The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1919-11-14
WANT GAME BUT NOT NAME
Southern Minnesota Peeved at Class
IfIcation of Huns--Act Like Huns Any,
way--"Might Makes Right Their
Attitude Towards the North.
(by R. w. HITCHCOCK. Representative Goth District

Returning to Minnesota after an
absence of three weeks we find some
Southern Minnesota papers resentfui
over our warning to the at present
numerically more powerful southern
half of the state mot to further play
the Hun" in the tonnage tax issue
We of the south are not Huns pro-
tests the Lanesboro Leader; yet in
the same breath declares that the
South: twill some daw arise in its
might and majesty" and take" that
which it thus far has been able
neither to justify or to take, the ton
mage tax. They want the game but
not the name.
Of course the people of Southern
Minnesota are not Huns, but they
are persistently playing the Hun in
this matter, for the strength of the
tonnage tax in Minnesota today is
not the strength of reason or right
but the strength of envy and greed,
fattened by blind prejudice into an
ugly determination to stake" be-
cause it has the"might" to take. The
tonnage tax is builded upon an arbi-
trary theory whose foundation stone
lis a lust for the good things of 9TH
ers, whose superstructure is patch
work of sticks and stones of igno-
rance, passion and prejudice, and
over whose narrow doors is crudely
carved the motto of those who dwell
therein, might makes Right" Men
have been going in and out of this
house for twenty years, and as they
look longingly away to the North as
to a promised land, their talk is a
iargon of "vast holes in the ground"
"divine right" and "steel trust, !"
but most Of all they talk of rising
in their might" and taking" Never
once, in all these twenty years, have
they been heard to utter sound,
clean reason for the enactment of a
tonnage tax law as a matter of sound
economic policy. The plain truth is
that Northern Minnesota has wealth
and Southern Minnesota wants it.
and proposes to take it.
Can't Justify the Tax
1t is quite true that there are
thousands of people in Southern and
Western Minnesota who honestly be-
lieve that the tonnage tax is a just
tax, yet they cannot justify their be-
lief with a single reason that is not
founded on prejudice and false
and made-to-order premise. The devil
in guise of a politician has taken
them up into high mountain and
has shown them all the wealth of the
North and has said: "All this will /
give to you if you will elect me to
Office" They have accepted the die
tum of the demagogic politician
that, Minnesota is being robbed
of its wealth by the steel trust. {"
Southern Minnesota has never stud
led the tonnage tax; it has simply
taken somebody else,s say-so, and
that somebody else has been the pol
itician who uses the tonnage tax and
the "steel trust" as springes with
which to catch woodcocks. If South
ern Minnesota ever really thinks
about the tonnage tax, the thing will
die a sudden death and will be bur-
led forever with scant ceremony, for
the people of Southern Minnesota
are a just people who need only to
see the right in order to do it.
Ambition Eggs It On
True it is, too, that there are
few men in Southern Minnesota who
have thought about the matter and
nave pcESuducU themselves LI1dI IL IL
right, for the human being is so con-
stituted that if he wants thing fer
vently enough, he can find reasons
by which he will justify to himself
his having it. Doubtless David was
fully persuaded that the good of his
kingdom demanded that he set Uriah
the Hittite in the forefront of the
hottest battle, but we know that
what he really wanted was the wom-
an, Bathsheba. No doubt the au-
thors Of the most recent tonnage tax
failure were perfectly sincere in
their devotion to the measure. Doubt
less, too, the one would be hurt and
indignant if anyone should suppose
that his lively ambition to be govern
or made him hotter for the tonnage
tax than he otherwise would be.
Quite conceivably, also, the other
author might rise and rigi1teously
denounce as ''the height Of presamp-