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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 1901)
& ' ' " "TSSP . . 1JI * Conservative. The pop u 1 i s t s HATE IT and other com- BUT GET IT. mnnists teach hat red of wealth as a cardinal virtue. To acquire , to ac cumulate and conserve capital is an atrocity. It is plutocracy plundering the poor , whenever a citizen creates , by industry , sobriety , good manage ment and self-denial , enough capital to hire mind and muscle to work for him. Then it is that he becomes a target and is denounced as a tyrant. Then it is that ho is lashed by the tongues of those fervid lovers of ' ' the plain people" who prance up and down the country proclaiming the greed and wickedness of the capital istic classes , and are also collecting money from wage-earners with which to pay themselves for making an econ omic disturbance. They hate money , but get it by any and every device ex cept that of honest efforts to earn money. Each one of them denounces capital and capitalists , and each one of them is ambitious to get capital and become a capitalist. They tell how hard the times are , and how close money is , and brag of getting five hundred dollars for a single speech full of froth and fallacy. 'tThey talk of the limited libraries for plain people and boast of sales , amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for books like Coin Harvey's School for Idiots , or that bigger volume of bigger bosh ' ' The First Battle. ' ' They de nounce monopoly and then seek the monopoly of the gullibility of all the emotional , ignorant people in the country for the purpose of doing them out of their [ ballots and their del lars. lars.Recall Recall the campaign of 1896 ! Re read the prophecies of Bryan and the other calamity forecasters as to the evils which the defeat of 1(5 ( to 1 and its ticket and the success of the gold standard would inexorably precipitate upon the American people. Did they not toll you that wheat prices and silver prices were indissolubly - ubly and forever married and that no power on earth could ever divorce these commercial affinities ? Did they not even declare 16 tel a God- instituted ratio and did not Senator Monologue Morgan of Alabama preach to the senate by the day upon the heavenly origin of the sacred 16 to 1 ratio and dogma ? Aud-what financial prediction among them all has been verified ? What prophecy of evil to agriculture , com merce and manufacture made by those oracles remains unimpeached ? Sparkling oratory , pi easing metaphor and even skillful elocution are as de licious as soft , soda-pop , fizzing drinks at drug-stores in summer. But the intellect starves without some lo gic and the soul sickens without some truth just as the body would on no other sustenance than soft summer drinks. That populist exhorters and com munistic declaimers all aver their hatred of thrift and its accumulations everybody knows. And everybody but their immediate dupes sees and understands that by more words thosoi exhorters and declaimers would got money which successful men get by work and retain for use as by good judgment , self-denial and careful management. To hate people who have earned and saved a competence ; to array all the thriftless against the thrifty ; to stir up discontent and make antagon isms in the social and industrial life of the United States ; and at the same time to gain for themselves political prominence and a pecuniary compe tence is the object and aim of ninety- nine out of every hundred of the bla tant advocates of populism , which is communism only thinly disguised. A marked weak- THEY DREAD .ness in the public TO BE ALONE , men of the United States is their al most universal dread of being alone. Nothing frightens the average states man in this country so much as to find himself alone in the support of a great truth or principle , which in a moment of uncontrollable vehemence , he may have proclaimed to his party or the whole people and had rejected. This idea of being with the crowd , herding with the majority , permeates all the politicians of the partisan or ganizations of the different states. And never until the present discus sion as to whether the Republic had better or better not add to its citizen ship ; besides the already secured lep ers of the Sandwich Islands , , millions of half civilized , hybridized and in ferior beings in the Philippine and West Indian Islands , has this fear of being found alone with a principle era a truth which the multitude repel , been so visible amidst the officialism and officeseekingism of the United States. Moral courage seems to have been pretty thoroughly bred out of the male mass of humankind. The cus tom of ascertaining the trend and tone of the mob and following the same , while posing as a leader , has so long obtained that it has become a sort of second nature among American politicians. And the voice of the slums and sins of great cities , al though known to be the utterance of ignorance and crime lias been and continues to bo accepted as the Vex Dei for patriots in pursuit of ballots that may place them in offices. The oft- repeated lie that "a majority is al ways right" lias come to be regarded as a social and political axiom. And as a majority are sinners , unconnect ed with any religious faith , many have seemingly concluded that wickedness is therefore , especially in a public matters , moro popular and valuable than straight-forward truth and honesty. West Point and Annapolis perfect the youth of the country who are there schooled in all arts of war. Physical courage is coached , exer cised and disciplined in those great national institutions until their pupils are perfectly prepared to enter npon those vast international corpse-mak ing matches , called battles anywhere on earth. Such splendid machinery has modern civilization and Christian ity invented for the wholesale de struction of humanity when the op posing armies of two refined and pi ous people meet in conflict that physi cal courage has become almost a part of the mechanism of that magnificent murder which we call war. And now the need is for men who have that sort of intellectual and moral bravery that will make them bold enough to tell the truth , to ad vocate the truth , and if need be , to politically die for the truth. The schools , colleges , and universi ties of this Republic should teach their students the importance of think ing instead of depending upon what others have thought. Individuality and the strength and self-reliance of an enlightened inde pendence in thought aud speech are sadly lacking in the public life of the United States. Men who dare to denounce wrong , in the face of a mad populace who for the moment approve and support the wrong , are needed now. The old fallacy that' ' a majority is always right" was exploded on Cal vary , at Jerusalem , more than eigh teen centuries ago ! In business BUSINESS affairs men get sal- AFFAIRS. aried positions be- cajBe they can do aud have done useful work. But in political life they frequently are nom inated and elected to salaried offices because they have proved themselves useless everywhere else. Why not ad opt the methods of business when voting ing for officers ? Why not pick out men who have merit , and record of usefulness , to perform the duties for the people ? Self- ul- Selfforgetf - A CITIZEN'S ness is the first DUTY. duty of the patriot- i c public man when he discusses a question involv ing the institutions and permanent welfare of the Republic. No states man can consider first his own per sonal popularity aud the needs of his countrymen and the Republic after wards. Man's first duty is to his native land and his second to human ity in all lands.