The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
The gang of mutton-heads whose duty it was to select twelve poets
whose names should be commemorated in the new congressional
library, excluded that of Tom Moore on the plea that he wasn't
much of a poet, and now the Irish-Americans are fairly seething
with indignation. Take it easy; Tom Moore doesn't need a memorial
tablet. He will be read and honored centuries after the library
building with its poet's corner has perished of old age. He is
the poet of the people, and has more readers than any ten of
those honored by the committee.
* * *
SOME GOLD-BUG GUFF.
If it is gold that has appreciated, as the silverites claim,
aren't the farmers now getting two dollars a bushel for their
wheat?--Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.
The foregoing is irrefutable evidence that the fool-killer is
enacting the role of cunctator. Only a gold-bug editor could
insult the people of Alabama with such an exhibition of idiocy. I
am heartily tired of this whole currency question; but the
Advertiser has been fairly stinking for attention a long
time--its Smart Alecism has become simply insupportable.
Politically considered, the Advertiser has been all things to all
men and "nothing to nobody." It is a journalistic George Clark,
mistaking political treachery for diplomacy and impudence for
intellect. As Clark cannot interview himself to the extent of
half a column for the Morning Bazoo without getting his goozle
entangled in the skein of his own intorted argument, so the
Advertiser cannot grind out an editorial of equal length without
getting hoist with its own logical sequence, split from vermiform
appendix to occipitofrontalis by the recoil of its own
syllogisms. The Advertiser is unreliable as Proteus; the base
vulpine instinct serves it in lieu of brains; the clink of cash
in the counting room is the keeper of its conscience. At least
such is the pen-portrait drawn of it by the best men in Alabama.
Its allusion to $2 wheat is a trick that would disgrace the
sophists who practice in our municipal courts with drunks and
courtesans for clients. Such a horse-play for the benefit of the
political gallery gods would be contemptuously ignored by the
ICONOCLAST were not the Advertiser's betters indulging in the
same unmitigated bosh. Our Alabama contemporary is but an anile
echo of the New York Tribune, a faint adumbration of the Chicago
Inter-Ocean. The bigwigs cut out the work for the journalistic
wiggletails. They pitch the tune and all the intellectual eunuchs
come in on the chorus. The editorials of all such sheets as the
Advertiser are but a stale re-hash of Eastern utterances. They
pick up these things and "work 'em over," just as the Herald of
Astoria, Ore., revamps articles from the ICONOCLAST and runs them
as original. The farmer IS now receiving $2 a bushel for his
wheat. That is to say, the dollar with which he is paid has
double the purchasing power of the dollar two decades ago. He is
exactly as well off as though he received two old-time
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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