The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 17, No. 1, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 6, 1898 Page: 6 of 16
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THE SOUTHERN MERCURY.
Weekly, by Southern Mbkcury Pub. Co. (In-
corporated).
Texas Populist State Publication, apd Official
Journal Fanners State Alliance of Texar
Milton Park,|Managing Editor.
Entered at Dallas, Texas, post office as mail mat-
ter. second class.
Moneys can be receipted for by the home office
oaly.
Office, corner Lamar and Commerce
Streets, Gaston, Building.
The Hillsboro Herald, and t*e Re-
flector, have been consolidated, and
will be issued in future under the
name of the Hillsboro Reflector.
Messrs. Wear & Fields, proprietors.
The Baltimore Record says that
"Populistic agitation and threatened
legislation against property invest-
ments is the chief cause of the scarc-
ity of money in the South." The Rec-
ord is showing its cloven hoof, at
last. The "prosperity" which plutoc-
racy promised is bringing from under
cover many who have been pretending
friendship for the South, but who were
in reality our bitterest enemies.
Gov. Culberson is out in an elabo-
rate platform announcement for the
United States Senate. Even Demo-
crats say that he must attach an affi-
davit and give bond that he won't
jump off as he did from the late State
platform at Goliad.
Even Democratic farmers are begin-
ning to show their teeth to the little
bosses who have kept them voting for
the Austin ring. They have in their
own party raised the banner of revolt,
and the cry is, "no man from constable
to governor shall eat the bread of the
people who is not for the people."
These men are honest but are barking
up the wrong tree. They will have to
cut down the tree to get those sly old
coons.
When Populists meet together for
council or for any other purpose, and
there are any present who are in favor
of any sort of a union of forces with
any faction or party, that involves the
sacrifice of a single one of our princi-
ples, he or they should at once be in-
formed that they are not Populists;
that they are in the wrong pew, and
should be politely but firmly asked to
retire. We must have none but true
Poputfsts in our camps.—East Texas
Reformer.
Every Populist should have a voice
In the management of the party. Dele-
gates to conventions, like representa-
tives in the legislatures and congress,
forget to work for those they pretend
to represent. The referendum should
be applied to all party maters.—Cicago
Expresss.
If Wabliilng Willie and Mark Hanna
are opposed to the civil service, then
let the mud-sillers elect those revenue
officers and others. It requires too
much prostitution of honor and di-
vision of salary with the bosses where
they peddle ont the public appoint-
ments. The people pay the freight.
Ohio, and got cash and pie. When the
vote is counted for United States sen-
ator it may be discovered that they
also fused with Hanna. They call it a
free silver fusion, but Bushnell has
just been elected on a gold platform,
the same convention having nominated
him that endorsed Hanna. This is
queer politics. Ask your free silver
Democratic neighbor to explain how
this is. It is funny; but truth all the
same.
A. P. Beathard, division superin-
tendent of the Katy at Denison, has
issued a bulletin limiting the authority
of conductors to pass railroad men. It
says: "If any railroad man with
proper credentials at an intermediate
point, and in search of employment,
desires transportation to assist him in
that direction, he can obtain transpor-
tation by communicating with the
nearest superintendent by letter or
otherwise, and regular transportation
will be sent him."
While Boss Ci
figuring on movinf
New York as a Tai
for vice president, very"
the Huntington syndicate, tW ^
c^in Book Trust, andtheinsuranc^^
panies, the Democrats of Texas wi"
not be worked by the Austin crowd*
Bryan kinder coquetted with Wynne
and some of the outside Democrats,
but Hogg hurried home from New
York, and he and Culberson counter-
acted the bad effect of the Austin din-
ner with Bryan for centerpiece. That
crowd, when they were exposed, got
under the coat tail of Bryan, and said
"look at us and the company we keep."
Since the Democrats themselves are
beginning to show up the compromise
devilment of the commission and its
discriminations against Texas indus-
tries the Austin ring is anxious to re-
pudiate it. Culberson's friends are se-
cretly charging that Old Man Reagan
has no war record, except as a mail
carrier, and is too old for the United
States Senate.
Bro. Roark, of Kentucky, made a
pleasant call bn the Mercury en Thurs-
day last. He is one of the tried-in-the-
fire Populists, and has abated none of
his ardor. He says he and his people
will not raise a finger toward political
work till the lines are marked out, the
banners placed in position, and battle
orders issued. The eyes of the coun-
try are fixed on the St. Louis meeting,
and are counting on something defi-
nite, positive and progressive.
While the politicians are getting
ready to cover up their robbery of the
people by shoving them into a foreign
war, the common people are getting
together in their school houses to
make war on this blood-sucking offi-
cial class. They will not be the first
arrant set of rulers who never recog-
nized the signs of the times until they
were doomed. If one-third of our pol-
iticians were statesmen of historical
information they would know that
they can't save their carcasses by for-
tifications from an outraged people.
Politicians Have bought votes and
have sold out so often themselves, un-
til not only a common legislator, but
even sound, common voters, have to
be bought. The Ohio lesson shows ex-
actly how politics are, and the corpor-
ations are squealing about the big fees
they have to pay in Austin to get a
hearing. The little and big politicians,
in their eagernes for money, are de-
stroying confidence and good morals.
There is an occasional revolt against
the rings that form, but they are spas-
modic, and are soon fixed by the sleep-
less manipulators of tax money. School
house clubs all over the United States
could redeem the country.
Mills seems to be gaining ground.
The Democrats point to his oil well
and say that he is the only man in
the race who has put one dollar of his
salary into home industry develop-
ment, and that he is the only one who
has a war record. He did not straddle
any more on the financial question
than the others and stood pat on the
anti-prohibition and other questitons.
It is a Democratic fight. Let 'em fight.
The whole state, and especially its
youth, has suffered a great loss in ex-
Gov. Ross, who died so suddenly on
the 3d instant. In peace and in war,
in official and in private life, he was
without reproach. He belonged to that
type of even balanced, pure men so
scarce in these days of scheming and
money getting. He loved his fellow
men and Texas loved Ross. The an-
gels must love to welcome such a
spirit to their home.
C. J. Jackson, the popular chairman
of Bell county, denounces the state-
ment published in the San Antonio Ex-
press "that the Populists would not
make nominations for county offices if
'the nominees of the Democratic party
proved satisfactory to the people gen-
erally," as "an infernal Democratic lie
of whole cloth." The Mercury knows
the Bell county chairman too well to
entertain such a report for one mo-
ment. If all Texas Populists were as
sound as C. J. Jackson, we would be
invincible.
It seems that Bryan lias not really
been hunting ducks in Texas and Mex-
ico, and that James Stephen Hogg has
not spent the winter in New York for
medical examination, and that it is the
Croker appendix that is needing greas-
ing. That dinner with Wynne, a rank
outsider, was not on the programme,
but the other Bryan dinner seems to
have been a part of an elaborate
scheme. If the laboring element would
digest all these things it would easily
appear that they are of the potter's
clay. If the average populist would
read the expenditures and expenses of
the democrats by democrats, it would
be sufficient. If the Texas farmer
would bear in mind that he can cor-
rect the mistakes in his family, in his
country and in his state government,
and that he can't get hold of New York
and Liverpool bucket shops, his condi-
tion might be quickly improved.
The farmers must read and discuss
social economics and political matters
with their families at the fireside and
with their neighbors, independent of
religion or party politics. The farmer
Í9 neither as ignorant nor as helpless
as he has been educated to believe. A
government will be just as bad as the
common people permit it to be. Eco-
nomic sharpers will fleece the common
people just as close as permitted. If
the elephant was not a slavish beast by
nature, instead of one keeper leading
It around by the nose, it would require
one hundred. A man who will not take
time to meet his neighbor once a month
in the school-house to discuss questions
of mutual interest is neither fit for a
good citiscn nor a Christian. If he
knows more than his neighbors, the
The Austin ring is diligently and se-
cretly spreading it around that Judge
Reagan is too old for the United States
Senate; yet every man knows that it
requires twice as much vigor and study
to be a railroad commisisoner. This
cold-blooded crowd of politicians have
been ysing the old man as a cat's paw
every since they got him out of the
senate. It has been a confidence game
from the jump, and has cost the people
of Texas millions in freight. The old
man always holds on to the job he has,
while figuring on another, or the ring
would have had him out in the cold.
When he entered'the race for governor
they let it be known in every school
house that Reagan bossed the fifty
thóusand dollar Hearst funeral, and
had his wife draw a secretary's salary
from the United States Senate. Cul-
berson's friends are making a mistake,
for the people know that the old man
would do less harm as a general man-
ager of congressional funerals than as
a railroad commisioner.
The farmer who thinks that the only
thing to be remedied is the low price
of cotton and the gambling in futures,
is to be pitied for his ignorance. The
volume of cotton to be raised will be
fixed, by the farmer with a lot of chil-
dren to support, for he will starve the
others out of the business. Its price
will be fixed by the ability of the pro-
ducer to hold it and the amount that
is produced. His ability to hold will
depend upon whether he is upon a
home industry, pay-as-you-go basis of
living, instead of upon a country store
credit basis. How can the farmer make
the money he receives go further, is a
question that cannot be avoided in a
proper settlement of present condi-
tions. He cannot stand the present
government expenses, or the present
high freight rate to the Gulf. He will
never see the products of his labor
high enough to stand these and have
anything left for his family. He is
now paying high freight both ways,
and supporting an army of extrava-
gant office holders and pensioners like
unto the number of the locusts of
Egypt. A revolution against these will
take his nose from the grind stone.
The Austin ring is threatening
death to those Democrats who are
clamoring for a new ticket. It is none
of our fight, but we would rather bet
our money on the fellows that
are toting the rocks. They have cam-
paign funds of a size never known in
Texas before the last election, and
they compromise everything from a
railroad rebate case, to a monte or crap
indictment. Autocratic bosses with
cash and patronage are hard to down.
They will get the scalps of Joe Savers
and Farmer Shaw, too.
The Austin ring considered that Bry-
an's eating dinner with Dick Wynne at
Fort Worth was notice to the Demo-
crats of Texas to unload the Austin
railroad agents. The Austin ring de-
manded that he eat with them, to neu-
tralize the effect of his eating with a
Democrat not in the ring. They made
a great political point out of it. This
sort of politics is relieving the pro-
ducer of Texas of a great many bur-
dens. The expenses of that Bryan re-
ception at Austin will probably be paid
out of the salary of the executive gar-
dener who don't garden.
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Park, Milton. The Southern Mercury. (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 17, No. 1, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 6, 1898, newspaper, January 6, 1898; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth185738/m1/6/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .