The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1888-02-25
PILL NYE ON THE TARIFF.

|
"I've always hollered for high tariff in
order TO hyst the public debt, but now that
we've got National debt cooped l wish
they'd take little back at mine. I've put
In fifty years farmin'. | never drank
Ticker In any form. I've worked from ten
to eighteen hours day; been economical
In clos and never went to show mOre'n a
dozen times In my life; raised a family and
learned upwards OF two hundred calves to
drink out of tin pail without blowing their
vittles up my sleeve. My wife worked
along side o. me SEWN new seats on the
boys pants, skimmin' milk, and even
helpin' me load hey. For forty years We
toiled along together and hardly got time
10 look into each othor's faces or dared TO
stop and get acquainted with each other
Then her health failed. Ketched Geld In
the spring. house, probly skimmin' milk,
and washin' pans, and scaldin' pals sand pat
butter. Anyhow, she took In long
breath one day while the doctor and me
was watchin' her, and she says to me-
Henry, says she, I've got chance to rest,
and she put one tired, worn. out hand on
top OF the other tired, worn.out hand, and
l knew she'd gone where they don't work
all day and do chores all night,
81 took time to kiss her then. I'd been
too busy for a good while previous to that,
and then called In the boys. After the
funeral II was too much for them to stay
around and eat the kind of cookin' we had
to put up with, and nobody spoke up around
the house as we used to. The boys quit
whistlin' around the barn, and talked kind
of low to themselves about goin' to town
and gettin' job
"They'er all gone now, and the snow is
four feet deep up there on mothers grave
In the barryin'. ground"
Then both of US looked out of the car.
window quite long while without saying
anything.
IL don't blame the boys for going into
something else longs other things pays
better; but / say-and say what know
that the man who holds the prosperity OF
this country in his hands, the man that &C.
tually makes the money for other people to
spend, the man that eats three good, simple
square meals day and goes to bed at .
o'clock SO that future generations with
good blood and cool brains can go from his
farm to the Senate and Congress and the
White House-he is the man that gets left
at last to run his farm, with nobody to help
him but hired man and high protective
tariff. The farms in our State is mOrtgag-
ed for over $100000000. Ten of our
| Western States-I see by the papers-has
got about three billion and half mortga-
ges on their farms, and that don't count
the chattel mortgages filed with the town
clerks on farm machinery, stock, Wagons,
and even crops, by gosh that amt two in.
ches high under the snow. That's what
10 Tnr
ernment is rich, but the men that made 1t,
the men that fought perarie fires and per.
arie wolves and 1njuns and potato bugs and
billiards, and has paid the war debt and
! pensions and everything else and hollered
for the Union and the Republican party
and high tariff ard anything else that they
was told to, is left high and dry this cold
winter with mortgage of seven billions
and half on the farms they have earned
and saved thousand times over"
Eyes; but look at the glory of sending
from the farm the future President, the
future Senator, and the future member of
Congress"
"That looks we'll on paper but what does
it really amount to- Soon as farmer boy
gets in place like that he forgets the soil
that produced and holds his head as high
as a hollyhock. He bellers for protection
to everybody but the farmer, and while he
sails round in highty-tighty room with a
FIRE in it night and day, his father on the
farm has to kindle his own fire in the
morning with elm slivers, and he has to
wear his sons lawn tennis suit next to him
or freeze to death, and he has 10 milk in an
old grey shawl that has held that member
of Congress since he was baby, by CORY
and the old lady has to sojourn through the
winter in the ilannels that Silas wor at the
riggatter before he went to Congress.
SOL say, aud | think that Congress
agrees with me, Damn farmer, anyhow"
He then went away. BILL NYE.