Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1878-08-30
THE QUESTION UNDE Err DISCUS
SION.

THE QUESTION UND Err DISCUS
SION.
When usually successful physician has
the courage to tell his patient that he can
not relieve him by medicine, and that ma
lure alone can do the work, he does a wise
thing, but unluckily his wisdom often
results in the patient turning to a
charlatan, who is liberal with nos
trums, which will prove speedy cures.
In the end nature does the work,
the quack gets the profit and the
credit and the honest doctor has only an
approving conscience for his pains. The
case with the American patient of to-day is
very similar. The honest leader will candid
ly confess that nothing can be done save by
time, while the quacks in politics rush for
ward with their nostrums and it seems
likely are to get the offices and the profits,
when time, the only healer, shall have
brought about health and prosperity. Es-
pecially do these quacks ignore the fact
that there is any other sufferer like the
American, and fill his ears with the story
that his is a peculiar case and that nobody
in the civilized world is suffering like him.
And yet the truth is he is in the midst of
an epidemic. England is suffering financi-
ally as much, France after her spirit at
paying her war debt is, outside of Paris
where the Exposition is progressing. IN a
state of depression, Germany is standing
with silent workshops and the workmen
thereof talking socialism and shooting at
Emperors civilized country on the
face of the globe is affected like America
and yet every here and there some am
bilious politician is springing up with his
panacea for the cure of the world.
And so determined is this clamor that it
is hard to get a hearing on theside of prac-
tical common sense. Talk to a citizen
about the management of his farm, or his
store, or his workshop and he is practical
enough, but speak to him of the nation
which is only larger edition of all three,
and he sails up into the air. There is plenty
of money in this country, unless all the au-
thorities on the subject are lies. There
$12 in currency to every man while in 1860,
year of unexampled prosperity, and sound
prosperity too, there was only So. While
the population has increased only one
fourth the money has doubled. The
very orators who tell us that there is
not enough money. tell us in the next breath
of the immense amount there are
millions and millions of it in the banks
unused, and that have not been invested be:
cause there was no opening for it. There
is plenty of money everywhere; in France
$40 per head but the people haven't got it,
in England $26 per head but idle workmen
lie down hungry at night. 1t is not the
lack of currency that gives us our present
trouble, it is the lack of confidence.
Another trick of our charlatans is to pre-
tend to know what brought the disease on,
and they befog their diagnosis with 80
many of the outward symptoms, that the
patient is bewildered. Every man may
easily know what is the matter with us.
It is not the first time America has had
the disease of hard times, and it has al
ways come on from the same cause.-A
season of extraordinary expenditures bring
ing on an extraordinary amount of cur
rency, high prices. extravagant living,
then settling day. then disaster. and then
gradual recovery. Three times has this
nation been through this-it is not new
and every time there has been great suffer
ing and slow recovery. There is no legis-
lative remedy for it.-All the law in all the
law books won't get man or nation on
its feet in a firm financial standing. They
must work out. When John Browns sons
stop tilling the farm and go to fighting
each other. and not only stop selling their
wheat at the county town, but buy their
wheat there, they must expect to pay
for it after they make peace. Their due
bills may stand well, and they may live
well for little while after the row, On
them, but they've got to pay. While our
fight was going on we showered our due
bills everywhere, particularly in Europe,
and she charged us high prices. Of course,
all this had to be paid. By some doctri.
naires our ealamities are dated from the
OVERRIDING of railroad building after the
war, but this, it is likely, is a symptom,
rather than the disease. The disease was
that number of men stopped producing
and went to fighting, borrowing means
from abroad to do it, and paying exag-
gerated prices for those they obtained from
home, and now it only remains for the
country to make good that four years of
idleness, and the subsequent years of ex-
travagance, by economy and industry
The nostrtms which are rendered the
people instead, such as imitation and re-
pudiation, will do no permanent good.
The nation will only have to go through
another season of distress, after tempo.
Iary relief, a dulling of the pain by fnan-
cial narcotics, which will not remove Or
even touch the seat of the ill.
To all who thoughtfully egard the
present state of the country, which is one
Of unavoidable distress, the most painful
subject of contempla ton, next to that OF
the popular suffering, is that of really wise
political practitioners STOPPING to the arts
of the quack, in dealing with public ques-
lions before the people. To be remanded
to private life may be the greatest of
griefs for a politician. but it is not the
greatest for the patriot. 1t is during the
temporary storms Of disappointed popu-
lar hopes and the wavering of compasses
that the CLEAN from the lighthouse should
be highest and brightest and steadiest,
and it will be humiliating reflection, I'M
der the clear skies of the morrow. that
light extinguished by timidity and greed
has strewed the shore with wrecks.
The accounts from the South are ap.