The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-11-20
The Modern Man of uz.
From Richmond Christian 4duocate.

From Richmond Christian Aduocdte
Mr.. Robert Beverley, of Virginia, Pres
ident of the Farmers Congress of the
United 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-
protected manufacturer, the traffic manager
and the Corporation Senator" r"-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 suffer-
ings; the trial of temper in stumpy fields;
the vileness of plantain; the wickedness of
weeds; the deceit of cookie; the "birth-sin'
in wild onion. While the average citizen
can hardly hold his own against the world,
the flesh and the devil, the unhappy pris-
oner of Gland measure perch, rod and
rood-is tormented by the Apaches of the
vegetable, mineral and animal Kingdoms.
We lift up lament with Brother Bever-
ley, and chant war song against the to-
bacco worm and the tobacco tax.
The Virginia Farmer has our pity. He
is the drudge-the helot of political econ
omy. Everybody rides him; nobody cur
ries him. He is the victim of hog cholera,
high tariff and fraudulent fertilizers Pas
toral poetry may delude him, for the mo
ment, into dream of rural bliss, but the
sheriff rudely wakes him to his wretched-
ness.
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 cobber is a "Knight"; the
plowman a 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 fur
nished 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
merciless than the floods that swept away
his crops. The torrents devastate once in
a decade. A barbarous Revenue raids him
with the regularity of the zodiac and the
hunger of the horse leech.
The unhappy planter, like the eviscer-
ated man in Warwick's Almanac, is beset
by enemies on all sides-man, beast and
insect The earth is treacherous. Weeds
choke the good grain; wire grass entraps
the innocent timothy; sassafras fourises in
immortal vigor where wheat pines and
perishes. Let the husbandman set out a
vine or sprout seed. 1t must run the
gauntlet of the frost The mole hunts for
the root to destroy The grub gnaws it.
Caterpillar, cut-worm, borer, and countless
enemies, winged or creeping, with tooth or
sting, prey upon it. Mildew, rust and
blight fall on it. Potato bug, turnip bee
tie, bean weevil, tomato worm, leaf slug,
onion maggot, 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 rewards 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 revel in his
hennery. The hawk by day and the owl
by night capture the survivors of the gapes,
straddles and cholera.
His capital in farm stock is precarious
investment Murrain and black-tongue
slay his COWS. The bot-hy is ever intent
on fastening its deadly egg to the horse
The scab, the fiuke, 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
detains his harvest in the barns till rats
| ldlOcu On IL duu Inc WeeVll feafS q MYRIAD
progeny for future foraging The hoof
that escapes dog or disease, the sacks Of
grain saved from crow or mice, find at the
depot the priests Cor rather the pirates) of
commerce, demanding tenth of the in
crease of the earth for transportation over
railroads built out of the taxes of the agri-
culturist.
The element battles his hopes. The Sa-
beans make incursions upon him and levy
"war tariff" on his property. Eliphaz,
Bildad and Zophar, with the usual lingual
limberness of the small statesman, ''darken
counsel by words without knowledge" and
rather side with Satan and the marauding
Chaldeans.
The modern Job, sitting amid his broom
sedge burrows, with the larvae Of ''infant
industries" feeding with fostering ulcers
upon his life, vexed with the gabble of the
Temanite, the Shuhite and the Naamathite
is it strange thing that he 'saggravates
his voice" roars agrinst his tormentors,
and repines at his miserable lot-Despair
on an ash-heap?