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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1899)
Che Coriscratr > . . , . , , , . . . VOL. II. NEBRASKA CITY NEB. THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 21 1899. NO. ii. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. OFFICES : OVERLAND THEATRE BLOCK. J. STERLING MORTON , EDITOR. A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE DISCUSSION OF POLITICAL , EGONOMIO AND SOCIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS. CIRCULATION THIS WEEK 6,542 COPIES. 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 postofflce at Nebraska City , Neb. , as Second Class matter , July 29th , 1898. VOUCHERS.The calm brazen- THOSE VOUCHERS. face dn ess with which ex-Governor Holcomb admitted that all of the money which he had drawn from the state treasury to pay rent for an executive mansion had not been used for that purpose , but for per sonal profit , is only equaled by the effrontery with which the same voucher- maker now asks to be elected a member of the supreme court of Nebraska. The petty trick of throwing three card monte is a magnificent triumph of honest art when compared to Holcouib's little vouchers for house rent. And. the justi fication which he gives i. e. "others did the same thing , republican governors got more than I did , " is peurile. Sup pose they did. Are you or are you not a reformer ? Did you or did you not promise to remedy all republican abuses ? Many of them were bad. Joe Bartley was wholesale badness. You are retail wickedness. You knew then and you know now that Judge Orounse a fairly reputable lawyer who had been a member of the supreme court of the state , while governor refused to take a cent for house rent because he held the legislature had no constitutional right to make an appropriation for that purpose. Why did you fail to follow Orounse ? At Chicago last A BBYAN TRUST. week , in the con ference on trusts , Colonel Bryan made a very telling oration. It told par ticularly of his misconception of the relations of the states with their ex pressly reserved rights to the general government , and especially when he proposed to have all corporations , in each state , licensed only to do business by the federal government. "Who else would , as a candidate for high office , assume such imperial power for the general government ? Who among im perialists has proposed anything more imperial than this ? The fact that natural monopolies exist is ignored by Colonel Bryan. Adeliua Patti has a vocal trust in song. By her natural monopoly in vocal melody she extorts a thousand dollars an evening from the public. Colonel Bryan him self has a monopoly in a certain style of very popular oratory whence he easily derives a fat income. But human law makers can not abate , nor create these monopolies , and all the combines in the commercial world are merely composites of integral natural monopolies. They are made by fusion of brains , skill , ability and money into active and aggressive war for markets. If licensed by the federal government would they change their human nature ? . . A recent number , , , TAKE A SEAT. . . . _ _ _ of the Daily Nor folk News remarks in a compassionate sort of way : "J. Morton that Sterling says com bined capital has driven out the man with the 'hoe. ' It is wondered if the ex-secretary of agriculture believes the man who sits on a two-horse cultivator and hoes two rows of corn at a time has had anything to do along this line ? " Certainly ' 'the man who sits on a two- horse cultivator" has a function to per form. But who invited him to ' 'take a seat" and plow corn , except combined capital ? Take a picture of old John Deere's blacksmith shop , where he began to make famous plows , and compare it with the vast shops which his able and active son , Ohas. H. Deere , has developed at Moline with incorporated capital. Individual effort could not do it : the father , though a most remarkable and forceful man could not , at his shop , turn out two-horse and two-row cultivators , but the son with massed capital , incor porated , says to the plowmen while he points to the riding , two-horse and two-rows-of-corn-at-a-time cultivators with the utmost politeness "Be seated , gentlemen ! " "Take a seat ! " THE CONSERVATIVE DISHONEST TIVE knows a quar ter section of very beautiful and fertile land adjoining Nebraska City. That half mile square of superior soil when first sold and deeded in 1857 forty-two years ago bought only two hundred dollars in gold. But the laud is , like the gold dollar lar which Colonel Bryan describes , "dishonest. " It is "dishonest" because its purchasing power is constantly in creasing. Today one acre of this dis honest land will buy two hundred gold dollars. Honest land , like an honest dollar , can not buy more at one time than at another ! Think of the diabolism of this wicked ly enhancing land contemplate the nefariousness , the innate rascality of a soil that has risen in purchasing power in forty-two years , so that one acre buys as many dollars today of gold coin as a hundred and sixty acres bought in 1857 ! What is Colonel Bryan's remedy ? Is it the coinage of desert land farms at 10 to 1 ? Will Colonel Bryan permit people holding lands that cost one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre to demand and get interest on fifty dollars for each acre thus bought ? Will this kind of watered stock be tolerated ? State government . THE COST. ment costs too much. Never in Nebraska , except by Governor James E. Boyd , have the laws of business been applied to the manage ment and handling of the executive office and its functions. Governor Boyd reduced expenditures in each and all of the public institutions of the state over which he had any influence or con trol. The state needs frugality and economy in administration. There is no reason why the commonwealth should be extravagant in employing more people than are needed about the state house or anywhere else. Thus far popu list promises have been unfulfilled in reductions of the cost of running a state government. Never has there been any marked lessening of the number of political pot-hunters on the pay rolls of populism. Instead of abolishing asy lums for political dependents , instituted by the republicans , the populists have increased them and added length to the pay rolls of several state institutions by billeting their relatives and other par tisan parasites on the public treasury.
