The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1879-02-06
VOL. VIII.
THE TWO LEGESLATURES-CITY
AND STATE.

/ ~ n
City fathers are eminently slothful.
Never dreaming that it is their prov
ince to do more than collect taxes and
repair highwsys,it it never occurs to them
that their duties, in narrower sphere,
are those OF members Of the Legislature.
Wise lawgivers devote themselves to
tasks devised in promotion Of the glory
and greatness of Texas through ell the
countless years of the States existence.
Idiots legIslate for to-day; statesmen
for succs sssive generations. The one
class would ALLEVIATE school and uni
versity lands, which it costs nothing to
retain; wise men would deal with this
property as if they themselves might
live thousand years and reap rewards
of splendid opulence evolved from the
lapse of centuries. He who deprives
the State or the city of gains incident
to immortal lie becomes, his own
selfishness inducing him to pIunder the
commonwealth by wicked laws, neither
more nor less than a robber. His
crlminality Is none the less even if his
constituents be bribed by greed for
money to approve the acts and votes of
such lawgiver. There are few legis-
lators of Texas who would do these
things, never discriminating between
the interests or lusts or cupldity of a
generation and the rights and necessi-
ties Of successive generations. They
will tell you that it is proper to compel
posterity to pay the cost of a court
house built by the sale of bonds, as was
the tasteful pile of French architecture
at the head of the Avenue, and when
We assent by saying it is even criminal
to ALLEVIATE land belonging to posterlty
as thoroughly as to ourselves that we
may devote trifling proceeds to
schools as worthless as the colleges
in which they culminate-when we
assert the criminality of such
legislation there are demagogues of
the hour who defend it. We find a
few of the same class of thinkers di-
recting the fortunes of the city gov
ernment. They think only of to-day,
and never reck of the morrow. They
clean cutters and the streets surface,
and slowly poison the sub-soil: By
sinking consecutive pits, and multi
plying, as the city grows in years and
in density of population, repositories
of filth, the place, when showers fall
and the sun shines, is reeking with
foulest vspors. Unthinking aldermen,
incapable as other lawgivers of look
ing beyond the present, when cholera
or yellow fever appears, become disss-
trously active. 1t is too late to re-
move accumulated poisons stored away
in covered sinks and closets. 1t Is too
late to dig drains. Sporules prey upon
exhalations from upturned filthy soil,
and crazed city fathers rush madiy into
all sorts of extravagant hygienic alb
surdities. They force the accumula-
ton of fetid water and filth in back
yards. Cutters can not be used for
purposes of drainage, and all foulness
is accumulated in shallow pits or hidden
in barrels to stand and tester and rot
and stink, like aldermanic intelligence,
beneath the blazing sun of Texas.
Why not now cut sewer down
the centre of the broad Avenue
from the Capitol to the river? The
spot was selected by statesmen that
the river might cleanse great city,
and yet wiseacres say they fear to
render the river impure when Gods
laws make this impossible. Austin's
city fathers may be of this average
sort. They have perpetrated every
folly here defined. They are still idle,
awaiting the coming of cholera, slow
ly traverslng Eastern Russia, and the
redevelopment of yellow fever, said to
exist to-day IN Grenada, and that never
dies in the West Indies. Such un-
lawgivers, like those of the
who would part with the
school and university lands, would be
pitiable if their conduct were not |
criminal. The difference is that the
lawgiver robs posterity, the al
dermau destroys hte. If god
like justice could be meted out
among men, mayors and aldermen
would be held responsible for the
lives of ten thousand people who
have died of filth aud ghastly odors
rising up from ten thousand vaults of |
undralned cities in the valley of the |
Mississippi. On this one question
there is, among doctors and intelligent
observers, no difference of opinion.
Healthfulness, without sewage, Is i'm
possible. Now that the new Capitol |
is to be built and horrible pits that |
emit, through summer months, hide
Gus smells in Capitol square must be
drained by the State, the city fathers |
of Austin should begin and finish, be-
fore summer dawns, the great drain |
for the great thproughfsre. Every sink
that breeds fevers in hotels and bed
rooms aud storehouses should be
drained aud Austin, famed by winds |
as pure as they are made foul by alder
manic dullness, would be as perfectly |
exempt from dangers of foul infec-
tions and epidewics as the solitary
clerk of the weather enthroned among
the clouds on the summit of Pixies |
Peak.
THE AGRICULTURaL COLLEGE