'Cbe Conservative *
BBYAN AND CHOKER.
I am dying , Crokor , dying ,
FHta the White House vision fast ,
And Expansion's coming shadows
Gather on the wintry blast ;
Lei thine arms , O Crokor , clasp mo ,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear ;
Listen to my great heart-sorrows ,
Thou , and thou alone , must hear.
Though my Pop and Anarch legions
Bf ar their red flags high no more ,
And my wreck'd and acatter'd platform
Strews dark Philippino's fatal shore ,
Though Stones and Jones surround mo ,
My ambitions to fulfill ,
I must perish the true fakir ,
Die the great jaw-boner still.
Lot not William's brave adherents '
Moclc the Silverto ! laid low ;
'Twas no gold man's arm that felled mo ,
'Twas your Ice-Trust struck the blow ;
I who worshipped on thy bosom ,
Turned aside from Western ray ,
And who , drunk with thy orations ,
Madly throw my gold away.
As for theo , thou Boss of Tigers ,
Thou enchanter of the Thugs ,
Guard my path back to Nebraska ,
With a bench full of your Pugs.
Give McKiuloy golden crosses ,
Lot him in the White House shine ;
I can scorn e'en Teddy's triumphs ,
Basking in a love like thine.
I am dying , Crokor , dying ,
Hark I the exultant Patriots cry.
They are coming I Quick , my jaw-bone ,
Let me front them ore I diol
Ah I no more amid the campaign
Shall my voice exulting swell ;
Tammany and Alt gold guard theel
Croker , Washington , famwelll
THE CONSERVA-
THE HENRY FUND. TIVE is pleased to
receive a letter
from Mr. W. R. Corwiiie , together with
his report made to Hon. Cornelius N.
Bliss , relative to the fund raised for the
family of the late Geu. Guy V. Henry.
It is very satisfactory to observe that the
fund netted Mrs. Julia Henry , widow of
the general , $19,408.96.
AUSTRALIAN FAILURES.
PART II.
New Zealand in 1880 to 1891 lost by
excess of emigration about 18,000 people ;
and since then the net increase due to
immigration has been but 8000 a year.
In the cities the labor problem is so
prominent that industrial arbitration
has been made compulsory , and old age
pensions are given to one-half of the
people sixty-five years of ago. In the
country districts labor is so scarce that
the area of land cultivated per inhabi
tant 2.2 acres has remained stationary
since 1881. The average yield of wheat
is twenty-four bushels to the acre , yet
the area under wheat has fallen from
866,000 acres in 1881 to 816,000 in 1898.
The raising of mutton for export has
become the mainstay of the colony. In
New Zealand the railway department
scarcely thinks of competing with the
coast vessels , but is content to act as
feeder to them. The average length of
haul of railway freights is only thirty-
five miles. In 1895 the total tonnage
carried upon the railways was 2,050,000
: ons ; in the previous year the steamers
and sailing vessels entered coastwise
and cleared coastwise had a capacity of
respectively 4,600,000 and 4,500,000 tons.
The significance of the failure of the
Australian railways to meet the de
mands of the new era ushered in by the
crisis of 1898 can be brought out in
striking manner by a brief review of
the services rendered to the people of
the United States by the American
railways in 1878 to 1880. The close of
the Civil War was followed by the
absorption of the huge armies of the
North and South in the industries of
the United States. Scarcely had that
readjustment from a war-footing to a
peace-footing been effected , when there
came a wave of immigration which
contributed about forty per cent of the
increase of population which occurred
in 1867 to 1873. Then came the crash
of 1873. The extent of the depression
which followed that disaster is indicated
in the course of the imports , which fell
from $668,000,000 in 1878 to $466,000,000
in 1879. In the readjustment of popu
lation and industry made necessary by
this long period of liquidation , the ten
great agricultural states of the Ohio and
Mississippi valleys , together with the
state of Texas , played the most promi
nent part. Those states contributed
seventy-eight per cent of the increase in
the area under crops effected in the
United States in 1867 to 1880. "Further
more , they absorbed forty-five per cent
of the total increase in population , the
equivalent of seventy-five per cent of
the immigration in the period in ques
tion. And it may be added that while
the proportion of the emigration from
the United Kingdom British subjects
and foreigners that went to the United
States fell from the highwater mark of
eighty per cent in 1871 and 1872 to sixty-
two per cent in 1873 to 1879 , it jumped
again to respectively seventy-seven per
cent and eighty per cent in 1880 and
1881.
By 1878 the westward movement in
the United States had reached districts
five hundred and a thousand miles from
the Great Lakes , and not a few persons
of no mean authority believed that the
cost of transporting the heavier agricul
tural staples from the more distant dis
tricts would almost or quite prohibit
production for export. But nnder the
stress of depression and tremendous
competition between the rival railway
lines leading from the agricultural
regions to the rival export harbors on
the Atlantic seaboard , transportation
charges fell even more rapidly than the
farm prices of agricultural products.
There was not even a temporary hitch
in the solution of the great problem of
enabling'the farmer in the interior of
America to compete in Liverpool with
the farmers of England and continental
Europe. .The huge armies of the North
and the South , the unprecedentedly
largo number of immigrants of the
years 1867 to 1878 , and the vast bodies
of men forced by a period of drastic
liquidation and readjustment to find
new avenues of employment all wore
absorbed with an ease and absence of
friction that are without parallel.
If one leaves out of account the entire
area which has a rainfall of less than
twenty inches annually , Australasia still
has a population of only 4.4 people per
square mile , as against 9 people in Am
erica , the arid region included. And
yet , since * 1885 , the problem of the un
employed has been a chronic one in Vic
toria and Now South Wales ; and ever
since 1884 it has , in New Zealand , called
forth legislation as well as measures of
administration It is true that the main
difficulty lies in the unwillingness of the
people to go on the land , but it isy equal
ly true that under the present costly and
inefficient management of the railways ,
no considerable body of people could go
upon the land. Only the rapid decline
in the increase of population , which be
gan oven before the great "boom had
spent itself , " has kept this fact from
being demonstrated in such a manner
that even those who run might read.
The population of Australasia con
sists almost entirely of emigrants from
England , Scotland and Ireland , and the
descendants of these emigrants. And
yet , parliamentary government in
Australasia works as in France , rather
than as in Great Britain. Party ties are
loose , and the legislatures tend to break
up into small groups , for the purpose of
securing what members of parliament
are pleased to call "justice for the in
terests which they represent. " Sir
Henry Wrixon , late attorney-general of
Victoria , and one of the most judicial
speakers in the public life of Australia ,
has summed up the situation admirably
as follows : "The many functions un
dertaken by our governments , and the
largo measure of assistance that they
render to districts out of the general
revenue , enfeeble the position of the
representative , and impair the public
spirit of the constituencies. Each lo
cality ( and each class interest ) naturally
seeks to get as much as it can , and for
this purpose wants rather an agent to
look after its interests than a statesman
to take care of those of the country at
large. The forbearance , of many con
stituencies toward a member whom they
respect upon public grounds , and the
sense of duty to the state of members of
parliament , have so far done something
to mitigate the worst results of this
principle. But it remains true that the
representative is harassed by a divided
duty ; and that I take to be the great
est impediment to statesmanship in our
ranks ; and the more socialistic govern
ments become , the greater is the danger
that Burke's prophetic fear may be re
alized , and national representation de-
