Decatur Democrat, Volume 35, Number 26, Decatur, Adams County, 18 September 1891 — Page 2

©he democrat DECATLTR, IND. BLACKBURN, - - - Publisher. IF Ur. Carver has succeeded in getting in debt to Berlin jewelers to the extent of $3,000 he ought to be able to shoot his way out. When one can cross the continent tn four days and seventeen hours by making quick connections with reglar trains, the rapidity of the age in , which we live is demonstrated. ■ 6 ’ If you are out of a job and can’t find one keep off the street. Industry hates an Idler, and if you join the , flrmy of loafers, employers and others will blacklist you, and you will always be a loafer. Therefore keep elose at home. Besides, it is cheaper to stay at home; no beer to buy. Down in Georgia a law has gone into effect prohibiting the selling of liquor within three miles of any church of school house except in incorporated cities. This is a blow at agricuiture for certain. Georgia’s available population will soon be concentrated within the limits of her cities. j. Some time ago a man was arrested in Egypt for manufacturing mummies, which may> be a proper procedure in Egypt, but if, in these talky times, somebody would only manufacture a few mummies in these glori-ous-United States we would save him from the hand of the law if it took a constitutional amendment to do it. Hotel soap, is the latest bugbear. You must not use it, for you do not know who used it last or what was the condition of his hands. Always carry your own soap, for “the hotel soap is unexcelled as a medium for the conveyance of cutaneous maladies.” Nonsense. •> Giveus a solitary » well authenticated instance of the kind. — Texans are still unhappy. «A recent law compels the separation of white and colored people on the cars. So it happens now frequently that half a dozen jolly colored citizens occupy a whole car and lounge around as they please, while sixty or seventy white people suffocate in the car coupled behind. Many a man with tired legs doesn’t see the smartness of the law.? Some irresponsible writer upon a New York paper has taken to mak- ’ ing scurrilous] y foolish remarks about the lady managers of the World’s Fair. It would seem that out of purely selfish consideration this person should feel impelled to refrain from making an exhibition of himself. He cannot, of course, help it if he was born foolish, but he might at least make his jovial and inspired asininity a little less conspicious. The good old days of romance Are by no means over in the East if the recent reports are to be believed. The story is that the Shah has had the Governor of Mazenderan quiptly boiled alive for presuming to steal more of the revenues of the province than the Shah thought proper. This is really good old-fashioned style, and it is easy 4;o see that there might be some chance for even a realist to write exciting novels in the domain of the Shah. « Another Tennessee .clergyman has been arrested for illicit distilling. He was smoking altogether too many hams, as it appeared to the officers, and they have found in the smoke house an excellently equipped still with a few gallons of the fiery, Unnamed mountain dew. His excuse was that the liquor was distilled for family use, but this will hardly satisfy the courts. It will be necessary to teach some of our brethren in the south the difference between the spirituous and the spiritual vocation. Wisconsin seems to be among the modest States in its views of representation at „ the Columbian Exposition. The Milwaukee Sentinel says: “It is just as well that Wisconsin does not combine with three other States for a general headquarters building at the World’s Fair, With her small appropriation she would be able to call only about four shingles of the building her own. A tent of proportions will be commensurate with the legislative Interest of the fair.” The dress reform movement has broken out again, and is assuming great proportions. It is determined by the leading women of the country to introduce the new style of dress •this fall. “Corsets have filled more .graves than whisky,” says one ardent ■worker, “and we propose to do away with them.” The new style will be an imitation of men’s clothes, with vest, coat, and a short kilt skirt that reaches to the shoe tops. ' The reform will never amount to anything. There are too many thin women in the country to work Against it. The White House is undergoing the usual annual repairs, with a consequent renewal of the talk about a new building. There is no question of the need of additional room. There are very few private families possessed of moderate means who do not have better living accommodations than those furnished by the nation tor the president and his family. The present White House is hardly larger

than is necessary for the offices and public reception rooms of the President. The nation is able to provide its official head with ample and convenient living rooms, and it ought to do so. It is not the scarcity of dimes to be picked up that makes poverty; it is the number .of unnecessary dollars that are wasted. Frugality and economy in youth are the only protections against poverty and dependence in old age, but there are very few who seem to have enough good judgment and foresight to practice it. Most men seem to think that some unknown providence of philanthropic friend will provide for them in old age, but they will live to realize their mistake. These are not the days of fairies and protecting spirits.. Every man must take care of himself, and it is a lesson he cannot learn too soon. While England, France, and every other foreign nation of the earth is showing an active interest in the World’s Fair, the eastern portion of the United States itself regards it with indifference, if not with downright hostility. So palpable is the fact that no zeal fqr the enterprise can be aroused in the cities of that section that the eastern department of the exposition is to be abolished. It was organized for the purpose of overcoming jealousy of Chicago and prejudice against the fair, but it has utterly failed in its object and is only a useful and expensive appendage of the fair’s executive organization. The action of the management will be a stinging reproach to the Eastern cities, and too late they will repent of the folly of their course. That some high geniuses with peculiar endowments can never attain great fame is evidenced in the career of Louis Paulsen, whose death was recorded recently. Paulsen was born with the marvelous faculty of the chess-player and some of his feats at his chosen game have not been surpassed. He mastered all contemporary knowledge as to openings and methods and developed originality enough to overthrow former systems and confound older players. His memory was so remarkable that he could play twelve games at once while blindfold. Yet at his death his name was unknown to nearly all save the comparatively few who make chess their hobby and pay long devotions before the graven images of bishop, knight, and pawn. Some curious measures have come up in the State legislatures during the past few months, and the Georgia Legislature is evidently determined not to be behind the rest in this respect. It has just introduced a bill providing for the taxation of bachelors. Under its provisions the Georgia man of 30 who has not yet found a wife will be taxed $25, that sum to be increased by a like amount for ?every five years of his bachelorhood. At this rare the man who persists in keeping his neck out of the matrimonial yoke until he is 60 would have to pay about S2OO a year for his singleblessedness. At a green old age it would cbst him a good-sized salary. The State legislatures have abounded in cranks, but they have produced ho bigger one than the author of the anti-bachelor bill in Georgia. Os coursp the measure will fail to pass, and it is useless fqr the Georgian old maids to build any matrimonial hopes upon it. An incident which happened recently in the House of Lords affords a hint which might be turned to advantage in the legislative bodies of this country. The acoustic properties of theoratory hall of the House of Lords are such that two lords made quite long addresses at the same time without either discovering that anybody else was speaking. It would not be a bad idea to have the halls of Congress arranged on the same principle, to the end that a half dozen of .the long speeches be made at one time. Nobody pretends to suppose that in these *days the speeches which are made for and against a bill have anything to do with the vote which is taken upon it. They are made for the purpose of having them afterward circulated as campaign documents, and, of course, there is no need that the representatives shall hear them. Their delivery consumes a vast deal of valuable time, and it were an excellent thing if they could be disposed of in a lump. Sock and Buskin. In the early ages theatrical performers disguised their faces with wine lees or a rude pigment. Eschylus, the famous tragic poet, introduced masks, which were of various kinds, expressing every age, country, condition and complexion. All were constructed with the greatest nicety and precision. The dresses were also adapted to the characters assumed by the actors. What was known as the buskin was a hunting boot. Those worn by tragedians had soles three inches thick, composed of layers of cork, and were laced up in front as high as the calf. Sandals were also worn, and many of these had thick cork soles. The colors of the footcoverings were various, red being the favorite hue for warriors and purple for other characeers. Slaves wore a low shoe, bearing the name of sock, which was also the ordinary footwear of comedians. From this circumstance arose the wellknown phrase of “sock and buskin,” so 'generally associated with the drama. It is easier to make a fortune than to keep it. That is to say it looks easier to an outsider.

1 A TYPE OF DIVINE 10VE 1 KINDNESS OF THE BARBARIANS TO PAUL. I Dr. Talmage Draws a Variety of Lessons from the Record In Acts—They Were Barbarians Only In That They Could ' Not Speak Greek. I ‘•Kindness.” Dr. Talmage’s sermon was on “Kind- ■ ness,” from the text, Acts xxviii, 2, “The . barbarous people showed us no little . kindness.” My text puts us on the Island of Malta, another-name for Melita. This island, > which has always been an important commercial center, belonging at different times to Phoenicia, to Greece, to Rome, to Arabia, to Spain, to France, now belongs to England. The area of the island is about 100 square miles. It is in the Mediterranean Sea, and of such clarity of atmosphere that Mount Etna, . .130 miles away, can be distinctly seen. The island is gloriously memorable because the Knights of Malta for a long while ruled there, but most famous because of the apostolic shipwreck. The vessel on which Paul jailed had “laid to” on the starboard tack, and the wind was blowing east northeast and the vessel drifting probably a mile and a half an hour ere she struck at what is now called St. Paul’s Bay. Practical sailors have taken up the Bible account and decided beyond controversy the place of the shipwreck. But the island which has so rough a coast is for the most part a garden. Richest fruits and a profusion of honey characterized it in Paul’s tigae as well as now. The finest oranges, figs and olives grow there. When Paul and his comrades crawled up on the beach, saturated with the salt water and hungry from long abstinence from food and chilled to the bone, the islanders, though called barbarians because they could not speak Greek, opened their doors to the shipwrecked unfortunates. Everything had gone to the bottom of the deep, and the bare-footed, bareheaded apostle and ship’s crew were in a condition to appreciate hospitality. About twenty-five such men a few seasons ago I found in the life station near Easthampton, Long Island. They had got ashore in the night from the sea, and not a hat nor shoe had they left. They*found out, as Paul and his fellow voyagers, found out, that the sea is the roughest of all robbers. My text finds the ship’s crew ashore on Malta, and around a hot fire dryinsr themselves, and with the nest provision the islanders can offer them. And they go into government quarters for three days to recuperate, Publius, the ruler, inviting them, although he had severe sickness in the house at that time—his father down with dysentery and typhoid .fever. Yea, for three months they staid on the island, watching for a ship and putting the hospitality of the islanders to a severe test. But they endured the test satisfactorily, and it is recorded for all the ages of time and eternity to read and hear In regard to the inhabitants of Malta, “The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Kindness! What a great word that is. It would take a reed as long as that which the apocalyptic angel used to measure Heaven to tell the length, the breadth, the height of that munificent word. It is a favorite Bible word, and it is early launched in the book of Genesis, caught up in the book of Joshua, embraced in the book of Ruth, sworn by in the book of Samuel, crowned in the book of Psalms, and enthroned in many places in the New Testament. Kindness! A word no more gentle than mighty. I expect it will wrestle me down before I get through with it It is strong enough to throw an archangel. But it will be well for us to stand around it and warm ourselves by its glow as Paul and his fellow voyagers stood around the fire on the Island of Malta, where the Maltese made themselves immortal in my text by the way they treated these victims of the sea. “The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Kindness! All definitions of that multipotent word ' break down half way. You say it is clemency, benignity, generosity; it is made up of good wishes, it is an expression of beneficence, it is a contribution to the happiness of others. Some one else says: “Why, I can give you a difinition of kindness. It is sunshine of the soul; it is affection perennial, it is a. crowning grace, it is the combination of all graces; it is compassion; it is the perfection of gentlemanliness and womanliness.” Are you all through? You have made a dead failure in your definition. It cannot be defined. But we all know what it is, for we all felt its power. Some of you may have felt it as Paul felt ft, on some coast of rock as the ship went to pieces, but more of us have again and again in some awful stress of life had either from earth or Heaven hands stretched out, which “showed us no little kindness.” There is a kindness of disposition, kindness of word, kindness of act, and there is Jesus Christ the impersonation of all of them. Kindness! You cannot affect it, you cannot play it as a part, you cannot enact it, you cannot dramatize it. By the grace of God, you must have It inside you, an everlasting summer, or rather a combination of June and October, the geniality of one and the tonic of the other. It cannot dwell with arrogence or spite or revenge or malevolence. At its first appearance in the soul all these Amalekites and Gergishites and Hittites and Jebusites must quit, and quit forever. Kindness wishes everybody well—every man well, every woman well, every child well, every bird well, every horse well, every dog well, every cat well. Give this spirit full swing and you would have no more need of societies for prevention of cruelty to animals, no more need of protective sewing woman’s associations, and it would dull every sword until it would not cut skin deep, and unwheel every batter Mil it could not roll, and make gunpowucr of no more use in the world except for rock blasting or pyrotechnic celebration. Kindness is a spirit divinely implanted, and in answer to prayer, and then to be sedulously cultivated until it fills all the nature with a perfume richer and more pungent than mignonette, and, as if you put a tuft of that aromatic beauty behind the clock on the mantel, or in some corner where nobody can see it, you find people walking about your room looking this way and that, and you ask them, “What are you looking for?” and they answer, “Where is that flower?” So if one has in his soul this infinite sweetness of disposition, its perfume will whelm everything. But it you are waiting and hoping for some one to be bankrupted or exposed or discexhfited or in some way overthrown, then kindness has not taken possession of your nature. You are wrecked on a Malta where there are no oranges. You are entertaining a guest so unlike kindness that kindness will not come and dwell under the same roof. The most exhausting and unhealthy and ruinous feeling on earth is a revengeful spirit or retaliating spirit, as I know by experience, fer I have tried it for five or ten minutes at a time. When some mean thing has been done me or said about me, I have felt: “I will pay him in his own corn. I will show him up. The ingotol! The traitor! The liar! The

hi in. i mi 'I ——- But five or ten minutes of the feeling has been so unnerving and exhausting I qave abandoned it, and I cannot understand how people can go about torturing themselves five or fen or twenty years, trying to get even with somebody. The only way you will ever triumph over your enemies is by forgiving (them and wishing them all good and no evil. As malevolence is the most uneasy and nrofitless and dangerous feeling, kindness is the most healthful and delightful. And this is not abstraction. As I have tried a little of the retaliation, so I have tried a little of the forgiving. I do not want to leave this world-untll I have taken vengeance upon every man that ever did me a wrong by doing him a kindness. In most of such cases I have already succeeded; but there are a few malignants whom I am yet persuing and I shall not be content until I have in some wise helped them or benefitted them or blessed them. Let us pray for this spirit of kindness. It Jwill settle a thousand questions. It will change the phase of everything It will mellow through and through our entire nature. It will transform a lifetime. It is-’not a feeling gotten up for occasions, but perennial. Still further, I must speak of kindness of word. When you meet any one do you say a pleasant thing or an unpleasant? Do you tell him of agreeable things you have heard about him or the disagreeable? When he leaves you does he feel better or does he feel worse? Oh, the power of the tongue for the production of happiness or misery! There are those if they know a good thing about you and a bad thing, will mention the bad thing and act as though they had never heard the good thing. Now, there are two sides to almost every one’s character, and we have the choice of overhauling the virtue or the vice. We can greet Paul and the ship’s crew as they come up the beach of Malta with the words: “What a sorry looking set you are! How little of navigation you must know to run on these rocks! Didn’t you know better than to put out on the Mediterranean this wintry month? It was not much of a ship anyhow, or it would not have gone to pieces so soon as that. Well, what do you want? We have hard enough work to make a living for ourselves without having thrust on us 276 ragamuffins.” Not so said the Maltese. I think they said: “Ccme in! Sit down by the fire and warm yourselves! Glad that you all got off with your lives. Makeyourselves at home. You are welcome to all we have until some ship comes in sight and you resume your voyage. Here, let me put a bandage on your forehead, forthat is an ugly gash you got from the floating timbers, and here is a man with a broken arm. We will have a doctor come to attend to this fracture.” And though for three months the kindness went on, we have but little more than this brief record, “The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Oh, say the cordial thing! Say the useful thing! Say the hospitable thing! Say the helpful thing! Say the Christian thing! Say the kind thing! I admit that this is easier for some temperaments than for others. Some are born pessimists,and some are born optimists,and that demonstrates itself all through everything. It is a cloudy morning. You meet a pessimists and you say. “What weather to-day?” He answers, “It is going to storm,” and umbrella under arm and a waterproof overcoat show that he is honest in that utterance. On the same block, a minute after, you meet an optimist, and you say: “What weather to-day?” “Good weather; this is only a fog and will soon scatter.” The absence of umbrella and absence of waterproof show it is an honest utterance. On your way at noon to luncheon you meet an optimistic merchant, and you say, “What do you think of the commercial prospects?” and he says: “Glorious. Great ctops must bring great business. We are going to have such an autumn and winter of prosperity as we have never seen.” On your way back to your store you meet a pessimistic merchant. “What do you think of the commercial prospects?” you ask. And he answers: “Well, I don’t know. So much grain will surfeit the country, farmers have more bushels but less prices, and the grain gamblers will get their fist in. There is the McKinley bill; and the hay crop is short in some places, and in the Southern part of Wisconsin they had a hailstorm and our business is as dull as it ever was.” You will find the same difference in judgment of character. A man of good reputation is assailed and charged with some evil deed. At the first story the pessimist will believe in guilt. “The papers said so, and that’s enough. Down with him!” The optimist will say: °“I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t think that a man that has been as useful and seemingly honest for twenty years could have got off the track like that There are two sides to this story, and I will wait to hear the other side before I condemn him.” 6 My hearer, if you are by nature a pessimist, make a special effort by the grace of God to extirpate the dolorous and the hypercritica>Sfrom your disposition. Believe nothing against anybody until the wrong is established by at least two witnesses of integrity. And if guilt be proved, find out the extenuating circumstances if there are any. And then commit to memory so that you can quote for yourself and quote for others that exquisite thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians about charity that suffers long and is kind and hopeth all things andendureth all things. By pen, by voice, in oublic- and in private, say all the good about people you can think of, and if there be nothing good, then tighten the chain of muscle on the back end of your tongue and keep the ivory bars of teeth oh the lower jaw and the ivory bars of teeth on the upper jaw locked, and the gate of your lips tightly closed and your tongue shut up. Furthermore, there is kindness of action. That is what Joseph showed to his outrageous brothers. That is what David showed to Mephibosheth for his father Jonathan’s sake. That is what Oneisphorus showed to Paul in the Roman penitentiary. That is what William Cowper recognized when he said he would not trust a man who would with his foot needlessly crush a worm. This is what our assassinated President Lincoln demonstrated when his private secretary found him in the Capitol grounds trying to get a bird back to the nest from which it had fallen, and which quality the illustrious man exhibited years before which having some lawyers in the carriage on the way to court passed on the road a swine fast in the mire, after awhile cried to his horses, “Ho!” and said to the gentlemen, “I must go back and help that hog out of the mire.” And he did go back and put on solid ground that most uninteresting quadruped. That was the spirit that was manifested by my departed friend, Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, (and lovelier man never exchanged earth for Heaven,) when at Washington. A senator’s wife, who told my wife of the circumstances, said to hint, “Mr. Stephens, come and see my dead canary bird.” And he answered, “No, I could not look at the poor thing without crying.” That is the spirit that Grant showed when at the surrender at Appomatox he said to Gen. Lee, “As many of your soldiers are farmers and wiU need the horses and mules to raise the crops to keep their famillu from suffering next winter, let each Confederate who nan

claim a horse or a mule take it along with him.” That is the spirit which last night ten thousand mothers showed to their sick children coming to give the drink at the twentieth call as cheerfully and as tenderly as at the first call. Suppose all this assemblage, and all to whom these words shall come by printer’s type, should resolve to make kindness an overarching, undergirding and all-per-vading principle of their life, and then carry out the resolution, why, in six months the whole earth would feel it People would sav: “What is the matter? It seems to me that the world is getting to be a better place to live in. Why, life after all is worth living. Why, there is Shylock, my neighbor, has withdrawn his lawsuit of foreclosure against that man, and because he had so much sickness in his family, he is going to have the house for one year rent free. There is an old lawyer in that young lawyer’s office, and do you know what he has gone in there for? Why he is helping fix up a case which is too big for the young man to handle, and the white haired attorney is hunting up previous decisions and making out a brief for the boy. “Down at the bank I heard yesterday a note was due, and the young merchant could not meet it, and an old merchant went in and got for him three months’ extension, which for the young merchant is the difference between bankruptcy and success in business. And in our street is an artist who had a fine picture of the ‘Rapids of Niagara,’ and he could not sell it, and his family were suffering, and they were themselves in the rapids; and a lady heard of it and said, ‘I do not need the picture but for the encouragement of art and helping you out of your distress I will take it,’ and on the drawing room wall are the ‘Rapids of Niagara.’ “Do you know that a strange thing has taken place in the pulpit and all the old ministers are helping the young ministers, and all the old doctors are helping the young doctors, and the farmers are assisting each other in gathering the harvest, and for that farmer who is sick the neighbors have made a ‘bee,’ as they call it, and they have all turned in to help him get his crops into the garner? “And they tell me that the older and more skillful reporters who have permanent positions on'papers are helping the young fellows who are just beginning to try and don’t know exactly how to do it. And after a few erasures and interpolations—the reporter’s pad they say: ‘Now, here is a readable account of that tragedy. Hand it in and lam sure the managing editor will take it.’ And I heard this morning of a poor old man whose three children were in hot debate as to who should take care of him in his declining days. “What is the matter? It seems to me our old word is picking up. Why, the millennium must be coming in. Kindness has gotten the victory.” My hearers, you know and I know we are far from that state of things. But why not inaugurate a new dispensation of geniality? If we cannot yet have a millennium on a large scale, let us have it on a small scale, and under our own vestments. Kindness! If this world is ever bought of God that is the thing that will do it. You cannot fret the world up, although you may fret the world down. You cannot scold it into excellence or reformation or godliness. Kindness to all! Surely it ought not to be a difficult grace to culture when we see towering above the centuries such an example that.one glimpse of it ought to melt and transform all nations. Kindness brought our Lord from Heaven. Kindness to miscreants, kindness to the crippled, and the blind, and the cataleptic, and the leprous, and the dropsical, and the demoniacal characterized him all the way, and on the cross, kindness to the bandits suffering on the side of Him, and kindness to the executioners while yet they pushed the spear, and -hammered the spikes, and howled the blasphemies. All the stories of the John Howards, and the Florence Nightingales, and the Grace Darlings, and the Ida Lewises pale before the transcendent example of Him Whose birth and life and death afe the greatest story that the world ever heard, and the theme of the mightiest hosanna that Heayen ever lifted, Yea, the very kindness that allowed both hands to be nailed to the horizontal timber of the cross with that cruel thump! thump! now stretches down from the skies those same hands filled with balm for all our wounds, forgiveness for all onr crimes, rescue for all our serfdoms. And while we take this matchless kindness from God, may it be found that we have uttered our last bitter word, written our last cutting paragraph, done our last retaliatory action, felt our last revengeful heart throb. And it would not be a bad epitaph for any of us if by the grace of God from this time forth we lived such beneficent lives that . the tombstone’s chisel could appropriately cut upon the plain slab that marks our grave a suggestion from the text, “He showed us no little kindness.” But not until the last child of God has got ashore from the earthly storms that drove him on the rocks like Mediterranean Enroclydons, not until all the thrones of Heaven are mounted, and all the conquerors crowned, and a l the harps and trumpets and organs of Heaven are thrummed or blown or sounded, and the ransomed of all climes and ages are in full chorus under the jubilant swing of angelic baton, and we shall for thousands of years have seen the river from under the throne rolling into the “sea of glass mingled with fire.” and this world we now inhabit shall be so far in the past that only a stretch of celestial memory can recall that it ever existed at all. Not until then will we understand what Nehemiah calls “the great kindness,” and David calls “the marvelous kindness,” and Isaiah calls “the everlasting kindness” of God! A little adventure which once cost the composer Wagner a bad ducking illustrates the precarious footing on which favorites stand with a sovereign highly sensitive as to his dignity. A water party by moonlight had been organized on the lake near King Louis* summer palace, and a celebrated prime donna had been invited to sing some of the duets from “Tristan and Isolde” with the King. Wagner, in his fancy ‘dress, and a page, who sculled, completed the quartet in the royal boat. It was all very poetical, and the lady, carried away by the romance of the occasion, made so bold as to administer a gentle caress to the King, who resented this breach of etiquette by a push which sent her overboard. Wagner plunged after the soprano, whose tuneful voice was being raised with rare force., and succeeded in rescuing her; but it was a doleful party that presently stepped ashore—lsolde sobbing and wringing out her clothes, the Meistersinger creaking in his shoes, Tristan murmuring as he stalked away with an injured air, and the page, no doubt, laughing in his sleeve, after the manner of lus irreverent kind. It is curious to read to-day, in a Baltimore paper published early in the century, thatlS9 slaves had been sold at auction for the benefit of the United States, end the proceeds, over 189,000 placed in the treasury.

Oe home market. HOW MUCH OF THE WHEAT CROP IT WILL EAT. Over 800,000,000 Bushels Win Be Exported, While Our Protected Classes Can Eat Only 16,000,000—The Truth About Wages—This Year and Last—Foreign Trade In a Nutshell. A Dead Failure. One of the much-vaunted objects of protection is to provide a home market to consume the produce of our farms. Impose a high tariff, say the protectionists, and men will engage in manufactures, will give employment to large numbers of laborers, and thus a great home market will be built up to consume all that our farmers can produce. It is upon this basis that they go to the farmers to seek support for our high tariff system, even trying to persuade them that they get greater advantages from it than anybody else. This thing has now been going on for thirty years, and it would seem that by this time protection ought to have accomplished something substantial in the way of building up its home market. Let us see what the result so far has been. /v By taking wheat as the most important of our farm products, and finding out how much of this year's crop will be consumed by the protected classes, we can form an approximately correct estimate of the importance of protection’s home market. . How many people in this country are subject to foreign competition, and therefore benefited by protection? In answer to this question three eminent specialists in the employ of the United States Government have made estimates. These are Worthington C. Ford, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of the State Department; Professor Simon Newcomb, Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, Navy Department; and E. B. Elliott, the United States Government Actuary. These three authorities reached slightly different results. According to Ford the number of persons subject to foreign competition is 4.70 per cent; according to Elliott, 4.75 per cent.; and according to Newcomb. 5.20 per cent. For our purposes here let us take 5 per cent, which is a little above the average of the three estimates. Now the average population of the country for the fiscal year now passing is given at about 65,000,000, and the party dependent on protection .by the above estimate is, therefore, 3,250,000. This is, then, the dimensions of protection’s home market. Now let us see how much of our wheat crop this boasted home market will eat this year. According to the Agricultural Department at Washington the average per capita consumption of wheat in the United States is now about 4% bushels. At this rate, our protected classes will consume just 15.266,000 bushels of our present large wheat crop. At the same rate the farmers themselves and other unprotected classes of our population will require 288,166,000 bushels, an amount which dwarfs into utter insignificance the consumption of the protected classes. The wheat crop of the present year has been placed by the Agricultural Department at 544,000,000 bushels, though some authorities put it higher. Besides this, a surplus of 20,000,000 bushels was brought over from last year s crop. The total supply this year will, therefore, be not less than 579,000,000 bushels. The entire home demand for this wheat will be about as follows: Bushels. Nonprotected home market2Bß,l66,ooo Protected home market 15,266,000 For seed...., 55,000,000 T0ta1358,432.000 This leaves for export to the foreign market over 211,000,000 bushels, or a quantity sufficient to feed, at our own rate of consumption, a population of 45,000.000. This is a most astonishing result after thirty years of effort at creating a home market According to these figures our farmers will have to sell thirteen times as much of their wheat abroad as the protected classes of this country will consume? ’ If protection had carried out its boasted scheme of creating a home market large enough to eat all our farmers’ wheat, it would have had to bring here 45,000,000 people and put them into some form of protected manufacturing. With such figures as these before them our farmers will see what an enormous contract at market building protection has taken upon itself. Do they believe that it will ever finish the Job? One of Horr’s Jokes. R. G. Horr, the New York Tribune’s tariff joker, is at it again. In a recent number of the Weekly Tribune he tries to show that our protective tariff causes foreigners to lower their prices, and as an illustration of this he says: “We have been for years making no tin plate in the United States. A protective tariff was placed on foreign tin plate by the McKinley bill, and our business men are preparing to make American tin plate. If my doctrine is true, the following will be the result: Tin plate will be produced in America in a few months after our factories are set in motion, better in quality and cheaper in price than during the past five years, when we obtained all our supplies from abroad. If such shall be the result, will not that prove the wisdom of that increase of duty? Do not misunderstand me! Ido not say that tin plate will not then also be cheaper abroad than it is now. That will of course be the case. But we have been waiting for a fall in price, for foreign tin plate (which is mostly iron or steel) similar to the reduction that has taken place in iron and steel goods which are made in this country. It has not come. ” Noiv when Mr. Horr says this he is either showing his ignorance of the subject, or else he is making a willful misjatement If he had consulted the Treasury reports he would have found that the plate has declined in price very greatly during the past eighteen years. The tin plate Imported in 1873 was invoiced at 7.65 cents per pound; in 1876, at 5.16; in 1879, at 3.78; in 1882, at 3.76; in 1885, at 3.28. The average price for the five years 1886-’9O was 3 cents. For the fiscal year 1891, however, the import price was 3.50 cents per pound, an increase due to the enormous demand created by the McKinley law. If Mr. Horr will examine present English market reports he will find that the grade of tin plate known as “I C Bessemer steel, coke finish,*’ the kind most in use, is now selling at exactly 3 cents a pound. This all means that tin plate has fallen to considerably less than half the price it commanded in 1873. This fact the tariff joker could easily have verified by merely examining the Government reports. But the joker is true to his character as a wag. After making the willful mlstatement just exposed, he winds up his article by saying: “Falsehoods have had their day. The supremacy of truth is at hand. • Where will Horr stand under that “supremacy?" Foreign Trad* in a Nutshell. T. B Willson says in the New York World: Jones, an American farmer, has 19,000 bushels of wheat. He takes it to Liverpool, sells it, and receives a check on a foreign bank for 810,000 In payment. It will not pay him to bring back i'. Jr , ‘vs*Ji&s *', >. •>. _

gold. He could have sold his wheat a| the same price in New York as in leverpool. less freight, and at the same price in Chicago as in New York, less freight. He loses his time and his work, selling for gold, and there is no profit in it. Gold is worth less in the Untted States than in any country on earth. An ounce buys less of anything. But the value of a dollar is so much greater in Liverpool than in New York that the SIO,OOO will buy there woolen goods worth $20,000 here. “He Invests his bank check for SIO,OOO in cloth, and brings the cloth back to sell here. It goes to the Custom House, and Jones is informed that he can have it upon payment of $12,000. which is the fine levied to discourage his competition with the woolen mill-owners. Instead of selling his wheat at $1 he has sold at 80 cents. His net proceeds for his 10,000 bushels of wheat, after adding the fine and selling the cloth to his countrymen, is SB,OOO. He is between the devil and the deep sea. He must sell for gold at no profit or for cloth at a lose It does not matter whether Jones, the farmer, does it himself or hires men to do it; whether the Chicago broker hands him 80 cents and settles at onep or waits three months. The result is the same, the law is the same, the intent is the same. “Protection is a fine levied upon the payment received for our exported farm surplus to prevent the surplus American farmer from competing with the American mill-owner. * HAPPY ABOUT PORK. Inconsistent Protectionists Rejoice that Germany Will Buy Our Pork. The protectionists are making merry over the removal of the prohibition of American pork by Germany. In their glee, however, they are overturning many of their favorite idols of economic heresy. They are showing, for example, that it will make & market for from $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 more of American pork; and in putting this down as so much gained, they neglect to make any deduction whatever for the German duty on pork. According to the oftrepeated teaching of our high-tariff wiseacres, “the foreigner pays the tax" in this country. But if the foreigner pays the tax when we import from Europe, then we must pay tariff taxes in Europe whenever Europe imports from us. Now Germany has a tax on pork and bacon of more than 2 cents a pound. Are farmers ready to pay that tax in order to sell their hog meat? That is what they must do if there is any truth in what the wise Republican editors so often tell us Look into the editorial columns of the New York Tribune and other high tariff papers, and you will find frequently assertions of this principle: When we put a duty on foreign goods there is no increase of the price of those goods in our own market, since the Europeans are compelled by our tariff to reduce their prices by the amount of the duty. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways; and what is sauce for the European goose must also be sauce for the American gander. Os course our farmers will see that German lawmakers with this brilliant protectionist theory in their heads, must argue in this way: • “We have put a duty of more than two cents a pound on pork, but that does not make it any higher to German buyers, since the American farmers have had to knock off more than two cents a pound from their price, and thus pay our tariff tax. ” ? This is an exact reproduction of the “argument” so often made by our protectionists. Now, one question for these protectionists: If you believe your own teaching, why do you rejoice over the fact that the American farmers will have to take two cents a pound less for all the pork they send to Germany? The protectionist organs are pointing out, too, the benefits which both countries are to get by the renewal of trade in pork. Not simply America but Germany, too, is to be benefited. But this knocks down another protectionist idol. Have we not heard over and over that when a nation imports what It can produce Itself and is producing, thejg is a, Ipsj to the comiqunity? Labor? the high-tariff wiseacres assure us, is made poorer by every pound of competing foreign goods brought in. But Germany produces a very large number of swine; and It was' to protect these that Bismarck prohibited our pork upon pretended sanitary grounds. Notwithstanding this excellent opportunity to apply their native-grown American theory on German soil, our high tariff organs are actually claiming that Germany, will be much benefited by taking our pork. When they make this statement they forget also that other cardinal principle of the protectionist crew, viz., that when you buy an article made at home you make a profit and the seller makes a profit, and thus you keep two profits at home; but when you buy a foreign article only one profit stays in the country. This is venerable protectionist teaching, but they shrink from applying it to Germany. They reserve it for use upon home-grown American fools. But our protectionists are right for once. Get them off American soil and they throw their theories to the winds and indulge themselves in the unwonted exercise of ordinary common-sense. The American farmer will not pay the German tax; and our pork is really good for Germany. They see it! The Truth About Wages. The position of the tariff reformers in the matter of wages and competition from European pauper labor has been all along that the greater producing power of American labor should remove a linear of dangerous competition from Europe. They have always claimed that wherever a true comparison is made between wages in America and in Europe, a comparison of the proportion of wages in every dollar’s worth of goods, American wages will almost invariably be found lower than wastes in Europe. The tariff reformers did not expect to see this fact admitted by the high tariff cranks; but now the New York Tribune, the most tariff-blinded of all protection journals, says: K “It is acknowledged by foreign manufacturers and railroad men who have visited this country and carefully examined affairs here that the higher efficacy of labor secured by higher wages here to a great extent counterbalance* the difference in wages paid. ” If so, what need for protection? Do you not see that you have given away - your case? This Year and Last. Last year President Harrison and Mr. McKinley inveighed against cheapness, and declared that “a cheap coat means a cheap man.” This year all the Republican speaker* and organs are trying to show that pretty much everything, including a coat, is cheaper than before tee new tariff law was passed. Last year every Protectionist newspaper declared that a higher tariff was necessary in order to prevent the “flooding of the home market with foreign goods” This year they are boasting of increased importations.—N. Y. World. Jokkßmslby, who has just died, waa sexton of 8L Michael’* Church ta Charleston, & G, far nearly fittf >*am»