Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-05-23
RApICALIsM IN POLITICS.

| Housekeeping youths are SAID 10
have homely wits. Some travel and
| much social intercourse are necessary
| to sharpen the wits, strengthen the in
| telligence, and inform the mind. not
alone of the young but OF those adj
vanced in years. This truism has had
a new exemplifcatiOn in the travels in
the East of Uncle Jerry Simpson, the
| picturesque Alliance congressman from
Kansas. Returned TO Washington re-
| Gently from pleasant SOjourn through
the North, he displays moderation in
| tone and language a trife inconsistent
/ with the radicalism OF his utterances
on new-fangled topics, both in Kansas
and Washington Immediately after his
election. But true to the bent of his
! faculties, when one extreme is avoided,
| he rushes to another. He found that
the tariff was running agriculture in
New York state where 80 per cent of
the farms are heavily mortgaged, and
that the manufacturers even are get
ting tired of it in New England. See
ing these things Uncle Jerry concludes
that not only protection, but the whole
tariff system is wicked and pernicious,
and that prosperity will avoid the
agricultural classes until every custom
house in the land is abolished. The
whole system of customs duties must
be abolished, and some other mode of
raising revenue adopted instead.
Here we have plain, practical and
just illustration of the radical reform
ideas of the class or classes of men rep
resented by this sockless statesman.
Raised on the plains of Kansas with
ideas of government necessary crude,
grotesque and ill-informed, he gathers
information by travel, which moder-
ates and alters some of his previous
views, but at the same time suggests
others which are no less radical, pro-
nounced and dogmatic. His mind.
naturally defective in perception, and
unable to generalize, rushes hurriedly
to conclusions based on the most meager
data. He calls it thinking for him
self" 1t is nothing for him that his
thinking on given topic is totally at
variance with that of the greatest
men, Gladstone for example, or Tilden.
His only reply, if reminded of that
fact, would be, probably, that they
were not honest, or were under undue
influence. This rather fippant and
summary method of putting aside gen.
orally received maxims of politics and
craftsmanship characteristic enough,
and involves the corallary that true
patriotism can be found only in radi-
calism and violent changes.
Note these facts as illustrating what |
is said above. Uncle Jerry believed |
firmly as a Kansas Republican until
recently that a protective tariff was the |
sum of all political good. The Demo-
crat who opposed it was traitor to his |
government and country. There was no
middle ground whatever, and any sort
OF opposition to it was no better than
the suggestion of satan himself Now |
where do we find the prairie states
man? On the other extreme. That |
same tariff that was year ago such a
blessing, is to-day an unmixed curse;
and the Democrats who were public
enemies then for seeking to reform it,
are almost as bad now because they
won't declare with him that it SHOULD |
be wiped out completely, and every |