VOL. II. NEBRASKA CITY , NEB. , THURSDAY , JANUARY 25 , 1900. NO. 29.
PUBLISHED WEEKLY.
OFFICES : OVERLAND THEATRE BLOCK.
J. STERLING MORTON , EDITOR.
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE DISCUSSION
OF POLITICAL , ECONOMIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL
QUESTIONS.
CIRCULATION THIS WEEK 7,141 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 npon appli
cation.
Entered at the postofflce at Nebraska City ,
Neb. , as Second Class matter , July 29th , 1898.
MEDICINE. . .
sick they take
medicine that is sometimes exceedingly
nauseating. When the country is sick
and shakes with the fever and ague that
the malarias and vagaries of communism
have given it , and there seems to be
danger of a collapse of the entire finan
cial system , many thoughtful voters
who do not believe in McKinleyism will
sustain it , take the entire dose , rather
than aid in forcing the money fallacies
of Bryanarchy upon the country.
President MoKinley has faults and
lacks individual courage when questions
of right and wrong may be determined
by his own conscience , instead of being
turned over to Hanna , Elkins and Quay
for solution. But it is better to have
the gold standard with McKinley than
the free and unlimited coinage of silver
at sixteen to one without McKinley.
The medicine is bitter , nauseating ,
disgusting , but it is better for the
United States than financial death. As
a dose it may be continued intermittent
ly. But as a chronic diet or nourish
ment it cannot be endured except by
the insane.
NOT DISCERNIBLE. .
in Nebraska there
were a thousand pair of moccasins worn
by its inhabitants to one pair of boots.
Sixteen to one was not the ratio of
Indian to white feet. But the tracks
made upon the plains and along the
valleys by the aborigines , either bare
footed or in moccasins , have been
effaced and their trails are forever
obliterated. The plow and the railroad ,
the village and the city , the farms and
the homes of civilization have erased
every vestige of the savages. It is not
possible to reproduce the. imprints that
barbarians had made upon these prairies
prior to their settlement by the pioneers.
Those imprints have been rubbed out by
the sharp attrition which agriculture ,
commerce and manufacture have
brought to bear upon Nebraska.
They have been made forever illegible
and those who follow the Indians are
their superiors only by so much as they
better human conditions and environ
ments. The best citizens those who do
most for themselves and their families
within the limits of the public good ,
that is without encroaching upon the
rights of others , will be longest remem
bered and respected. They write per
manent and indelible autographs upon
the records of the state and are by the
immortality of benignant influences
forever interwoven with the texture of
its mental and material development.
But the walking delegates , the broad
cast sewers of discontent , who merely
find fault with whatever is and declaim
in favor of the impossible , which can
never be , will soon be forgotten or only
remembered as a scourge just as famines
and pestilences are recalled. Thirty
years hence and the deeds and results of
the malcontents who are now endeavor
ing to stir up wrath among the people ,
by arraying class against class , will be
as invisible in Nebraska as are now the
moccasin tracks of the Indians made
fifty years ago.
When THE
SEBVA.TIVE
settled upon Nebraska prairie in 1854
the coyote was a majority of the animal
world along the west bank of the
Missouri. A little further towards sun
set , just beyond where Lincoln , em
bellished with statesmen , salt wells ,
universities and the penitentiary , now
flourishes , were vast herds of buffalo ,
bands of innumerable antelope and great
droves of deer. But the coyote was
discontented. There was not enough
meat , per capita , in circulation from his
wolfish and indolent standpoint of view.
The coyote was the original walking
delegate. He never worked except to
destroy. He never sought any job
except a job of feeding , eating , devour
ing something which he did not earn.
And even when his stomach was full of
stolen food he would uncomfortably
seat himself on a knob of prairie and
raising his wicked eyes and bad little
face towards Heaven , like a populist
orator talking of the money octopus-
howl his discordant discontent at
the starry skies. The coyote was the
primitive populist and original howler
of Nebraska. But ho perished from the
earth. He could not fatten on discon
tent. The politicians who imitate the
coyote will likewise vanish from sight
and like him only be remembered as a
nuisance.
Ifc is P ° 83ibl ° for
FAME.
a man to be a can
didate for the presidency , and then
within four years to find himself merely
a humorous figure in contemporary
literature. We have observed the fol
lowing veiled , but sufficiently scandal
ous , allusion in a story by Mr. Owen
Wister , in the January Harper's , about
a baby-show :
"The mother of Thomas Jefferson
Brayiu Lucas showed us a framed letter
from the statesman for whom her child
was called. The letter reeked with
gratitude , and said that offspring was
man's proudest privilege ; that a souvenir
sixteeu-to-one spoon would have been
cheerfully sent , but 428 babies had been
named after Mr. Brayiu since .January.
It congratulated the swelling army of
the People's Cause. "
Theanti-octopus
AN ISSUE.
cohorts m the state
of Montana where Mr. Clark and his
agents made an analysis of the relative
value of the "dollar-made man and the
God-made man" are about to declare j
for a larger per capita circulation of j
currency for the plain people in the state '
which has been swallowed by an
anaconda. It is proposed that the pec
capita circulation among the members j
of the Montana legislature , which is ,
proved to have been maintained pending
the election of United States Senator ,
Clark , be and the same is declared the
normal and rightful per capita due of
every "God-made man" in the state ; all
the "dollar-made" men and dollar-made
senators to the contrary notwithstand
ing. This is worth while. Marrying
many dollars in Montana may not prove
as disqualifying for a senator as marry
ing many wives in Utah does for a
representative in the popular branch of
congress. And yet "money talks" in
Montana elections as much as do women
in the elections and selections of Utah.