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About The independent. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907 | View Entire Issue (June 4, 1903)
JUNE 4 , 1903. THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT Independent School of Political Economy History Precious Metals, $3; Hist. Monn. i.2 Hist. Monetary Crimes, 75c ; Science of Money, $1 Hist Money in America, I1.50; Hist. Money China, 50c; Hist Money Netherlands, 50c. CAM BRIDGE PRESS, Box 160, M. S, New York. FROM EARTH'S CENTER. Through the kindness of A. Free land, Mt. Pleasant, Tenn., The Direc tor has received 8 copies of "From Earth's Center," by S. Byron Wel come (published in 1895 by Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago). This is, said the Boston Herald review, an interesting romance that will be read oy millions who find Progress and Poverty too abstruse, and will inter est students who wish to trace the effects of the single tax reform on so cial institutions of all kinds." Henry George said: "I most heart ily commend From Earth's Center. It contains in entertaining form an -explanation of the practical workings of the single .tax, and is on masy other matters of social concern suggestive to a high degree." Mr. Freeland says: "It is a goo 3 work for beginners, young and -old. Then Social Problems, etc., Progress snd Poverty, joid Mind up with The Story of My Dictatorship." From Earth's Center is a paper cov ered book of 274 pages. Postage will Be about 5 ents. The eight copies are . "free books." . Borrowers will pay postage on to the next Ask for the book. WANTS CORRESPONDENTS. Director I. S. P. E.: Your favor t recent date at hand. While I am ever Teady to forward a book to the nexi reader, yet the holding for a few flays of Ely's Outlines of Political Econ omy will enable me io review It; which will be to my profit I am very glad to get the chance to read sucn fcooks as are standard authority on the subject of social economics. I wish to express to The Indepen dent my sincere thanks for the chanc? not only to read such fcooks as are within the pale of truth, but are a clear exposition of the subject under discussion. Today , we are suffering more from our own carelessness than ' .from anything else. I firmly believe in .the people. I believe their cause 1 is 3ust. I believe if they will educat? themselves and become familiar with economics, that they, the people, will solve many of the problems that are worrying the foremost thinkers. - If those who are loyal to liberty are to "have a rallying ground, it must be that which gives to the constitutional rights of the citizen a democratic In terpretation. It is the contempt fo human rights that leads to political rapine and which clouds progress with the crimes of the politician. You may seed me "The Science of Money," by Alexander Del Mar, and oblige. If there are any of the readers of The Independent who wish to corre spond on any of the subjects that in terests them, that is, any economb question, which deals not so much with reform as with scientific prog ress tell them to write vne and we will try and make the subject inter esting. PERRY D. PLAIN. . Atwater, 111. THE LAND QUESTION. Director I. S. P. E.: Have forward ed book No. 104 to Mr. P. A. Booker, Liberty, Tex. The reading of "The L,and Ques tion" has given me an insight to the ownership of land which I did not se heretofore. This work should be read ij every member of The Independent School of Political Economy. As this Is the busy season on the farm my time for reading is some what limited, but as soon as the busy season is over I expect to take ad rantage of your liberal offers. You will please send me Henry George 3 "Protection or Free Trader C. E. DOTY. Nehawka, Neb. R.F.D.12. LOCAL TAXATION. Director I. S. P. E.: I send you under another covey, as a donation to your library, a copy of "Burdens of Local Taxation and Who Bears Them, by Mr. Lawson Purdy, secre tary of the New York tax Teform asso ciation. This pamphlet is neither a plea nor a denunciation of any system of taxation, but a clear statement hi concise form, as is expressed in the title, of the distribution of the var ious kinds of local taxes to the final payer. I do not know of any othsr book dealing with this subject, at least in such compact form, and T think it will be of value to those of your readers who "are taking up the study of taxation. You will see at the end of the book that noted economists are agreed that the conclusions ar rived at in the book are accurate. BOLTON HALL. 52 William st, Hew York, , N. Y. LITERARY NOTE. Prof. Josiah Royce's Outlines of Psychology: an Elementary Treatiss with some Practical Applications, will be published on the 10th of June by The Macmillan Co. In this volume the author is concerned solely with certain problems of the natural his tory of mind; metaphysical Issues are not at all in question. The author's plan has led him to concern himself with elementary principles rather than with technical details, and to attempt practical applications of thess principles rather than statements of the fascinating but complex special researches of recent laboratory psych ology. "I presuppose, then, a serious reader," says Professor Royce in hh preface, "but not one trained eithor in experimental methods or in phil osophical inquiries. I try. to tell hln a few things that seem to me im portant, regarding the most funda mental and general processes, laws, and conditions of mental life. 1 say nothing whatever about the philos ophical problem of the relations vt mind and body, and nothing about the true place of mind in the uni verse. Meanwhile, 1 try to view the matter here in question In a perspec tive which is of my own choosing.' Tb3 American 'The American farmer," said T)r. F. Englehard, of Surprise, Neb., Is the rock upon which both socialism and. the single tax will split and go to pieces." Whether the doctor's forecast is cor rect, only time can tell; but it is evi dent that at present the American farmer is an important factor, and any calculations which ignore him are liable to bring an erroneous an swer. "The American Farmer" is the title of a book written by A. M. Simons, editor of the International Socialist Review, Chicago, and published by Charles H. Kerr & Co., 56 Fifth ave., Chicago, (cloth, 208 pp., 50cL Populists and others who have tried to keep in touch with socialist litera ture, and ieep informed on the sub ject of scientific socialism, have not failed to notice -how utterly inade quate is all foreign writing whenever the field of agriculture is reached. As applied to manufacturing and trans portation one can see marked similar ities between foreign conditions and those in America; but in agriculture, none of these foreign writers seem to even faintly understand American conditions. There is a wide field for such a work as Mr. Simons has entered. We may not agree with all his conclusions, but cannot fail to appreciate how faithful ly he has given the facts. He remarks in the preface that "Anyone entering upon a new field of social thought is always" more lia ble to error than he who follows the beaten path. There is scarcely a page in this book on which It was not nec essary to draw conclusions or maka decisions on points not previously dis cussed m theoretical works." And he finds the field so large that he was obliged to write either a monograph upon a -narrow phase of the subject or sketch the outlines of the entire field of ' thought He chose the latter. 'The American Farmer4' is divided into three books: Historical; agricul tural economics; and the coming change. Under the historical head, Mr. Sim ons subdivides the United States intq six groups: The New England States, The South, The Middle West, The Great Plains, The Far West, and The Arid Belt, and treats each separately. Introducing him, Mr. Simons says, "The American farmer is a distinct and peculiar social factor, No other age has anything comparable to him. No other nation has his counterpart His problems, his history and his fu ture evolution present complications and relations unknown elsewhere." The New England States, Mr. Sim ons finds, began as a theological au tocracy, with the village as the social unit, comparable to the time of Tac itus and the isolated German com munistic settlements known as the Mark (from which comes our modern word "market").. The so-called "dem ocracy" of the "town meetings" was rather a property-holding theocracy of the most exclusive character. Strangers could enter , a community with difficulty and were always sub ject to expulsion if they dared to ques tion the opinion of the ruling class. Non-property holders were treated practically as chattel slaves through "indenture" devices. The South, by the days of the rev olution, had a different social organi sation. There the farm was the so cial unit; the government, a patri archal despotism tlfe plantation master ruling a self-supporting com munity. Not more than 5 per cent held negro slaves, and the interstices in southern economy were filled up with "poor whites" who were crowded back Into the inaccessible mountain districts, compelled to be self-supporting, trading little, and changing little till in very recent years. The Middle v'est was peopled by pioneers who were driven out of New England as the great landed proprie tors gobbled up the common land of the villages, breaking down New Eng land feudalism and emerging into ca pitalism, with manufacturing domi nant These pioneers conquered the wilderness and their life gave , the fullest opportunity for the develop ment of individuality, with the closest dependence upon the social unit the neighborhood or community who joined in "raisings, husking bets, log-rollings, "frolics," etc. The Great Plains have a very dif ferent history. Railroads preceded the settler to a great extent There were few pioneers and few pioneer hardships. In no part of the United States was the settler, from the start, so dependent upon others. He pro duced for sale; sold; .and bought to supply his wants. (One thing that astonished me when I came to Ne braska in 1S84 was to see a farmer haul a load of iogs to town -and re turn with a side of bacon! ) "Instead of splitting rails," says Mr. Simons, "and laying a Virginia rail fence from materials ready to his hand, he was forced . to patronize the barbed-wire trust." "Instead of towns arising as trade routes ; developed, the trade routes, in the form of railroads, came first and their owners arbitrarily de cided where the centers of population should be located." Yet withal the wonderfully fertile soil, the farmer on the Great Plains "found hfmself helpless In the face of the most gi gantic financial and corporate forces the world has ever known." The Far West has already passed through three sharply defined eras (1) That of Indian domination down to April 11, 1769, when began (2. Spanish domination at San Diego lasting 53 years, or to April 9, 1822, when (3) Mexican pastoral life began with the Independence of Mexico; then (4) the American commercial era began, July 7, 1846, and now con tinues. Here almost alone can we find evidences of the permanent suc cess of what Is known as bonanza farming. The history of the Arid Belt, Mr. Simons believes, "is filled with more tragedy, andN its future is pregnant with greater, promise than perhaps any other equal expanse of territory within the confines of the Western Hemisphere." - "For many years," he continues, "It was marked upon the maps as a great white blank indicating an unhospit able desert. Finally as the territory bordering upon it became more thick ly settled and the pressure for land became ever fiercer, the line of settle ments encroached more and more up on this stretch of apparently worth less soil. Following the times of oc casionally rainy seasons, this line of social advance Tose and fell with rain and drouth, like a mighty tide beat ing against a tremendous wall of the Rockies, And every such wave left behind it a mass of human wreckage in the shape of broken fortunes, de serted farms and ruined homes." Lack of space this time prevents a fuller presentation of the second book. Mr. Simons finds that "one industry after another has left the farm and fied to the great city factory. Cob bling, spinning"; weaving, dyeing, knitting, sewing have already gone and butter and rheese making with a host of other processes ,of farm work are developing into separate indus tries and joining the great procession toward industrial centers. On the other hand, what work is left the farmer is done by compli cated machinery and he Is obliged to learn a multitude of trades almost as diverse as he formerly pursued, each one growing more and more complex. But in marketing his crops he is at greatest disadvantage, having prac tically no knowledge as to best meth ods and being wholly at the mercy of others something he must master if he is to exist in the competitive system. Mr. Simons, arguing rightly that "railroads and steamships, with ele vators, cold storage and packing houses are as much a part of the necessary equipment for agricultural production as wagons, teams, granar ies and barns," regards the farmer in the light of a wage-worker, because his income is more nearly compar able to that of the wage-worker." In other words, allow the average farm er wages out of his income and there Is nothing left for interest on capital invested. Hence, he argues that the G TRUSTS GO I GUT OF BUSINESS That is a head-line yon don't see in the news columns of this paper. The trusts are not breaking up into the smaller concerns that were merged into them. The trusts are the greatest labor-saving' invention yet made, and they .will stay till they can be replaced by something better. There Is only one trouble with the trusts. They enable men to pro duce more wealth with less waste of energy than was ever possible before but they take most of the wealth away from those who do the work and give it to those who do the own ing of stocks and bonds. Suppose that we who work for a living should decide to do the own ing ourselves, and to run, the trusts for the benefit of all. That would be SOCIALISM. If yon want to know abont it, send for a free booklet entitled "What to Read on Socialism." Address CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 56 FIFTH AVE., CHICAGO interests of farmer and wage-worker are identical and that the -"farmer must enter the political battle from the point of view of jthe laborer, not of the capitalist" a point which pop ulists will not dispute. Some of Mr. Simons' criticisms ot the populists will not be commented on at this time for lack of space, but will be taken up later. Ills book merits a careful reading by populists, nevertheless, if they are a keep abreast of modern , thought And if the co-operative commonwealth per chance should come via the govern ment ownership or "state capitalism" route, Mr. Simons may thank the populists more than all others tor the propaganda work they have done in that "behalf. CHARLES Q. DE FRANCE. Grover Trust Busier Editor Independent: Your kind favor of the -8th inst. to hand yes terday, read and contents noted. I was proud of the six months' exten slon, as I was being anxious to keep posted with some of the discussions that are published in your noble pa per and to read the sledge hamme' blows, you are giving the money gods. Of all trusts and corners tha money corner is the worst; the com mon herd feels it the most and they are the class that is hurt by It. I will distribute your samples you sent me and do all I can for your grand paper, although I am confined to home with old age and bad health. I believe old Grover will be the next nominee of the so-called demo cratic party, and I hope so; he is a trust buster; he came very near bust ing it into smithereensx-once before and I think he would finish it this time. The two old parties are like Jacob's catUe, ring streaked and yel low;" they are a kind of mongrel, mon key, ape and baboon; they have lost, all of the stripes of Jefferson. Jackson and Lincoln and it makes me sick to hear one of the so-called democrats say, "I am a Jeifersonlan democrat" or "a Lincoln republican." The lead ers of both old parties are rotten to the core and won't do to trust I want the pops to put out a good clean national ticket. Success is my wish to you. J. W. RUTHERFORD. Hayes, Tex. A Fine Half Section Farm For Said This Is located seven and one-half miles from Hastings, in Adams coun ty, Neb. This is a fine stock and grain farm, all cultivated but 100 acres, has fair improvements in good condition, fine grove, orchard and many advantages and if sold soon will be bought at a bargain. Write us for description of this and other farms and ranches. . Cornelius & Brown, Hastings, Neb. Do you need groceries? Write for one of Branch & Miller Co.'s com bination orders advertised in this ?a sue. It's a money saver. The Inde pendent guarantees satisfaction. Hun dreds of our readers have found them so. ' w f
