Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1870-02-25
UTLEY ON RETRENCHMENT
Harry Burnett's Old Sow.

-. Col. Utley Of the Racine Journal, has
been devoting his attention to the various
styles Of retrenchment. He does not be.
live that every cent we can possibly hold
on to is just SO much in the scale of econ
aomy, neither does he approve of thatreck-
lessness which will vote every dollar of
poor mans " little alp for the ,"public
good. He says:nQa3 isdl aro1 sh|
/" 1t is very difficult to decide which of
the two classes are the greatest curse to
khe country. The one would never invest
q dollar for the advancement of the State
or nation; while the other would spend
the peoples last dollar, and saddle them
with debt, on useless and impractical adj,
ventures. 7f,4raef 3 hs.ttsa..rst -I.ra
n daere is nothing so much talked about,
and so little understood, as retrenchment
A niggardly expenditure of money, in
either an individual or a legislature may
not be economy, any more than it was for
Harry Burnett to undertake to fat his old
sow and keep his corn. Harry belonged
to that class Of people which we have de-
scribed. who never worked for dollar for
the purpose Of enjoying il himself, but to
lay up for some one else. Prosperity
comes hard to such men, but usually stays
with them and, after ALL such men are of
great use to the world, in a certain sense,
but they are not the men to open up and
{ develop a country with real substantial
Improvements. Well, as we were saying,
Harry had raised nice little field of corn,
and he had monstrous big old sow to fat.
The country was new, and the times were
hard Harry wanted pork, but it would
take all his corn to fat the hog. Harry, in
his dilemma, no doubt discovered that
great defect in nature which makes it nee
essary for hog to, eat up the entire pro-
duct of a whole summers work, in order
to get fat; it seemed to him., and very
properly, that hogs ought to get fat some
other way. At all events, he resolved to
cheat nature and the old sow out of this
improvident arrangement; and Sc he
slaughtered her, and hung her up. Some
of his neighbors coming along, were loud
i'll their establishment that he should have
killed so poor a hog, saying she was good
for nothing, Harry began to feel little
ashamed Of it, and said that he knew she
was rather poor But" says he, "d-n
her, she haint got much of my corn"
In all phases and situations of life, cub
lie and private, you will find the exact
counterpart of Harry. Whenever we see
a man obstinately refuse to aid in any pub
lie work that must inevitably rebound to
the public good, and make the whole COM
munity richer and better off, we think of
Harry and his retrenchment experiment on
his old SOW. When we see a man refus-
ing to take newspaper because it costs
two dollars and shutting himself away
from the knowledge of what is going on in
his own town or county, saving two dollars
and losing hundred, we think of Harry
and his old SOW. When we see man sit
ting down in the midst of stock of goods,
year after year, too stingy to let the people
know what he has got, and where he is,
and then growing because people don't
come and trade with him, we think of
Harry; he saves his goods, but gets no
cash. When we see man working his
children from morning till night, refusing
to give them an opportunity and the
means TO get a moderate education, we
think of Harry; his children are ignorant
but "d-n 'um, they haint got much of
his corn" When we see man refusing
to aid in spreading the gospel, and to help
on the great work of Christianity in the
world, we think of Harry he has saved
his corn, but lost his soul. Whenever we
see a man refuse to spend dollar in the
improvement of his stock, and clnging to
his knurly. bug horned, timber backed,
sow gated, bare bellied, and coarse wooded
stock of all kinds, we think of Harry !;
he saves his corn but gets no pork. aIe'8
And finally, when we see Congress, after
having spent millions of dollars in the pur-
chase of the barren waste places of Gods
earth, which can only prove curse to a
representative government, and other mil
lions in unwarranted subsidies, and then
undertake to play they are retrenching by
forcing the country new s2apers to pay their
own postage in advance, when we see this
great body of great men, instead Of under