The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-10-30

The Republicans have been Saving
the Union" for thirty years, and the
tramp, tramp, tramp of million men
on the march still sounds through the
Countrywide tramp Of the tramp. The
appearance at the polls of a new party
which was not known in 1888, and in
1892 in it's first presidential campaign
cast owe 1000, 600 votes is a hint that
a new conception of reform is shaping
itself in the minds of our fellow citi
zens. They want reform that will re-
form, and they want it now. Reform
that is reform, and reform in u time,
not in our great grandchildren's time,
is what the people need and what they
mean to have.
Lafayette said in 1894 that it would
take twenty years to bring freedom to
France; in two years feudalism was
dead. Our great Emerson said in 1859
within four years of the emancipa-
ton proclamation-''We shall not live
to see slavery abolished" Jefferson,
the young delegate in the House of
Bdrgesses of Virginia, i none year abol,
ished entail, and primogeniture, and
the whole fabric of aristocracy in that
colony. The patricians pleaded for de
lay, for compromise. Let our oldest
sons inherit by law at least a double
portion" mot unless they can dotwice
as much work and eat twice as much
as their younger brothers," was the re-
ply of this first great social Democrat,
and he finished his reform at the same
session at which he began it.
No great idea is ever lost. Under
absolutisms the people mend their for
tunes by insurrection. Under popular
government they start a new party.
All over the world, wherever popular
government exists with it's provisions
for peaceful revolution instead Of VIC
lent revolution, the people are forming
new parties-in England, France, Ger
many, Australia, as well as this coun-
try. This is the great political fact of
our times. Some of these, like the dis,
tinctively workingmen's parties, are
class movements. They are the natural
and inevitable reaction from class
movements against the workingmen,
These parties all have practically the
same object-to ~democratize the mil
lionaires and, as Jefferson did when he
democratized the provincial patricians
of Virginia, to do it as nearly as posi-
BILE at one sitting.
"Far-seeing men, "says James Russell
Lowell, ''count the increasing power Of
wealth and it's combinations as one of
the chief dangers with which the insti-
buttons of the United States are threat
ened in the not distant future" This
concentration of wealth is but another
name for the contraction of currency,
and twin miseries Of monopoly and
pauperism, the tyranny Of corpora
tions, the corruption Of the govern,
ment, the depopulation of the country,
the congestion of the cities, and the
host of ills which now form the staple
theme of our novelists and the speeches
of the new party orators.
Those faithful watchers who are
sounding these alarms are ridiculed as
calamity .howlers. When strong,
shrewd, grasping, covetous men devote
themselves to creating calamities, for
tunate are the people who are awak-
ened by calamity howlers. Noah was
calamity bowler, and the bones of
the men who laughed at him have
helped to make the phosphate beds out
of which fertilizers are now dug for the
market. There are thirty two para
graphs in the Declaration of Independ-
ence; twenty nine of the thirty-two are
calamity bowls about the wrongs and
Of America under British rule.
The contraction of the currency is a
terrible thing, but there is another as
terrible-the contraction of commodi-
ties and work by stoppage of produc
ton, sslockouts, the ""dismantling of com
petitive works, the suppression of
patents and other games of business.
The institutions OF America were
founded to rest on the love of the peo-
pie for their country; we have a new
cement now to hold society together
i~njunctions and contempt of court.
And we see materializing out of the
shadows of III great court rooms a
system of government-govern-
ment by campaign distribution. The
people maintain their national, State,
city and local governments at a cost of
81, 600, 600, 900 a year, but the trusts,
and arnnOr Mate nOnfractnrr and tho