Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1889 — THE FARMER IS AT FAULT. [ARTICLE]

THE FARMER IS AT FAULT.

What ails the Western farmer? Why does he observe the denudation of * his soil and the desertion of his sons without striving to know the cause? With the canker of protection gnawing at his vitals, why does he not address himself to the disease? The railway managers have had sordid reasons for the maintenance of a system which hindered the usefulness of their roads. - But the farmer owns stock in no mill. He makes no contract. He does not stock his farm and then vote himself sifs,oUo salary. He does not consolidate with his neighbor nnd water the two capitals for twice their value. Why should he uphold a reign of false economy that reduces the value of farms and products and deprives the ngrienlturist of all the advantages accruing from the benefits of twenty-five years of constant labor and wonderful invention? Is it true that the farmer reads little? Has he ceased to till his mind? Did he, when he was a harness-maker in 1862, read the daily paper with zest? Did he, after he moved up on the farm, welcome the visitor who brought the daily news? Does the same host now, in his old age, gaze indifferently on the same courtesy of his visitor? Have the years of toil reduced that farmer to peasantry? Is the farmer twenty years behind the nge? When Louis Napoleon was “reelected” in 1870 it was said the French farmers thought they were voting for the Little Corporal. Are American agriculturists equally conservative? The tariff reformer laid the truth before our farmers last fall. But the Republican orator, familiar with the premises, dwelt on that last fond look the farmer's eldest son gave the old place as he marched away to Shiloh. The farmer’s eye was on the dead past. Awake to-day, tillers of the great valley! Your house is on fire; your children will burn! The third stage of an awful plague sits on the brow of a fair land. The Government, swollen with pride and arrogance, winnows your entire wheat crop. Apparent idlers have set up scandalous pretensions of value for their “services.” International trade is long abandoned. American ships are rotted and gone. Gigantic consolidations of goods stolen from the labor of the nation mount to heaven and keep the bright sun away from a once happy and hopoful yeomanry. Reduce these odious and profligate expenses of $379,000,000 a year. Colleot only half as much, and collect it without the robbery which has made American methods the astonishment of the world. Reduce stock-waterers. lobbyists, monopolists and tariff-masters to the honest ways of toil, such as are practiced in the long and black furrows of Illinois. Do not be played upon like Hamlet’s pipe, discoursing most excellent music for thieves —for human pride, rapacity and false ambition. Will the farmer be man or peasant? Does he worship the bou of the father, like any clout in Italy or Russia? Will the farmer of Illinois presently walk to the'ballot-box an! vote intelligently? If he should do it but once the dishonest, avaricious, aristocratic war tariff would disappear like the airy fabric of, a vision, leaving not a wrack of wrong behind.— Chicago Herald.