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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (July 27, 1899)
* * * . * w * * N vv 3 r- Conservative * CALAMITY AXI ) D1SASTKK. The standard mercantile agencies of the United States , which keep commer cial statistics , and tabulate trade facts , declare the last twelve months to have been the largest trade mouths , manufac turing mouths and money-making months ever experienced by the agricul ture , manufacture and commerce of the United States. In those months there has been a vast sale of American implements to go abroad and a tremendous output of all kinds of American machinery for for eign customers. Plows , harrows , rakes , mowers , reap ers and biuders for the farmers of Eur ope , Africa , and South America , have been shipped from the United States by the thousand. The markets of all the world have been invaded. Competitors have been met and undersold by the products of American invention in every trading center of the globe. The ' 'Home Market Club" of Boston has been almost moribund because of the manner in which the Spanish war knocked the theories of protection on the head and demonstrated that a tariff for protection brings no revenue. When cash was needed with which to buy old yachts and dismantled steamers for the navy , and embalmed beef for the army , no body , not even McKinley , proposed a protective tariff , with higher duties , as n proper means of getting that cash into the federal treasury. Everybody at once , upon the breaking out of war , dis carded protective tariffs as revenue pro ducers. Everybody recognized the ne cessity of taxing "the home market" and all domestic exchanges were im mediately placed under contribution. But in spite of stamp taxes and all other charges , direct and indirect , for the "benevolent assimilation" of the "half- devil" and "half-child" of Cuba and the Philippines , the material prosperity of the republic has advanced and exalted itself marvelously during the year. THE CONSERVATIVE never approved ( * - ! either of the war for Cuba , or the war for the conquest of the Philippines , any more than it approved of the economic war , made by protection , upon the mul titude , for the benefit of a class. But THE CONSERVATIVE is not blind. It can see and admit the fact that prosperity has permeated all branches of human endeavor. Demand. Sunshine and shower and fecund soils have made it possible to the husband man. The product of his fields have been abundant and perfect. Other farmers , in Europe , have not been so fortunate and as their fields have failed foreign demand for the output of Amer ican fields has materialized. Demand for bread and meat , from the United States , in the great populational centers of the world lias enhanced the values ol our flour , bacon and beef. Demand creates values. "When the demand grows values increase. The farmers of the United States have been blessed with a growing and importunate de mand for their products all over the world. Hence their prosperity ; hence rhoir ability to pay debts , liquidate taxes and buy more laud. Legislation did not make prosperity for farmers or anybody else. But demand did it ; and all demand is the outgrowth of human desire. Things not desired are not in demand. Other DcmiuidH. Besides the farmers the manufac turers of the United States have been favored with an increasing and intensi fying demand for their surplus output. Steel rails for Prauco and even for England are demanded from the rolling mills of the United States. Ameri can railway companies , having the benefit of "the home market , " pay more for their equipment in iron and steel than do foreign companies. They behold the benefit of the protective tar iff going to the foreigner who , McKiu- ley says , pays the tax on imports. Seven dollars a ton more to homo companies for rails thau to foreign. Locniuotivcfl. The Baldwin locomotive works and all the largo establishments constructing engines for railroads are overcrowded with orders from abroad. England and Russia , France and Finland , China and Japan and South America have in or ders for locomotives aggregating thous- auds. But in the face of all these stal wart and stubborn facts calamity howl ers utter their dismal yells. In Nebraska. Even in Nebraska which has liqui dated , under the gold standard , millions of indebtedness for the purchase of lauds , improved her farms aud factories and stuffed her banks in every one of the older counties with surplus money , the wail of calamity and the moan of disaster ascendeth to Heaven from day to day from the camps of the fusionists. Even in Otoe county , where bank de posits of money , almost wholly idle , go beyond a million of dollars , Coin Har vey and his lachrymose disciples weep over the oppression of plain people by plutocrats and corporation cormorants. Money at five per cent a year , today , under the gold standard ! Money at twelve per cent a year prior to the "crime of 1873 1" Weep 1 Wail ! gnash your teeth and cry aloud , oh ye popu lists ! NUIJHASKA'S OPPORTUNITY. Dr. MacLean's resignation , to accept the presidency of the University of Iowa , loaves the University of Ne braska without its principal executive. Now is the time for the farmers of Ne braska to rise as one man and insist thai their agricultural college be such in fact as well as in name. Last winter the Nebraska legislature voted to the state university the largest per centago tax given by any state in the union to its central institution of learning. By this act Nebraska notified the world that it stood second to none in recognizing the potency of education in the upbuilding of the commonwealth. A generous government has likewise dealt liberally in providing this institution with funds which were to bo specifically devoted to agricultural education and research. By the first Merrill grant made in 1863 ; he University of Nebraska receives a arge sum of money annually for agri cultural and mechanical arts. Then ; hero is a second grant of $25,000 au- nually for the same purpose and the Hatch fund for experimental purposes amounting to $15,000 annually. Despite these generous appropriations the agricultural college of the Nebraska state university is languishing for lack of funds. If anyone doubts this lot him visit the university at Lincoln and lo cate the funds which go specifically to agriculture and note the buildings and equipment of that branch as compared with what may be seen at similar insti tutions in Kansas , Iowa , Minnesota or Wisconsin. The few members of the real agricultural faculty aud the limited equipment of buildings , apparatus and live stock all show a poverty which is almost beyond belief and a condition not only unworthy of au institution so liberally eudowed but absolutely be neath the dignity of so rich a state. Nebraska is marked by Nature as one of the greatest agricultural states of the union. Corn is produced at the lowest cost of any place in the world , and with alfalfa aud grasses iu abundance to sup plement this cheap grain and with trunk lines of railway reaching to the great plain regions lying westward , cat tle are available without number for economical fattening. These conditions , coupled with the enormous possibilities for the home rearing of cattle and with a climate well suited to animal life , in dicate clearly Nebraska's real destiny as a great agricultural commonwealth. Will her people now rise to the occasion and demand of the trustees in charge of the university at Lincoln that in the se lection of the now president there shall also be a new regime so far as the agri cultural college is concerned , and that from this time forward that branch of the institution shall be the leader and not an insignificant appendix toler ated only to gain government grants and leading a 'poverty-stricken exis tence ? The fact that the agricultural college has boon hampered by lack of funds , properly its own , and because it has been abused-time and again in ways almost without number , is all the more reason for a radical change at this time. If the farmers of Nebraska will awaken to the situation they will never
