The patron of husbandry., 1879-08-02
ATTENTION, FARMERS!

Our city cousins tell us that the farmer
is kind and obliging; that he loves to ac-
commodate and help his fellow man.
Doubtless we are all familiar with the
story of the artist who received bread and
butter in lieu of the stale bread for which
he asked. w. M. Laffan has a new yer.
sion of the affair, in which the stale bread
begging artist was made the happy recip-
lent of a piece of pie. The story will IL
lustrate the generous, obliging disposition
of the farmer.
There is certain class of men in the
world known as lawyers What benefit
they are to mankind is a question difficult
of solution. They are hardly producers,
although a large majority of the lies man
imagination. Nevertheless, there are
members of society SO long as they keep
their place. There are too many lawyers
for all to have paying business, and as
they are too smart to earn their bread by
the sweat of their brows, they lay aside
Blackstone and commence political wire
pulling. When they come to the farmer,
praise his wife, nurse his children, and
furnish MIN with cigars; the farmer, SIM
ply to oblige them, sends them to Con-
gress TO represent him in the august as
sembly!
But what cares the lawyer for his con-
stituent's interests? The farmers inter-
ests are not his own. Laws beneficial to
the farmer are of no benefit to him. In
stead of legislating for the benefit of the
country, he dives deep into the dirty cess
pool of politics, bringing up old and effete
issues makes grandiloquent speeches, ar
rays section against section, tampers with
the finances, stirs up sectional hate, gets
drunk or passes law that gives a man
who, when minister plenipotentiary
wrote treatise on draw poker and got
mixed up in dishonest mining scheme,
5000 because he was shot though the hand
Alter having drawn the salary he has not
earned, and stolen enough to live in luxu-
ry the rest of his life, he comes home to
laugh at the stupidity of the farmer. If
the gas he expends in Congress was COM
pressed into one-millionth of the space
that it now occupies behind bullet in a
Springfield rifle, and that rifle pointed
straight at him and allowed to explode ac
cidentally, it would be a blessing for
which posterity would be thankful.
This, indeed, is sad picture, but it is
not overdrawn. The laws profession un-
hts him for legislative duties. 1t teaches
him to bubble over unimportant techni.
calities, to presuppose that there are two
sides to every measure, that he must es-
pouse one side or the other without refer
ence to right or wrong, and that he must
make speech in advocacy of his view of
the matter, measured only by the strength
OF his lungs and his capacity for gas.
And when he has succeeded in PASSING
law no one can understand it, and no one
but lawyer has the audacity and effont
ery to pretend to. All LAWYERS are not
Congressmen (thank heavenly, but we
have only to read of the dlsgraceful pro.
ceedlngs Of Congress to realize that nearly
all Congressmen are lawyers accustomed
to the scenes and epithets of our courts of
justice and order. A tilt between the
honorable gentleman from Maine" and
ditto from Georgia, makes striking illus
tration. Congress has become a curse
and It's sessions calamity dreaded by the
nation.
There is but one remedy; farmers must
unite. not as Republicans, Democrats or
Greenbackers; above all, not as part;sans
as falstaff was coward by instinct, but
as American citizens, to overthrow this