Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-04-10

the necessary funds can be secured to
erect the building. The Grand Army
men have quite sum to start with
| and the balance could be secured by
subscription and donations.
Ex-soldier.
you may trust him with the weightiest
affairs Of the nation. Neither will
any man call him eccentric; he Is as
incapable of eccentricity as he is of
brllliancy. You shall find him the
very soberest of counselors.
Yet again, that prairie land, by rea-
son of its uniformity, forbade the
building of great cities. The Iowans.
therefore, escaped the political cor
rupt1on which is bred by urban di-
sease and disorder. They never got
under the heel of a Platt or a Croker.
But perhaps you will say that this
explanation of the Iowans' evolution
should apply with equal force to Kan
sas and Nebraska, both of which are
western bred states, both of whom
revel in aching monotony of scenery
and geography, and both of which
have escaped the curse of great cities.
To this shall answer vigorous
No" Kansas Is the haven and the
heaven of the cratic; it was founded
by them. And both Kansas and Ne
braska are swept by the hot wind, and
the hot wind makes bad politics. The
hot wind accounts for Williams Jen-
nings Bryan. 1t comes roaring out of
the south; it draws it's flaming scythe
across Kansas and Nebraska; it kills
the crops; it crazes the farmer.
n rJJir IN, III -,
debtedness and enraged against des-
tiny, the farmer shrieks vengeance.
Upon the weather man? No. Upon
the administration at WASHINGTON.
He will tear down the political heay.
ems and set things right. Then comes
Mr.. Bryan tinkling his 50-cent medals
and calling them dollars. Free silver
follows the hot wind.
But in Iowa it is not so. In Iowa
corn crops follows crop in so sure a
succession of triumphs and so unfail-
Ing wake of prosperity that all are
enriched. So rich, indeed, does the
farmer become that he sooner or later
lets out his acres to husbandmen,
while he himself moves to town.
where he lives in sweet comfort the
rest of his days. And that is why
y
to trouble the Iowan
Open minded, however, the Iowans
certainly are, but their open-minded-
ness is of an eminently practical sort.
They experimental with prohibition;
got bad results, gave up their strict
laws. and instead adopted the mulct,
which works admirably. They aboI-
ished capital punishment, got bad re-
suits, and went back to the old order.
They welcomed Professor Heron, got
bad results, and permitted Professor
Heron to pack up his socialistic be-
longings and take himself away So
cialism in Iowa! There isn't worse
soil for it in all Gods world Socialism
provides amusement for Imaginative
that get fun out of
thinking how the nice the world would
be If it were something else And
Iowa produces no minds of that sort.
Rather has it produced the sensible,
contented, straightforward, broad
walk type Of mind-ready always to
hear a new gospel. but testing that
gospel by the canons of practicability.
You can always rely on Iowa to
send a sound statesman to Washing
ton, and when they have sent him
there they keep him there. Sane
themselves, they appreciate his sanity.
They are the best constituency in
North America. Never was there a
more perfect adjustment of the prin-
ciples of representative government.
And by grace of this splendid loyalty
which returns the same man term af-
,er term to his end at the capital, the
Hawkeye statesman becomes an ex-
3ert-making up by long experience
md slowly acquired knowledge what
,ver he may lack of conspicuous bril-
lance.
Here, then, we may have seen the
ype Of man Iowa produces, and why
t produces that type. Now let us
six why all America applauds the as
tendency of Iowa. I think there are
wo clear reasons. For one, Iowa is
lot longer a western state. Once.
vhen l had settled down to live in
Iontana. good lady said to me: I'm
o glad to hear you're from the east.
m an easterner myself" or course
fastened to ask her from what part
+ the country she had come. "Ioway,"
he answered. That was stretching
point admit, but not stretching 1t
ar. So vast and magnificent an en-
ire has sprung into being beyond the
ontinental divide that the center of
Kings has shifted and now lies west
the Mississippi. Meanwhile the
ralrle, rich with grain and teeming
Nth cattle-reaching as it does from
batavia, New York, to the Bad Lands
t North Dakota, has become Amer.
ca. There, in the measureless Mis-
lssippi valley, the Americans have