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PAGE TWO
Public Opinion Throughout the Union
HOME MAKERS AND DEALERS.
The family that has large purchases to
make need not and should not go to some other
city to find needful goods, for our merchants
keep or can quickly procure every article
known to trade. The way to build up home
merchants and home establishments is to buy
all we can at home and really everything kept
in stock anywhere can be procured in this
town.
Our small industries are not as numerous
as they should be, and unless we spend our
money for the goods made here we need not
expect to see such industries increase and
prosper. Every patriotic citizen will natur
ally prefer to buy goods 4 4 made in Birming
ham.” If we keep that leg-end always before
us the home manufacturer will be encouraged,
and home manufactures will be increased.
Home-made or home-bought goods is the
road to commercial independence and pros
perity, and the good people of this district
should not forget this fact. Every box of
goods sent away from Germany bears the
familiar legend on the outside of it in plain
black letters “Made in Germany,” and the
lettering is in good plain English with noth
ing Teutonic about it. So it is in Japan. So
it should be in Birmingham. We should seek
in the first place home-made goods, and if
they are not to be had then we should procure
home-bought goods. The home merchant
should be patronized in any case, for he
stands ready to sell home-made goods.—Age
Herald.
MR. BRYAN’S PROGRESS.
From that bitter note of awakening
worldliness to the development of Mr. Bryan
in a well-cut frock coat, unbagged trousers,
four-in-hand cravat and an income estimated
at something like $60,000 or $70,000 a year,
with a political prestige that rises superior to
consequences and compels even his enemies to
fawn like spaniels, his growth has been large
ly a conversion of politics into a clean, prac
tical but going private business.
Nor is there the slightest unfriendly aim
in this statement; merely an impartial con
sideration of interesting and significant facts
concerning one of the most singular and com
manding personalities in American history.
Mr. Bryan takes 50 per cent of the ticket
money when he lectures. It does not matter
whether his lecture is for the benefit of a
church, a hospital, an asylum or an entertain
ment bureau, his share is not less than one
half of the receipts.
He does not charge anything for his strictly
political speeches, nor for his attendance at
Democratic banquets. In these matters he
gives his services without pay. But it will be
seen that the activity and enthusiasm of his
political followers, and consequent attention
paid to his plans, movements and views in the
newspapers, save the cost of advertising and
help to draw paying crowds to his lectures.
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
Mr. Bryan has received SSOO apiece for short
newspaper articles, money paid in advance.
It is said that he got 10 cents a word for his
recent written debates with Senator Bever
idge in a magazine.
Yet before he was nominated for President
Mr. Bryan’s average income as a lawyer was
about a thousand dollars a year, and his
salary as political editor of the Omaha World-
Herald at the time of his nomination was
only SI,BOO a year.—James Creelman, in
Pearson’s Magazine.
HAITI AND SANTO DOMINGO.
If a man passing along the streets sees a
big dog tearing a little one to pieces, or sees
a thief robbing a woman whom he has knocked
down, there is no statutory provision requir
ing him to interfere, and if he goes on about
his business he has been guilty of no infrac
tion of the law. Or if a man lives next door
to a nuisance, which is a menace and a scan
dal to an entire neighborhood —if he chooses
to put up with it, no one can compel him to
complain, or take measures to abate it, and
he has violated no legal duty in not doing so.
As to his duty in the forum of conscience,
there can be no difference of opinion. A man
taking such a position would be universally
condemned, and the degree of condemnation
would be greatly enhanced if he had not only
refused to interfere himself, but had prevent
ed others who were willing and ready from
doing so. While nations in their conduct as
such, and in their relation to each other, are
bound solely by treaties —and by international
law, so far as they choose to recognize it —
and while there rests on them no legal duty
to go outside the requirements of law and
treaties, and interfere in affairs of foreign
nations, no matter to what scandalous condi
tion they may have come, or how menacing
they may be to the general peace and well
being, there is a universal recognition of the
fact that ’powerful and intelligent countries
are under some obligation to the weak and
ignorant, and that where a nation claims for
itself exclusive jurisdiction to superintend,
police, and look out for, generally, any given
area, it is bound to do it promptly and effec
tively, or get out of the way and turn the
job over to same one who will not shirk it.
It was on this principle that we went to war
with Spain to rescue Cuba from intolerable
conditions, and that, having turned the island
over to its own government, we again inter
pose to prevent revolution and anarchy. It
will be on this principle and obedience to a
law of political gravitation which; cannot be
resisted that we shall again at no very remote
day finally take possession of Cuba, in order
that it may have the development it is capable
of and which the world at large has a right
to expect from it. It was on the same princi
ple that, having been compelled to take the
Philippines, we refused to abandon them to
internal strife, or to foreign spoliation.
The question repeatedly arises, and will
not down so long as existing conditions con
stantly recur in Haiti and Santo Domingo—
first one, then the other —whether we have
any duty to those unfortunate, benighted,
semibarbarous communities on their account,
on our own account, or on account of the
rest of the world having interests there. It
seems on the face of it that something ought
to be done to bring about peace and tran
quillity, and whatever it is, it is incumbent
on us to do it, for we have long warned every
one else that we would tolerate no such occu
pation by any one of territory covered by the
Monroe doctrine.
For nearly 100 years that fair domain —one
of the fairest and richest in natural resources,
fertility, and beauty, and advantages of
climate on the globe—has languished and
gone backward, rather than advanced, in the
hands of people long since demonstrated to
be incapable of improving it or bringing it to
a state of civilization and productivity.
Around its edge is a fringe of semibarbarous
African settlements devoid of every attribute
of enlightenment or progress, and the interior,
capable of supporting 5,000,000 or 6,000,000
of people and of sending needed products to
the rest of the world, is mostly a trackless
jungle. There is not the slightest prospect
of ameliorated conditions unled present
auspices. A hundred years’ experience proves
it, and the present outbreak of lawless fero
city in Haiti, following recent similar exhibi
tions in Santo Domingo, confirms it. Euro
pean countries, as well as ourselves, have hur
ried ships of war there, as they repeatedly
have been compelled to do before, to prevent
the murder of their people and destruction of
their property, and now the inhabitants them
selves are calling for intervention. Have we
no further duty in the premises 1 ? Is not the
whole world entitled to some action on our
part? Is there any questidh what any other
great power, situated as we are and making
the pretensions we do, would have done long
ago under the circumstances ? The island lies •
a dismantled and dangerous derelict directly
in one of the most frequented paths of com
merce. We simply cruise up and down, re
fusing either to board and refit it or to pennit
any one else to do so. It would better be
blown out of the water or sunk in the depths
than left as it is, a disgrace to civilization, a
reproach to the United States, and a standing
menace to every legitimate political and com
mercial interest in the Caribbean.—Washing
ton Post.
Jeffersonian Bible
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JEFFERSONIAN. Thomson. Ga.