The Palatka news. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1905-1908, 1907-09-27
Passing Of the Demasosue.


The Telegraph is beginning to feel
sorry for the candidate, state or ma
tional, whose stock IN trade is appeal
to popular prejudices. Calamity
bowling in the face of the highest
wages for labor and the highest
prices for the products of the farm
that have been known in years is an
uphill business. Those who are
wont to become wrought up by the
wall of the demagogue simply refuse
to be wrought, because they know
from their own experience that no
such conditions obtain as the dema-
gogue would have them believe. In
our own state, for instance, there
are persons and newspapers who
have been particularly active during
the past year or two in their efforts
to educate the masses up to a hatred
of and prejudice against all manner
of industrial enterprises. They have
told us necessarily and still tell us
that the railroads and other enter
prises that happen to have, and
must have, large means are tramp
ling US under foot and drawing our
very life's blood. The speciality of
these calamity howlers is to shed
crocodile tears over the condition of
the farmer. There is method in
this, for whatever else you may say
OF the demagogue he is not without
his full quota of cunning. He thinks
the man who tolls in the field, nee
essarily removed by his vocation
from intimate association and fire.
quent exchange of ideas with his
neighbors and friends, is the man
most easily wrought upon by his
vaporings. But he underestimate
the Intelligence of the farmer. AL
though his home is somewhat iso-
lated and he is denied the close
touch with affairs that is en-
jOyed by the inhabitants of the cou-
gested centers of population, the far
mer is reading and thinking and
cry of wolf don't have near the
terrols for him that it did a few
years ago. He sees with his own
eyes that his land, horses, his cattle
and his hogs have steadily increased
in value in the proportion that the
development of the state has increas-
ed the supply of money and the de-
mand for his property. and he has
seen with his own eyes the steady
increase in the price of everything
that he produces on his farm until
at present there is hardly a single
item of produce that is not bringing
him at least % per cent. more than
it did two years ago. Sea island cot
ton, one of the money crops of this
county for instance, has increased in
price during the past two years until
it is now quoted at So cents per
pound, figure not reached before in
twenty years or more. These things
have happened too, at time when
the demagOgical politician has been
loudest i'll crying out against what
he is pleased to term the "mOnied
interests 1t is small wonder, then,
that the farmer can no longer be
haraugued into believing the hand
of the world is against him and that
his salvation lies in a constant war
fare on everything else. He has
learned from experience that he
prOspers in exactly the same meas
ure that the balance of the country
prOspers and instead of Joining in a
hue and cry against the universe he
is rejoicing in the general prosperity
phNt Wishing SuGCtSS " every Du5i-
ness enterprise in the universe, reck-
oning correctly that the railroads
and the mills and the stores and the
shops must make money and pros
per if their owners and employees are
to be able to pay top prices for the
products of the farm aud the orchard
and the garden
With this awakening and broaden
i1g of opinion on the part of the far
mers, the last hope of the political
demagogue vanishes, for he has
thrived on deception and prejudice,
and surely the people upon whose
prejudices he has depended for sus-
tenance will not be led back into an
tagonsm of the industrial interests
upon whose extension and success
their own prosperity is shown by
present conditions to be so largely
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES Telegraph.