The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-10-22
his country there is an overproduction

this country there is an overproduction
of Is politics and dogtics."
Kansas too has her pretensions is this
line. We aspire to grow rich and great.
but We fall down ON the means employ
ed. We would enjoy the ideal of COM
fort, but we will never attain it by slip
shod efforts. We can discount the
Georgia people by the very magnitude
of our absurdities We use S20-grey
hounds to chase jack rabbits over mil
lions of acres of rich, black soil which
can be bought at from So to SO per
acre, and pay S1.25 per bushei for pota-
! toes from Colorado, raised on land
which is irrigated at a cost of 800 per
acre. We turn the pigs into acres and
tons of peaches and pay % cents
a pound for sour, insipid article from
! California. This, however, is a saving
of labor; the pigs feed themselves. We
sell corn at 20 cents bushel and II cents
a pound for sugar-cured hams. We in
vest hundreds of dollars in labor-saving
machinery TO do the work which might
be better done by the muscle which
nature has given us gratuitously. We
leave the comforts of home, and the best
climate on the continent, and take ex-
pensive apartments at well advertised
santarium q to bridge us over a bilious
attack caused chiefly by laziness and a
want OF exercise. We consume the
shining hours in devouring volumes of
so-called literature to get few lines of
original thought.
We sleep on the golden opportunities
of the new west and allow one man in
ten thousand to carve out fortune.
He serves Us, however, as a ''shylock"
and a ''gold-bug," and furnishes theme
for the goods-box orator. We leave the
pillow in the furrow, the mill and the
workshop Idle. to join the throng which,
gathers around an imported, gaw-
mouthed demagogue, who has a ready
made scheme for theoretically paying
our debts with promises and practically
electing himself to Office. We can
boast Of a long lire of self-sacrificipg
patriots, beginning with John Brown
and reaching to Polly Lease. No
other state has ever furnished
the spectacle of two Legislative
bodies transacting business in the same
hall at the same time Strange as it
may seem this anomalous dual body was
held in subsection by nonpartisan mill
tary hero who was afterwards court
martiaied for preserving the peace. In
the exercise of the elective franchise we
have solved the seemingly impossible
problem of changing from the biggest
Republican majority of any state in the
Union in 1889 to ALI electoral delegation
Of Populists, who cast the solid vote for
a Democratic president in 1891. But we
rise to the climax, and pass the record |
of absurdities in granting the right of |
way, and voting bonds and |
other valuable franchises to every |
railroad in the state, and |
then, with the law-making power in our
own hands. allowing them to charge us
double freights on everything shipped
into or out of the state. 1t cannot be
that this is permitted from choice, or
that we intend it as perpetual gratuity
to the railroads, for we denounce them
through the press and from the stump on
all suitable occasions. Il it is a fact that
we elect the class of lawmakers who
may be corrupted by annual passes or
the corrupt, unlawful use of cash, then
are we, or are we not, the greatest ag-
gregation of chumps that ever enjoyed
the franchise? 1t must be admitted that
the existing state of things are more or
less con- promising on this point, and it
might be we'll to agitate an investigation.
No, there is nothing small nor COM
in Kansas. Whether these
conditions have any bearing
upon the hard times or not, we are not
SO clear as our Georgia friend. 1t is
enough to know that Excelsior is our
trade mark and that our nbsurdities are
no less pronounced than our nameless
and inexhaustIble excellencies.
Kansas is an all round record breaker.