San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1894-04-05
WHERE ARE WE DRIFTING
The People Are All Right-A Scared
Contributor.

y
order, protection and property,
men will submit to the iron hand
Of military despotism. 1t was this
disgust with riot, revolution, civil
war and confiscation, and craving
for stable and firm government,
which caused the Romans to sub
NIT to Augustus Caesar. The same
feeling enabled Cromwell to seize
the supreme power in England. 1t
was the same feeling that helped
Napoleon and Louis Napoleon to
grasp the supreme power in
France. A mob of tyrants is I'M
endurable.
The people Of this country seem
to have lost all conservatism Of
thought and feeling, and to have
been seized by furious passion for
impracticable theories, change and
innovation. The government is to
be perverted from its Legitimate
functions and transformed into a
Lady Bountiful, distributing gifts
right and left, with a prodigal
hand. The old-fashioned plan of
a government being supported by
the people, is to be discarded, and
the government is to be made to
support the people by deluging
the country with irredeemable pa
per money. South Carolina has
closed liquor shops and become
the sole saloon keeper, under the
flimsy preteXt of stopping drunk.
enness, and the outcome is riot
and instruction. Paternalism is
at once the shibboleth and
the panacea. The government
must do everything-oW n railroads
telephones and telegraph lines,
and open pawn shops for the farm
ers. Municipal corporations must
own Waterworks, lighting APP
paratus, street cars, public
hacks, saloons, brothels, res
taurants, and feed and clothe
the people. The mere fact
of mans being rich covers him
with odium and subjects him to
denunciation. He is pointed at as a
leech and a robber-an enemy to
the people, and is pelted with mud.
CoXey and Frey are leading
band of tramps to Washington
with the view of Overawing Con-
gress. These men are foreigners
by birth, and tramps by profession,
and, doubtless, most of them are
full fedged socialists, or Anarchists
and hostile to our government.
The POpulists are advocating
measures, which, were they to be
reduced to practice, would destroy
our system of government. Pater-
nalism would prove hot bed of
corruption, and corruption is the
peculiar bane of Republics.
Our country is the dumping
ground and waste-basket for the
populations of the world, and the
result is that our native working
men are crowded out by the cheap
labor poured into this country from
Europe. Paupers, criminals, social
lists and anarchists are poured into
the Union from every nation in
Europe. Our cities are crowded
with undesirable foreigners, who
cannot speak our national Ian
guage, nor comprehend our system
of government and our laws.
These men feel no attach
ment to the United States,
confound liberty with licen-
tiousness, and having been
kept in subsection in the native
countries by the iron hand of mill
taryism, and an army of spies and
policemen, they despise our gov
eminent as weak, and are radically
incapable of self government.
Every municipal ticket must have
on it a German, an Irishman, an
Italian and a Swede, otherwise the
adopted citizens Of those nationali-
ties will vote against it. Our ma
tive workingmen are crowded out
by cheap labor from Europe.
These are stern facts, and we
must look them squarely IN the
face. A spark may kindle riot,
and a riot may grow to be an in
surrection. Revolutions always
flash out suddenly, though they
may have been brewing for years.
1 am far more of an optimist than a
pessimist, but my opinion is that
all the signs of the times, many of
which | have previously alluded
to, foreshadow the approach of
riots, revolution and military des-
potism. Cleveland has helped the
revolutionary spirit by his auto
cracy-by his indispensable hostil-
ity to silver coinage and by his sub
serviency to Wall street and the
cold huUS The lOOS0ninp of marty !