--.VOL 12 NO,G,
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LINCOLN. NEB., SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 20. 1897.
smnron omoiit
AM MOOXD-CLAM MATT
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BARAH l?. HARRIS.
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OBSERVATIONS. I
0 t
It is fitting that Secretary Morton
should hare one last scrap with congress
before he leaves it. As Secretary or
Agriculture, he has strengthened oppo
sition in his political opponents, as well
as antagonized those of his own party.
lie, no more than President ClevelanJ,
considers the unity of the party as an
object worth striving for. Without
concession or compromise they have
both striven to impres3 their own indi
viduality upon Congress and the nation.
They have both succeeded in smashing a
united party into unrecog. izable atoms.
Mr. Morton is a disintegrating, an ex
plosive energy, and he cannot help
knocking things in his locality to pieces.
Before he went to Washington the party
in Nebraska, through Mr. Morton's in
Huence, had already created animosities
which only the sod can cover. At his
birth the fairies gave him every
thing by which success is won ex
cept one, and that is the powe"
to succeed. Ho ha? brains, integri
ty and force. But wherever he goes
he antagonizes tho ics'.ruments which
he must use to attiin his end. However
laudible and beneficial to the race that
design may be, the congressional repre
sentatives or that part of it which in
habits the United States, being a com
bination of belligerant Irish, stocky
Dutch and bull-headed English, must
be entreated gently ard deferred to. The
descendant of Irish, Dutch and English
ancestry prefeis to hang on to an old
foolish custom rath?r than give it up, al
though he would laugh to 6Corn a new
project no more foolish than the one
which he respects because of its age. A
casein point is the "Deceased wife's
sister" bill which "The Lords" have re
fused to pass every year for fifty years.
Leg slative bodies will not allow any
man. especially a cabinet ollicer, to peso
before them as of superior virtue and in
tegrity. Mr. Morton refused to distri
bute the seeds which congress bad au
thorized. His reasons were cogent, but
that had nothing to do with the case.
Here was a gentleman farmer from Ne
braska informing Congress that it had
authorized a silly ard wasteful and
needless distribution of 6eeds to agri
culturalists who did not need them.
If Mr. Morton had been able
to accomplish his end without making
his own wisdom and virtue the reproach
of each member of congress he might
have endad the seed distribution fake.
Instead of that "what reforms he has
accomplished in the agricultural depart
ment have been secured in tr-e face of
the most vigorous opposition loth from
his own party and from republicans. He
will leave Mr. Cleveland's administra
tion with probably morj enemies than
any other member of the cabinet, but
with full satisfaction of having carried
through, in a number of instances, his
own peculiar ideas of departmental ad
ministration against the combined oppo
sition of the politicians in both branch
es of congress." Considering the an
tagonism which his reforms have creat
ed in congress there is little hope that
they will be permanent Mr. Morton
says he is g ing to Japan. Well, there
are many abuses theie that need atten
tion. The Japanese are small and Mr.
Morion may succeed in doing them
gcoJ.
It is to be regretted that when a bank
fails, the cash on band and that which
is constantly coming in from notes
which fall due, is not paid to the depos
itors. but to the Jawyeis and the re
ceiver, who hold their jobs as long as
theie is anything in sight. Becausj of
their number and their impotence, de
positors' claims are the last one3 to bo
considered. In the case of the quondam
Capital National tho money which is
being paid in is absorbed by the men in
charge of the obs quie?, which will last
until the youngest defrauded depositor
is dead. Then what is the use of a re
ceiver or an absorber? The people want
a transmitter.
Mr. Bryan's proposal to insure the de
positors against less is reasonable and
just, and gives the abused majority a
chance which it has not bad so far.
The new populist officers of the state
are fashioced like the governor. They
are large bovine herbiverous animals,
used to the open air and ignorant of the
drawing room or opera house pitch.
But they never decline an opportunity
to make a speech, howeter inoffensive
the audience. Their voices have what
is called "the section line pitch." It is
meant to reach a long ways and it would,
if the walla of the building did not pre
vent and bounce it ba.k on the ears of
an intimidated people. Naturally the
pitch that is convenient for an uho ! or
a hulloo! is inipissible to sustain. When
the sscietary of state speak-, after the
first sentence he gasj s and inhales bar
relsful of air every gasp aud exhales it
with a pphzm that is most painful to up,
though his powerful frame may tint be
disturbed by it. Withal he has a pleas
ant, boyish face and seems anxious to
improve. When he arrived in Lincoln,
the placj of bis new splendour, it was
not more than a fortnight until he dis
carded the buffao overcoat whirh he
woro when ho arrived.ind appeared, im
mensely pleased himself at the change,
in a new 1 ox coat, lie would not be
obliged to get a new voic. for be has
plenty, only he does not us-e it Mimi'mie
ally or easily. Hotetmto hvo idas
and, as I have said, his personal appear
ance is prepoising.
The legist iture as a who'e are wpII
disposed towards the univers ty. The
members would havel'ss business pence
than their success has demonstrated
that they possess, if they showed an un
willingness to crant the univrisity ap
propriation. The university is a poor
man's school and returns and a ill return
an hundred fold to the stat which sup
ports it. The agricultural college, by
introducing scientific method on the
tarm wil make farming more profitable.
In a decade's time an uudiversilied
farmer will be a curiosity and a crop
failure an impossibility. That an agri
cultural state has neglected for r- long
the study of pgriculture is a repioich
and we are paying for this neglect now.
Within itself the s'ate has all the re
sources, undeveloped but potential,
that make pr sperity. Some of the best
scientists in the country are iu the
faculty of the agricultural school. It is
their object to make the dairy, the poul
try yard, the cattle range and the arable
field, jiU their economic maximum,
with a corresponding lessening of labor.
In the last fifty years th pnduet venees
of Jill kinds oHabir has been mu tipped.
The farm machinery has nabl d
the farmer to plant a-ul reap
more acres in the same iiie. It
has not increase I th- produc iveness
of the ground and until lt ly agricul
turists have not tried to br e l-in ceitain
desirable elements in vege'ablt-s and to
discourage those which are ntt food
This is the method usmI at the itcricul
tural school. They aro developing t e
bttt with the most sugar, the potato,
wheat and corn containing the laret
quantity of the special characteristic for
which it is grown.
When agricultural schools werestirt
ed an unknown number of jearsaco,
everybody made fun of them. The news
papers said that to learn bow to plow
you mu&t plow, etc. The mn who un
derestimates today the benefits r.t an
agricultural school is a specialist i-o
deeply immersed in bis own topic that
his opinion on any subject of practical
value to the world wo live in has ceased
to be of any value. Mr. Harrington
EmTon, formerly a professor in the
state university, who lived in Germany
as a boy aid passed through tho gym
nasium and afterwards through the uni
versity, siiil that the German fellows
an I pro'essors were like men digging a
well, each one only separated from tho
other del vers by a fow feet of earth but
utterl, unconscious of the fact, ignorant
as well of the light and air above them,
occasionally they look up when tho
shadow of a passer-by is cast upon their
work, or when they send up tho result of
a b- axon's dicging. But th'.y are so far
down that the surface of the earth and
the men that wa'k upon it are nothing
to them. Though the diggers occasion
ally send up something of permanent
value to mankind. Their acquaintance
with the present is limited and their
opinion of i's needs worthless. Such
was Mr. Emerson's cbaiacterization of
the specialist on a subject whose study
took him away from mankind. It is a
definition which obstinately recurs
whenever I hear one of these worthies
criticise any modern function or institu
tion not fusty and mouldy with age.
But the worthies have their place and if
the occasionally forget it, tho world
does not, so they do no barm and much
good.
If it were not that tho endurance of a
great corporation is the sum of the units
of which it s composed a thousand or
two thousand man-power, as the case
may be, the railroad coupanies would
have gone into bankruptcy like so many
of their individual patrons. A dispas
sionate consideration of the duties aud
relations of a railroad company, (it does
not have any privileges), to the public id
rare. Newspapers are on one side or the
other. There is justice and in jus' ice on
!otb side-". Meanwhile the interests of
both are identical. The company has
all the advantages of an absolute mon
archy so far as its own affairs is con
cerned. With a man like the recently
deceased President lioberts. of the
Pennsylvania road, who had a special
railroad genius, the P steal was like an
arm in the field under the control of a
general. The whole field is within his
vision and he can make his flexible forces'
advance or retreat as the character of
the ground and the position of the peo
ple and his opponents change. Legisla
tive acion, which is the only mtthod of
expression the people have, is slow and
frequently planned to meet tactic?,
which. long before the bill can go into
effect, have served their purpose and
b-en abandoned forcthers. Thefoltow
ing statement or an old complaint of the
people against th-i roads and ths defend
ant's rep'y is worthy read nj.
I is the favorite argument of the
wentrn farmer and his represntative in
the legislature that railway rats are
k"pt unreasonably high in order to make
i Lena pay big dividends on watered
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