The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1919-03-20

tinued to vote out billions of the
peoples money as if money grew on
trees. A national administration
which breaches thrift to the people
practices waste on such a scale as
was never before imagined in history.
New political schemes, involving
vast additional appropriations, are
sprouted. They are proposed in the
name OF social betterment, but they
involve the impoverishment of the
people and the bankruptcy of their
government unless they are halted
a prospect made more remote by the
ocstponement of the date Of assem-
bling a Congress elected by the
people partly in protest against the
present administration program of
appropriation and appropriation.
The people are told by the dema-
gogues that the money the politicians
are raising and spending unneces-
sarily comes out of the pockets OF
the rich and that it affords a means
of redistributing property. In the
end the people as whole must pay
this bill. Land and labor produce all
original values,-land and labor, the
farmer and the wage worker, must,
finally pay the fiddler. The admins
tration sets the pace in extravaganza
and waste; the example is initiated
by every state, county, city and town
ship in the land. The saturnalia OF
expenditure has caused an imitation
of the currency, with vast incidental
hardship to every person of fixed in
come. or income incapable of in
nation sufficient to keep pace with the
activities of the political money
spenders. And under this system i
dividual profteering is so fostered
that instead Of the rich being made
poorer and the poor richer, the
number Of millionaires in the country
has been doubled in two years, while
the burdens of the consumer are In
creased almost beyond endurance.
Not satisfied with the oppor-
tunities for money spending afforded
by existing conditions, the politicians
are reaching out ior new worlds to
.onauer. They would make the
world their parish. They would
organize police force for the planet
They would extend tre fabric OF
jficialism to enyclop both hemi-
spheres. They would feed: clotho,
regulate and fight the battles of the
entire earth, They act as If they
hought the resources of the Ameri-
can people are without limit, and
the possibilities of taxation have no
! boundaries,
There is a bottom to every meal
barrel. There is an end to ever
nurse. There are limits beyon,
which the process of depicting th
private payrolls to fatten the publ
payrolls may not safely go. Think
ing in billions is glorious for the pol
iticians, but that sort of thinking
cannot, like Tennyson's brook, go o..
forever, without taking account of tht
fact that there is a last straw Oh
every camers load that these bill
ions must be earned as well as ex
pended.
The greatest material, the creates.
moral, the greatest patriotic issue o.
today is political extravaganza ant
waste. reflected in abnormal living
costs, taxes under which business en-
terprise is staggering, a currency de-
preciated in purchasing power, and a
fear of the future which halts bus
mess enterprise. An effort is being
made to divert the attention of the
people from the situation, first by
The theory that everybody is going
to be supported by the government
| under the new freedom, and second,
that a scheme of world reconstruction
is under way which will bring peace
and prosperity to mankind through
the phrases of new world constitu-
tion.
1t was said of Germany before the
world war that every citizen carried
a soldier on his back. 1t is coming
about in this country that every
citizen is carrying a politician on his
back. The people are already stag
gering under this burden, and the
politicians responsible are lying tc
them as to the real causes Of their
difficulty, and telling them that the
remedy is to put two politicians on
each back by voting money out of the
treasury to fatten the public payroll
and the bankroll of tho public
functionaries. The resistance to this
process on the part Of the minority
)arty since the war ended has beer
I'll too feeble. 1t must become or
ganized and militant, and reflect it.