The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1878-05-30
WHAT FRIGHrENs THEM.

4
number of republican societies. Even
the grand old Emperor of Germany,
his attention directed to the subject by
q bullet aimed at his life, has been
pleased to speak earnestly of this mat
ter. We can understand and perhaps
would approve any degree of violence
necessary in Europe to relieve the
many Of the expressions and exactions
Of the few. European multltudes have
tolerated subordination to hereditary
riches until life, subjected to burdens
incident to the relations of the govern
ing and the governed class, can nc
longer be endured. Burdensome as we
find taxation and knavish as are Fed
eral masters Of recent years, and eX-
travagant and absurd as was penny
wise and pound-foolish Rutabagaism,
we know nothing of the miserles and
wrongs of the peasantry and of the
over-tasked millions of Europe. Each
citizen is a soldier, and a soldier, at
best, is q pitiable, unthinking slave.
Women and children must toll even as
beasts of burden in the fields and
in the workshops, while men
are taught through ten and fifteen years
the arts and habits and wretchedness
of soldiers life. Therefore 1t is that
the only security of thrones and of the
arlstocratic systems of Europe consists
in the maintenance of mighty standing
armies, and at last we find that kings
are questioning the trustworthiness of |
these armies. The people and the ar
mics are one, and principles and pur-
poses accepted in secret societies per-
vading Europe are accepted by most |
of the soldiers of Europe. Not only |
do kings learn that great armies are
wholly untrustworthy, but the enor-
nous cost of their maintenance hsstens
the coming of the very calamity they
were created to postpone. Not only |
must Prussia pay and feed and clothe
and arm eight hundred thousand men
and maintain them at Bismarck's beck
and call, but the women and children
of Prussia must be substituted as Ia
borers in fields and workshops for these
soldiers thus distracted from indus
trial pursuits. Therefore we hear tray
elers tell of the terrible hardships to
which the peasant women of European
States are subjected, and therefore
the flight of multitudes to this country.
A veracious rac0nteur tells that he has
seen, in an interior European country
of most exalted civilization, woman
and an OK yoked side by side and thus
plowing the fields. OF truth there is
no degree of harsh poverty or utter
hopelessness for the future and dreari-
ness of the past which does not over
shadow the poor of Europe. Mean
while each ''budget" of each govern
ment annually exceeds in amount that
of the preceding year, and debts and
armies grow greater and more costly
and each government armed to the
teeth is a perpetual menace to its
neighbor. and still the rich 1--we in
luxurious ldleness and the poor are
beggared till toiling millions are too
wretchedly poor to adopt even the life
and gain the sustensnce of tramps.
As the tramp is the product of bad
government and unwise legislation and
of criminal, selfish financial measures,
for which the bondholders and their
agents in power at Washington deserve
everlasting reprobation, so the woes of
the poor of Europe have origin IN the
ambition of kings, and folly and self
ishnesss of monopolists of land and
bonds. The little that is left the poor
by tax gatherers is wrested from them
by the bondholding aristocracy.
We are blest in having only
bondholders, and our condition
is only preferable to that of the people
of Europe to the extent that the war
created aristocracy of America have
not seized all the land or succeeded in
organizing great army, and the thiev-
ing Robson would not suffer us to
have a navy, and thus no people
were ever more fortunate than we.
In these facts we see why Commun-
ism may pervade Europe and cannot
America. We may revolt, through
legislative action against the bond
holders, paying them off as rapidly as
their paper natures, in greenbacks,
but when this is effected every reform
which cannot be achieved by the bal
lot has been accomplished. We have
no standing army worthy the name;
We haye no aristocracy maintained by
law and reigning and robbing by law
and by divine right; we have no
landed aristocracy, pretending that
they have the exclusive right to God
given air or water or soil. Happily
there is more land in sparsely popu-
lated America than the bondholders
could buy, and the winds are free and
no mortgage has been fastened on the
stsrs and our aristocrscy have failed to
turn backwards the flood-tide of our
great river, and thus America is
spared the terrors and dangers i'm
pending over Europe. Save in narrow
districts. along great railway lines and
in the oldest States, Communism can
have, in the very nature of things. no
fOothold aud can do no good or evil in
America. But in Europe the day is
not distant when armies must be dis
solved and thrones overturned and dy-
nasties destroyed. The sooner the IN
evitable cad comes the better for the