Jerry Simpson's Bayonet from Wichita, Kansas • 2

0 JERRY SIMPSON'S BAYONET. BOOM FOR EXPANSION. over one dollar a bushel. The farmers had surplus money for the first time in years and used it to buy the necessaries of life which they had long denied themselves. This started the mills and factories a working, increased business of railways -end promoted general business activity.

The election of William McKinley caused the advance of the price of cereals. This is a syllogism which all our readers will recognize. They have seen and heard it before. The other syllogism is as follows: Given a shortage of crops, with the same number or an increase number of mouths to feed and an increase, through mineral discoveries of the circulation medium and an increase of prices must inevitably follow. In the last three years, the world's cereal crop has been short, although the United States has produced more than her average.

The world's supply of money has also been increased by large and unexpected gold discoveries. The shortage in the world's crops, together with increase in circulating medium has given our farmers higher prices for their products and as a result they have been able to buy the products of the factory and the mine, thus starting the wheels of industry. It might be added in conclusion of this syllogism that William McKinley had as much to do with it as a cow has to do with astromony. monument to the zeal of tUe old man. It is gone now.

A utilitarian came with an ax and the next winter warmed his caitiff knees with it. The last trace of the tannery, as also the log house, made vocal with the life of those twenty children, has likewise perished from the earth, a prey to the elements, and their sites today heave in yellow waves of golden rod which glow like concentrated sunshine as if in honor of a famous memory. It does not appear in any conversation one may hold with that mine of information, the oldest inhabitant, that John Brown, was in the day of his Richfield residence particularly distinguished, even for his anti-slavery views. He did not talk to auy great degree, albeit all knew of their existence and mildly deprecated them as the one flaw in a fairly symmetrical character. While in Richfield in September, 1843, four of the younger Browns departed this life almost hand-in-haud.

Withiu the space of three months came this darkness to old Brown. Up in the graveyard that crowns a pretty hill, these four were buried. The one stone which marks the graves for the poor must economize in woe as elsewhere, and the humble tanner cculd only afford one monument is a small, cheap and meager thing. It has sunk somewhat iu the earth and no longer stands exactly upright, but it has fame as embalming the first and only effort at verse John Brown was known to make. Mosses monopolize and veil the lettering, but if one will bress his way through the mask of blackberry vines and low-flung thorn and thistle which completely hedge it in, he may stoop, and through the fingers of obscuring moss, may read: Through all the dreary night of death, peaceful slumber may you rest, And when eternal day shall dawn, And shades and death are past aud gone, Oh! may you then with glad surprise In God's own image wake and rise! It was not long after, that the restless agitator moved away, and, so far as known, never visited Richfield again.

When iu jail under sentence of death, with a record, blazing and violent, written on the plains of Kansas for a world to read, an old friend in Richfield addressed a letter to the gray old fanatic and gained this reply: Charlestown Prison, Jefferson 1st Dec, 1859. My Very Dear Friend: I can only say one word to your most kind letter of the 28th Nov. I trust God is with me in very deed. May He ever be with you and all yours. Your friend, John Brown.

To another friend at the same time he wrote that many could do more by dying than by living for a cause, and that he regarded himself as of that class who attain success in death. For that reason he was willing and eager to go. New York Verdict. laws are supposed to be intended to foster. Congress, however, may be induced, by the exercise of the proper amount of pull, to relieve them from the aforesaid contribution by upsetting the navigation laws for the moment and granting them "American registry.

The object in confining American registry to American-built ships is of course to encourage the building of ships in this country, but the practical effect of the prohibition has been to obstruct the development of American shipping and to compel American capital to seek investment under foreign flags. Were it not for this absurd prohibition the American flag would be seen much more frequently than now in foreign ports, and American ships would carry a much larger per centage of our foreign commerce. But powerful influences have been long at work to keep these obstructive laws on the statute books, as part and parcel of the protective system of which the other part is steamship subsidies. For many years these influences have been urging the passage of a steamship bounty law, and if the imperialistic policy becomes firmly established steamship subsidies will follow as surely as the night follows the day, for such bounties are one of the cardinal features of the imperialistic creed. Tne commissioner of navigation devoted many pages of his last annual report to arguments in favor of the bounty scheme.

Secretary Gage has recommended it, and the president hand-in-glove with the imperialistic money-grabbers, urged in his last annual message the "adoption of a maritime policy," citing Spain as an example of what the United States ought to do in that direction. What Spain did was to bleed her colonies for the cost of their mail service, paying subsidies to own steamship lines out of the colonial budgets. This is one way in which the Philippines may be made to yield a good thing for the American capitalists. The bounty system, if adopted as part of what the president terms a maritime policy, will put fortunes into the hands of a few steamship companies at the expense of the general community. It means an annual expenditure of $5,000,000 or more for twenty years to come.

It is a grab-game that needs to be watched. That the pension roll should show a decrease in the number of pensioners under a Republican administration is something of a surprise. Yet this is what has happened, for the forthcoming annual report of the commissioner of pensions will show that at the end of the fiscal year 1899 there were pensioners on the rolls, against 903,714 at the end of the fiscal 1898, a decrease of 2,195. The commissioner predicts that from this time onward there will be a steady diminution in the roll, a prediction which has been made by former commissioners, but which seems to be now nearer to realizatioe than ever before, because the natural annual decrease in the number of pensioners due to mortality and other causes has overtaken the practicable annual output of pensions. It is not likely, either, that the expenditure for pensions will grow any larger in the future, unless congress should enact fresh pension legislation.

The expenditure in 1899 for pensions, though amounting to the enormous sum of $138,253,922, is the smallest yearly expenditure, with one exception stnce 1892. Special Corr. Bayonet. D. Aug.

14. That there is plenty of room for expansion in the United States for many years to come appears very plainly in' a pamphlet of facts about the public domain lately published by the agricultural department, which estimates the area of unappropriated public land at acres. Immense tracts of this land are as yet unsurveyed. There is more public land still open for settlement in this country than is comprised in all of our recent colonial acquisitions taken together. It is true that much of this land is termed arid, but it is for all that fertile and capable of yielding a comfortable living to the farmer and truck raiser when properly irrigated.

Some years ago Maj. W. Powell, then director of the geological survey, estimated that 150,000 square miles of arid lands in the west could be economically reclaimed by irrigation during the present generation. It is stated that this area would support a population of 15,000,000. Thus the area in our western states immediately irrigable, to say nothing of the great tracts irrigable at some future date by extensive works, is far greater than that of the Philippine Islands, and would support twice the population of those Islands.

"But," said Senator Pettigrew, in a suggestive speech before the senate last winter on this subject, "we have started upon a career of conquest rather than one of internal improvement. Many of our people and the administration believe that it is of great benefit to this country that we should annex 10,000,000 people in the Philippines 10,000,000 people who live in the tropics, where the white man can not live, and where self-government as understood by us and under our constitution, cannot exist. Instead of spending hundreds of millions in conquering the Philippines, would it not be better economy aud better business judgment to spend it in reclaiming the arid lands of the west, covering them with our own race, a people capable of self-government, adding ten-fold to the commerce of this country, than can possibly be secured by the acqu-sition of the tropical countries we are now trying to conquer and occupy?" Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the folly of expansion at the cost of domestic development, as expansion must always be. When the war with the Filipinos shall have been concluded the cost of the acquisition of our new dependencies will total a mere fraction of which expended in redeeming the irrigable lands of the west would add to the national wealth a productive domain equivalent in area and population to that gained by conquest, far superior as a market for domestic manufactures, end peopled by American citizens. The refusal of the commissioner of navigation to grant an American registry to the Scipio, one of the foreign vessels bought for the use of the government during the war with Spain, brings forcibly to mind the absurdity, of our outworn navigation laws.

Under those laws, copied from British legislation of the eighteenth century, American registry, or the right to fly the American flag, cannot be given foreign built ships bought by Americans, unless taken as a prize in Should the Scipio be purchased by Americans, as is likely, they must fly a foreign flag over their property, and flatter themselves that by some hocus-pocus they are contributing to the prosperity of the American merchant marine, which the navigation STRAY LEAVES OF JOHN BROWN'S LIFE. That American Roundhead, old John Brown, who in his hour was a potent fanatic and spurred up history not a little by his crazy covrses, hod residence in the earlier 40's in the little village of Richfield, some twenty miles some twenty miler south of Cleveland, O. There he abode with his family. Readers may repose a reasonable accent on the family, for all told, John Brown and twenty children. At this time the apostle of anti-slavery put bread in these many mouths by the business of a tanner.

He was very religious, strict in all church observances, and is remembered therefore by the few who now recall his day in Richfield. His mind was as sternly set against slavery at this time as when in later years the crack of his rifle gave celebrity to Harper's Ferry. John Brown's nature was the very essence of grim courage and futurity held no threat to move him from his course. Even back in his Richfield tannery days he now and then talked and urged abolition in a spirit which gave much scandal to his neighbors, and gained from them grave doubtsas to his sanity. Out in front of his tannery stood a white oak tree.

It was one of those scrubby, stocky trees, not handsome nor high, but strong and firmly rooted. John Brown, contrary to his ordinary instincts, for he looked on nature with a lover's eyes, discovered an evil antipathy for his particular tree. It was no chance-sown sapling, but a robust, adult ook, some two feet in diameter. This tree, Brown, in his discontent, named "Slavery and was wont in his first efforts to remove the hair from the hides he was tanning, to belabor it with him. He was possessed of great physical strength, and would drag a liquor-soaked hide from a vat, and whirling it over his head, lap it around the white oak bole with such amazing resound that all within the radius of half a mile well knew that John Brown was administering a hiding to "Slavery." He fairly whip ped the tree to its death, and sapless, leafless it stood for many years a The only genuine, livinsj, Mrs.

Partington is an Alabama politician whose name is Wilt or Willet, or something of that sort. He also belongs to the elass of men who don't know when they are hit by a club. Wilt aspires to be a president-maker and fondly imagines that he is going to prevent the nomination of Bryan. He will be a wilted Wilt when the time comes. "The Wichita Eagle is as truthful in its political news as the new reporter, who produced the following as his first effort: We are informed that the gentleman who stood on his head under a pile-driver for the purpose of having a tight pair of butes druv on, shortly found himself in China, perfectly naked and without a cent in his pockets." Here are two syllogisms.

You can have your pick as to the correct one: William McKinley was elected president of the United States. After William McKinley was elected president of the United States, the price of cereals began to go up and mounted until wheat was quoted at.