Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 1898)
VOL. i. NEBRASKA CITY , NEB. , THURSDAY , SEPTEMBER 8 , 1898. NO. 9. FUllIilSIIED WEEKLY. OFFICES : OVERLAND THEATRE BLOCK. J. STERLING MORTON , EDITOU. A .TOUHNAL .DEVOTED TO THE DISCUSSION OF POLITICAL , ECONOMIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. One dollar and a half per year , in advance , postpaid , to any part of the United States or Canada. Remittances made payable to The Morton Printing Company. Address , THE CONSERVATIVE , Nebraska City , Neb. Advertising Rates made known upon appli cation. Entered at the postofllco at Nebraska City , Neb. , as Second Class matter , July 29th , 1808. BECAUSE THE The demagogy GOVERNMENT of communistic GAVE THEM speakers and the LAND. strategy of the social culprits -who promote and organ ize discontent among the citizens 'of the United States have for many years been making assaults upon the railroads of this country. Railroad companies , rail road managers and railroad properties have been the especial objects of the hatred of both domestic and imported communists. Herr Most and Mr. Debs never omitted any word of denunciation which their vicious vocabularies con tained when they indulged in oratorical pyrotechnics. Nearly all the flap-doodle- ism , and flabbergast of thorn-crowns and crucifixions on golden crosses for bleeding labor , have been evolved from meditations upon the crimes of capital embodied in railroads. And in attempts to stir up wrath for the stockholders and bondholders of railroads , a very large per cent of whom are estates , trustees of widows and or phans , and trust companies the fact that the government donated lands to railroad companies is always made prom inent as a reason why the government may , can or must regulate rates on these railroads. Because these companies were given lauds provided they would con struct certain lines of road , the govern ment has the right saith Debs and Most to fix the prices of the services which these roads render to the people. Laud grants to roads make the ser vices of those roads forever subject to enacted prices , regulated rates , by the government ! Homesteads are granted to settlers if they will locate upon raw lands and nako them into farms and homes. And f giving lands to secure railroads makes he power of the government to fix rates , vhy does not giving lands to secure 'arms leave inherent in the government ; he right to establish prices for all the products of those donated domains ? low would a law limiting the price of lornestead-grown wheat and corn suit lie proprietors of such donated farms ? if the railroads must bo regulated be- ; ause the government gave them lands why should not homesteaders , by a parity of reasoning , likewise bo limited jy legislation , as to prices of all the products of the lands given to them by ; ho general government ? populists HATE IT.au ( * ° " e r C ° m BUT GET IT. munists teach hat red of wealth as a cardinal virtue. To acquire , to accumulate and conserve capital is an atrocity. It is plutocracy plundering the poor , whenever a citizen reates , by indiistoy , sobriety , good management and self-denial , enough capital to hire mind and muscle to work for him. Then it is that he becomes a target and is denounced as a tyrant. Then it is that he is lashed by the tongues of those fervid lovers of "the plain people" who prance up and down the country proclaiming the greed and wickedness of the capitalistic classes , and ' are also collecting money from wage-earners with which to pay them selves for malting an economic disturb ance. They hate money , but get it by any and every device except that of honest efforts to earn money. Each one of them denounces capital and capi talists , and each one of them is ambitious to get capital and become a capitalist. They tell how hard the times are , and how close money is , and brag of getting five hundred dollars for a single speech full of froth and fallacy. They talk of the limited libraries for plain people and boast of sales , amount ing to hundreds of thousands of dollars , for books like Coin Harvey's School for Idiots , or that bigger volume of bigger bosh "The First Battle. " They de nounce monopoly and then seek the monopoly of the gullibility of all the emotional , ignorant people in the coun try for the purpose of doing them out of their ballots and their dollars. / Recall the waipaign of 1896 ! Re read the prophecies of Bryan and the other calamity forecasters as to the evils .which . the defeat of 16 to 1 and its ticket anjl the Success of the gold standard w/jhild / inexorably precipitate upon the A'jfuerican people. pkl they not tell you that wheat prices and silver prices were iiidissolubly and forever married and that no power on earth could ever divorce these commer cial affinities ? Did they not even de clare 16 to 1 a God-instituted ratio and did not Senator Monologue Morgan of Alabama preach to the senate by the day upon the heavenly origin of the sacred 16 to 1 ratio and dogma ? And what financial prediction among them 'all has been verified ? What prophecy of evil to agriculture , com merce and manufacture made by those oracles remains unimpeached ? _ Sparkling oratory , pleasing metaphor \ and even skillful elocution are as delic ious as soft , soda-pop , fizzing drinks at drug-stores in summer. But the intel lect starves without some logic and the soul sickens without some truth just as the body would on no other sustenance / than soft summer drinks. ' - That populist exhorters and commuii- ' istic declaimers all aver their hatred of thrift and its accumulations everybody knows. And everybody but their im mediate dupes sees and understands that by mere words those exhorters and de claimers would get money which suc cessful men get by work and retain for use as capital by good judgment , self- denial and careful management. To hate people who have earned and saved a competence ; to array all the thriftless against the thrifty ; to stir up discontent and make antagonisms in the social and industrial life of the United States ; and at the same time to gain for themselves political prominence and a pecuniary competence is the object and aim of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the blatant advocates of populism , which is communisn only thinly dis guised. The conglomerate REAFFIRMED FALLACIES. ate political con ventions of the summer of 1898 take great pains to ex plicitly reaffirm their faith in all the money fallacies advanced by the St. Louis convention of populists and the Chicago convention of alleged democrats in 1896. Those two bodies agreed that year upon the sixteen-to-oneness of sil ver and upon the dangerous diabolism of the satanic gold standard. The only difference between the Chicago conven tion and the St. Louis convention was
