The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-07-25
FARMER PETER KNIGHTS PUZ-
FLING QUESTION


most active and nifty characters in
south Florida, offered himself as a
target at the Tampa Tribune banquet,
because, following the occupation of a
farmer, he appeared at the joyial
board arrayed in the garb of bank
er instead of having his copperas
jeans suspended by the proyerbial
one gallus, and he was somewhat Sc
verely citicized for the advice he
dealt out to his fellow knights Of the
hoe.
Mr.. knight said that there had been
established Oh these shores a govern
! ment that is the wonder Of the ages.
A government that vouchsafes the
freedom, of conscience, the freedom Of
speech, the freedom of religion and
the freedom of the press-a govern
ment in which the voters are the SOW
ereigns, everything being done for the
sovereign voter that political wisdom
y
making a journey over the continent
last year he found discomfort preya-
lent everywhere. Farmers with their
barns bursting with plenty, yet dis
satisfied. Men travelling in automo-
biles, wearing silk hose and their
hands and shirt fronts bedecked with
glittering jewels, yet disconnected.
Discomfort and uncertainty threat
ening and almost paralyzing bus
mess enterprises and financial OPP
erations. The congress of the nation,
the legislatures of the states, the city
councils, the arguments before the
courts, all voicing and giving express
sion to this discomfort That every
man was making himself discontinued
in trying to regulate the affairs of his
neighbors. the community in which
he lived and the larger affairs of the
nation. The farmer, and especially
the Florida farmer, Colonel Knight
said, ought to be happy, tranquil and
contented. But he is not.
The Florida farmer is living in a
land where everything is pleasing,
where the climate is soothing and ex-
hilarating, where the soil needs only
to be tickled to yield abundantly, yet
the spirit of discomfort is nowhere
more prevalent than among the Flor
ida farmers.
"My Cod" exclaimed the speaker,
what is the explanation for this
widespread and almost universal dis
content?"
A writer, evidently a foreigner, Wis
iting our shores, in a recent article
in the Smart Set" may answer Far
mer Knights puzzling question. He
says:
Since the very dawn of his sepa-
rate history, the American has been
ruled by what may be called moral
conception of life. He has thought of
all things as either right or wrong,
and of the greater number of them.
perhaps, as wrong. He has ever tend
ed, apparently irresistibly, to reduce
all questions of politics, of industrial
organization, of art, of education, and
even of fashion and social etiquette,
to questions of ethics. Every one of
his great political movements has
been a moral movement; in almost
every line of his literature there is
what NietZsche used to call morale
acid; he never thinks of great men
and useless men, but only of good men
and bad men. And to this moral way
of thinking he adds a moral way of
acting. That is to say, he feels that
he is bound to make an active war
upon whatever is bad, that his silence
is equivalent to his consent, that he
will be held personally responsible, by
God, for all the deviltry that goes on
around him. The result, on the one
bering over moral issues, many of them
wholly artificial and ridiculous, and
on the other hand, an incessant snout-
ing into private conduct, in the hope
of bringing new issues to light. y
The American views joy with I'M
scOtchabEe suspicion, whatever it's Wis
ible form; his attitude toward it, in
general, is exactly opposite to that of
the PericIean Greek. Some of it's
agents, true enough, have wormed
themselves, after a fashion, into his
reluctant affections-the theater and
the dance may serve as examples
but he is still full of a vague feeling
that the devil sent them, he is still
disposed to apologize for them. When
he filings his legs in air, it is by no
means in innocence, but with a full
sense that the act is subtly lascivious