The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-02-14
A LITTLE srRAreHr-oUr TALK.

There are some queer social and political
forces at work, aiming for unaccountable
ends; but, we hope, the presumption is
warranted that the majority of Wichita
people have not lost their heads. The
variegated and intangible realm of bun
combe has not become to be our palladium
of liberty nor the magma charter of our
rights. No more have ignorant and mex
perienced apostles been delegated to save
the country. When any such pretended
leader, or anybody else, asserts that the
Wichita and Ell Paso railway enterprise is
anything other than an honest effort Of
our wisest and best business men to help
the city, as whole, to help the tradesman,
the workman and the taxpayer alike; to
increase our local trade, to extend our job
bing field, to add to our cattle and grain
market receipts, then such an one is
either traitor, tool or fool. The
men who are the most earnestly in
favor of the building Of this road
are the biggest taxpayers of the city;
therefore, the men who are staggering IN
der the biggest burthen; but, they are men
who cannot and will not sit down and fold
their hands in despair or in the hope that
some ephemeral political upheaval begot
ten of hard times is going to make black
white and substitute heaven for hell.
They are men who must do, and do all
the time, whatever lies in their power, to
raise the wheels of the city's progress out
of the slough of despOnd, and set them
gaily rolling onward and away again.
These men who have already spent much
time and considerable money to get this
enterprise in a shape to come before the
people, must, as we said, work; and if they
can't work here they will simply be found
in the near future working elsewhere, and
our city will have lost them. The man
who has got property, or business, which
he expects to hold on to until times
change and bring their increase, and
which he knows will be valuable the min
ute that the city again gets on the
up grade would be worse than an idiot to
listen to the morbid and gloomy whisper
would not lose a cent though Wichita to-
morrow were sunk out Of sight or swiped
| from the face of the earth with all that
she has and hopes TO be- OF no more value,
either, is the advice of the itching, creep
ing social scalawag who hopes to gain
some o flee or something of account by
pandering to the prejudices aud by be-
coming the fog horn of a movement that
is only maneuvered in the dark. The dem
ogogic squeal made by these fellows of
bonds and taxes" has no more sense in
it than the complaint that it takes money
to buy bread aud money is hard TO get.
Something cannot be had for nothing. The
only point for sensible, honest men to de-
eide is what Will this new independent
local line of road be worth to Wichita,
and is the price too much? There is
no other question involved. 1t is nothing
to the Peoples party to the Democratic
party. or to the Republican party, as such,
but plain, simple matter of enterprise
and of business. There is not a man in
Wichita who owns as much as a single lot,
or a man of family who owns nothing out
side The love he bears for his wife and
children, but that can well afford to give
up a whole day in the interest of the prop
osition even though the amount of bonds
were three times as much, In truth, if
the road should be built and on to Mex
leo, Wichita. as its starting point and
principal terminal and market, could af-
ford to give ten times the amount asked.
We are all in the same boat, all interest
ed just alike. We who have had none of
the work of the past months in getting the
enterprise on its feet to do, and none of
the actual necessary money to put mp, are
Just as much interested and will
be Just as much benefited in
proportion to our interests as those who
have done the work and expended their
money so generously. Are we to lay down
our energies, give up our enterprises, and
abandon our hopes in the interest of dis
gruntled pap-suckers, and their blinded
but unfortunate tools, without an effort to
save ourselves and regain our fortunes and
ascendency as a city? Let those whose all is
in Wichita, and whose hopes of pleasures
and successful rewards to come are cen
tered in her future. answer.
In short, the men who are fighting this
effort of the city to help itself would not
lose a cent If the town was left in ruins,
while they would all be directly benefited
in any forward movement y realization
Of this fact, and the further truth, that the
opposition alluded TO is instigated and di-
rected by distant authority ought to arouse
every man in Wichita, that is a man in his
own right, to a realization OF the jeopardy
of his interests and to prompt action.
SOMETHING ABOUT TIE JEF-ERSONS
The theater Goers of Wichita will not
soon forget last night. Two of the Jeffer-
son boys were both here. Tom, the elder,
is the manager. The oldest son of the
family, Charles B., is this season directing
the play known as The County Fair"
Tom only gets on the stage occasionally.