Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-19

mission, or such measure as the pro-
posed conversion of tile national govern
ment into universal bank OF issue and
discount upon produce deposits, is
but the thin edge of EN- entering wedge
as wide rs the continent aud limit
less in reach. Representative Flower
rightly Construed the logical trend OF
such measures when he suggested that
under the development of the policy
which they involved the government
would finally have its hands in every
business and have everybody's substance
Gin hook. ~ So it would hardly be ex-
travagant to suppose that ten years of
such progress would see the children
generally in government nurseries and
the mothers generally working in
the field or shop. The advice of Mr..
Flower that the farmer would do well to
manage his domestic affairs without
government interference is equally
applicable to merchants and man
ufacturers who fancy that they can be
blessed with special providence in the
shape of plenary commission to regu-
late carrying charges exactly to suit the
interests of each. The sdvice is also
equally applicable to Borkingmen of the
Powderly school who want the govern
msnt to regulate with psternal authority
hours ana conditions of labor in man.
ner to suppress all freedom of contract,
and to leave no individual option of serv-
ice. Perhaps the most unhappy aspect
of all the schemes and dreams of pater-
nalism in relation to any business or any
interest is that the hopes which
they hold out can bring only grief
and disappointment in the day of their
promised fruition. Representative
Flower, in discussing the sub-treasury
bill with Mr.. Macune, pertinently OBJ
served:
''The currency system of the present
was wrong. The government had not
managed it properly, and could not do
so. 1t had taken from the state the
right to issue currency, as though it was
the judge of the needs of the people.
The states and their people were the best
judges. - But it is to be remembered
and the memory is full of sad suggestion
that the currency system of the pres
emit, like the tariff system of the present,
was instituted with assurances, at the
time generally accepted, of results that
would answer every monetary need of
the people and prove the wisdom and
beneficence of the paternal govern
ment. The ceaseless fretting among
ers, and the seethirg agitations over
the silver question, the fiat money ques-
tion and the government sub-treasury,
warehouse and banking question show
that both of the measures have signally
belied the promises and hopes which at
tended their adoption. Still the delusion
that q paternal government can manage
the peoples business affairs better than
they can manage them is not exploded,
and perhaps will not be exploded until
the chapter of practical instruction. in
that direction has its last line written in
@ climax of sorrow and disaster. "No
revolution in social order,'' Professor
Sumner has observed, fhas ever been
brought about by the oppression or
folly or wickeduess of the rulers. II such
things as that could cause revolutions,
there would be but little else but revolu-
tions in history. Revolutions have been
caused by holding out hopes of bliss
which the ruling powers were not able to
bring to pass.' And here, doubtless,
turks the supreme and final peril of the
tumultuous eageTness of SO many people
of all classes and pursuits to surrender
manhood of intellect and individual free
agency to blind faith in the guardian
ship and providential management of q
eaternal government. Such intellectual
beggary is as fearful as it is pitiful, and
may well have suggested the remark of @
contemporary writer that "the sentI-
mentalists of our day bestow a huge
amount of sympathy upon the victims of
poor wages; but they do not grieve as
they might over the victims of poor
thoughts and disordered imaginations. D."