Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1896-02-19
STAT Els EVIDENCE.
'Ex-COV. GIBBS OF TEXAS LAM
BASIS THE OLD PARTIES.
de Says They Are Selling Bonds and De-
Vising New Systems of Taxation In
stead of Laboring to Tighten the Bur
dens Already Upon the People.


democratic party. This time it is ex-
Governor Gibbs of Texas. He gives
the following reasons for the change.
He says:
III used to be that democratic plat
form was no longer than the ten COM
mandments, and as easy of comprehen-
sion, Now it takes Roger @. Mills and
horace Chiffon two hours each to tell
crowd what 1t is, and when they get
through talking the oldest democrats
are as badly mixed as if they had been
alternating between beer and red Ii
Quor. Mills says that gold with Just a
little silver mixed in makes democracy
NH'ton says that Mills is wrong; that
democracy consists of an allopathic in
stead OF homeopathic dose of silver
Which is the right prescription for
democrats? They differ on the size
OF the dose. Which will kill or cure?
when 1T comes to the tariff, Cleveland
and Mills think that it is democratic
Tor the men, women and children who
mere sheep and roundup cattle to do
ihba In the teeth of the northern and
tde competition of the world, but that it
Is also democratic for corporations who
manufacture wooden goods and shoes
in big brick buildings to have so per
cent protection.
Old Bill Morrison of the old-line
democrats was retired to a soft job on
the interstate commerce commission
because he thought the tariff ought to
be on n strictly revenue basis, and
while 1t was getting there that all
should have the same amount of protec-
tlon. He did not believe that the sheep
and cattle industries of the south and
west, pursued by individuals for live
iihood, should be laid out to hold the
campaign fund and votes of eastern cor
porations. They killed old Morrison
and the fact that he was choked to
death on soft official butter doesn't fool
man at the forks of the creek.
We know that republicanism stands
Tor protective tariff and extravagant
appropriations every day in the week
and Sunday, too. We know that it
stands for big pensions to the rich,
when Texas looking to the condition of
those who had to pay pensions to its
grand veterans, provided that where
one of these heroes was worth more
than 81 900 that he should draw no pen
sion, and those grand veterans left out
from reasons of justice and equity
never complained When the demo-
Gratis had congress they never had the
nerve to pass such an amendment to
the pension law of the United States,
but left the country to pay more than
one-half of the immense pension list
to men and women of wealth. Under
the tariff system the poor people pay
the most of this pension money. The
democrats did not tackle this and other
manifest abuses of government because
they wanted to win with eastern votes
and get appointments to foreign mis-
sions and other fat offices. In their
anxiety TO get and hold office they have
made platforms and congressional rec
ords that look as bad and contradictory
as some old woman's crazy quilt made
of rags just as they come to hand.
Free perfumery and taxed wool hats is
u more ludicrous political sight and
smells worse to an educated political
nose than the oft-ridiculed populist
pumpkin in the government subtreas-
ury. A man wanting Office may swal-
low ad nauseam all this hybrid tariff
and financial policy just as a child will
take sheep saffron tea when he has the
bellyache. The democracy now dished
out by the leaders has as many ingred-
tents as Rio Grande hash, but the smell
of official garlic is the only distinctive
quality, whether it is Hogg or Clark
hash or Cleveland and Mills hash. The
recipe for making this hash is so COM
plicated that even our governor
understands it one way the day
before and another way the day
after. The uncertainty of what
constitutes Simon pure demo-
cratic hash has turned the political
stomachs of even Kentucky and Texas
democrats.
"The result of all this democratic
and republican strife for Office is that
we have had class legislation and spe-
cial indulgencies until the people are
eaten up by the offiee-holding, protected
and pensioned classes. They are issu-
ing bonds and devising new systems of
tax levy and collection and trying to
create money ont of everything instead
of trying to reduce taxation and ex-
penses and the too tempting official sal
aries. The national, state and county
governments are on too high horse but
their dignity won't permit them to ride
n smaller one. When the people kick
they give them a war commission or an
agricultural commissioner to spend
more money and inquire of somebody
else living on government money what
is the trouble with the mudsill fellows
who are not on government horse, but
are walking. The mudsill people have
got afraid to complain for fear they
will have some more expensive commits
sions or special committees to use up
the contingent funds, which have to be
filled up again by taxation. 1t takes
a mule to pull a copy of the United
States statutes, and two mules to pull
a copy of the state statutes, and still
they are adding to them and every page
creates more officials. Increased taxes
and floating warrants don't breed demo-
Gratis.
when the people begin to kick
against so much officialism, so much
taxation, the democratic and republic
an leaders begin to levy more taxes,
spend more money and create more Off