ment, and we would still have
enough to remote ages. Our dis-
posal of our minerals was still
more lavish and destructive. We
had not the wit to handle either to
advantage. How we could have
done more thriftlessly than we did,
it would difficult to point out; as
indeed it would in the management
of our affairs. Had we less with
which to start we would probably
have learned prudence.
We have made over a million of
tramps that, like the Son of Man,
nave not where to lay their heads;
and myriads crazy, whose poor
heads will rest nowhere till they
rest in the grave; and swarmB ot
convicts and criminals—more in
proportion than with any other
people in the world, civilized or
savage, and multitudes of suicides,
who find life not worth living and
destroy it; and a wide, wide waste
of wretchedness and woe in this
lovely land, that, if we were wise,
would be a paradise, for by nature
it teems with more than the milk
and honey and corn and wine of
the dreamers of old.
Immense numbers in our cities
are starving, dying, under the walls
of bursting granaries, that their
hands have filled, or depending on
soup houses that charity has es-
tablished to prevent their perish-
ing on the street. If we had jus-
tice, few would need alms. We
rob, and then return a sop, as ban
dits the emptied purse. We are
generous, but not juftt. We seek
to appease self-reproach by return
of a small part of the spoils, call-
ous to the fact that we cannot thus
right the wrong, as we have forced
our victims to a dependence for
which no return can compensate.
Why do not these poor of the
cities scatter to the country ? Yes,
to famish on the farms, as great
numbers there are famishing, and
in the woods, and mines, and be
Bhot down like dogs, as their kind
are; men, women, children, even
young girls, whose great crime is
the effort to shield their lovers, in
the coke regions of Pennsylvania
in the east and the catt.'e ranches
in the west, are driven out from
their little humble huts by the pit-
iless Pinkerton hired assassins,
who are always ready to murder
the poor for a price, at the beck
and bidding of our aristocratic
lords of the land, who have grown
bold and mighty under the aegis of
high tariff and gold standard. A
venal press, always in the service
of respectable wealth, sanctions
the shooting, without a solitary
protest, because the victims are
only "pauper laborers." In our
code no other crime is so odious
as that of being anxious to earn an
honest living by the sweat of the
brow. For this we call men hard
names—anarchists,soóialists,what-
ever else, and slaughter them and
theirs, and boast of it. No mercy
is shown to such, nor to their de-
fenders, in our wealthier circles of
society, nor in our courts of law,
nor by our mobs on the street,
especially if the skin of the victim
be darker than our own. For this
we shoot down the Chinese and the
rustlers in the west, the Africans
and Dagos in the south, and the
Huns, the Slavs, and the Goths in
the north, because they are guilty
of the great crime of toiling for
bread. But if they be wealthy
with spoils wrung from other
hands, no matter how, nor by what
villainy, we bend, and bow, and
scrape, with hand in hand,to these
"distinguished foreigners," and
ape their ways and manners, and
welcome ihem to our hearts and
homes, and feel greatly honored in
selling our daughters to titled, rot-
ton rakes, and libertines from
abroad, and hasten to lick the spit
tie of lords, and princes, and kings
without a question ot character.
Our plays, our romances, make
these the object of our idolatry,
our adoration—hankering for mas-
ters, like does.
Descended almost entirely from
a "foreign pauper labor" ancestry
who can blame us that now, when
rich, we despise and would fain
conceal the humble source from
which we sprang, lack dignity,and
inherit the instinct of truckling ?
We have more evictions from
mortgaged, lorfeited homes in
Kansas, with its fresh, fertile, vir-
gin soil than they have in Ireland,
that has more than three times as
many mouths to feed off less than
half as many acres, already ex-
hausted by ages of tillage; and
more in the Dakotas than in Den-
mark, Sweden and Norway com-
bined, with eight to one, and in
much the same proportion in oth-
er parts of the country, and in the
cities. Nor can tongue tell, nor
fancy conceive, the wretchedness
of our unhappy poor, the unre-
quited toilers, who lie awake at
night, sleepless to insanity, study-
ing how to keep the wolf from the
door, and the humble roof over
the heads of their beloved.
Admitted we have a large pro-
portion of the comfortable,content,
well to do, who have honestly ac-
quired a competence by thrift, self-
denial, temperance, prudence and
care, or by inheritance, or good
luck, or by rendering society an
equivalent in invention, skill, or
enius. Of course no complaint is
ue, nor need be made, but of the
crafty, selfish, unscrupulous para-
sites, who, without rendering any
such equivalent or earning, have
grabbed and gathered into their
own hard hands most of the wealth
of the land, that was produced by
the innocent toilers, and have piled
up colossal fortunes that dazzle the
world, and make even their pos-
sessors quite as miser-able, in care
and anxiety, as the poor victims of
the extortion. These foes of man-
kind are invariably endowed, to
an eminent degree, with the facul-
ty of making both themselves and
others unhappy.
In old times and other lands
such robbery was wrought by the
red hand of rapine and war. Not
so now; but by the equally effect
ive method of manipulating the
laws, and law makers, and execu-
tives. One of the most successful
testifies with a blush: "When 1
want a legislature I buy it." With
equal truth and force might he
haye said: "When I want voters I
buy them, a judge, a court, a jury,
the press, a congressman, even a
president of the United States, I
buy him, buy what I want." It
would not be difficult to name a
score, some of them foreigners,
who, when they see fit to combine,
can do and make of any material
they wish, any officer they wish,
even to the chief executive. It is
nauseating to hear the innocents
discuss the prospects of this candi-
date or that. The fact is, when
these decide what tool will serve
them best, they select and elect
him. Nor does it signify in the
name of which party. There is no
difference of principle between
them, democrat or republican. The
only point of struggle is the office
with its spoils. In all else they
are exactly alike, both in the east
favoring high tariff and gold stand-
ard, while their vassals of the west
are opposed to both, and the bal-
ance of power remains in the mid-
dle, to be moved and moulded as
the parasites wish. We hear no
fault found with the execute's
falsehood to humanity, however
direlect—only that he does not
distribute the spoils of office to the
satisfaction of his hungry parti-
sans. If we were wise he would
have no spoils to distribute, no ap-
pointments to make, but we would
elect all our officers, even to the
members of the cabinet, holding
them all responsible to the people
and not to him Nor should he
lave the power to veto, nor lord it
over the land.
When a rich rascal wants the po-
1 I
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Park, Milton. The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 12, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 9, 1893, newspaper, February 9, 1893; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185503/m1/1/: accessed May 14, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .