Juniata sentinel. [volume] (Mifflintown, Pa.) 1846-1873, 1873-07-02
Hercules Helps When You Pat Your Own
Shoulder TO the Wheel.
BY PROF. ). d. BUTLER.


BY PROF. }. d. BUTLER.
"Never give to beggar," said Pool
Richard" for if you pay a man to dc
nothing. he will do it."
1 Luxury" said gruff DR.. Johuson. "i'
better than charity. for luxury feeds the
industrious, but charity the idle; and
the industrious improve, while the idle
deteriorate."
Through Disregard of these social laws
the doles dispensed in medieval monas'
teries proved parent principle of mod
ern pauperism.
We cannot. overrate the strength ol
laziness in one who has all his lifetime
lived in beggary. Hence. when l told
a veteran mepdicant wondered that 60
able-bodied man as he would beg, i,
was perfectly natural for him to answer,
"You would not wonder at all if you
only knew ho,o lazy lam"
/ But, in helping a man you always hurt
him. whenever you do not make him help
himself This was the spirit of Moses
bidding the Jew not to reap the corners
of his field, and to let some handfuls fall
on purpose. and to leave them for the
poor to CLEAN. 1t was the spirit of Christ,
who only twice fed the hungry-but
times without number healed the sick.
enabling them to rise aud earn bread for
Themselves.
Acting on similar principle with re-
gard to paupers. and helping most those
who most helped Themselves. Massachu-
setts has lOssened their number in her
territory by fifteen per cent, within the
last ten years. and that while her popu-
lation has been fast increasing.
In like manner, those safe from pau.
perism are lifted still higher Steamers
and railroads. bringing immigrants by
millions into the Mississippi Valley, have
done them good just in proportion as
their new opportunities have stimulated
them to make the rost of themselves.
Pre- emption and homestead laws aim
so to bestow the public domain that it
shall become public discipline. Both
require man to make a journey to his
farm-both teach him to prize it, the
former by making him pay something for
it, and the latter BY making him till it.
When the public land near towns and
navigable streams was all occupied, Con-
gress enabled farm hunters to reach other
lands and brought their produce nearer
markets. by the only means in its power.
namely, land grants to railroad compa
nies.
1t is fashionable to condemn those
grants both in Iowa and elsewhere. but
let it be remembered that they have cost
the United States nothing. since as many
acres have been sold at double price as
have been given away-that they have
brought millions Of acres under State
and local taxation eooner than they
would otherwise have been subject to it;
that they have rendered railroad acres,
and others near them SO desirable that
they are bought up at a cost several
times greater than would secure lands
equally good further from railroads.
A railroad depending for dividends on
a local traffic which cannot exist without
the development Of the country through
which it runs, is not likely to charge ex-
orbitant prices for it's land The Burliug-
ton and Missouri River Railroad, con-
senting to be paid for lands in install
ments, extending through half a life
time, with nothing of the principal in
the first four years-and asking only elk
per cent. interest, grant terms which
thrill with hopes of owning farms, ten
ants, mechanics and laborers who were
sinking in despair all over our older
States. Their hearts with glad surprise
to higher levels rise.
The advance guard in the emigrant
host from those regions have already,
within thirty-three months purchased
along the B & NJ Railroad either in
Iowa or Nebraska, 4,525 farms, contain
ing ATS, ,9SS acres. More than $4,000
homesteaders and pre-emptors have ia
ken land in the same region. A farm ia
a fifth gospel to agricultural laborers,
who are majority in every community.
Behold how the chance it Offers electrifies
land lovers.
"Fast they come, fast they come;
See how they gather;
Fast they come, fast they come;
Faster aud faster
Chief. vassal. page and groom,
Tenant and master"
WITHOUT apologizing for the part that
Republican Congressman have taken in