Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1898 — THE SPANISH PEASANT. [ARTICLE]

THE SPANISH PEASANT.

Downtrodden and Oppressed, bat fiat Qualities of Greatness. The condition of the Spanish peasant is one of Ignorance, misgovernment, extreme poverty and sullen endurance. He deserves a better lot He is to-day the best man in the land. He has fine qualities; he has large capacities; he has many virtues. Give him a real school, a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, an honest and capable government, and a well-founded hope of enjoying the fruits of his toil, and he would rise up to be the new man of a fieW land, one of the finest peasants in the tvhole of Europe. But he has not had a chance. To-day be has not f hope. The Spaniard as be was is not, and the world will never see him more. A thoughtful German who has lived for years in Spain declares that the old cavalier with his haughtiness and his honesty, his pride and his honor, his punctilious ceremoniousness, but his essential gentlemanliness has gone forever. And if Spain is to have a national and social resurrection the masses, not the classes, must be looked to. The hope of the future lies with the yeomanry and the peasantry. It is sadly true that at this hour these classes are fearfully distressingly ignorant. No power has done anything effective to save them from sinking lower and lower into the slough of a semi-annual stupidity. Of course they are poor. What other result could years of merciless taxation, pressing chiefly on them, yield? Of course they are Superstitious? What full beam of light has ever been poured around them? Of course they are now often passionate and stealthy. What other than this fell fruit would you look for from the wretched culture which has been their only care? Of course they are lazy. But what openings have they had? What incentive to toil? But when all this disparagement has been set forth it remains true, according to the firm belief of a score of competent witnesses, that the peasant, the small farmer, the workingman, is the hope of this degraded land. And he is the coming revolutionary. The air is heavy with the brewing storms. The tempest may burst in an hour. Sleeping in these poor peasants, who have never had a fair show in the face of Europe, are great qualities. These men, now scoffed at as soldiers because, undrilled, unfed, unled, they have had to go from bitter defeat to defeat, can yet prove themselves worthy of the praise of Napoleon and Wellington as the raw material out of which might be made the toughest infantry in the World.

These masses are strangely patient and enduring— I “sufrida,” to use their own pregnant word. They have great pluck and heroism. They are cheerful, graceful, affectionate and hospitable. But they have been ground down till the good is buried out of sight. Tbe evil has been called out. The nobles have racked and spoiled them. The government has known them only as patient beasts of burden on whom must be laid the multiplied and oppressive loads of petty taxes till they are verily crushed beneath the pitiless weight. For this oppression, this extortion, the peasant gets nothing. The bad roads grow worse and the appropriated road tax fills the pocket of some official. The fallen bridges, are not repaired, but some engineer is benefited. The children are left without school or teacher, yet school tax is levied. The beardless lads are hurried off to Cuba or some other colony and die soon, but their pay is drawn by the officer.