People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1893 — Our Plea. [ARTICLE]

Our Plea.

Tabor & Co. went wooling and got fleeced. When Judge Wiley’s hand was •lifted from Jasper’s board, they were as flat as a toad beneath a ton of bricks. To say the present board of commissioners has anything like a just comprehension of its responsibilities is to violate the fifth commandment

When Tabor escaped from Judge Wiley’s hands, he is reported to have said, “I now realize as never before the purport‘of the psalmist’s words, •the way of the transgressor is hai'd.’ ”

The Pilot is not without hope that its castigation of the board, coupled with Judge Wiley's righteous decision may cause that body to have some respect for the law and the rights of people under the law.

One of the imperative duties resting upon the voters of Jasper county is to elect a board of commissioners which is broad enough to know that it was elected that the people might have a wise, just, progressive and economical administration of their county uffairs.

From present indications it seems almost certain that arrant demagogue and notorious blatherskite, Carter Harrison, will be elected mayor of Chicago. If he is, that means an addition of a few thousand saloons to the four thousand already there, wide open gambling dens, and prostitution the most open. Should such a calamity befall that already sincursed city, then would we advise everybody who expects to attend the World's Fair to take out a large life insurance policy for the benefit of their heirs for it would mean the reign of thieves, thugs and murderers.

In our first article we showed that our manufacturing industries were almost exclusively of a domestic nature, being almost entirely carried on by the family and that in the production and preparation of agricultural products for market the rudest implements were used, precluding the possibility of colossal farming, and it is a noteworthy fact that so crude were the farm implements used and so limited and deficient were the means of transportation that no slave holder of the south became possessed of a million of dollars, though they numbered their staves by the thousand. Great as is the difference between the instruments used in the production in fields and factory then and those now in use a comparison will show as great, if not greater, difference in the means of transportation and transmission of intelligence between the two periods. It is within the memory of men and women now’ living, that all the dry goods and groceries used in the interior of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, lowa, Missouri, Illmtfis, Tennessee, Kentucky and in fact all the middle, western and southern states w'ere hauled in wagons over dirt and corduroy roads from the lakes and navigable rivers. Two, four, six and ; eight horse teams were used and | two days to three weeks I

were consumed in the journeys. There were professional teamsters in those days. They are well remembered by all old people now. The substantial horses, “the housing” great leather capes, gaudily fringed, that fully protected the shoulders, the “bells’’ on each horse, the great “breeching” on the “w’heel horses,” and the driver seated on the near “wheel

horse,” and so accustomed to his place that he had so thoroughly habituated himself to the position that he shifted with each motion of his horse. The carrying trade on land was done by this class of men, and they adopted a set of rules by which they were all governed. How slow, how cumbrous, how inefficietit that system of transportation seems to us now, but it was

regarded as near perfection then. In the transportation of intelligence a greater difference is seen between the two periods. If a person in one part of a city desired to communicate with another in a different part you must wait for the post, or dispatch a messenger. In those days if you wished to open up correspondence with any one in a far distant part of the country you would have to wait for the lumbering stage coach or the post rider as he toiled over heavy roads. But now if in the city, you can call any one up in the most distant part of our greatest cities and talk face to face. Or you can call to your aid the telegraph, and in a few hours reach a person any where in the civilized world. As a further illustration of the vast changes wrought in our social, commercial and business conditions we need only state that in that old or domestic age, not only were the purchasable articles for the household hauled from the river towns and lake ports, but corn, wheat, rye barley were hauled from the interior to the above named places to find a market, sometimes from one to two hundred miles. Hogs were also driven the same distances to be slaughtered and carried in “flat boats” to far distant markets. Cattle were gathered from the rich prairie pastures of Indiana and Illinois and driven afoot to Albany and Buffalo, New York, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Looking back from our day it is difficult to realize how slow and tedious were production and distribution in those days, and how very different were all the conditions. In that age each family was self sustaining almost, formed an independent community and if all other families were to die or move away the one left could plow, sow, reap, thresh, spin, weave and supply themselves just about the same, hence there were no strikes or lockouts, no one to take your job, nor did any one lack employment, for each could employ himself. While the age had many disadvantages, it had some meritorious ones. No one could corner or oppress the labor market. No one lacked employment and whatever one produced he got the full benefit of it, no part was paid transportation and insurance companies nor divided up with middle men. But that age with all its advantages and disadvantages is gone, never to return and it is not desirable or expedient that it should. It was but one phase, era or period of national development and answered its purpose and passed forever away. We could not recall it if we would, nor wouldn’t if we could. (To be continued.)

In purchasing spectacles do not patronize traveling doctors or opticians, as very few of them are honest or competent and are pretty apt to sell inferior goods, at very high prices. Dr. I. B. Washburn has a fine test case of lenses and will order you the very best of glasses, in such frames as you wish, at very reasonable rates. 1-50-ts " Smoke the Mendoza cigar.