Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1893-03-16
ARP'S REGULAR CHAT.
He Thinks Everything is Looking
Lovely Now.
rAtlanta Constitution, March 12.l

|
rAtlanta Constitution. March 12.l
The spring is fairly upon US, and it is
really the birth of a new year. The
sweet odor of violets is in the air and the
alder tags are blooming in the glades.
The robins are bobbing around and the
setting hen comes clucking from her
nest. Fire is on the mountains, and the
busy farmers are burning brush and
clearing up the fence rows, or hauling
guano to make the biggest crop of cotton
the world ever saw. That is what they
told me in North Carolina, and reckon
it is so all over the cotton belt. The poet
says, "Whatever is right" and so we will
have to be reconciled and let the farm
ers do just as they please and take the
consequences. In fact, it is risky and
| impertinent to advise a man about his
business. But editors will do it, and l
heard farmer tell one not long ago that
he could run better newspaper if he
would give it more attention and give the
farmers less advice. Well, it stands to
reason that man who has been farming
all his life knows more about it than a
1own-raised editor who never farmed a
day.
The farmers are in earnest now. Poll
tics has settled down in the old ruts.
The Ocala platform is dead and buried,
and all the vain hopes that inspired it
have vanished away. Just as the forty
acres and mule" played out with the
darkey, so have all the expectations OF
some big thing from the government
played out with tie Peoples Party. 1t
was delusion and snare, and nobody
but few politicians profited by 1t. 1t
is at last an admitted fact that the farm
ers must depend on themselves and not
ON the government. FaternaliSm IS the
curse of State or nation. and l am
clad to see that Mr.. Cleveland is going to
put his foot down upon it. Protection
for projections sake must so. We want
no more infant industries. They must
start full grown and compete with the
world This pension outrage must be
reformed, for itgrows bigger as the years
roll on. 1t is the politicians hobby, and
he rides on it into Office. Over eight
hundred thousand are now on the rolls,
and not one-fourth of them ever saw
! battlefield. 1t is nothing but paternal-
ism. and it has gotten to be an epidemic.
Most everybody wants some help from
the government, and if they can't get it
one way :ney will another. Our revolu-
tionary fathers, who were wounded and
disabled, drew pensions, but, IN course
of time, they died and the pension stop
ped, but now the pension keeps running
on and spreading out to widows and chill
dren and grandchildren, and most OF
them are to foreigners who fought for
the money that was in it and nothing
else. Just 60 into the national cemetery,
at Chattanooga, and see the names on
the headstones, and you can't pronounce
half of them without corkscrew. For the
honest. patriotic soldier we have the pro-
foundest respect, but we rebels know
something about the foreign hirelings we
had to fight the last two years Of the
war.
Paternalism is run mad. One hundred
and eighty millions Of pensions is more
than the government can stand. The
nation has put Mr.. Cleveland there to
reform, and we believe he will dot. The
salaries of the government officials are
too large. Millions could be saved by a
healthy reduction. and then there would
not be SO many office-seekers. Hcv is 1t
that our Governor and our Supreme Court
Judges get only about half as much as a
United States Marshal or Clerk OF
United States District Court? How is 1t
that little post office like CarterSvllle
paws 81 800, when there are ten men and
twenty women who would take it for
I $1,000?
Let us get back to the economy OF our
fathers, and then the duties Oh the neces-
saries of life can be taken off, and the
common people can get their shoes and
blankets cheaper. Washington is called
tie father of his country, and now we
! want Mr.. Cleveland to father the coun-
try some, too, besides little Ruth, and
take the burdens off the people. That is
all the patcrnalism we ask fora clean
and honest administration. Kill the
monopolies and the trusts. Let Hawaii
alone and the Nicaragua canal and every
thing else that calls for more money and
more taxes. Don't fret so much about
the money or the scuffle between gold
and silver; it is doing very well. | once
was Young and now am old, but have
/ never seen the time that there wasn't
enough money in town to pay for every
thing the people had to sell. | farmed
for eleven years, and my corn brought
me 80 cents bushel for every crop. 1t
isn't the kind of money, whether gold or
silver OF paper, that concerns us, but 1t
is the solvency and honesty of the banks,
for 9j per cent of all the business Is done
by checks and deposits. There are
enough dollars and dimes to do all the
rest. Who ever sees piece OF gold
coin? Who ever looks at a national bank
bill to see what bank issued it? They
are all good, from Maine to California.
In my opinion, the world has no better
currency, and | dread to see the day
when any man or set Of men can issue
their own bills and foist them upon the
country-we have tried that and suffered.
Let well enough alone. What old Geor-
oian does not recall the failures of Geor-
gia banks in the anet-bellum days-rot
only the wildcat banks that were intended
to fail, but good banks that failed through
! great financial revulSions? There were
failures at Macon, and Columbus, and
st. Mary's, and Rome, and Ringgold, and
Atlanta, and many of us have got relics
hid away that we sometimes look at md
! lament. / know one man who has
package of $1,000 of Ringgold money
that broke before the war. 1t is the
common people who suffer from spurious
money; the smart, swrewd traders get
rid of theirs before the collapse comes.