Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1894-05-16

The new recruits to Populism are
the most ferocious. Old timers in the
work are ccntented to let each day
make its own history. The valor of
these new converts reminds us of the
man with a street car income who
constantly longed for ocean voyages.
Tho work of the reformer is slow.
Few who enter the work live to see
their hopes realized. Many give up in
disgust after years OF toll and join the
pie counter" rigade
There are few readers of the news
papers who can not recall some of the
writings of the late Don Piatt, whose
pen contained vitriol and who could
make the most cal!oused politician
squirm and howl with anger. Mr..
Piatt was an honest-hearted. conscien-
tous man, although the lickspittles
OF plutocracy left no stone unturned
to besmirch his character, and he was
also firm and sincere friend of labor.
In letter to John Swinton, nearly
ten years ago, Mr. Piatt wrote:
81 do not advocate anything. I
think advocacy is a sort OF waste of
time and wind. I feel sorry for the
dery-hearted reformers " no have mis-
sions to wear their lives out in advo-
eating reforms. They are putting
their pearl, which cost deal OF hard
n n anil 20 lsxfx
The swine want slop, and it is aggra-
waiting to them to be offered pearls.
and II they do not turn and rend the
man who offers them there is no truth
In the divine words of the divine re-
former who was crucified by swine In
illustration of what he said.
WHAT tried to say was merely
that law existed in the moral world,
MS in the physical, which makes evils
breed violence as miasma breeds fever.
did not say advised il. hope | am
not fool. / might as well advise tho
elements to hurry up the cyclone.
What might say, or you, or a thou
sand with us, wOuld have as much
effect in one case as in the other. It
is the law of our being, and it is the
law OF our atmosphere. When the
hour is ripe, when oppression becomes
intolerable and the masses are starv.
ing, there is sudden uprising and a
fearful storm shakes the eirth.
I'VE are a nation of phraze-eaters."
wrote Don Piatt. "All the fruit OF
the tree of knowledge is canned for
popular use While we have fed orr
selves on this poisoned indigestion, in
the shape of choice apothegems tabled
republican, government free insti-
tutions, equality of man., and all
that sort of rot precisely the same
system that has cursed Europe for
ages. in which the many, who produce
all and enjoy nothing, are slaves to
the lew who produce nothing and en-
JOY all, is being fastened on us. Our
government stimulates greed and
calls 1T enterprise. 1t favors pro-
GEES that transfer the gainful labor of
the many to the few and gauges the
country's prospe ity by their wealth.
~ he remedy for all this lies in the
law govern ng our existence, When
the spring is strained beyond its
strength, it eitht r breaks orrebounds
When steam exceeds the power of the
boiler, then comes the explosion.
when the people can no longer bear
oppression, they get up in their wrath
and smite.
so far the safety-valve has been
the vast domain of public lands omen
as gift to labor. But the govern
ment has swung the heavy weight Of
incorporated monopoly on this, and
the valve is closed. The great con-
servative power that so far has held
Cypress d labor to its unrequited toll
is the agricultural class "a dead.
heavy, ignorant weight that has
plodded stolidlo on it's own ruin. But
1t feels, like the swapping tortoise, the
Goals on its back, and begins TO mova
against the enemy.
When the hour of retribution ar
rives in the United States, it will not
be cheerful. The way in which we
got up and went at each Others
Threats, in the late civil war. tells
what NJ q -