Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1895-07-24
THE TIME is COMING.
REVOLUTION PREDICTED BY
DON PIATT.
The American People a Nation OF
Phrase Eaters-Ten Years Ago a Note
of Warning Was Sounded-The Initia-
live and Referendum.

OF warning was Sounded-The Initia-
live and Referendum.
There are few readers of the news
papers who cannot recall some of the
writings of the late Don Piatt, whose
pen contained vitriol and who could
make the most calloused politician
squirm and howl with anger. Mr..
Piatt was an honest-hearted, conscien-
tious man, although the lickspittles of
plutocracy left no stone unturned to
oesmirch his character. and he was also
nrm and sincere friend of labor. In
letter to John Swinton, nearly ten
years ago, Mr.. Piatt wrote:
i do not advocate anything. 1 think
advocacy OF sort is a waste of time and
wind. 1 feel sorry for the fiery-hearted
reIormers who have MISSIONS and wear
tnelr lives out in advocating reforms.
Iney are putting their pearls, which
cost a deal hard labor to accumulate
oeIore swine. The swine want slop,
anu IL is aggravating to them to be Of
'ereo pearls, and If they do not turn
ana rend the man who offers them
there is no truth in the divine words
VI the divine reformer who was cruci
ueo py swine in illustration of what he
said
What tried to say was merely that
law existed in the moral world, as in
'ne physical, which makes evils breed
violence as miasma breeds storms.
uiu not say l advised it. / hope / am
uoI such fool. / might as well advise
ene elements to hurry up the cyclone.
"nat might say, or you or thousand
Win us, would have as much effect in
one case as in the other. 1t is the law
OF our being, as it is the law of our
atmosphere. When the hour is ripe,
"nen oppression becomes intolerable
ana the masses are starving, there is a
sudden uprising and a fearful storm
snakes the earth.
say 1t will come, but do not ask
IT, or advise it, or pray for it. Nor
am l silly enough to assert that in
Joining hands and crying aloud we
can avert it. 1t can be seen and read
IN the heavens that the storm is brew
ing. The same miserable relation be-
tween capital and labor that makes alb
1ect slaves of the one, and blind, stupid
despots of the other, is being introduced
among us. Every day, every hour, the
gulf widens between the very rich and
the very poor. Each hour, as it speeds
oy, the chains tighten on the limbs
OF labor and millionaires multiply"
We are nation of phrase-eaters, >
| WTnfQ 4.
tree OF knowledge is canned for popu-
lar use. While we have fed ourselves
on this poisoned indigestion, in the
shape OF choice apothegms, labeled re-
publican government free institu-
tlons,' equality of man. and from all
that sort of rot, precisely the same sys-
tenn that has cursed Europe for ages
In which the many, who produce all
and enjoy nothing, are slaves to the
few, who produce nothing and enjoy
all, is being fastened on us. Our
government stimulates greed and calls
it enterprise. 1t favors processes that
transfer the gainful labor of the many
to the few, and gauge the country's
prosperity by their wealth.
"The remedy for all this lies in the
law governing our existence. When
the spring is strained beyond its
strength it either breaks or rebounds
When steam exceeds the power of the
boiler, then comes the explosion
When the people can no longer bear op-
preston they get up in their wrath and
smite.
$50 far the safety valve has been the
vast domain of public lands open as a
gift to labor. But the government has
swung the heavy weight of incorporate
monopoly on this, and the valve is
closed. The great conservative power
that so far has held oppressed labor to
its unreQuited toll is the agricultural
class-a dead, heavy, ignorant weight
that has plodded solidly on to it's own
ruin. But it feels, like the swapping
tortoise, the coal on its back, and be-
gins to move against the enemy.
when the hour of retribution ar
rives in the United States, it will not be
cheerful. The way in which we all
got up, in night, and went at each
others throats, in the late Civil War
tells what We are when once aroused u
|
It Is not an indication of security that
greets the student who reads the proph-
ecies of ten, twenty or thirty years ago
and then studies the conditions that
confront the people today.
He sees great armies of men hunt
ing for the means Of subsistence, and
society almost paralysed and unable to
aid them.
He sees the same blind, naughty, cold
and cruel aristocracy that ruled France
before the terrible eruption deeply
rooted in the once free soil of America
sneering at and despising honest in
dustry, monopolizing the implements OF
production and distribution and grind
ing the souls out of free-born men
women and children that may riot in
luxury and initiate the corrupt and H.
legitimate nobility that curses Europe
while the lines of class distinction
grow palmer each hour, envy becomes
a national disease, and hatred's pois-
onous fangs sink into the hearts Of the
plundered masses.
| He sees a large increase of church
spires point their way heavenward
grand collegs and schools multiplyins
all over this fair land and education
becoming universal. And he see.
crime increase at so frightful a rat,
that philosophers pause, dismayed b,
the epidemic. and at loss to accoun
for 1t.
He sees state governments strength
ening military organizations, buildin,
armories and buying the latest ant
most perfect weapons of warfare. AM
he sees men who pretend to follow tn,
Christ that preached Peace on earth
good will towards men," stand in thei
pulpits and advise military companie
to prepare themselves. not to resist tn