The Conservative *
AN OLD SONG.
There's n ballad of qunint love-longing
Tlmt often I yearn to hear ,
For it sots the memories thronging
Anil wakens a by-gone year.
The words were hut simple and pretty ,
With a tender flnal fall ,
Yet I swear that this old-time ditty
Still holds my heart in thrall.
It was sung by a girl whoso fashion
Can never grow stain nor old ;
But she and her young soul's passion
Lie quiet in graveyard mould.
It was not the music , I fancy ,
Nor the story but just the way
She sang , and the necromancy
Wrought by u dear , dead day.
At times they will play it to me
Now but my heart sinks low ;
It isn't the same that drew me
There in the long ago.
I miss the meaning : 'tis broken
The spell of singer and song ,
I sigh for a vanished token ,
For a magic of yore I long.
For the place whore the voice would waver
And a sob rise up in the throat ,
For the little pathetic quaver
That wasn't on any note !
RICHARD BUHTON.
The valueless-
A POTATO PAPER.
ness of non
portable commodities is seldom brought
to human notice. The fact that move
ment is essential to the conferment of
value is scarcely ever in sight. The
farmer whose plow slowly moves along
the furrow and stirs the soil seldom re
flects that his tardy motions with those
of his snail-paced team are essential
primary elements of the possible value
of his coming crops. But after the soil
has been thus moved , it is marked out
for seeding by other moving implements
impelled across it. Then the seed is
moved into the ground and covered by
more movement. The young plants
spring up and those useful and uushar-
ing partners of the husbandman , the
rain and the sunshine , move upon and
fertilize them until full fruition is ac
complished. The ripened grain is moved
from the field to the threshing machine ,
from the threshing machine to the
granary or elevator , from the granary
or elevator into wagons or cars , and by
the wagons or cars to the mill , by the
swiftly revolving machinery of the mill
it is moved into flour , and then into
sacks or barrels , and moved again by
trains or ships into market. Thus when
this staple food , which we handle and
consume every day of our lives , is
logically examined and found to bo the
result of such myriads of movements ,
both manual and machine , we begin to
realize the value of the capability of be
ing moved , of portability in all agricul
ture , manufacture and commerce.
The pioneers who settled upon the
plains of Nebraska along the west bank
of the Missouri
Land Yuluea.
river in 1854 and
lived thereupon for more than ten years
before any railroad touched the eastern
bank of that stream , fully understood the
value of land to depend upon human
effort , put forth upon it or in relation to
it. They learned by experience that in
and of itself , land had no more ex
changeable value than air and water.
These soils were as prolific then , as they
are now. The crops were as generously
satisfactory. But there was no method
by which they could be profitably mov
ed to market. And not beiug transport
able they had a low value , limited or
fixed by merely local demand.
There were no fears then of an inva
sion of Nebraska by bauds of millionaires.
There was not an
IS" . . . , , , .
incorporated dollar
in the territory. Little children had then
never been frightened by ghastly stories
of the plutocrat and the hideous claw-
ings and clutching of the octopus. The
plain people of Nebraska had then no
special instructors in economics , nor
-constituted guardians of their right
to liberty , life or property. Those
halcyon days of innocence , rural comfort
and rustic abundance were of course
prior to the mastodon-sized crime of
1878.
1878.More
More than forty-five years ago , when
I came to Nebraska , in 1854 , the shrill
_ . , shriek of thb loco-
Distant Railroads. , . , ,
motive coul d not be
heard anywhere within three hundred
miles of its boundary line. There was
no railroad company organized for the
invasion of farms and for the oppres
sion of farmers , anywhere within that
distance from my squatter's cabin.
Neither did incorporated capital , in the
fiendish form of banks , nor in any other
ghoulish shape stalk up and down the
land seeking whom it might destroy
and devour anywhere west of the Mis
souri.
The first corn planted at Arbor Lodge
in the spring of 1855 was dropped from the
hand and covered
Corned. . . . , . _ .
with a hoe. The
hand and the hoe were individual pro
perty. But capital came together and
conspired to and did construct the Brown
corn-planter and voracious incorpora
tions devised check-rowers and cultiva
tors by which they crushed out the by-
hand-and-by-hoe corn planting indus
try. The village blacksmith who made
the hoe was driven out by the cruel in
ventions which capital conspired and
combined to manufacture and introduce
to general use for laud tillage. This
process of crushing out the primitive ,
and bringing into use , the improved and
new implements , and machinery for
agricultural development has con
tinued by the combinations of incor
porated money until the money power
has made it possible for muscle power
to plow , plant and till annually more
than 8 millions of acres of corn in Ne
braska. This enormous area produces
an average of between 25 and 30 bushels
to the acre each year and makes an ag
gregate of between two hundred and
fifty and three hundred million bushels
of corn the annual output of this state.
With the hoe and the hand-planting ,
such a vast domain could never bo tilled
in that cereal. Only combinations of
capital stimulating and utilizing inven
tions that are labor-saving , could make
this miraculous corn production a pos
sibility. Then came the imperative
need of a new and cheaper method of
distribution , to transport from producers
to consumers , the results of those im
proved methods of agriculture. With
the ox and mule transportation which
first carried the farm products of No-
brafaka to market , the present produc
tion of the farms of Nebraska could
never bo marketed. Individuals could
not build railroads ; corporations could.
No one man had enough money to con
struct lines and equip them with engines ,
cars and warehouses. But many men ,
contributing each from one hundred to
one hundred thousand dollars , could and
did associate , under laws providing for
incorporations , to build and operate the
existing vast system of transportation ,
and make them as common carriers use
ful public servitors.
And in the last 25 years the charges
for railroad transportation have been
reduced in the United States from an
average of about two cents a hundred
pounds per hundred miles to an average
of about 8 mills per hundred pounds per
hundred miles. These reductions have
been gradually but constantly going on
all over the republic. The denser the
population tributary to each mile of
a line of railway the lower the rates.
Therefore in sparsely settled sections ,
traversed by railway lines , the rates for
passengers and freights must be and are
higher than in the older and more thick
ly settled parts of the country. A whole
sale business is always done with less
prices to the buyers than the retail.
And where the common carrier gets
passengers by the thousands , fares are
less than where the carrier transports
them by the scores. The same reason
ing holds good as to freight rates. Not
very many years ago the writer looked
up the tributary population to each
mile of the New York Central railroad
and found it more than thirteen hundred ,
and at the same time it was ascertained
to be less than GO to any mile of rail
road in the state of Nebraska. Never
theless , there were statesmen and econo
mists then , as there are now , protesting
with great assumption of knowledge
that rates in Nebraska logically and
equitably should bo the same as rates in
New York.
" \
f
" " * However , in this paper , in order to be \
in unison with the principal discussion
_ , . . of this annual
Potato. . . , , ,
meeting of the
State Historical Society , I propose to
give only a single personal experience
with the pioneer methods and costs of