West Virginia Democrat. [volume] (Charles Town, W. Va.) 1885-1890, 1888-09-07


within the last twenty years; and
with very gratifying progress, have
developed taste for flowers and
painting, and rudimentary music,
and in the art departments OF form
and color, generally; manifested
chiefly in house plants, and parterr-
es of flowers, and in simple pictures
and musical instruments; but above
all in the improved and graceful
style and fit and adjustment and
color of their apparel
There is also. q greatly higher de-
gree of intelligence in certain de-
partments of knowledge; whilst in
other departments, notably in the
knowledge of political rights and
public duties, there has been rather
q decadence than progress. And
as to the functions which the great
mass perform, of public nature,
they are. so far as respects political
virility,, however different in kind,
entirely similar in Importance and
manliness, to those offices and funct-
ions which the eunuchs exercise in
the administration of the economics
of the oriental harem.
Notwithstanding the many graft
flying advances above referred to,
toward higher and gentler cul-
ture, there is steady tendency to-
ward the conditions which after all
will finally characterize the life
merely of well-fed and contented
peasantry from whose life all politi-
cal ambition will, perhaps not unfor
tunately for the general good and
the public repose, have been eliminat
ed. For the great business oflife af-
ter all is not to be great administra-
tors of affairs, nor great command
ers of armies who burn and devas
tate cities and slaughter the inhab
itants, nor great philosophers who
prosecute knowledge and truth from
one strong hold 70 another; but to
produce and prepare for use those
material things upon which the HUI
man race subsists; and in doing
which it has always been, and it
will ever be necessary to have
very large majority of what we have
been accustomed to regard, very un-
justly, as very common and very un-
interesting people whose narrowness
of opportunity must always limit
their aspirations, their energies and
their practical efforts to that strug-
gle which nature has devolved upon
all her animated creatures-the con
fiict with opposing or inert forces,
which is involved in the effort, eth
er to comply with the conditions of
mere animal existence, or to set
aside those conditions and eyade
them; an effort which has never
achieved anything. "In the sweat
of thy face shalt thou eat bread" is
the memorable law of nature, no less
than of revelation, and ,notwithstand-
ing the Normal Schools, the econo-
my of mans existence requires what
we have been used TO call some
common people"-men who will
consent to sweat, and who under an
improved realization of memorable
laws which involve no dishonor,will
not desire to rise" out of a falsely
stigmatized inferior condition, &C
cording to the teachings of such
-reformers and spurious NOR
alists as Washington GLADDEN..
Especially should there be no sur
pride to find the great body of the
people gravitating toward the peas
ant condition in country which
has maintained, at least since its
consumation in 1864, the most grind
ing and oppressive taxation that has
been witnessed in the history of
mankind; which pays larger sum
in pensions than any other govern
ment ever paid during the history of
the world; which pays now Two
ffths of all the pensions paid by
the seven greatest governments on
earth; and the public newspapers of
which, publish weekly, the fatal and
shameless, and idiotic boast that un-
der Cleveland's administration the
recouuting for the grand army of
mendicants and parasites goes
bravely on, and scores are daily add
ed to the ignoble and ungodly list
OF vampires who are fed and cloth
Ell by the labor of others.
One hundred poor families in
West Virginia would be gladdened
bv an annual distribution amongst
them of the yearly $4,000 flung out
of the hard earnings of their class
the other day into the lap of the
widow of man whose profane and
destroying life was maintained from
''the sweat of the poor and the blood
of the brave.
And in the midst of these dis
tresses there comes down from the
SCI in a ship the great political
charlatan and blatherskite of the
century croaking his wicked and
mendacious monologue: "If you
reduce the tariff you will ruin the
people"
JAMES Morrow, JR.
A prominent Ohio farmer sends
us an editorial from the New York