The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1894-05-05

ton to the individuals of the public do
main of this country. The remarkable
spectacle of three hundred thousand
men, homeless helpless, under the
leadership of earnest though misguided
individuals, creating by their presence
revolt against the things which are
fixed, is of itself constant menace to
freedom, and indicates restlessnes of
the people of the nation, and speaks
volume to the truth that things are not
secure, that the spirit of unrest is
abroad in the land, and that patriotism
to the republic has reached a point
where it is being more shaken in it's de-
votion, and becoming more unstable in
its permanencv than at any time since
the birth of the republic. The late
civil war was waged upon the question
of the permanency of the government,
according to the views of the combat
ants on each side of that memorable
controversy based upon a sentiment of
loyalty to union as one, bur today the
war has opened in time of peace waged
on the question as to whether or not
the government, though preserved, has
been preserved for the benefit or the
destruction of a certain class of it's in
dividuals. However men may differ in
their views of these matters, the fact is
that such an awful interrogation is in
the faces of thousands of citizens of
this country. They are mostly, to be
sure, those who have homes in dark
and gloomy and unhealthy corners of
the great cities, where even hunger
and starvation surround their every
day life, but nevertheless they are the
nations children, citizens of the re-
public.
This could not be If there were ave
nues by which these people could go to
the farms and till the soil, and return
to their once native agriculture-the
only true source of free peoples lib
erty and a free governments perma-
nency. So long, therefore, as the nation
shall have placed her public domain in
the hands of great concerns, which as
incorporated bodies, neither buy the
land, so as to contribute taxes to the
government to aid its support, and who
neither abandon the land, so as to let
the individual obtain it, but who hold
their right to it by grants from con-
gress, use it as the foundation for mort
gage bonds, obtain money at per cent
interest on the security of these public
grants, lend the same money to the peo-
pie of this country at from to IL per
cent, making clear profit of 6, putting
the principal sum into the building of
railroad, water the stock to such a de-
gree that it becomes fraud in the
hands of the holder, and no security to
the buyer, course of permitted con-
duct which all taken together, persuades
the individual citizen who looks for
home in the country that ne is without
hope as against such awful contest
ants and in the face of such dreaded
enemy. A man here in this west, where
the domain should be most free, should
seek hame-indueed as he is by the
government, and as one of the grants
that the government was supposed to
hold In trust for him-would find tina,
before he reached spot that was not
claimed by one of these singular institu-
lions that have referred to-couterd-
ing their rights to be paramount to the
citizens by some grant of eongress-he
will have gotten away so far from any
point of commerce or settlement and
upon land of so worthless nature that
he cannot bring himself to bear the
privations incident to an existence
necessary in such lonely spot. There
fore, as above all else, this government
must hasten to restore these homes of
the people back to the people, that they
may have some refuge, some abiding
place. This would be the grandest and
quickest solution of all impending evils
No patriotic citizens, of whatever
political faith, can view with satisfac-
ton and content the situation of a new
government which within one-twentieth
of the time in which Rome reached her
point of destruction, has passed beyond
and through the same ravages which
destroyed the first republic, and by
which before generation and a quar-.
ter has elapsed in this new republic the
sons of the fathers who fought for the
domain will not have place to call
their own. This is spectacle that
calls for warning, and bids the most
hopeful citizen to feel keenly the alarm.
The third and equally paramount
question is the protection-or guarding
of the individual toiler from the unfair
and oppressive competition of class of
foreign and convict labor, where skill
and honesty in men is forced to succumb
to the level of serfs and worse than
slaves In order that they shall exist.
This believe must be brought about
rather by such proper regulations to
ascertain the manner of workmen who |
come to compete-that Is that they are
of an honest and deserving kind rather
than the sort often forced upon us by
foreign contract labor, imposed upon
our home toilers by large companies
who refuse to pay their fellow citizen a