What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks

BY W. S. MORGAN

MUCH of our modern civilization is nothing more than refined savagery.

The yellow metal kills more people than the yellow fever.

Harmony is simply stopping the wheels of progress to get rid of the noise.

Saying that a thing is settled does not settle it.

All old party roads lead workingmen to roam.

Shall our financial system be American or British?

Don’t surrender until you see the size of the enemy—and then don’t surrender.

A man must open his eyes in order to see even as bright an object as the sun.

Corruption in the best form of government makes it the worst of all.

The trusts owe their existence to yellow-dog politics.

With the control of the currency turned over to the bankers, it will be in order to allow the hawks to feed the chickens.

The independent vote is a nightmare to the yellow-dog politician.

The Beef Trust is living in constant defiance of the law. It is a greater menace to the rights of the people than a thousand highwaymen.

Democratic statesmanship has gone to seed, and the seed has germinated into a howl.

Jefferson and Jackson placed the mark of Cain on bank money, and the bankers have never been able to remove it.

The men who talk the most about “sound money” and the “nation’s honor” are the greatest tax-dodgers.

Take the corporation lawyers out of the important offices in this country and about two-thirds of them would be vacant.

The banker has no more right to regulate the quantity of currency that shall be used by the people than he has to limit the number of cattle that shall be raised.

Enforced poverty is taking many a man out of the ranks of yellow-dog politics and making an independent voter out of him.

It always gives me a pain in the left hind foot to hear a man who wears a hoot-owl look on his face, a quid of tobacco in his mouth and a double-barrel patch on the bosom of his pants talk about “money that is good in Yurrop.”

About the only thing that Bryan can reorganize out of the Democratic Party is a bob-tail flush, and that is just what the Republicans want him to do.

A stand-patter is a fellow who is too lazy to move, or who has plenty of feed in his own trough and doesn’t care for anyone else.

The Beef Trust might possibly make good its plea of innocence, were it not for the fact that it has been “caught with the goods.”

The cotton growers who met in New Orleans in January decided that the Wall Street “bear” was worse than the Texas weevil.

Yellow-dog politics is the spirit that moves a man to ride to hell in a two-wheel cart drawn by the Democratic mule or Republican elephant, rather than to go to heaven by the independent route.

It is gratifying to know that a real effort is being made to “control” the railroads. The failure of such an effort is the best evidence that it can’t be done. Then will come public ownership.

The government has no more right to farm out to the bankers the privilege of issuing money than it has to grant to a few rich farmers the exclusive privilege of breeding short-horn cattle.

It is said that gold furnishes a stable currency, but history teaches that it is the most cowardly money ever used. In time of war, when it is needed most, it hides itself and paper money fights the battles.

The glory of war is a relic of barbarism. It differs only in form from the ghoulish dances of the aborigines, or the fiend-like performances of the Dervishes. “War is hell.” Its spirit is of the devil. Nine-tenths of the wars could be avoided. They are caused by the selfishness of man.

In this day of progress and invention no man can define radicalism. That which appears radical today is conservative tomorrow. The leaven of a higher and better civilization is working in the hearts of the people, and the day of emancipation from false systems draws near.

In the past ten years in this country the railroads have killed and crippled more people than all the wars in which this government was ever engaged. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and then howl against government ownership.

It is urged that the greenbacks should be retired, because they constitute an “endless chain” to deplete the gold reserve in the Treasury. It should be remembered that no one ever uses the “endless chain” but the bankers. The people don’t want the gold; they would rather have the greenbacks, and they will take them without any gold behind them. The way to break the “endless chain” is to abolish the gold reserve.

Bryan seems bent on building up a straw party for the Republicans to knock down. In doing so he is playing into the hands of the Republicans, and he is using some good men for straw. He is doing just what the Republican bosses want him to do. Whether he has sense enough to see it, does not alter the situation. Every move he makes tends to divide the Democratic Party and help the Republicans.

The bold and brazen bag-barons of the Beef Trust will in all probability find some way to dodge the injunction issued against them. There is an old saying that runs something like “catch your cottontail before you cook it,” or words to that effect. If there is no change in prices of cattle and beef, you may rest assured that the beef barons are still robbing the people at both ends of the line.

For thirty years I have heard this talk of the better class of men in the Democratic Party getting control of it and bringing it back to its old-time moorings, but the party is in a much worse condition today than it ever has been before. That there are good men in it, no one will attempt to deny. The rank and file of the party are honest and sincere, but the party is controlled by the most unscrupulous set of buccaneers that ever existed, and, under the system of primaries and conventions, the people have no more show to win against the professional politicians than a goose would have in a running match with a red fox. The party is not only divided and demoralized, but it is disgraced in the eyes of the people. The attempt of the party in the recent campaign to ape the methods of the Republican Party as practiced by Mr. Hanna in 1896 and 1900, and its bid for Wall Street support, were despicable beyond description. A party that has for years laid claim to being a reform party, that will stoop to such contemptible methods, deserves not only the distrust of the people, but their everlasting condemnation.