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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (April 27, 1899)
V I 1 * ' ix " "ftjjjj. . . t"i . . . . > . . - > . . V."t , .1 | , , f | < Cbe Conservative. schools ( some of them industrial ) and hospitals for the Indians , and upon a scale that more than favorably comparps with like institutions of today. In 16556 they pave the Indians of Mexico a news paper , 102 years before the whites of this country had one. Humboldt found the Indians of Mexico ice ( in 1824) ) a people on whom he lav ished no end of praise. Two hundred and fifty years ago a half-breed Indian engineer , with Indian workmen , compassed the herculean task of the Tajo of Nochestongo a ditch through earth and stone twelve miles long , 800 feet wide , at an average depth of 180 feet. Th last great tunnel and ditch dug for the drainage of the City of Mexico , and pronounced one of the greatest en gineering feats of this age , was con structed by Indian workmen under the guidance of a full-blooded Indian engi neer , and it was built without cas ualties. Juarez , that unswerving patriot-presi dent of Mexico , whom the United States so justly acknowledged , was a full-blooded Indian. The present president of Mexico ice , who has no superior either as sold ier or statesman , is part Indian. The Spaniards not only found the Indian could be educated , but also found his education a profitable investment , and , had that education been without church bigotry , Spain would have stood a right smart chance of ruling a large portion of this continent. In Mexico today every hamlet of 100 Indians has a school house and religions teaching forbidden in all schools. The progress of the Mexican nation in the last twenty years is the greatest marvel of this progres sive age , and President Diaz's name will appear upon history's page as one of the world's greatest benefactors. There is no stronger proof of our de generacy than the fact that we have a minister of the gospel who excuses slav ery , and writes such lame excuses as this : "It is only common justice , how ever , to remember two things : the first is that the bondage in which he was held in America was at its worst beyond comparison better than that from which he was fetched in Africa. " "Whose word has this divine for this "worst" state of the African before the white man's whiskey and the slave-hunter gel among them ? How about the thous ands of slaves born in this country ? Many of them so white they could not be distinguished from their masters. Has he no words of condemnation for the white men who dealt in their own flesh and blood , and reaped greater profits because the subject of the sale was to gratify the worst passions' other white men ? He says : "The real question is , has the United States done what it might for the negro since it became alive to the wrong and folly of slavery ? To ; his I reply that so far from having any- liing to shame us in our record we have done for that people beyond estimate more than any other nation under Eleaven would have done or has ever done. * * * * * * And what is more the negroes generally recognize this fact , and are grateful for it. " Upon the surrender of the Confeder ates we extended to them a magnani mity that surprised the world , yet those rebels returned home and placed upon the statute books of every state , except Tennessee , laws that would have made a barbarian of the dark ages blush , thousands of white and black Union men were murdered , and the white men of the North did nothing but go down there and fasten a debt of $291,000,000 upon the states , "provisional govern ment expenses , " such as the politicians will fasten upon those islands we have captured. If you claim this was just after the heat and bitterness of war , we'll take the record from 1885. Twenty years ought to have cooled the rebels off , especially as they now had full swing in congress and the North was still showering them with olive branches. Since 1885 [ over a thousand negroes have been shot , hanged and burned at the stake in the South , and so openly , brutishly , and defiantly , that in many instances the photographer was called to take the crowd while at the job and in the crowd were white mothers holding up their little children to see the ghastly sight. Through the newspapers of the South many have been led to believe this punishment was dealt out to negroes who ravished women , but only 311 were charged with this crime , and not one of these proven. George Cable's testimony in regard to the convict system of the South ( given before the prison congress of Kentucky ) demonstrates that this lynch ing business is far the most merciful of the two. "Colored men and women sentenced from two to ten years for an ordinary fist-cuffing ; 1,200 convicts in Georgia prisons , had for simple stealing , without breaking and violence , been virtually condemned to be worked to death. " Cable declares : "It is useless to sentence a prisoner for over ten years to any of these Southern prisons as the records show that ten years is the aver age length of life in these prisons. " If , as McConnell says , "the negroes are grateful for this treatment what musl have been their life in slavery , and thai back in Africa , from which the slave- hunter so kindly released them ? " Isn't it a little singular that a people of whom the brilliant Brady of The Atlanta Constitution said : "The most remarkable people on earth , when then ? masters went out to fight a war for their continued enslavement the master's all was left in the negro's charge , and we have yet to hear of a single instance where the negro betrayed that trust , " should become , so suddenly , criminally vicious ? "Thousands of white women , without white male protection , left in the negro's care for years , and not one of them as saulted , but now the negro voter pans out a terrible brute ( ? ) " But God's law of equity doe's not al- .ow the white man to perpetrate all ihis injustice without injury to himself. From 1886 to 1895 there wore 48,834 mur ders and 1,655 lynchings in the United States. Murders increased from four a day in 1886 to twenty-seven per day in 1897 , and last year promises an average of over thirty per day. Although there were 14,527 murders and lynchings from 1885 to 1890 the census-takers found but 7,386 persons confined in all our peni tentiaries , county jails , reformatories and asylums who were charged with homicide and murder. In the five years there had been 449 executions , but these no doubt , are offset by those serving long terms for murders committed prior to 1885. Connected with each of the 702 lynchiugs there were all the way from , five to twenty persons. All of which demonstrated that paying premiums for treason is likely to be followed by again paying premiums for murders. If there is nothing wrong in our mode of govern ing , why all this crime and blood ? How is it Canada has had but one lynch ing and her murders so few , while we today stand charged with being the worst nation on earth for murders ? If we are not , as McConnell says , "without shame" we will have to ac knowledge our hands are not clean. GEORGE E. SMITH. Racine , Wis. , April 11 , 1899. Vest , Cockrell , PROMOTKRS Bailey and other OF WAR. free silver states men boasted a few months ago of then ? ability as promoters of the Spanish- American war. In the senate and in the house they vaunted their prowess as stimulators of hostilities and accelerators of battles between the armies of Spain and the United States. They even claimed the honor and foresight of hav ing brought on the conflict and de nounced Grosvenor of Ohio for assum ing it to be a party war a republican party war. With such jingo antecedents what right have Vest , Bailey , Bryan & Co. to bemoan consequences , to criticise con duct , or to object to being held equally responsible with McKiuley , Hanna , El- kins , Quay & Co. ? The free silverites , the Chicago plat form prophets precipitated the war. They led as drum majors the forces of imperialism annexation , expansion and corruption 1 The "benevolent assimilation" of the money of a bank by its cashier some times results in imprisonment and some times in suicide.