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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (July 27, 1899)
Conservative. 3 On Friday , July AT HUMl'HRKY. , - , , , , 15 , at Humphrey a large and enthusiastic mooting of citi zens listened to Allen , Bryan and W. H. Thompson , the pocket giant of Grand Island. The latter in a peroration of great rovorboratory power , tremendous resonance and completely innocent of definition , directness or thought , sub limely screeched : "Awake , freedom calls ! The foe of organized wealth must never slumber ; it recks not how o'er pleasant may seem the day or happy the hour. If you have sorrows , go bury them ; they will keep until another day. If you have strifes and contentions , forget them now ; think of the cause and not personal prefer ment. You'll have all the strife and contention you can cope with furnished you free by another party fighting under another banner and for another cause. Organize ; organize from the state house to the school house , and be friends while you organize. United we will win , di vided the victory will perch on the ban ner of another. " If the somnolent "foe of organized wealth" fails to awake after Mi * . Thompson's sonorous call the bird of freedom is moribund poultry. If insomnia does not torture "the foe of organized wealth , " from this time on , no matter how "pleasant may seem , the day or happy the hour" THE CONSERVA TIVE is no forecaster of mental and polit ical perturbations. People who had sorrows rows when that speech of Thompson's began buried them , to "keep until an other day , " when Thompson finished Such an appeal was as irresistible as the shock of an earthquake or the career of a cyclone. Everybody present organ ized. The benches and chairs organized Allen "organized. " The plaudits of the listening thousands organized into one grand magnificent peau of praise foi "the little giant" who could thus charm an audience with the symphonies of a vocabulary entirely devoted to the uon conveyance of logic or common sense. Mr. Thompson's concluding sentence is so masterly , so entirely original that THE CONSERVATIVE cannot refrain from , its repetition : ' 'United we will win , di vided the victory will perch on the ban uer of another 1" Win what ? What is the "victory ? " A bird , a turkey , a goose , or as anEug lish cockney would say is it a "awk , ' "aheagle" or "a howl ? " And wha sort of a perch or roosting place can be found on a banner anyway ? Mr. Thompson evidently eclipsed ex Senator Allen and even somewha dimmed Mr. Bryan in the firmament o shooting-star oratory. At Humphrey , as elsewhere , the prin cipal speakers were not for any particu larprinciple. They Co-oporatloii. , , . , , each and all advo cated the cooperation of politicians with out principles , and condemned the coop ration of citizens with capital. Upon .he . beauties of political pooling and the Hicacy of cooperation as a moans of ornering votes and getting offices Mr. Bryan proudly and with great candor as o the chief end of political life , from lis standpoint , said : "It was cooperation between the re- 'oriu ' forces that elected Holcomb and eelocted Holcomb governor of this state , and I am very proud of the hum ble part I took in the election of Gov ernor Holcomb ; it was cooperation that enabled us to elect the entire state ticket , and if it had not boon for cooper ation we would not find out until now ; hat we wore short one-half million dollars lars in the state treasury. It was coop eration that enabled us to elect a su preme judge of this state , your distiu- uished citizen of this county Judge Sullivan. " Cooperation too between ballot-box stuffers at the state house as recently proved by investigation attempted a stupendous fraud upon the taxpayers of this commonwealth. Populism , fusion , tried to burglarize liberty itself and to perpetrate grand larceny upon the fran chises of the people. This incestuous cooperation by the officials of fusion in tended a robbery of ballots far worse than the stealing of mere dollars. The plain people , massed and incar nated in Holcomb , the lender of money on chattel mortgages embracing "the speckled cow" and the "boar black pig , " achieved a victory. This blessing-bear ing cooperation between populists who have solemnly declared for irredeemable paper money as a principle on the one hand , and the free and unlimited coin age of silver followers of the Chicago platform who have declared as a princi ple the ratio of 16-to-l on the other , has given the world of executive life Hol comb and the judiciary Sullivan 1 Could more be asked ? Are the plain people voracious for further fruits of coopera tion ? The speakers at Humphrey agreed per fectly. Each denounced a combine of capital for gainful A Trust. * _ , p u r p o ses. Each eulogized a combine of ballots , regardless of the principles and policies of those who are to cast them , for political pur poses , for their own personal preferment. To combine to get offices is a righteous proceeding and a beneficent trust. To combine to get enough money to build and operate -great industrial es tablishment , a bank , or a railroad is devilish and malevolent. THIS GKKAT AMERICAN UJESKRT. Speaking of the tract afterwards known by this name , Captain Zebulon M. Pike , writing in 1807 , expresses the results of his observations as follows : "A barren soil , parched and dried up for eight months in the year , presents neither moisture nor nutriment suf ficient for the growth of wood. These vast plains of the Western Hemisphere may become in time equally celebrated with the sandy deserts of Africa , for I saw in niy route , in various places , tracts of many leagues whore the wind had thrown up the sand , in all the fan ciful forms of the ocean's rolling waves , and on which not a speck of vegetation existed. But from these immense prai ries may arise one great advantage to the United States , viz. , the restriction of our population to some certain limits , and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling , and extending themselves on the froii- iers , will , through necessity , be con strained to limit their extent on the west to the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi , while they leave the prai ries , incapable of cultivation , to the .vauderiug . and uncivilized Aborigines of the country. " This is not only curious reading to an inhabitant of the territory in question , but it illustrates the fact , to whic-h THE CONSERVATIVE lately called attention , that "Pathfinder" Fremont was neither the discoverer of that territory nor the first to apply to it the distinctive appel lation of desert. In fact , Captain Pike was in a soldier's grave before Fremont was born. OBITUARY. Robert G. Inger- sell , the leading agnostic and popular orator , died at Dobbs Ferry , New York , on Friday , July 31 , 1899. THE CONSERVATIVE had known Colonel Ingersoll for many years and in social life always found him a most interesting and instructive com panion. He held the honorable offices of husband and father in the highest esteem and discharged with faultless fidelity all the sacred and loving duties which they imposed. His domestic life was all that could be attained of happi ness in this world. A dollar never DOLLARS. saw the day when it would buy more food , clothing , trans portation and other necessaries of life than now. On the other hand , a dollar never saw the day when it could earn less than now. Hartford Couranfc. A dollar uever saw anything. It pos sesses none of the senses. It is an assas sin in the hands of a mean man , an an gel of mercy in the hands of a noble soul. It is a token , whose respectabil ity is determined by the man who owns it. New Haven Register. And THE CONSERVATIVE adds that where the man owns and controls the dollars there is no danger either to the man or the community in which he lives. But whore the dollars own and control the man trouble may be ex pected. Reasoning from introspection nearly all Bryanarchists affirm that largo fortunes make men their slaves. Sensible citizens think that big fortunes are properly the slaves of large men ,
