stations which have been established by the department over the country. Some of them are no good whatever. Why, I have found one at Garden City, Kan., the business of which was to evolve a grass which would grow on the arid plains of the west. Twenty-two thousand dollars have been spent on it in five years, and a Professor Veasy is trying there to produce a sort of grass that will grow without rain, water or soil, a sort of grass orchid, I presume. From what inquiries I made I found that this Professor Veasy had a home address at Denver, Colo., and he seemed to be only heard from at times when his salary was due. I have stopped the appropriation and I suppose he will now materialize in some shape or other. I got a request the other day for $50 for a United States flag, which was to be put up over the sugar beet farm at Schuyler, Neb. I couldn't see the reason for the appropria- . tion and I investigated the station. I found that it was costing us over $5,000 a year and that all we could get out of it was some beet seed, which the regular sugar beet factories would send to us if we would only pay the freight. We pay on these experimental stations about $360,000 a year, and I think the most of them should be abolished. My idea is that experimenting should be done through the agricultural experiment stations of the states. There are forty-four of these scattered all over the Union. They get an appropriation from Congress of $750,000 a year. This goes directly to them, and over it we have no control. I think that the seeds could be distributed through these experiment stations and not by the congressmen. It costs $135,000 a year to send out seeds from here. I am going to recommend Congress to abolish this part of our business. As the seeds are now sent out they do not reach the parties they should nor do the proper kind of seeds get to the proper localities. "What are you going to do as to the meat inspection, Mr. Sec retary?" I asked. He replied: I am going to abolish a good part of it. Our meat exports to Germany last year amounted to only $2,000,000 and I find that the Germans reinspected all the meat that came in. We sent $34,000,000 worth to England, where there was no inspection. The inspection costs a vast deal more than it comes to, and in eleven months it has footed up a total of about $200,000. Why, during that time we paid out $4,000 to inspect the meat at the Indianapolis abattoirs, and how much meat do you think was exported from there? Just $351.50. For every dollar's worth of pork sent to "How about American Corn in Europe? Is Cornmeal Murphy going to revolutionize the continent?" corn. I think not, though he is still in Europe. More of our corn should be used in Europe, but I believe we can create a greater market for it by getting the Germans to use it in the making of beer rather than the making of bread. Most of the beer in the United States is made largely of The Milwaukee brewers will tell you they don't use it, but they use glucose, which is the same thing, and the greatest per cent of our beer comes from corn. Milwaukee turns out a hundred car loads of beer every day the year round, and our breweries have a great deal to do with the price of corn. The Germans use vast quantities of beer. Bavaria alone turns out 9,000,000 barrels a year, and the other German provinces have vast brewing establishments in all of their large cities. Corn makes a very good beer, and I think we can gradually get them to using it. I have selected a bright, well educated brewer to go to Germany to look into the matter. While the above shows in what spirit of intelligent discrim ination he began placing his department upon an honest basis, the general outcome has become his splendid vindication. During the absence of Secretary Morton in Europe, in the fall of 1894, studying their agricultural systems, and economic methods, D. MacCuaig, Esq., Chief Clerk of the Department, in successfully vindicating him against political campaign charges of a republican committee, incidently touched upon the subject of the foregoing interview. If there is one thing which Secretary Morton detests more than paternalism it is nepotism. Amid the subsidence of premature clamor, the words of the Hon. E. J. Hainer of Nebraska, in the House of Representatives, February 4, 1895, add to the official vindication: I know that there is no better friend of the real genuine agriculturist, not the fraudulent kind,-not those who masquerade as agriculturists, there is no better friend of the genuine farmer than the present Secretary of Agriculture, J. Sterling Morton, though he be a Democrat. In the February number of the North American Review, 1895, there appeared an article from the pen of the Secretary, in which he illustrated the proposition, that "to-day analyzed, is only a portrait in miniature of an aggregate yesterday." From the history of early exchanges of property, and the opinions of ancient authors upon a circulating medium, he passed to the object lesson of Nebraska in her infancy, with an inflated paper currency, before her possession of exchangeable commodities, and the crash two years later, when the inferior currency had expelled the superior. In a subsequent interview the salient points of the article were condensed: I do not believe that an international congress can establish permanently a commercial ratio between gold and silver any more than it can establish a permanent commercial ratio between rye and wheat. But if an international conference can fix the price of gold or of silver, it can also fix the price of wheat or of any other commodity, and thereby avoid all the possible shrinkages in values which tend to cause panics. I think the word "intrinsic" ought not to be used. The value of gold is always relative. To illustrate: If I sell you a thousand bushels of wheat today for $570, the transaction has established, for the time being, the wheat value of gold and the gold value of wheat. Tomorrow's cables of utter failure of wheat crop in Argentina, Russia, and Europe entirely change the relation of gold to wheat, and the thousand bushels of wheat purchased at 57 cents yesterday, is worth $1.14 a bushel today. But in the meantime, there has been no "intrinsic" value of gold, notwithstanding there has been a change in the relation of wheat to gold. My own judgment is that we must sooner or later declare that the United States of America recognizes gold as the best and least fluctuating measure of value and medium of exchange which the commerce of civilization has thus far utilized. The time for straddlers has passed. Those who are for sound currency on a gold basis ought to have the courage to say so, and abide by the results of their declaration. It makes no difference to me whether a declaration of truth, either upon the tariff or the money question, temporarily drives votes from or allures them to us. It is barely possible that the financial fallacies of the populists and other vagaries may temporarily secure a majority of the voters of the United States. Should such a catastrophe overtake the country, the people must learn by experience what they should have learned by diligent study and reason. I have no hesitation in declaring myself utterly opposed to all free coinage fallacies, all the 16 to 1 lunacies, and all of the cheap money illusions and delusions which populists and other vagarists advocate. My judgment is that silver cannot be restored to its monetary place in the commerce of the world, because the supply of silver has outgrown the demand for silver in the exchanges of civilization. The relation of supply to demand is the sole regulator of value. This maxim applies alike to salt, silver, sugar, and soap. All the legislation of all the law-making bodies on the face of the globe can neither mitigate nor annul the operation of the inexorable law that "the relation of supply to demand is the sole regulator of value." The President's critics ask, What is sound money? Any ordinary man of business may answer that question. Sound money is that sort of currency which has the most universal and least fluctuating purchasing power in the markets of all countries. That money is the soundest for which, throughout the commerce of the civilized world, there is the most universal demand. And that universal demand is always based upon the universal and unfluctuating purchasing power of that money. The present epidemic of the silver fever will in due time abate. As the temperature of the 16 to 1 patients declines, mental aberrations will disappear and reason once more resume its sway. GOVERNOR SAMUEL W. BLACK. May 2, 1859 to Feb. 24, 1861. The appointment of Samuel W. Black,1 as associate justice of the territory of Nebraska, in 1857, was the date of his introduction to the "Far West." Born in the city of Pittsburg, Pa., in 1818, then on the confines of western civilization, and educated under the severe moral constraints of covenanter influence, he reached man's estate better furnished for the battle of life than a majority of American youths. At twenty-two years of age thousands were charmed by his brilliant oratorical efforts in that incomprehensible campaign of 1840, when speech and song, hurled in passion, drove democracy from the White House and enthroned "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Sanguine friends were predicting for him the garlands of success at the bar, when the Mexican war gave an outlet for youthful valor, and a colonelcy commission filled the demands of an enthusiast's ambition. When introduced to Judge Hall, of Nebraska, a Mexican remembrance incited his wit, when he exclaimed, "Judge Hall, are you related to "The Halls of the Montezumas?" and received the retort, "Governor Black, are you a relative of the Blacks of South Carolina?" After the resignation of Governor Richardson in the fall of 1858, the Hon. J. Sterling Morton, territorial secretary, became acting governor until the arrival of Governor Samuel Black on the 2nd of May, 1859. On the 6th day of December, 1859, Governor Black delivered his first official message to the legislature. Being a man of scholarly attainments and well posted in political history, he devoted half of the space of a long message to dispel the cloud cast over the Territory by the ignorance and hasty decisions of early explorers, as to its being a desert region, and further, to establish its right to speedy admission as a state. 1 Biography of Gov. Black, Nebr. Stat. Hist. Soc. Pub., 1st series, I., 94, 95. |