The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1890-07-25
Was the Fable q Prophecy ?

ALL of our readers have no doubt read or
heard of the story about the people who in
times long past killed the goose to get the
golden egg, and it has doubtless occurred to
many of them that there were more geese
than one concerned in that affair, notwith-
standing but one is mentioned.
The old fable was certainly written in a
spirit of prophecy. Nothing can be more
evident than that the ruthless slsyers of the
goose, greedy and avsracious, not caring to
secure a competence by honest industry but
rather snatching the unripe fruits of the labor
of others. were intended to typify the tariff
barons of to-day, who are certainly as grasp
ing and quite as foolish as they.
But the goose-whcm did the sage in
tend to portray by it2 Who is it that bears
the golden egg of to-day which the war tar
if lords are seekingf 1t can be none else
but the farmers and laborers, the bone and
sinew of the country, who alone are produc-
ers of wealth, and who are being rapidly
brought to the point of utter despair by these
vampires who suck their very life blood, cry
ing loudly all the while that they are for
protection to workingmen."
In other words, if those for whom we are
being taxed to death were at all wise they
would comprehend that if they expect to
keep on reaping golden harvest they must
allow their creatures living chance, that
they may keep on producing for them and
would see how impolitic it is, to tax our in
dustries out of existence.
If the Mckinley bill-which has already
passed the House and will in all human pro-
liability pass the Senate also-becomes q law,
il is hard to see how farmers can continue
their business
As every schoolboy knows it is in a foreign
market that the prices of our unprotected
. agricultural products are fixed, for it is there
we have to sell. When you have an article
TO sell, and must sell it, 1t is worth just what
you can get for it, and if the party you are
trying to sell to doesn't want it, the price is
apt to be very low. If you have made bad
friend Of him by refusing to trade with him
on fair basis he is likely not to want ii at
all, especially if he can get it elsewhere.
In 1889 France bought of US merchandise
worth 46,120.O41, mostly agricultural pro-
ducts; Germany $6S, 002, 594 the United
Kingdom $3.50 ,9s1 ,674.
+, Goaded by the reckless legislation of our
Republican statesmen these countries are be-
s ginning to adopt retaliatory measures, and
intend to give us tit for tat. They are ex-
porters also, but not Of food. They want our
grain and beef but they expect US to take in
return partly, at least, some products of their
own. The value of the exports of country
is not returned to it in cash, or at least very
little of il is.
When Individual traders deal with each
other the exchange is usually made in goods,
for the mutual exchange gives mutual profit.
Still more 80 is it with nations for vessels can
not afford to carrya load one way only, and
foreign merchants will not be likely to send
vessels to our ports to freight with our wares
when they are practically prohibited by our
unheard of duties from sending US cargo.
Of American vessels it is unnecessary to
speak, the policy of the Republican party
having long since driven them from the face
of the deep.
minded man doubt for u moment, what the
result will be should the tariff bill pass 1t is
truism that "the farmer, he must feed them
all, and when he quits business that the rest
will soon follow his lead. The quantity and
price of his exports of wheat, corn and pork
have already been seriously affected A very
little more "protection"-th Mckinley ini
guilty gives abundance for the purpose-and
we will not ship a grain of wheat nor an
ounce of meat. If the farmer can not sell,
how can he buy? If he can't buy, how can
the merchants and manufacturers SELF If
they can't sell, how can they continue bust
ness and pay their employeesP And, if the
employees can't be paid, how will they live
Answer yourself this question, as fair man,
without regard to party. Is not any man
or party who will advocate such measures as
the Mckinley bill at such time as this, quite
as foolish as those in the ancient fable !?
But though the bill should pass it may
afterward be repealed and proper and wise
legislation enacted in It's place If the right
men are sent to Congress this fall. Let US
hope that the farmers and other toilers, who
have been plucked so long, will refuse 10 be
entirely sacrificed for the sake of the coveted
egg, but will rise in their might, next No
vember, and convince the world that not
they, but their prosecutors, are the geese.
The Condition OF the Negro in the South.
Henry Watterson, in an editorial in the
Louisville Courier Journal on the odious force
bill, has the following to say with regard to
the condition of the negro in the South. His
remarks will be verified by every UMPIRE
JUDGED man, Republican or Democrat, who
has ever travelled in the Southern States:
The negro in whose name and whose
alleged benefit this iniquity has been set on
foot, is at this moment the b,st conditioned
and best paid, the happiest and the freest
operative 10 the world. There is less friction
and better understanding between capital
and labor in the South to-day than anywhere
else on earth. The old kindly relations be-
tween the master and the slave, and the bonds
of sympathy and affection growing out of
common trials, dangers, losses and sorrows,
are yet strong enough 10 keep the two races
upon parallel lines Of progress which lie re-
clprocal and mutual. Each is still contribu-
tive to the other. Together, in spite of an
external pressure, sometimes malignant and
always unwise, the white man and the black
man in the South have got over good deal
of ground in the last five and twenty years !;
chiefly the last twelve years of unmolested
intercourse, and in these regions where the
whites have been in q majority, and able to
direct the movement. Ali things considered,
no people could have done better. and the
prosperity which their united efforts have
achieved has poured itself into the reservoir
of the nations wealth, helping the people of
the North to sustain the mighty load of Fed
eral expenditure, put upon them by ruinous
system of Republican economics and a riotous
system of congressional legislation.
Nor is there anywhere in the South the
least disposition to restrict or obstruct the
franchise of any black man who has the ca
pacity to cast free ballot. That, and that
alone, which the whites of the South resist, is
the budding of great masses OF sem-barbarous
blacks into secret lodges and armed camps by
unscrupulous and abandoned white men, get
ting their warrant from without. mere polit-
cal adventures at war with the communities
In which they live, simple public plunderers
owing no allegiance to public opinion, but
seeking, through fraudulent and enforced
domination over the negroes, secured by false
promises and foreign aid, to feather their own