The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1915-09-09
Underwood Bouquets and Brickbats

Billy Bryan says, ITO go to war
with Germany now would be like chal-
longing a lunstic asylum. This is
true saying and worthy OF all aceepta-
| tion.
Two extensive and dangerous fires
have lately started on the bluff west of
Underwood, kindled either by passing
trains or by hobos. Ii is hoped the
Junk and trash will be so burned off
/ this time as to make fires of this kind
scarce in the future. The fires have
been extinguished with difficulty and
much work on the part of busy cltl-
zens. Fire wardens and detectives
should be busy finding out who Is re.
sponsible for starting such fires, and
short shrift should be given the guilty
parties.
The early peach and pear harvest is
about over. A large quantity OF hne
peaches have been allowed to 20 to
waste because there was no market OF
the cost of marketing would exceed
the returns to the grower. At the
same time the canneries in which we
have invested good money are standing
idle, the railroads are losing transpor-
tation, while they are asking for an
| increase of freight rates, as are also
the express companies. There is NAL
adjustment in this whole transportation
and distribution problem, and 1t is up
to our newspapers, politicians and eX-
perts to locate the trouble and lind
remedy.
| The railroads and newspaper writers
have been exhorting everybody but
themselves to go back to the soil and
produce something. But those who
have taken this advice and delivered
| the goods find transportation and dis
/ tribution are not organized to do their
part of the job, or they are so wssteful
as to absorb nearly all financial reward
| leaving the producer a mere plttance
| for his work and toll and sometimes
nothing at all. This is the discourag.
| ing feature of the back-to-the-soil
movement and must be remedied. When
! the producer nowadays has something
of food products to sell he has to ap-
pruach prospective buyers in spirit of
humility and almost apologize for ask
ing their attention. Yet he is by far
| the most important member of society,
far outranking all the military heroes,
and is rendering the most important
service in the upward march OF human
ity. 1t is sign of our essential bar
barism when he does not get the recog-
niton he deserves. We have been build
ing monuments and giving pensions to
some who have destroyed commerce,
burnt cities and butchered the inhabi-
tants, while the man on the soil, who
has to support the whole awful system,
is still regarded as a sort of joke and
inferior, and when he passes we build
him no monument, lis there any m0nu-
ment to farmer in the United States)
but often dispose of him in some such
spirit as that of the doggerel:
Rattle his bones over the stones,
He's but hayseed nobody owns.
Our last congress appropriated vast
sums of money to build commerce de-
stroyers, but refused to appropriate a
dollar for commerce carriers, and made
very modest appropriations for sclen-
tific agricultural work and experiment.
Our greatest scientists and inventors
are now asked to lend their brains and
skill in devising for US the most perfect
instruments for killing and destroying.
Do the safety, honor and prosperity of
the United States rest upon armaments
and weapons of destruction, or upon in
telligence, morality and peaceful indus
try? Or, if in the present condition of
international brutality and scientific
heathenism we must have more soldiers
and warships to defend ourselves
against the incursion of lunatics and
savages from our Christian neighbors,
for uneducated heather have no arma-
nlents, ought we not to regard these
instruments with a spirit of regret and
humility and not with spirit of pride
and boastfulness as if they were the
symbol of our greatest national asset?
Our illustrious forebears who started
the American republic did not begin by
organizing armies and navies, but by
building churches and school houses as
the bulwark of this new order of Amer
ican civilization. This has been, and
must be, today and tomorrow, the order
of our republic OF we tumble into ruin
AS has every other nation that has
', stressed brute force rather than right
and reason. They that take the sword
, shall perish by the sword, b." is an eter.
! nal law. Who wi win in this Europe
an slaughter house that is now the
, crowning climax in the long tragedy OF
human history? Who won the Sar
, Francisco earthquake? All went dowr
! in wreck ard ruin in the one and sc
, ,, they will in the other. After this vol
cano of fire and blood the whole worlc
will have to be made over on new
plan.
The president of our agricultural col
| lege says, the country church is the
| most important institution in the Unit
t ed States. At present in most cases il
is a very feeble concern, but in it are
e to be found the solutions of most of ou
' rural problems, if neighborhood cal
E be rallied under competent leadership
i Report says a rural church is soon t.
e be erected on the Underwood Heights
a site for which has already been Sc
a cured ThistleodWn.