The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1889-10-18

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had a Parliament. A friend found
that he was being bribed. He went
to him and said, with great indigna-
ton:
"Why, Sir John, you surely
wouldn't sell your country for
money!"
eyes, would" replied the noble
legislator, "and thank God that /
have country to SELL
But this, my friends, is not
what free government means. We
do not go through all the expensive
forms of election to simply furnish
plumber for a few, and subjects
for the great corporations to cor
rupt. The object of government is
and ought to be THE ENHANCED PROS
PERITY OF THE PEOPLE. THEY
SHOULD BE LARGELY RICHER BY
EVERY LEGISLATURE THAT ASSEM-
BLEs. If they are not, then the ma
chine fails to do the work for which
it was created. But in this country
the people rejoice, at the end of a
Legislative session if their representa-
tives have not made them poorer.
And they usually have not even this
poor cause for selfcongratulations.
And what is to be the future?
What will be the future of state of
society where the man of moderate
means is perpetually at the mercy of
the rich; when everything that men
hold valuable, or honorable, is ex-
posed annually, or biennially, on the
auction block to the highest bidder;
and when only that small residuum of
rights and privileges remains to the
common people which are too insig-
nifcant for wealth to desire to pur-
chase? You select an honest man to
act for you; you send him to St. Paul;
and he comes back rotten and pol
luted; his whole moral nature eaten
out of him, and it's place supplied
by an ulcer of corruption which is
certain, in time, to spread pestilence
and contagion throughout the whole
community in which he resides. Your
young men are ushered into man
hood with the advice of the old
Quaker to his son, ringing in their
ears:-"My son, get money! Get
money, honestly if thee can-but at
any rate get money" They observe
that successful vil1ainy is honored,
feted, toasted, elevated to office;
while honest poverty is despised and
ridiculed-the subject ofevery knave's
taunt and of every FOOLS laughter.
They perceive that the path to pre-
ferment and glory and wealth, is to
join in and rob the people; the path
to obscurity and poverty and igno-
miny is to serve and defend the peo-
pie.
Only an uprising of the popular
conscience can arrest this swift march
to destruction. Ifthere are two farm
ers, side by side, with harvests to
care for, and one offers the best of
fare and the highest wages; and the
other offers wretched fare and no
wages, it is not difficult to telf-Whose
crops will rot, uncut, on the ground;
and whose granaries will groan with
abundance. If the thieves are the
paymasters, and pay with the honest
mems money, it is not difficult to see
that thievery will soon become hon
orable, and honesty disgraceful.
Our present system of society is in
verified, the pyramid of civilization
is turned upside down, and rests on
the narrow head of a pickpocket.
The great, broad, peaceful base of
law and order-the innumerable
many, who produce food and harm
nothing that lives, is despised and
rejected and driven out of authority,
amid the hootings and howlings of
an army of monkeys, dressed in the
gilded trappings Of thieving corpora
tions. A farmer might just as we'll
put his granary in charge of the rats,
and kill his cats, as permit the pres
ent state of things to continue, and
hope for peace and prosperity.
It is dreadful thought that these
great communities, now growing up
on this majestic area of the north
west-in Minnesota, Dakota, Iowa,
Wisconsin, Montana, etc.-are, like
a child that receives the syphilitic
faint, in the mothers womb, to be
ushered into life and action, stamped
with the dreadful cicatrices of rot
tenness and corruption, to transmit
the virus of their own system to a
countless posterity.
The Farmers Alliance is fighting a
battle for purity, virtue, good gov
eminent, liberty, and prosperity, for
this and all succeeding generations.
1t stands in the shoes of the fathers
of 1776, of whom Emerson wrote
"Here first the embattled FARMERS stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world
1t stands in the shoes of the men
of that revolution of the ,yeomenry-
those shoes may be old and worn.
There were holes in them at Valley
Forge, and the blood-stains on the
lcr, oh H. I,