The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1884-03-27
Its Bad Effects.

It's Ddu ELECTS.
c
Our Bruggerhoff correspondent yes .
erday touched the meat of the trou- :
le in Texas so far as the present i,
ence-cutting and its disastrous effects !
re concerned. The question of the :
wrongs represented in the outbreak
iced not he touched here. The bad /
lseS made of lawlessness, and the
3aralyzing of the industries of Texas ]
ire of more immediate and pressing
and they push for imme-
late adjustment. Money is the most
sensitive of all the interests of men.
The least uneasiness, the smallest ex-
of a lawless disregard for
rights and every man own
ing dollar or having dollar invested
in a community embraces, the first OPP
portunity to get it ont safely and away |
from danger. This is great evil, but |
it is by no means the worst. Law
lessness cuts off the supply. Money
in Europe and the east seeking invest
ment at three and four per cent per
annum is doubled up and locked away
whenever its owners are told that
a combination exists in Texas to de-
stroy fences, and it is actively at work.
No one man knows or can ever ap-
proximately estimate the loss Texas
has sustained in this way since the
first W ire fence succumbed to the nip
pers. There is nothing Texas needs
so much now as money, or the con-
Gdence which induces it to embark
in enterprises here. Our vast
natural resources are as yet barely
touched. Only enough has been done
to show us what may be accomplished
by intelligently handled money, and
ordinary business care and energy. A
few men in the state realize all this,
but they are powerless before the
passion-heated mob intent to make
some petted favorite governor, or send
some other idol to congress or the
senate. All the vast interests repre-
sented in our peerless agricultural
possibilities are made subordinate to
the petty political schemes of some
mere pothouse patriot whose utmost
intelligence and best effort would
probably not be worth half dollar
a day in honest and useful industry.
Wta wrttched policy is this What
moonstruck madness it is to continue
the course and policy which invites
disaster. Had there been no political
chem es to work had there been nc
narrow or selfish purposes to forward
had there never been a wire cut in
Texas, instead of sitting here idle
with all of our improvement en-
terprises at dead standstill. the
state would have been resoundipg
with the noises of a profitably en-
ployed industry, and money and peo-
pie pouring in from every direction to
open aud develop the fairest and
the richest land in all the earth.
There is not mile of new railroad
being constructed in all our two hun
bred and seventy-four thousand square
miles of territory, and yet we need
railroads and the facilities they bring
more than anything else. 1t is in the
face of facts, hard, stubborn and IN
complimentary facts such as these,
that the petty politician projects and
impels the forces of destruction, that
his puny schemes may 60, his puny
ambitions be realized and his puny re-
venges worked out. 1t is high time
that the sober conservatism of Texas
steps to the front with an emphasis
which will set the little idols of the
mob to quaking. What if, in serving
purpose as high as this, John Ire
land or Sull Ross, or even John Peter
Smith should be compelled to go to
wall, be ground into powder even be-
fore the stern requirements of an ear
nest people and their high and patri-
otto purposes. Before interests 80
grave the petty ambitions of mere pol
iticians seem pitiful indeed, and yet
we go on from year to year pushing
the political fortunes of some pet of
the hour, and trampling the interests
of people under our feet.
The state of Texas could well afford
to do many other impolitic things
rather than to call the halt as she has
done, to the inflow Of development
money. The most beaded epidemic,
the severest drought or the worst crop
disaster which has ever come to US
in the past, is a light affair compared
with a single section of severed wire,
where that has been done in defiance
Of law, or by the connivance of the
officers of the law. Let us give small
attention to the duty of governor
making this summer, and rather adj
dress ourselves seriously to the task
of finding solution of these troubles,
and our word for it our summers
work will be more patriotic, and more
profitable.