The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 5, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 30, 1896 Page: 1 of 16
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!
VOL. XV., NO. 5.
DALLAS, TEXAS, THURSDAY, JAN. 30. 1806.
*1 PER ANNUlkí
BARNEY'S BUGLE BLAST.
HOT SHOT HEAVED INTO THE HUNGRY
HOARD, WHO HOWL HARMONY AND
HOLD UP THE PEOPLE.
Be Punctures the Cuticle o( the Old Party
Pie Eaters With His Free Lance, and
Hubs Salt and Capsicum Into ■ heir
Gaping; Wounds.
Hon. Barnett Gibbs writes to the
Dallas News, of Jan. 26, as follows:
"I see the governor of New Jersey
shows by actual figures that a rail-
road can be built for $1000 per mile
less than the turnpike roads being
built by that state. He shows con-
clusively that a railroad can be built,
ironed and tied for $6000 per mile.
The state of Texas can build such
road from the gulf to Red river at
$4000 or $5000 per mile or canalize the
Trinity at one-third less cost per
mile. To do this it need not involve
any of the taxpayers' money, as what-
ever was not done by convict labor
fed from state farms could be done
by money borrowed on the work and
paid from its earnings. The produc-
ers in the interior will never get to
the tramp ships of the high seas on a
low rate of freight, commission or no
commission, until the state of Texas
has something besides artificial or
quasi control of the freight situation.
With ownership of a railroad or a
canal as a basis of freight rates to
the gulf, there could be effective reg-
ulation or a reasonhble rate without
any regulation from all parts of athe
state to the gulf. The annual saving
in freight would be larger than the
cost of construction, and we could
get to the highway of commerce with
natural products and manufactured
products at a cost that would enable
us to compete with other states. The
railroads now carry corn from Kansas
to Galveston at 15 cents per 100 pounds
and they charge us 17i cents per 100
for one-third the haul. Texas will
never get in under the 'favored na-
tion' clause of commerce until she
favors herself some, and if a railroad
commission helps the agricultural and
commercial interests of Texas much
it will be when it has some other in-
strument of tortue than its tongue
and an army of clerks with railroad
passes. When people to the north of
us can get their stuff hauled 1000
miles for less than we can get it haul-
ed 300 miles.to our own coast, some-
thing is wrong. Is it because we are
democrats? If-so, we are paying like
smoke for our politics. Is it because
we are fools? If so, we are paying
like the devil for our foolishness.
"I suppose some of the pap suckers
who are reading me out of the demo-
cratic party and over into the popu-
list party will say I am to blame for
this condition of things so onerous to
the people of Texas. They won't
deny the facts, for hundreds of ship-
pers will testify to them. Personal
abuse of me don't make political con-
ditions one iota less onerous. If the
fiery-tongued pie-eaters and editors
have any statesmanship in stock let
them suggest some relief instead of
trying to bulldoze or ridicule every
man who is not willing to abide by
the donothing policy of the powers
that be.
"So far as the official fee system is
If a man in the next world is damned
for what he has 'left undone as well
as for what he has done,' why not po-
litical leaders who agree in return
for large slices of public pie to study
public interests and formulate
healthy legislation?
"I feel I have already done my
country good service by-giving some
congressmen a chance in attacking
me to let the people know they still
live. They seem to be under the im-
pression that they are paid $8000 per
annum in per diem, mileage and per-
quisites to scare every man to politi-
cal death who don't swear that every-
thing they do is great.
HON. BARNETT GIBBS.
concerned, the question at issue is
not whether an officer under it gets
too much or too little, but can a «gov-
ernment permit a fee system to exist
with no maximum limit without en-
couraging a piratical exercise of
power and a speculative investment
in office seeking? It is no answer to
issues that demand settlement to say
that I am after office or have quit the
democratic party. These things
worry me but little, and the great
masses of the people less. Whenever
thyarty machinery don't do the
bew work for the least money it is
worthless except for old political iron.
"The Austin syndicate will be so
busy from this time on holding on to
their own crowns that they will have
no time to annoint their successors in
perpetuity. If our democratic con-
gressmen are only boys paid to mind
gaps in the fence,and club any politi-
cal sheep that tries to get out, they
seem disposed to earn their salaries
by clubbing a sheep that even looks
at a gap. When they wake up next
time they will find the democratic
sheep have quit the dead grass pas-
ture and gone where the grass is not
so stale.
"They make an own roost out of the
old democratic tree and then shed
crocodile tears over any person who
won't sit under the tree and look up
with open mouth and reverential
eyes¡ They take all the tariff off of
wool, hides and lumber, and leave 50
per cent on shoes, wool hats and fur-
niture, and then point to their impov-
erished people and say: "Look what
fine control we have got of our fool
constituents, if they squeal we will
read them out of the party, or scare
them to death with republicans and
niggers, or call them populists! We
keep newspapers paid with public
printing, promises and postofflces to
lambast any of them that kick.' I
may be a back number, but I know
peanut politics from statesmanship,
and know when the free exercise of
political judgment stops, political
slavery begins with a train of evils.
"These sharp-tongued critics of pri-
vate citizens will find that even those
men who had their democracy shot
into them during the war, have had it
starved out of them under a Dolly
Varden, do-nothing policy of states-
men, who think their only duty is to
provide offices for their friends and
the organizers of the common people
into blocks of five for voting purposes.
The agricultural, commercial and
manufacturing interests of their own
people don't seem to occupy their
thoughts any more than the burning
of Rome did those of Nero when he
fiddled. They show the energy of a
mountain goat, and the venom of a
snat.- full of poison, if i any one (no
matter how faithful a voter of the
ticket) objects to the extravagant
selfishness of a government that so
richly provides for the few at the ex-
líense of the many who only ask fair
treatment. If we have war, we will
only have the undaunted valor of our
people to depend upon, as the official
class are now borrowing money from
England to pay extravagant pensions
and salaries, and to maintain an army
of private secretaries, porters and
special commissions and even a $100,-
000,000 commission to determine
whether we shall get mad enough to
fight. If multiplying offices, increas-
ing salaries and raising taxes and
farming out powers of government to
corporations is democracy, then I
have been on the wrong track all my
life. I am like Col. Bill Fitzhugh
during the war. He sat by the camp
fire sometime in deep meditation and
listened to the terrible snoring of a
soldier on the other side of the fire;
he turned to the surgeon of the regi-
ment sitting by his side and said:
"Doctor, by God, if that man is get-
ting his breath right, I have been
getting mine wrong all my born days!'
It is not paternal to shovel out public
money by the billion to the official
Continued on page 8.
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Park, Milton. The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 5, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 30, 1896, newspaper, January 30, 1896; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185644/m1/1/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .