Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1886-12-08
THE MODERN MAN OF w.

Mr.. Robert Beverly, of this State, Pres-
dent of the Farmers Congress of the Uni
ted States, made an address before that
body at St. Paul. Mimi, in August. He
uttered wall over the hardships of his
bucolic brethren, and predicted sore evils to
the country if their taskmasters-the pro-
tected manufacturer, the traffic manager
and the corporation Senator''-continued
to make the life of the farmer ''bitter with
hard bondage" The men in fine linen and
faring sumptuously every day turn deaf
and distant ear to the Lazarus in linsey-
woolsey. Pharoah hardeneth his heart.
Our bowels melt with mercy towards these
Sudras of the soil, whom the high and
naughty Bramins of commerce and coin
''spurn with the foot as a stranger cur"
We know their sorrows and sufferings; the
trial of temper in stumpy fields; the vile
ness of plantain; the wick edness of weeds;
the deceit of cookie; the ''birth sin" in wild
onien. While the average citizen can hard
ly hold his own against tho world, the flesh
and the devil, the unhappy prisoner of
"land- measure" rod and rood-is
toimented by the Ap,ches of the vegeta-
BILE, mineral and animal kingdoms. We
lift up a lament with Brother Beverly, and
chant a war-song against the tobacco worm
and the tobacco tax.
The Virginia Farmer has our pity. He
is the drudge-the helOt of political ecOno-
my. Everybody rides him; nobody curries
him He is the vistim of hog cholera, high
tariff and fraudulent fertilizers. Pastoral
poetry may delude him, for the moment
into dream of rural bliss, but the sheriff
rudely wakes him to his wretchedness.
He can't strike for increase of wages or
shorter time of toll, The mechanic has
his guild. fixes his own pay and hours for
work The cobbler is "Knight;" the
plowman dumb driven OK. The man of
tools follows his trade often in warm fac
tory, and always sheltered from the wealth
er. The farmer must rise with the dawn,
face the storm, and forsake the field only
with the departing day.
In city Or town, superior schools train
the child of the poorest laborer for ten
months in the year. Short sessions, and
frequently Indifferent instruction, are
furnished the country patron. And indeed
the boy can be spared but for brief period
from the farm.
A "war tariff in these years of peace
plumbers, by hundred cunning devices,
the landowner. The ''Robber Barons" Of
monopoly have him by the throat and their
hands upon his purse. They are more
mereless than the floods that sweep away
his crops. The torrents devsstate once in
decade. A barbarous Revenue raids him
with the regularity of the zodiac and the
hunger of the hOrse-leech.
The unhappy planter, like the eviscera-
ted man in Warwick's Almanac, is beset by
enemies on all salesman, beast and insect.
The earth is treacherous. Weeds choke
the good grain; wire grass entraps the in
nocent timothy; sassafras fourishes in i'm
mortal vigor where wheat pines and perish
es. Let the husbandman set out vine or
sprout a seed 1t must run the gauntlet of
the frost. The mole hunts for the root to
destroy. The grub gnaws it. Caterpillar,
cut warm, borer, and countless enemies,
winged or creeping, with tooth or sting,
prey upon it. bIildew. rust and blight fall
on it. Potato bug, turnip beetle, bean
weevil, tomato worm, leaf slug, onion mag
got, rose chatter, cabbage lice, lead an
army of vegetable pests in forays upon the
fruits of his toll. Every invader lays eggs
by the thousand and matches a new brood,
In the run of a single sun, to ravage the re-
wards of rural industry. The air is dim
with buzzing vandals and the earth alive
with the crawling devourers.
The untaxed cur destroys his flock The
sly fox and slippery weazel reveli in his hem
merry. The hawk by day and the owl by
night capture the survivors of the gapes,
straddles and cholera.
His capital in farm stock is a precarious
investment. Murrian aud black-tongue
slay his cows. The bot-fy is ever intent
on fastening its deadly egg to the horse.
The scab, the fluke, the rot ruin the fold.
No electric light shines for him along
paved highways. In the short, dark days
of winter mud imprisons his family and de-
tains his harvest in the barns till rats fatten
on it and the wesvil rears myriad progeny
for future foraging. The hoofthat escapes