Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1875-10-07
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
P GIVES 1T UP.

mistaken about the effect OF his
speech thought was making the
lway for railroad connection with
Dubuque SO easy and plain that even
a fool might not err therein, but |
fpd from Q's statement that l. have
made the project appear visionary
and ridiculous That being the case
l will withhold my pen and let @
write on the other side.
see L have made @ think I
wanted to run the railroad to Prairie
du Chen instead of Dubuque. 1t is
hard to tell what hs will think if l
write more, and | do not wish my
stupidity to put any more of my
ridiculous visions in his head at the
risk of defeating a Lancaster rail-
road.
| @ tells us that "for all the out
ward freights from Potosi and Lam
caster to Dubuque, the Winters ice
is highway that will beat any rail-
road that we can build TO that city"
That declaration suggests that if we
can't lay bed of ice from here to
the Mississippi the next best thing
is to run a railroad to it. Dubuque
wouldn't need TO put a tracked
bridge" at Specht's ferry for Q's ice
expresses wouli beat any railroad !
| am fortunate in not having made
that suggestion, for if | had said it
what electives would Q have used 2
| have heretofore represented that
| Lancaster would have to furnish only
100000 to build q railroad 10 Platte
vile. Q repr that Lancaster
would have to furnish 100000 My
ridiculous vision was at fault again,
and since be shows that tho people
can pay out 100000 instead OF
100000, | see that of course they
will all join in his project.
That competition at Plattevillc, too,
is another thing ridiculously left
out. We can ship our grain to
Plattevile, and then take choice of
roads, and then reship at either
Galena or Warren, and then again at
Freeport if reshipping is a luxury.
That Plattevile built the narrow
guage road is something l did not
know. How much does she own or
control of it?
But see now that my most ridlcu-
lous vision was in supposing that there
could DO railroad constructed be-
tween Lancaster and Speoht's ferry.
L learn fro n Q's article that we
would have TO begin at Lancaster
and we woald have to first build
road to PlattevilIe in order to have a
road to haul the rails over. If l had
only thought of that | should never
have mentioned the other project.
I back down completely and until
election I'm going for the Platteville
road. Z.
LANCASTER, October 6.
EASY LESSONS ON THE CAPABILITIES
OF MAN.
EDITOR HERALD:-We propose in
this lesson to show what man is capa-
BILE of doing as an inventor and me-
chanic.
We take these two together be
cause neither could accomplish much
alone. The inventors brain may in
vent valuable machine, to be made
of iron, steel and brass, but without
the aid of men skilled in working
these metals, it can never be built
and of course neither the inventor
nor the world can be benefited by IT,
Let US in our Imagination go back
to the time when men were few
upon the face of the earth, living
mainly upon its spontaneous produc
tons, whom all the ores containg the
metals were buried deep in the bowels
of the earth, and man stood upon its
surface with nothing in his hand
no tool-not even hammer. How
then could be ever begin to do any,
thing about mining and working the
metals. That he did do it is fact
known by all men, and not only so,
but he has succeeded in working
these metals into all sorts Of useful
machines, from the sewing machine
and printing press up to steam en-
gnes with power to drive ships,
laden with 10000 tons, across mighty
oceans, against wind and waves, and
up great rivers, where human power
unaided by steam could never take
| them. All this and much more these
men have done for the world, and it
does not appear that their mission is
yet ended on the contrary, inven-
ton and progress were never doing
more foF the world than now, and
they appear to increase in geomet-
rical progression, for they have done
more in the last fifty years than had
been done in 500 years before, and
so great has been the improvement
that had one predicted forty years
ago all the improvements that have
been made in railroading, telegraph
ing and machinery, he would have