The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1891-07-09
DEFERRED ARTICLES.
Chronic Kiekers.

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Chronic Kiekers.
There are people so constituted, who's,
moral perceptions are so obtuse, tina
they will gloat over the misfortunes O
their fellow men and roll under the
tongue as q sweet morsel any false ant
malicious statement or Islander thai
may be started affecting individuals o.
a community. This perverse nature has
been manifestly illustrated since the
! boom depression or reaction com.
menced. Either through criminal care
Iessness or criminal design, statements
have been circulated about improve
ment organizations, as well as individuals
prominent and successful in real estate
transactions, damaging to their credi!
and seriously duplicating numbers OF
persons whose business relations are in
terwoven with the success of the i'm
! proyements. Rumors found currency
recently that certain land companies
! when there was not a single fact to JUS
/ tify it. Another was that two promi>
nent and wealthy real estate men of Ro>
anoke had made assignments, when
there was no truth in it, or excuse for
coming the faisehood These false ru-
mors were eagerly caught up by the
morbid, the mean and the vicious, and
freely circulated with exaggerated in
situations about other companies and
individuals, who were not mentioned in
the first instance. Every community
has such creatures. Some of them pride
themselves on their responsibility and
social standing, and their solid financial
condition, and that they have never
spoken good word for or invested
dollar in improvement enterprises
Others, with a passion for gossip, or
mania for falsehood, take delight in
catching up, if they do not originate
them, every unfriendly reference or mis-
representation that malice, disappoint-
ment or pure cussedness may invent
Such persons are busiest in their kind of
work, whenst there is a partial lull in bus
mess, or a depression in real estate trans
actions, OR when the public mind is more
prone to accept and be impress / by adj
verse statements. 1t is in this Way that
many good men have had II credit
affected and their business .. ranged, if
not seriously. damaged, aid the whole
community implicated in what have af-
forwards proved to be mere fabrications
coined by designing obstructionists, who
have no proper conception of the duties
of citizenship or concern for the welfare
of their neighbors or the town in which
they live.
Every community is afflicted with
more or less of this kind of citizenship,
and the credit of every public spirited
man and of every improvement organi-
cation is liable to be. the object of their
malignant proclivities. 1t is the time
when all true men, who mean well for
the State, the city, the community in
which they live, should unite their ef>
forts and concentrate their wits and en-
ergies TO counteract,su such influences and
to give the falsehood to them, by show
prominently in the future of their place
and the interests paramount in it. The
truth will eventually triumph. Towns
which have solid conditions upon which
to build will go ahead, and the result
will bring confusion and condemnation
upon those who have directed their in
fuence to the harm rather than the good
of the community There is a duty the
press owes to the people and the State
in this connection. When unwarranted
assaults are made upon organized i'm
proyement companies those who insti~
gate them should be pointed out and
the animus OF their conduct publicly ex-
posed. In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, they are those who have been
disappointed in their expectations, and
who purchased stock expecting to draw
the best lots and sell them at large
profit, and thus repay themselves for
their original outlay and have good
surplus left. In the game of chance,
which they obligated themselves to take,
they were not as lucky as they had hoped
to be, and forthwith they commence
kicking, charging fraud, and threaten
to resort to the courts to uncover some
way to treat his class of spectators is
to provoke them into court and there
expose their motives and their purposes
before the country. Those who sign an
agreement and then seek to evade its
obligations, because they were not as
fortunate in the venture as some others,
deserve very little consideration. They
expose themselves and give the public
an insight into their true character, and
demonstrate that they ought not to be
trusted as between man and man. There
has been too much leniency shown such
mischief makers. They ought to be
handled with gloves off. 1t is all very we'll
with them if in the game of chance they
win largely. Then tits all right, at least as
far as they are concerned, but if they
happen to strike a streak of bad luck,
they rant and foam, and cry fraud and
denounce the engineers of the improve
ment as scoundrels and swindlers. Up
to this time, there has been no DISPOSE
tion to strike back, but there is a point
where forbearance ceases to be a virtue,
and when that is reached. it will be found
| that there are remedies at command
| for one side as we'll as the other 1t is
cowardly and dishonest, whenlne have
taken chances and lost, to put in a plea
of unfairness or worse, simply because it
is corporation they have dealt with.
Corporations have rights, and those who
compose them have rights, and these
rights they ought to maintain at all haz-
ards, let the consequences be what they
may. Chronic kickers ought to be taught
| that there are boots ON other peoples
| feet as well as their own.
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