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nutl the desire intulc a denmiul and the
demand made a value and a price.
Then because of occasional crop fail
ures through drouth or grasshoppers ,
discontent devel-
Growlers. oped and growlers ,
carpers , faultfinders
ers and all the breeds of nevcr-do-
well folk began to revile the country
and the lands. And many of them
for political purposes , laid all the
woes of the people to incorporated capi
tal generally and to railroads especially.
Then the Peoples party and the Farmers'
Alliance party began the propaganda of
populism. They denounced all railroad
rates as extortionate. They declared
that no man could make a living by
farming because the railroads charged
all the fanu products wore worth to get
them to market. And this howl of
anguished mendacity rent the sides from
one end of the state to the other until
many believed all the untruths and
made a strong political party based
thereupon.
But while confidently and with great
show of sincerity , the assertion that the
lands were useless
Queer. for fanning pur
poses , because of
ruinous railroad rates , was sent broadcast
over the country the prices of the afore
said lauds were steadily rising. And in
1896 even when everybody was told that
unless the free coinage of silver , in un
limited quantities , at the sacred ratio of
sixteen to one was entered upon by the
government of the United States distress
would be universal the lauds aforesaid
held their own or steadily rose in value.
And they are still rising in. 1901 be
cause demand for them is still increas
ing. Queer how many fools the world
has with money in their pockets with
which to buy lauds at thirty , forty , fifty ,
seventy-five dollars an acre , in Nebras
ka , upon which all Bryanarchy has
solemnly asserted nobody can make a
living ! Queer dementia epidemic mad
ness to buy lands at big prices which
will not pay the man who cultivates
them enough to live upon !
And now on the same stage upon
which the curtain rose in 1854 are more
than a million
More than a. Million , actors. The hum
of contented in
dustry and the hymn of domestic en
dearment break upon the ear from
thousands of prosperous factories and
tranquil homes. There are comparative
ly few men who stepped out upon these
peoploless prairies in 1854 and witnessing
the first act in the foundation of a great
state have been , by a kind Providence ,
permitted to tarry as interested specta
tors through all the changing scenes of
forty-six years. A most lively and ap
preciative gratefuluess should shine from
all the eyes which have looked upon the
enchantry of self-reliant and intelligent
industry , which in that time has con-
verted desolation into beauty and savage
wilderness into the comfortable abode
of educated and refined society. No
other generation of Americans have ever
witnessed such exalting and satisfying
dramatization of strenuous life. There
is no stage like the great plains left upon
this continent whore , in all its realism of
courage and triumph , of .sorrow and joy ,
it can over be repeated. Those who
come after us must bo content with less
impressive and more slowly changing
acts and scones.
If there had
BEQUESTS. never been any ac
quisitiveness suc
cessful in the United States and there
fore no immensely wealthy men , there
could have been no great gifts to educa
tional and charitable iustitiitions.
During the year 1900 the donations from
living rich men and dying rich men to
the cause of education and to various
religious sects and to sundry hospitals
and homes for indigent aged people in
the United States aggregated more than
one hundred millions of dollars.
Who gave this enormous sum to bo so
distributed for the betterment of the
race in this ropub-
Who Gave ? lie , for the allevia
tion of human
suffering and the development of moral
and mental strength among Americans ?
Was this thoughtful and discriminating
benevolence evolved out of populism ,
pauperism , communism or socialism ?
Did the donors of these vast sums of
money for praiseworthy purposes agree
with Fourier in France or Bryauarchy
iu America ? Did they hold , with that
leading thinker of French communism ,
Prudohn , that "all property is robbery , "
or did they agree with his American
imitators that the gold standard is
making the rich richer and the poor
poorer all over the world ?
All these gifts came from capitalists ,
that is to say , from men who , by frugal
ity and wise indus-
Capitalists. tiy of hand and
head , had saved up
fortunes to be used for the advancement
and elevation of mankind. No college ,
no asylum , no hospital , no home for the
aged and indigent was ever endowed by
a teacher of economic vagaries and finan
cial heresies such as have been promul
gated by the Bryauarchists of the United
States during the last eight years.
Capital , legitimate capital , can be
evolved only out of enlightened selfish
ness. And only enlightened selfishness
can understand , appreciate and enjoy the
divine luxury of doing good. Capital
represents industry , temporaucehonesty ,
good judgment , self-reliance , self-denial
and self-respect. Without some of these
aids and qualifications capital is never
acquired in a single generation by any
breed of mankind. And capital does
more than Christianity for the human
race every year of the century , and lias
been , for centuries past , the chief engi
neer of the intellectual and moral ad
vancement of the world. It has built
the ships that carried and maintained
the flag , that protected the commerce
of the globe , and permitted the mission
aries and their bibles to invade the lands
of the so-called heathen. Except for
capital no bibles could have been pub
lished , no churches erected , no mission
aries supported.
Who , then , are the maligucrs of capi
tal ? Who the miscreants , that , day after
day , decry capital
Maligners. as a tyrant
and demand en
actments to restrict its influence and
freedom ? Who are the men that en
deavor , with words of hot falsehood and
strenuous slander , to sunder laborers
from capitalists ? Who are the declaimers -
ers dealing out discontent in the United
States and inciting all tbAse who have
been indolent , intemperate and unfor
tunate in their lives to hate all those
who , by sobriety , industry and self-
denial , have acquired competencies ?
They certainly are not builders. They
can destroy but they never construct.
Iu Nebraska , Iowa ,
Not Builders. Kansas and all
other relatively
new states the fault-finders , the wrath-
cultivators , have never built a railroad ,
a null , a packing house , a canning fac
tory , or any other industrial plant which
employs and pays laborers ? The men ,
who , in all those states , have proclaimed
for years that the farmers were robbed
by elevators , railroads and middlemen
generally are not the men who have
caused the lands of those farmers to
double , treble and quadruple in selling
values in a single decade. Capital
which has built factories and condensed
the bulk and enhanced $10 value of land
products in Iowa , Nebraska and Kansas ,
and capital which has increased the
facilities and reduced the cost of dis
tribution by building railroads in those
states , has made farm lauds worth more
and the demand for them more and more
importunate.
A distinction be-
SELF-DENIAL. tween the savage
and the civilized
man is that the former is never taught
self-denial while the latter , if properly
brought up , is always taught self-denial.
Every pleasant home , every useful and
beautiful building in the world repre
sents self-denial that has been practiced
by some human being either in this era
a former generation. Every American
boy and girl ought to be taught first to
rely upon self self-helpfulness , then
self-denial , and out of the two teachings
self-respect will be evolved and then the
individual is safe from ordinary tempta
tions ,
J
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