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Show H FARMING, MINING AND PUSHCART REASONING. The following is from the Telegram: "Truth picks The Tcle-gram Tcle-gram up because we said: 'Farmers raise food, civilization depends upon the miners' work.' "It objects to that, says it is not true and cites the fact that 'wherever we find the evidence of culture and civilizatio.11 we have found that agricultural pursuits were highly developed,' and cites the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates as examples, and says that during the middle ages in Europe farming was disregarded. Our contem-porary contem-porary on this theme is running a pushcart ; that is, has its cart be-fore be-fore the horse. Why was there good farming in the valley of the Euphrates? Because the wealth in gold and silver in Babylon and Nineveh supplied the money to build the irrigating canals, and to buy the products of the lands. That is, the lands were finally cultivated because the gold and silver of those great cities bought the products of the soil. Did Truth never read of the hanging gardens of Scmira-mis Scmira-mis or of the gold and silver service, the plates and rups, etc., that Belshazzar had at his final banquet? Or of Nebuchadnezzar's golden image after he had returned with the spoils of Jerusalem? "And then the valley of the Nile. Did not Pharaoh after Joseph interpreted his dream put a golden chain about his neck and did not the account come two months ago of how a tomb had been nnnned and how the queen's mummy which was found there was slieued in gold? "Then as to Europe in the middle ages. Why were they called 'the dark ages'? Simply because the mines of Spain and Asia Minor from which Rome had been drawing her gold failed, and such poverty came upon the people that they degenerated until all Europe became tainted, and there being no market for the products of the soil, the land ran to weeds. "When did real prosperity begin in the United States? Was not the discovery of gold in California the dawn of it? When did prosperity pros-perity begin in Utah? Was it not with the opening of the mines? 'Men can vegetate on land, but their work is but barter until money is obtained for it, and it is not until then that great schools and the finer accomplishments of homes come. Ihe pushcart will not do." We have no particular desire to carry on a controversy with our esteemed contemporary, but we do want to suggest" that our friend on the Telegram seems to look upon civilization from an altogether different dif-ferent standpoint than we do, judging from his expressed sentiments. We would take it that his idea of civilization is that the most civilized nation, the most cultured and civilized men are those whose ability to buy things is the greatest. We may be wrong and yet we cling to the opinion that it is not your capacity for spending that makes you civilized or cultured, it is your ability to create and assimilate. From the Tclcgran 's reasoning we take it that civilization is something that you can buy ; that if some one were to discover a gold mine he could immediately buy civilization. That does not strike us as true by the history of facts. It appears to us, and history seems to bear us out in it, that the greatest centers of civilization arc not now and never have been located in the mining camps. As an example ex-ample take certain parts of Africa and Asia ; they have some very rich mines but we have observed that when the owners of these mines, that have produced such wonderful returns, want civilization and culture they have not been able to buy it and plank it down around those marvelously rich mines, but they, if they desired civilization, culture and refinement, have been compelled to go to parts of the world where farming and agriculture was thriving, because there they found civilization and they, mark you, these owners of mines and miners did not bring the civilization with them, but they came to it. The Telegram asks, "Did Truth never read of the hanging gardens gar-dens of Scmiramis or of the gold and silver service, the plates and cups, etc., that Belshazzar had at his final banquet, etc.?" Yes, we have, but in the first place we think we could find a happier illustration illustra-tion to show what civilization really was than to cite that extravagant extrava-gant revel and debauch ; in fact it rather strikes us that that was not civilization, that was a relic of barbarism. But if our brilliant contemporary con-temporary is right in his explanation that ancient civilization existed ex-isted because Babylon and Nineveh had money to buy the products of the lands, then why did they not buy more civilization with this gold instead of using it for silver service, plates and cups? We would like to make ourselves plain. We do not underestimate the value of mines and mining, in fact we think they are a wonderful help to civilization, but mines and mining are products of civilization civiliza-tion and are not the producers of it. You could close down every precious metal producing mine and civilization would exist, knowledge knowl-edge and learning would still flourish, because after all, and our contemporary con-temporary knows it, it is not the gold or the silver that is the controlling con-trolling force in even our commercial life, he knows that these metals as far as their purchasing ability is concerned are merely mediums of exchange, in fact ninety per cent, of the business of the world to-day is transacted on not an actual exchange of gold and silver but by credit; a slip of paper; a credit and debit. The actual purchasing power of gold and silver is regulated chiefly by some such institution of civilization as a well organized government. But the value of farming and agricultural products is certainly not imaginary, imag-inary, it is real. When you are hungry you must have actual and real food, when you are cold you need real, actual clothes. Let famine come, let the farmer fail to till the soil and bring forth the products of the earth and we pare not how much gold or silver one "ft. possesses civilization will lag and if agricultural pursuits arc neglected neg-lected long enough, not only does civilization perish but men cease to exist. And we insist that it is push-cart reasoning to say that a man docs not get hungry or desire food if he has not got the money to buy it. A man's appetite is just as keen for the products of the farm whether he has the gold or silver or not, and so long as the farm produces so long will men live, and if man does not have the gold and silver to buy he will give the equivalent for what he receives re-ceives in labor, which after all is the real basis on which all business is done in the world. One more word as to push-cart reasoning. If it is push-cart reasoning to believe that civilization depends more on your ability to produce and live while you are producing, than to spend, then wc -will merely say that wc have fairly good company, witness : Tolstoy, ' Henry George, Zola, John Burroughs, and many others, and wc take it that by exercising a little imagination, these "push-cart" philosophers philoso-phers might c placed in a class almost equal with' the able editor of the Telegram. 111111111111 |
