The Weekly Kansas chief. [volume] (Troy, Kan.) 1872-1918, 1878-10-03
Abev.t Hard Timcs.

Tie Republican speeches, last week, threw
the editor of the Bulletin into spasms. He
fairly turns himself inside out, in his rawlings
about what st. John said, (as he alleges,) rela
tive to the national debt, and times not being
hard in Kansas, aud the men who are in poverty,
being there in consequence of their own acts.
To begin with, he mixes his men badly. Col.
st. John spoke of the national debt, aud the bal
ance of trade that was in our favor, and Of the
women churning ont the debt; but it was Judge
HanLack who said that times were not hard in
Kansas. and that men who are in poverty, are
there by their own mismanagement, and that
loafers who sit about the corners whiting
goods boxes, were the persons who advocated
the most wise financial theories.
Let MS look at this moment, and see how far
wrong Judge Hanback, was. The men whose
farms are mortgaged, have m mortgaged them for
debts contracted in years when crops failed
by reason of drought or grasshoppers. The
want of money did not cause either of those
scourges, which would have happened all the
same, had the fat money been in full blast
Having no crops to sell, how could they have
got money, If it had been waiting by the cord
No party and no policy is responsible for this.
But there has been for years, and is to-day,
enough money to buy all that the farmer has to
sell. Prices are not very high, to be sure, but
they are regulated by the law of supply and de-
mand, and they are high enough to keep the
farmer from suffering. There is to-day work in
Doniphan County for every man who is able and
willing to work, and every man who has raised
anything to sell, can find amarket for it. man
may be prevented by sickness from working, but
that is something that the fnsncial question
cannot regulate; and in the river bottoms, farm
ers have had their crops drowned out, leaving
them in straitened circumstances, but neither
could that be avoided. But go outside of una
voidable cases, and where is there any need of
suffering in Doniphan Countyf There is plenty
on every hand, and the man who is willing, can
earn his share of it, The able-bodied men who
complain, are, as Judge Hanback, said. suffering
from their own lazness and mismanagement.
The farmer who spends his time travelling
around crying for moro greenbacks, has let his
farm run to weeds, and will never pay the mort
gage on it. The loafer who sits on goods boxes
and growls about hard times, will not work
when he has a chance. When we hear man,
in this year of Kansas, whining about having no
butter in his house, and suffering for the neces-
saries of life, and see that he is able-bodied We
are at no loss where to place the responsibility
for his short rations. 1t is either unadulterated
laziness, or high-toned cussedness that will not
permit him to work at anything except some
thing that he is not competent to work at. A
blacksmith could not make living at watch
making, if he labored from morning until night !;
nor could tailor earn his bread in blacksmith
shop making horse-shoes; neither could man
whom God designed to run a breaking-plow
make brilliant success editing newspaper.
All these would soon cry for butter, and for
bread to spread it on; but every man who is
willing to work at that which nature and prac-
tice have fitted him for, can make living and
need not suffer.
The men who have had to mortgage their
farms in years of misfortune, can do no better
than bide their time. In the hour of their ne
cessity, men were around loaning money at IL
and Is per cent, with a fat commission added.
These agents have mostly turned greenbackers,
| and are now bowling for fat money; but the
mortgages and interest still hang on. The best
they can do, is to worry along and keep the in
terest paid up, until the mortgages expire, then
follow the example of the Government, by re-
placing them with obligations at a much lower
rate of interest, without commission to agents.
We notice that several benevolent gentlemen
are now advertising cheap money, without COM
missions. By lowering their interest, working
hard, and keeping in trim for good prices, which
must come every now and then, they can event.
ually work out of bad predicament. But no
man is going to pay mortgage or interest, by
neglecting his farm, to organize Greenback
Clubs; nor will Government shinplaster with
out any promise of redemption, be of any more
benefit to him than would the note of an indi-
vidual without promise to pay.