The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-01-10
IsIT NOT INrOLKRaBLRr

ton They go backwards. Ou
1vsrs run south, but those of gold
alVsys cast. So resistless Is the mighty
current that it has swept backwards
with it the country's products. 1t has
inFerted the commercial map of the
United States. 1t has left Galveston
Houston, New Orleans and Charleston
poverty-stricken. 1t has aggrandized
Eastern capitalists until half a dozen
commonplacc bondholders could
buy and pay for our bossted
cities of the Southwest. The richest
of these Eastern lords pays no tax upon
his bonds or his income, and the sys-
TEN is so devised that its whole ten
dency is to make the rich richer, and
the poor poorer. Texas is taxed
perhaps $4,000, 900 per annum by
the tariff system. The internal
revenue system sends out a mil
lion each year, and when we have
asked for . miserable little custom
house and postoffice, they who monop-
olize all this income dole out to US
most grudgingly sum no larger than
this county of Travis has expended on
its %urt house. The condition of Texas
Is n Aingular. The Mississippi riv-
er has been damned up and made to
flow backwards, as a commercial fact,
by the system of government at
Washington, a city that has become
a lower faubourg of New York and
Boston. Railway owners, like Tom
Scott, haYe their wealth in Philadel-
phia, or, like Tom Allen, in st. Louis,
or, Vanderbilt, in New York, and
to these centers OF wealth States are
made tributary, and these Western and
Southern commonwealths are only mis-
cradle provinces plucked to poverty by
a thleving system of tariffs and then
su5ordinated by railway combinations
to the commercial domination of the
East. By law and habit and congress
ional legislation we are plundered and
robbed and stolen from through the
devious ways OF the infamous tariff un-
I'll, whatever the degree of popular in
dustry, or however abundant our crops,
our relative poverty is pitiable. All
the powers of the government are ex-
erted to impoverish and enslave the
taxed to enrich the untaxed. These
facts are not peculiar to the condition
of Texas or OF the South. Each West
ern State begins to confess misfortdnes
incident to a system of commercial en-
slavement whose shackles grow strong
er each day. The first effort to loosen
them Is developed in Bands silver bill,
and this is only the beginning of tie
revolt. Absurdly enough, the moYe-
ment is resisted by the bankers
and bondholders. The result is the
discussion of many practical CONNER
cial questions, to which the people
have hitherto given no attention
They haYe been so busy parcellipg out
offices among the politicians and so
excited about the dazed negro that we
have only heard of Democracy and
Radicalism and of the bloody shirt,
while the East has been coolly picking
our pockets by every conceivable de-
vice of selfish cunning and unmiXed
knavery. 1t is to divert popular at
tsntion, and that of our representatives
in Congress, from the solution of these
practical questions that Mr.. Conkling,
representing the great State of New
York, and Blaine, New England, have
agreed TO cooperate in uufurling the
old banner of sectional hates. There
is no other mode of maintaining sec
tional systems of robbery, called in de-
rision the grand Federal system of
taxation. Everything we eat, drink,
wear or consume is so taxed that East
ern monopolists, even the salt makers
OF Syracuse, ale enriched and the South
and West impoverished. The bloody
shirt pays. Conkling waves it for the
money there Is in it. The average
Southern and Western Congressman,
when Conkling's red hair blazes, and
when he rt-enacts the role of poor
Morton and outvies Blame in his as
sertions of Southern diabolism, only
proposes to divert the eyes of the West
aud South from the G and system OF
peculation, in which New York and
the East a,e engaged. Even sensible,
practical men, like Reagan, may Ue-
come so exaSperated by denunclationi
and lies leveled at the section r .agan
represents, that he forgets that these
"philanthroplsts" and these honest,
good men, who are so good that the
President becomes demon in their
eyes, only propose to divert the atten-
tion of the Congress and country from
each political money question. They
know that the negro is content and the
ex-msster perfectly blest in Sambo's
blissfulness. There were never kind
lier relations subsisting between two
diverse races thus unnstprally colloca-
ted, and yet Ccnkling and Blaine ap
peal to every sectional pass.on and re-
produce each war-cry of dismal,
dreary partisanship IN order to divert
our attention from those great financial
propositions to he consummation of
which the silver bill leads the way. We
hope Senator Ben Hill will not be en-
trapped as when in the House, and that
COnkling and Blaine may be suffered
to portray horrors of African life in the
South ad li5itGaE Their speeches will
be answered by living fac.s and become
model Celebrations of falsehoo1 for
gain to be pronounced infamous in his
tory. Let the money question and the
tariff and internal revenue systems and
TIE national banks have the floor. The
negro has occupied it long enough, aud
he stood there that the country might