Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-27
THE FARMER IN POLITICS.


The remark is quite often heard that
the meddling of the farmer with politics
in late years has had great deal to do
with his unprosperous and unsatisfied
home and give more attention to his
crops and stock, he would be better off.
To his lack of industry, thrift and man
| agement, together with q new-found
zeal for politics. is attributed his present
hard condition. The benevolent gen.
| tlemen who reason go mistake the case
woefully by transposing cause and effect.
The farmer is not poor because he is in
politics, but Is in politics because he is
| poor. His unprosperous condition is the
cause and not the effect of his political
activity. Besides, Incidence and thrift
lessness are not the cause of glutted
markets and upremunerative prices.
When the farmers of the country produce
far more than the ever glorious home
market can pay fair price for and con-
sumo, it can hardly be said of them that
they are lazy and indolent. Before gen.
tlemen of leisure, with philosophio
notions and dogmatic airs, are justified
in haunting the farmer with being shift
less and thriftless, they will have to
demonstrate their capacity for consuming
all or more than all of his surplus
products. AS long as the farmers
oil 1f 10 Of
farm products back from town because
there is no market for it, no man has
right to call the farmer lazy and thrift
less, or sneer at him as politician. To
do so is as idiotio as though one who
had just filled his stomach should after
wards kick the table over and cuff the
cook out of pure wantonness.
6 OF course there are all sorts of farm
ers, some good and some bad, some
wide-awake and intelligent, and some
stupid and good for nothing. But of
what calling or profession is not that
true? Are all mechanics, all doctors,
lawyers, artisans, models of excellence?
Are there not an abundance of shysters,
quacks and charlatans? Is 1t wonderful
then that there should be some poor
farmers? The mistake made is in class
ing all alike and branding them as indo-
lent and factious because they manifest
a disposition to make themselves felt in
politics. 1t ought to be matter of con-
graduation that they are waking up to
political activity, and exerting some por-
ton of the giant strength which they
possess. Never since they wrung magma
oharta from King John have the farmers
of any country banded themselves
together as such IN an unholy cause, or
exerted their power but in defence
of the common good. No one
ever dreams of looking for anarch-
ism, communism or Jacobinism of
any sort among them. Such manifesto
lions are looked for only among the dis
contented and turbulent elements of
cities, Never had the tillers of the soil
better grounds for rebelling against the
grinding tyranny of the superior class
ton. And yet the best authorities say
that the whole number of the revolu-
tionists who did such awful and bloody
work, at no time numbered ever $50, 600 |
in the whole of France, and that the
number of them in Paris never exceeded
5000. They were not farmers but the
vicious of the cities, the class that is |
always foremost in outbreaks, isurreo- !
tions, and civil brolls of whatever sort.
THE in fiuence of the farmer in politics !
is healthful, even though he may make
some mistakes. His errors are far less
harmful than the designed knavery of
others who would Cypress him as they
are doing, to build up themselves. If
western farmers had been as politically
active years ago as they are now, they
would have had far more than free quin-
inc and free binding twine.