People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1896 — A COLD BUG OUTFIT. [ARTICLE]

A COLD BUG OUTFIT.

A Private Car Loaded with to Storm the West. General Alger, General Howard, General Sickles, General Stewart and General Sigel are touring the country in General Alger’s private car. They will travel through Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, lowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana Kentucky and Ohio. They have a mission to perform and propose to enjoy themselves while at it It is the object of these gentlemanly generals to expound the gold standard theory of money in all its purity. They know all about its benefits, and who so able to explain them to others as those who have personal knowledge of. their general utility? In a general way these doughty warriors know, of course, that there are some people, usually of the common classes, however, who do not approve of the gold standard. They have also heard indistinct rumors cf suffering and hardship among the ordinary people who are so lacking in foresight and common sense as to toil for a living, but as for anything definite in that way penetrating their private car why, it wasn’t built that way. Private cars are usually built with an eye to the purpose of excluding the disagreeable characteristics of life, and suffering, destitution and starvation aie generally included in that category. In order to make them effective in accomplishing their purpose they are also built in such a way as to exclude the common people because It is only among the common people that the stupid habit of suffering for want of something to eat ever prevails to any extent It is well known that it is the duty of a general to command, and equally the duty of the private to obey, and when five generals buncb themselves together and start out to give commands it may be taken for granted that the privates will line thfcm selves up, right about face, double quick, charge, just as they are ordered to. Thus it would seem that our touring generals have an enormous advarrtage on their side from the start, and it only needs that those conditions which are the acknowledged proper ones, between generals and privates should ob« tain to make them preeminently successful in fulfilling their mission. However, there is some difference between a political campaign and a war campaign. One difference of considerable importance, too, is that political generals have no means of compelling obedlencee to their commands and therefore have to rely entirely on their persuasive powers to accomplish their end. This fact may not set well with the quintuplet who are riding in General Alger’s car and whose exclusive surroundings naturally will appear incomplete unless accompanied with all the attributes of unlimited power over their fellowmen which they seem to imply, but'’they will have to put up with it It does seem a little hard that a silken-clad general from the environments of a palatial private car should be reduced to the level of a Sockless Simpson or “Stump” Ashby in his dealings with the private voters of the country, but this is one of the Inconveniences of popular government which the Alger crowd will have to endure. But this is not all nor perhaps the greatest obstacle they will find in their pathway. . Some of the “demagogues and s.gitators'” with whom they will likely come in contact have traveled so far along the road that leads to anarchy as to question seriously .the right of any man or set of men to avail themselves of exclusive privileges at the hands of monopolistic railways whose very roadbed was acquired through nublic condemnation of private property on the pretense that such condemnation was necessary for the benefit of the public. These “anarchists” are actually demanding that the government shall take possession of all the railroads in the country and thus deprive the few God-favored ones of the free rides which they now enjoy at the expense of the people. Alger, Sigel & Co. will have to put up the best fight they can and even at the best, it is likely that they will not find their pathway among the ten-cent corn raiserA of the west spread with roses.