Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-11-14
TIE ALLIANCE AND SECTIONAL
ISM

1871.
President Polk of the National Farm
ers' Alliance, discussing the share which
the Alliance had in the recent popular
victory at the polls, claims an Alliance
membership in the Fifty-second con-
gress of thirty-eight representatives.
These come from the South and West.
He adds also what Is of no little i'm port
ance, that while there Is not at present
any union between the Alliances of the
South and West, union will be effected
this winter, and the farmers of both
sections will henceforth work in UNISON
which they groau. As one of the re-
suits of the election, this industrial af-
tiliatlon, If it comes to pass, will be no
trifing matter. More speedily than
anything else will such union antagon-
!ze and destroy the fell spirit of section
alism that has initiated for years against
the best interests OF the farming classes
IN both sections. That spirit has made
the Western farmer the complacent dupe
of the tarlflite and the monopolist.
1t has made him as blind as q bat to the
fact that he was paying an annual tri-
butte TO monopoly that would put to
shame the tribute paid the tsx-getherer
by the Egyptian Fellaheen or the Hindoo
RIOT. That shameful and degrading
the South and the Democratic party. A
puerile amnesty blinded him to the fact
That he was chopping off his nose 10 spite
his face. He took unusual pride in
.'voting as he shot, just as though he
had shot to create and support robber
tariff that would make IL beggar of him.
or to establish an Industrial oligarchy
that would sheer contemptuously at him
for being such a stupid gull. Voting as
he shot was celebrating and exciting
enough, but it resulted ultimately in fix-
ing an unmanageable mortgage on his
farm. his house. his farming imple-
ments, his COW. his horse, his ass, aud
everything that is his.
Coeval with the birth of radical pro-
tectionism, he fed from the less fertile
lands of the East to tn cheaper anu
more productive plains of the West. In
that way he hoped to keep ahead OF
tariff exactions and make something be-
sides. His calculations all tell to the
ground under the whitening tariff blight
that invaded all sections alike. He be-
came in time poorer and poorer, and If
he will look back to, say Connecticut,
he will find that, according TO official
estimates made by the state board Of
Statistics, or the labor bureau, the aver
age annual return of farm proprietor
of that state is only Slsl 50. while the
average annual wages of farmland is
1885 Sc. The conditions East and West
are similar. Losses or inadequate re-
turns everywhere. II there existed in
this country an oppressive monarchy
with primogeniture, n landed aristoc-
racy, and church establishment with
its system OF ti;hes, how much worse
could the situation of the average farmer
be? These things are the curse OF
some European countries. 1t was
supposed that exemption from them
in this country would enable the aeri-
culturist to approximate at least, other
Glasses in contentlnent and mode of liv-
ing. Has it done so?
Let the Western farmer ponder further
this question of industrial reform and
Democratic methods OF ruling and gov
erning, as he now seems 10 be doing,
and be will get the upper hand OF the
cormorants after while Let him put
away that baleful spirit of sectional ami
mostly, and join his brethren of the
Democratic party for reform and equal
rights.