OCR Text |
Show Warren VOI. 4 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 2, IS GOVERNMENT A FAILURE? Tlut depends. The original idea of government was to insure equal and exact justice. That presupposed that there existed two clashes of people: Those strong enough to oppress, and those too weak to resist oppression. Government stepped in as a mediator between these two classes, tn enable the weaker to cope with the stronger. Had all men been honest and just, or had each man been able to fight his own battles, and secure his own rights, then there would have existed no need of government. To secure justice was the end of government, to prf vent the strong from oppressing the weak was its mission, and the means through which justice would be reached. Now. if government has done this it has accomplished its mission; if not, it has proven itself a failure. The question is, has it failed? We answer, it has. Government is a human institution and, like all things human, is liable to be faulty and we would not have our readers understand that we are ready to condemn the whole thing because of the fact that, in some particular, it has tailed to accdmplish its end. Nor would we purposely convey the idea that no good results have accrued from govern ment, for all governments of which we know anything have been attended with some good; but the point we are aiming to make is that, taken as a whole, and especially that of the United Siates has only failed, only to do these it but has so changed that it has itself things become an agentof oppression. Let us see. nt Take one thousand honest, industrious men with their families and place them on a fertile island a thousand miles away from civilization and government, and without tools or money. Leave them there for one year and you will find that each of them has a home of his own and a roof to protect him and his family from the elements. Go again in five years and we warrant that every industrious man on the island will be surrounded by all the necessaries of life, not to say its luxuries. There are thousands today in Utah who can attest by their own observation and experience that such is the case. This desirable end is reached without the aid of money, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, street cars or any of the modern inventions of the day whose presence is supposed to add so materially to our happiness and prosperity. Take another thousand men, equally industrious and frugal, place them either together or scatter them throughout the most civilized portion of the country; where there is money, and railroads, and telegraphs and telephones, and 3treet cars and every other modern inventions, to say nothing of "the best form of government on earth. Call on these men one year after and all will be living in rented houses; call on them again in five years and probably 99 per cent of them will still be homeless, hopeless renters and pensioners on the bounty and fawners at the feet of some landlord. Have they not been industrious? Yes. Have they not been frugal? Yes. Have they not tried hard to make ends meet? Yes. We submit this question to the early settlers of this 6tate: Is it not a fact that it was easier for a poor man to get a start in life here in inis valley in 1848, than it is in 1898? You cannot but answer this with an emphatic yes. Then there must be a cause for these things and we hardly think that any sane man would attribute it all to the demonetization of silver or try to think that the re monetization of silver would change it Then what is it? Start your think works a going and see if you cannot ferret it out. In this beautiful city are thousands and thousands of homeless people: people whose livfe is one ceaseless round of toil; people whose whole time and energy, of mind and some means to body is taken up in devising as he Yet Moroini, exist and pay rent. of the great keeps vigil on the pinnacle temple, gazes down every day upon probably lands that produces 50,000 lots of vacant malaria breednoxious, but naught each year and homeland ing weeds. What! vacant less people in the same city! And that form of government governed by the best such is the world has eer known! Oh no. The not the case; such cannot be the case. statement is either a lie or else the govern ment is a iailure. Successor to THE INTER MOUNTAIN ADVOCATE. 189S Which is it? h V ' ! t submit t it. The tropical fruits rot on the If this number is on the labi taininR your name, you hac renew ground, and the Laplanders fidi go aa the number of the nextmiKhty issue. quick, :'.The Kansas farmer burns his corn for fuel, and the Colorado miner eats his FAMINE SPECTRE. coal or starves; and thousands of inexperienced Benedicts have to plod along unaided BV HENRY M. EDMISTON. as bept ihey can almost within speaking distance of ithetr absentbut not forgotten Mother-iA hideous spectre grim and stern men law, all because a lot of "business Appalls the poor whereer they turn, It chills the blood in human veins, have taken possession of a great public utiliOf starving people filled with pains. ty and converted it into an engine of robbery. It! brings the tears from burning eyes, But have we no laws to regulate these things? Listening to feeble mournful cries Oh yes plenty of liw; laws that are supOf sobbing children who want bread When not a crumb is to be had. to be made the but posed by people too, strange as it may at first appear, every one It fills the soul with anger just of these laws are made to assist these corTo know youre ground below the dust, The loving wife less than the beast morants in robbing the people instead of While thieving knaves on plunder feast, protecting the people from being robbed. form unclothed to wintry blast, Her Railroad companies are not violators of law. With naught to ease her lingering fast, On the contrary, they are great sticklers for The hovel open to wintry scows law. They steal by law. In other words, Are hellish wrongs the toiler knows. the law helps them to steal. Is it not the The little babe on Christmas morn duty of government tn protect the people You wish to God had neer been born, in these things? Has it done so? Has it The baby sent to bless your life Seems but a curse to suffering wife, not failed to do so? If so, is it not a failure? Your courage fails as ills increase, You end your life to find release, In looking over what we have written we . While royal thieves in gilded den find that our space is used. We must stop. Steal all the rights of toiling men. But what is true of the above mentioned is Some hanest men are driveling fools, true of nearly everything in the land; such And cringing slaves where money rules. as telegraphs, telephones, electric lights, You have a brain, exert your mind, street cars and so on The issuing o f the Begin to think and you will find You have the power to change the laws money of the land has been turned over to a few bankers, and the people are robbed withThat foster crimes and murder cause Join the ranks who justice want out distinction or mercy. In' every case And banish spectre who toilers haunt. with two lone exceptions, the postoffice and public school systems, laws are made to rob There ought to be no excuse this year the poor instead of protecting them. for people voting for what they don't want. If government is a failure, what are we to A man who believes one thing and votes do about it? Are we to lie still and let for another is either a fool or a coward-m- ore things take their course? Go and find a likely both. copy of the old Declaration ot Independence un-cau- Did you ever think of this? We start out on a rabbit hunt. We know nothing of the condition of the rabbits as regards fatness. We kill one. It is fat. We proceed to hunt others fully expecting all to be fat. And so they are. If one is fat, all are fat. Why? If nature has made proSimple enough. vision for one, it has provided for all and all share alike. We do not find one healthy rabbit fat and other equally healthy ones poor. There are two reasons for it. One is that no rabbit would be mean enough to deny other rabbits the use of the earth. The other reason is that the other rabbits have too high a sense of justice to submit to it. Then have we less sense than a rabbit? We certainly have. But what has this to do with government? It has all to do with it. Place over the rabbits the same fool laws under which we live, and compel them to obey them and their condition would be no better than ours. Give one rabbit the exclusive right to the use of the field and he would have more than he could eat and the others would have nothing. What! says one in horror, do you mean to say that our awlul condition is the result of government? That is just what we arc trying to say. Is such a government a failure? Ask yourself the question and answer it, if you can. The hills are full of coal, and the city is full of freezing people. Nature has furnished the coal free, and without the labor of any man. It was here before man was. The freezing people are not only willing but they are anxious to dig the coal that their children may be warm. But they dare not do so; there is a something that says they must not. What is this heartless something? Whatever it is, is certainly responsible should any suffer from freezing. Are there no laws regulating this thing? Oh yes, plenty of law, but unfortunately the law that is supposed to protect people in their rights is the very same law that says to the freezing man, you must not dig the coal. Does that sort of government "insure domestic or "secure the blessings of tranquility, liberty?" We know that it is an awful bad thing for one to ask such questions, and the man who does ought to be hung as an Anarchist, but while you are execrating him and preparing to execute him, just before you draw the black cap, and adjust the rope, suppose you answer the question; Is not such a Government a failure?. We say it is. If the plodding of a century ago could have lifted the veil of the future and taken one glimpse at our wonderful railroads of today, he would, no doubt, have pictured in his mind a wonderfully happy and prosperous people. He would, no doubt have fancied to himself as he beheld these phantom monsters of iron, steam and fire prancing over the plains and through the mountains, and drawing after them their long trains, how they would annihilate distance and place the fruits of the tropic at the very door of the Laplander, while the fish of his own catch will sate the palates of those who dwell in the land of everlasting summer, how the coal fields of the Rockies would be practically transplanted into the plains of the great Mississippi, and how the cornfields and the wheat fields of' Kansas would practically ripen their golden harvest under the very shadow of the miners cabin; how friends could be neighbors though separated hundreds of miles; how a young man in taking his beloved young wife from beneath parental roof could feel that even the earth itself was not broad enough, rivers not deep enough or the mountains high enough to deprive him of the ever present consoling counsel and admonitions of his dear Mother-in-laBat could he have lived to realize these things, how very lar short of his dream would he have found it! Instead of this great invention benefiting all the people, as it should, it has been turned over to a few people who use it to rob the masses while they enrich themselves. Railroads are not operated for the good the service would do the people, but 'or making money for those who own and operate them. They areal lowed to charge all the traffic will bear for ail they do and the people are compelled to ox-driv- er w. n adop'ed July 4th, 1776 and your duty will The poorest excuse on earth that a man be made plain to you. can give for being a fool is that he was a PRO?? '"NORTON1 ON ANNEXvWJO LmUkq. years ago.' Prof. Charles E. Norton, of Harvard Uni versity, in a speech made at an annual din- Henri Watterson, true to his former record of always being on the wrong side of ner at that institution a few days ago, made every question, favors the annexation of the following sensible remarks on the queseverything in sight. tion of annexing territory to the United States: According to The Tribune, Judge Rolapp of Ogden thinks Mr. Bryan is too radical. If "And yet our hearts have been heavy with new weight ot care and the very bright- he really thinks so we wonder what sort of a ness of the sunshine has but deepened by spineless thing Judge Rolapp is. He must be contrast the cloud of our sorrowful tnoughts-sorrowf- ul a sort of jelly-fisthat our nation should have turned its back upon its old ideals, and, standing at If every man and woman in the United the parting of the ways, should have chosen who knows that Populism is right Spates the ancient path, familiar to the old world, worn by the bloody feet of hapless genera- and the two old parties are wrong should tions, and which has never led to anywhere vote their convictions, a nomination on the but ill the path of aggressive war of foreign Populist ticket would be equivalent to an conquest, ot alien territorial aggrandizement, election. the path that leads from trouble to trouble. The black and brutal visage of war has indeed lightened up from time to time durWhy don't some gold bug kick on using the summer deeds of the fiat our railroad tickets? There is no gold back ing by gallant men in the service, and by the good con of them. The railroad companies even reduct and marvelous good fortune of our fuse to redeem them and are even trying to navy, and by the generous temper of humanity displayed so soon as the actual fight was prevent the scalpers from doing so; and still over, by both officers and men. But it has the gold bugs dont kick. Why is this? taken on a deeper shade of gloom from the needless sufferings which our brave soldiers The Presbyterians held a state meeting at have had to endure, from the lack of proa few days ago, and issued an adManti, vision for their needs alike in camp, on field and in hospital. It has been a miserable dress, telling all the mean things they know spectacle of incompetency, for which account of the Mormons. Now if the Mormons could must be rendered and penalty exacted. get together and tell ail the mean things After a review of the events leading up to they know about the Presbyterians the tw the war, Professor Norton said: "Peace has would make quite a contribution to current nominally come. The actual conflict has literature. ended, but less than too days of war has resulted in a revolution in the United States. The Utah State Journal and the The foundations upon which the government have become unsettled, the princi- both Ogden papers still pers;st in speaking ples upon which the government res'.s have of Free Silver Republicans just as though been vi&lattd. We have undertaken oblisuch a thing exists. Is it possible that the gations which neither our institutions nor our national character enable us properly to news of the abandoning of the party has not discharge; we, the one great yet reached the Junction City? Here at the in the have world, power suddenly joined State Capitol there is no such thing as that the ranks of the nations burdened with of which they speak. great armies and navies; we have burdened ourselves with an enormous additional debt, David Conscience Dunbar is a sort of and with an enormous increase in our nation al annual expenditures, a permanent op- vest pocket edition of Grover Cleveland. His pressive tax upo the indstvy of the people, j Groverishnes-- is limited only by his mental and whatever disposition may be made of j capacity and the size of the office he holds. the Phiilipines, we are already, through j Give David an opportunity commensurate holding them and claiming the right to dis-- j and his with growing conscience and great pose of them, brought into entangling rda-- j what depths of depravity to is no there with telling li'ur the nations of the world, and run ; the risk of losing the inestimscle boon which-ha- he might delve. Ilis obdurate methods of hitherto been ours, of freedom in the doing little things bespeaks wonders for him complications of the interralional politics of Were he given po vrr over greater things the old world, and of rem lining the independ- he would certainly not be fori Grover like innt masters of our own fortunes. It is, his of deed, a momentous revolution getful pets. h. 1 -- X-Ray- s, s non-militar- y i s |