tlbe Conservative *
A recent number
EDUCATION I1Y
of the Nebraska
TIIK STATK.
Farmer contained
an editorial in favor of the pan-paternal
ism of government. It takes THE CON
SERVATIVE to task for having suggested
that it is not a function of the state to
provide education for any specialists
neither lawyers nor doctors , farmers nor
merchants , nor blacksmiths , nor milli
ners , photographers nor shoemakers.
Every time a parent is relieved from
a natural duty to his offspring , by the
act of the state , which undertakes to defer
for the child just what the parent ought
to do for it , a government like this is
weakened. It is the duty of fathers and
mothers to feed , clothe and educate
their children. When they wilfully
fail to perform that function of parent
hood they demonstrate the incapacity of
their breed.
Whenever the state makes it possible
for persons to study law , medicine and
other specific
Mediocrity. pro
fessions and pur
suits at the cost of the state , instead of
at the expense of themselves or parents ,
the state invites mediocrity and in
capacity to attempt the impossible.
Those who are born with brains and
ambition , who seek eminence in any
colling , will certainly achieve it. Those
not so born will not reach the heights of
human knowledge , even with a state
treasury and a state university to aid
them.
The Nebraska Farmer remarks : "To
educate men to excel in an industry is
the greatest service
Kiiactcil Excellence.
vice the state can
render , aside from securing equal and
exact justice between men and corpora
tions. "
But the state cannot by enactment
provide excellent brains for those born
without them. Those who excel do so
not because the state decrees their ex
cellence , but because birth , ancestry ,
breeding , Nature , God , make it pos
sible.
Perhaps the most phenomenal lin
guist of this century was a native of the
United States , Elihu Burrit , "the
learned blacksmith , " who acquired a
knowledge of more than thirty lan
guages. THE CONSERVATIVE heard him
lecture and describe his method of get
ting an education during those hours
when he could be spared from the forge
and shop. It was not a state method-
no governmental paternalism prepared
him for blacksmithing or for oratory
and he was an adept in both.
But his own indomitable will , his
tremendous power of application andun-
intermittent industry
f * 'l Will.
dustry , backed by
the brains and ambition with which he
was born , made him one of the foremost
scholars of his time. And his skill as a
blacksmith was just as much to his
credit as was his irresistible power as an
orator. THE CONSERVATIVE honors and
respects successful industry in all the
legitimate vocations of mankind. There
has never been "any suggestion of con
tempt of the artisan" anywhere in these
columns , at any time , though they do
cherish and express supreme contempt
for that pan-paternalism which is
preached by the parasitic press of this
country.
It is the spirit and ambition , the in
tent and ability with which a man enters
_ _ into calling
, , any 6
ti
. J.
The Spirit. . .
that determines
whether that calling be an honorable
and legitimate calling or not. It is not
the soot and grime of the forge , nor the
smell of wax and leather , nor the dust
of the mill and factory which make
character for the workman. His intelli
gent , ambitious , independent and un
conquerable industry woven into
honesty and truth-telling makes him
the peer of any citizen. The state
schools cannot confer ability nor graft
character upon an individuality that by
inheritance and evolution has neither.
The legislature cannot enact , either
directly or indirectly , a good farmer ,
lawyer , doctor , blacksmith or miller.
It is not the business of the state to pre
scribe professions for citizens , and at the
expense of all the tax-payers prepare
them to practice them. The twaddle
about it being a function of the state
"to educate men to excel in an indus
try" shows non-power of analysis. The
Beatrice Institute for the Feeble Minded
may as well attempt to educate its
inmates for professorships in the uni
versity. Those men who excel do so
without state nursing.
In natural philosophy Watt , Franklin ,
Fulton , Morse , Edison and Bell loom
_ , up and illumine
Examples. f .
the heights of
modern advances in the material world.
Did they develop from state institutions
distributing gratuitous schooling ?
Among the inventors of agricultural
implements and machinery did the state
educate McCormick , John Deere , Studebaker -
baker , or any other of the inventive
men who have given thought , investiga
tion and hard work to evolve the many
labor-saving machines now used on the
farms of the United States ?
To bring the question right down to
date in our own state of Nebraska , will
the friends of a system for making
lawyers and shoemakers , farmers and
doctors by gratuitous instruction at our
university , to be paid for by taxation of
all the people , tell THE CONSERVATIVE
wherein this statefruits of this system ,
commensurate with its cost , can be
found ?
"The Army Canteen -
PROHIBITION. .
teen still continues
as the president's murder mill by the
sanction of Attorney-General Griggs
and a cowardly cabinet. It is a shame ,
The nation will pay dearly for such
wickedness and greed. "
The great central organ of prohibition ,
the New Republic , contained the fore
going in its last issue. That journal has
no objection to "criminal aggression"
with shot and shell. But a whiskey
"murder mill" startles it out of all the
proprieties that should govern pious
people when writing of presidents of the
United States.
THE CONSERVATIVE remembers when
a recent candidate for that high office , at
a state democratic convention in 1889 ,
over which Hon. A. J. Poppleton pre
sided , at Omaha , tried to formulate a
temperance platform plank which would
attract prohibitionists. Mr. Bryan was
then very anxious to conciliate the anti-
canteen citizens.
BEVERIDGE
speech at New
York Senator BeveridRO truthfully said :
"The occupation of demagogues today
is to divide the American people and to
set brothers laboring in one calling
against brothers laboring in another. Of
all of these the banks and bankers are
the favorite objects of perpetual attack.
The leason of this is that the banking
interests of the nation are the natural
objects of the people's suspicion , be
cause the banks are the holders of the
people's accumulated wealth , and each
depositor , forgetting his individual de
posit , looks at the vast aggregation of
deposits and thinks of the massed and
mighty bulk of wealth as the property
of the banks themselves. And so the
ear is credulous to the charge of the
Jack Cades of politics , that the banks
are unnaturally rich ; that this enor
mous wealth is dishonest wealth , by
mysterious and wizard hands won by
grinding down the people , won by
squeezing the juices out of prosperous
times until only the husk of hard times
is left for the masses. The cry of polit
ical Catilines today and always is , that
the prosperity of the banker means the
poverty of the producer , and on every
incendiary stump and in every sheet of
hatred in the land it is proclaimed that
the bankers of America are the natural
enemies of the laboring , the producing ,
and the business elements of the nation.
"All patriotic men should denounce
that slander. For there is no business
so utterly dependent on the welfare of
their fellowmen as the business of the
bankers of the United States. Banks
have but two sources of profit interest
and exchange. When times are good ,
money is in demand , rates are high , ex
change is brisk , and banks prosper pre
cisely as the country prospers. When
times are bad exchange diminishes ,
loans are called in , and all the sources
of income dry up like the withering
roots of growing corn in a summer's
drought. When do banks earn largest
dividends ? Exactly when the farmer