Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-02-29
Bill NYEs rARIFF VIEWS.

BILL NYHS TARIFF VIEWS.
Bill Nye Is the acknowledged leader
of the humorous writer's of to-day, and
be never wIOte more sensible article
than the one copied below. He pre-
tends to have met farmer on the cars
with whom he had long conversation
and among other questions Nye asked:
What are prospects for farmers in
your slater"
well, they are pore. Never was so
pore in fact, sence I've ben there. Folks
wonder why boys leave the farm. My
boys left SO as 10 get protected, they
SAID, and so they went into clothing
store, one of 'em, and one went into
hardware and one IS talking protection
in the legislature this winter. They said
that farmin' was gittin' TO be like iishin'
and huntin', well enough for mau that
has means and leisure, but they could
MT make llvin' at it, they SAID. An
other boy is in drug store, and the
man that hires him says he is royal
Teller"
kind of castor royal Teller, p" l said,
with shrek of laughter.
lie waited until had laughed all l
wanted to and then he said:
'I've always hollered for high tariff
i'm order to hyst the public debt, but
now that We We got the national debt
coopered / wish they'd take little hack
at mine. I've put IN fifty years farmin'.
never drank liquor in any form. I've
worked from ten to eighteen hours a
day; been economical in clOZe and meyer
went TO show mOre'n dozen times IN
my life; raised a family and learned
upwards of two hundred calves to drink
out of a tin pail without blowing all
their vittals up my sleeve. My wife
worked along side o. me SEWN new
seats ON the boys pants, skimmin' milk
and even helpin' me load hay. For
forty years we toiled along together aud
hardly got time to look INTO each others
faces or dared to stop to get acquainted
with each other. Then her health
failed. Ketched cold in the spring
house, prOb'bly skimmin' milk and
washin' pans an scaldin' pals and
spankln' butter. Anyhow she took in
long breath one day while the doctor.
and me was watchin' her, and she says
to me: 'Henrv,' says she, I've got
chance to rest, and she put one tired,
WORKOUT hand on the top of the other
tired, WORKOUT hand, and knew she d
gone where they. don't work all day and
do chores all night.
II took time to kiss her then. I'd
been too busy for good while previous
to that, and then / called in the boys.
After the funeral it 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
by themselves about goin' to town and
gettin' Job.
They're all gone now and the snow
is four feet deep on mothers grave up
there in the old berryin' ground"
Then both of US looked out of the car
window quite long while without say
ing anything.
SI.don't blame the boys for going into
something else longs other things pays
better; but l say-and L say what 1
know-that the man who holds the
prosperity of this country in his hands,
the man that actually makes 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 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 a
hired man and high protective tariff.
The farms in our state are mortgaged
for over 500 100000 len of our west
ern states-I see by the papers-has got
about three billion and a half mortgages
on their farms, and that don't count
the chattel mortgages filed with the
town clerks on farm machinery. stock,
wagons, and even stock, by gosh that
amt two inches high under the snow.
That's what the prospects is for farms
now. The government is rich, but the
men that made it, the men that fought
perarie fires and perarie wolves and
Injins 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 and anything else that they
were told to, is left high ana dry this
cold winter with mortgage of seven
billions and a half on the farms they
have earned and saved a thousand times
over"
Yes: but look at the glory of send
ing from the farm the future president,
the future senator and the future mem
Der of congress-"
THAT looks we'll on paper, but what
does it amount to? Soon as farmer
boy gets in place like that he forgets
the soil that produced him and holds his
head as high as hOllyhOck. He bellers
for protection to everybody but the
farmer, and while he sails around in a
highly tightly room with fire in itnight
ane day, his father on the farm has to
kindle his own fire In the morning with
elm slivers, and he has to wear his SON S
lawn-tenniS suit next to him or freeze
to death, and he has to milk in an old
gray shawl that has held that member
| of congress when he was baby, by
gorryl and the old lady has to sOjourD
! through the winter in the flanne!s that
Silas wore at the riggatter before he
went to congress.
80 l say, and l think that congress
agrees with me. Damn farmer, any
howl"
He then went away. BILL NYE.
Prohibition is not the issue in Kan