St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1888-01-19
BILL NYE ON THE>TARIFF
He Tries to Show How Little He Knows
About the Subject.

He Tries to Show How Little He Knows
About the Subject.
While so many other men who know
as little as do about it are freely dis
cussing the tariff, it seems almost
cowardly in me to hang back, writes
Bill Nye in the New York World. l
have resolved, therefore, to give utter
ance to a few terse and ringing SEN
fences, not calculated to inflame the
country, of course, for | have always
tried to be temperate, especially in my
language. and sought to avoid using
my wonderful gifts as word painter
and rhetorical thunderbolt jerker in
way that would excite the lower case
nature of man to war or tend to de-
press the stock market. Go to any
Wall street man of any prominence
today and he will tell you, unless lie
should happen to be prejudiced because
| may have pinched him in some deal
or other, that have never tuned my
Tyre for the purpose of melting the
nation to civil war or sought to unset
tie values or to wreck great financial
enterprises. But | say that at time
when the less a man knows about the
tariff the more freely he enters into a
discussion of it, | think it would be
wrong for me longer to restrain my
self. Go where you will in this cOun-
try today, and you will find men
talking about the tariff and the tax on
raw material who haven't had Il mouth
full of raw material or any other kind
in the house for weeks, except as their
wives earned it and brought it home
to them. This country is full of men
who have thought so hard for the COM
mon veal that the seats of their
trousers shine like the dome of the
Massachusetts, state house.
Several gentlemen have invented
methods for the prevention of rich men,
schemes by which property could be
equalized and divided per capita in
stead of per capital. The result of this
could be easily figured out in advance.
Today Jay Gould would be wealthy
and Henry George hungry, we will say.
Tomorrow Jay Gould and Henry
George would have sos apiece. Tues
day Henry George would have $35
and Il case of collie. Jay Gould would
have $50 and be at the head of
Jamaica ginger trust. Wednesday Mr..
Gould would have $l30 and an order
on Henry Georges agent for the pro-
ceeds of his next lecture on anti
poverty.
How is it with the American farmer?
He has been driven up further and
further into the corner by the legisla
ton of the past 25 years, and yet, be-
cause he is not actually starving to
death, he is pointed to with pride. The
American farmer contributed more to
the war than most anybody else, both
in blood and money, and really got
less i'm return. He got the priceless
boon of liberty, it is true, the liberty
to pay big war prices for rything
he wanted, and to sell his crops for less
and less year after year, competing
with foreigners abroad and foreigners
who came here to compete with him,
liberty to pay big prices for machinery,
help, clothing and everything else he
bought, and then ride into town on a
December day, accompanied by the
cold and still remains of an assassinat-
ed hog, only to be told that the threat
ened foreign war had fattened out,
and that pork had gone down to four
cents! 1t is depressing to ride 16
miles in the society of a hog that has
died by ones own hand, and every
time you look round to see that same
frozen smile, with chip in it, while
his chest is throws open in an inge-
NOUS way by means of IL hickory stick
in order to show that his leaf lard is
all that it has been represented. 1t is
not cheerful to ride all the forenoon
with no one near you but this cold
and pulseless clay, with no eye upon
you but the leaden eye of the dead.
Let the reader who never tried it ride
l6 miles when the shades of evening
begin to lower, ride over lonely road
over bare ground with Il pair of low
br0wed hobs, Il green calico comforter
over your knees and the clammy fea-
lures of Il dead and decolletee hog in |
your lap. Then, if you want to feel
your spirits sink out of sight, ascer-
tain, after You have laid out all the
money in your mind on a basis of 8 |
cents per pound, that 3a4 are the QUO
tations on an animal that you have
loved in his infancy, hid down in your
cellar so you couldn't hear him squeal |
when he was killed, and afterwards
helped to scrape with case knife, so
that even in death he would be
source of pride to you!
Men tell us that manufactures make |
towns, so we must foster
On the same theory
violent death every morning before
breakfast was what made the flush
times in California, Nevada and Colo
rado. In order to have prosperity we
must have more murders and lynching
soirees. Why, when a man was killed
every day or two in Leadville, labor
srs got as high as $40 "a day. There
fore crime makes money plenty and
wages high.