The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-15
SEATTLE. MONDAY. AU6. rs.
THEIR HALO DOESN'T FIT.

There was an old lady in New England
once who was wont to say that she never
"felt 30 happy as when she could sit right
down in all her misery and enjoy it,"
This same lugubrious old female when
she was told that there was no
such thing as eternal punishment,
no literal hell, expressed her dis
gust, saying she "had hoped for better
things" This overpowering sense of COM
fort in misery declared to be present and
in misery sure to come seems to be the key
note to which all the speeches of the Peo-
pies party orators, male and female, are
pitched. The Peoples party menagerie
ought to have a steam calliope to accom-
pany it, which could play dismal airs at
proper intervals in explosively strident
tones.
When the Roman augurs met they al.
ways leered at each other as they passed
and murmured, "You know how it is
yourself" How General Weaver, crying
calamity, and Mrs. Lease, screaming dis
content, can look each other in the face
without laughing is beyond our explana-
ton. Moral and mental dyspepsia and
spiritual strabiliousness in the cases Of
General Weaver and Mrs. Lease do not
res. on facts and figures; they are part Of
this precious pairs "true inwardness," we
suppose, which nobody can see, but which
they deeply feel. The Jeremiads Of Wea-
yer and the Mutations of his Kansas Cas-
sandra are not accepted as sound political
gospel by men, who, when they talk busi-
ness. deal with facts and figures. Mr.. Ed
ward Atkinson, the noted statistician, is
on record in the Forum, with this cheerful
view of the situation:
There never has been period In the history
OF this or any other country when the general
rate OF wages was as high as 1t IL now, or the
prices of good relatively to the wages as low as
they arc today, nor period when the work man,
in the strict sense OF the word. has SO fully Sc
cured to his own use and enjoyment such
steadily and progressively increasing proportion
OF . constantly increasing product
Tho laboring man today has higher
wages than he had in 1s6O by so per cent.
Everything tho workingman buys today
he can get Is per cent. cheaper on an aver
age than thirty-two years ago. The farmer
gets better prices for what he sells and
pays less for what he buys, save labor,
than he did thirty-two years ago. Demo-
cratic Senators Carlisle and Harris the
other day signed the Senate committee re-
port showing that wages in fifteen occupa-
tions:were per cent. higher in September,
1891, than in 1889, and that the wages in
the same occupations are u per cent.
higher In this country than in Europe.
Domestic trade is of enormous vol
ume." says the commercial agency of r.
G. Dun & Co., in its review of last weeks
business, "and decidedly the largest ever
known for the season."
Business is booming in the Middle
West; mills and factories are springing
up everywhere. Business in the United
States has never been so large in volume
and so excellent in quality as at the pres
ent time under the administration Of
President Harrison and the operation of
the Mckinley tariff law. And yet in the
face af these facts and figures General Ca
lamity Weaver and his Kansas Cassandra,
Mrs. Lease, vapor vociterously about our
''prostrated agriculture, shackled com.
merce. compulsory idieness Of labor, law
created wealth, the discontinued working
men and the despair of the farmer" There
are doubtless discontinued people in the
nation today. but such persons are first
cousins to the morose, querulous creature
whom his friend saw in dream sitting on
the right hand of glory wearing gloomy
look. Said his friend, lyon must be
happv at last Won are in heaven and in a
place OF honor" Yes, yes" came back
the peevish answer. at is all well enough,
but curse it, my halo don't fit worth a
cent" The Peoples party is composed of
the queer folk whose haloes don't Mt either
in this world or the next.