St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-10-23
FARMING THE FARMERS.

spade spade whenever occasion re-
quires that implement to be mentioned.
As doctor, he believes that the taste of
the medicine is secondary to its cura-
tive powers, and if a patient has come
to need the medicine he should be given
it with liberty to make as wry face as
he will. For many years the secretary
had been going up and down the Ne
braskan prairies telling the farmers of
that state hard truths of trade and
trades laws and giving them unpala-
table doses of his opinion of their stu
pidity in upholding party which at
tempted to set those laws aside. The
secretary keeps up his habit of plain
speaking, and has lost none of his clear
ness of statement. He told the farmers
at Chicago that their Alliance Organiza-
tons had been formed to attend to
something else besides farming. "They
have been worked, to use the parlance
of the day, by jOurneymen farmers who
have. for political purposes, farmed the
farmers" There are evidences in
pienty-and we need not go out of this
state to find them-that he spoke an
OtISl equally SOllu II ulll WITCH IlG Sdll
that the farmer was beginning to ap-
preciate that his best interests lie in
the direction Of individual development,
instead of that of gregarious combina-
tons.
In its earlier days the Alliance in this
state was an adjunct of farming devoted
to securing cheaper prices for its mem
bers. but it was not long before it was
seen by the walking delegates" of the
organization that i. was a powerful po-
litical machine if it could be DETECTED
to that end. The result was that the
Alliance became field cultivated by
lot of political farmers for their own
emOlument. They Harmed the farmers
to get into county offices; into the legis-
lature; into anything with a salary at
tachment. Some small successes ell
gendered ambitions for higher flights.
Congress and the state offices were none
too small crops for the ''iourneymen
farmers" 10 get reaped for them by the
farmers. Aided by adventurous circum-
stances, they reached high water mark
in 1890. The solvent of perception that
they were being worked by the profess
SIGNALS began its operation. and the poll
of '92 showed how it had weakened the
movement.
Pass the Alliance in review from its
organization in this state to its capture
and merger in the Populists, and see
who are the farmers who have been
the leaders and are now. As a whole,
what a motley crowd of disreputables
they are. What flavor of jobberv, of
humbug, of pretentious insincerlty, of
itching palms they emit. Sent to the
legislature because of their vociferous
cry for remedial legislation for their
farmers, they have with few excep-
lions been the eager vendors of their
votes in the lobby. Ask any profess
sional lobbyist and he will curl his lip
with disgust as he tells you that these
men are the hungriest and cheapest on
his list. Il have bought Legislators all
the way from Minnesota to the gulf"
said one knight Of the lobby, ''but these
Minnesota fellows are the cheapest |
have found. Why, it costs 81, 800 to buy
niger in Louisiana, but these fellows
have been throwing themselves at my
head all winter at $50 apiece"
When the farmers realize that in po-
litical action they are not farmers, but
just citizens having no special interests,
only those common to all citizens; when
they send men to the legislatures, not
because they are farmers, but because
they have built up in their neighbor-
hoods by lives of honest dealing, by
their Intelligence and common sense,
regulations which put their character
beyond the reach of the lobby; when
they cease to differentiate themselves as
a distinct class in the body polite and
assume common citizenship, and cease
to permit themselves. to be worked by
the professional farmers, it will be bet
ter for them, as it will for the whole
state