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DAILY NEBRASKA STATE JOURNAL, LINCOLN, SUNDAY 5 JUNE
1887 p21
NEBRASKA.
Her Rapid Development One of the
Wonders of the Age.
Destined to Be the Chief Agricultural and Stock Raising
State of the Union - Her Inexhaustible Resources Furnish a Sure
Return for Enterpirse and Industry - Opportunities Never More
Encouraging Than at Present - Wonderful Growth in Population and
Wealth.
Not many years ago Nebraska was
an unclaimed wilderness. A few adventurers, lured by the stories
that came from the fancy breeding Pacific, hurried across her
borders, shuddering at the vastness of the desolation that
surrounded them. Few realized that they were leaving behind in
disgust the surest ??? that ever rewarded honest industry. The
changes that have taken place since that time rival the
transformations of the magicians. So rapid have they been, in
fact, as to outstrip the comprehension, and only the evidence of
sight serves to dispel ideas the fruit of the events of a few
years past. Modern means of rapid communication have brought the
conveniences and luxuries of life into the midst of what was once
supposed to be a hopeless desert, towns and cities, the centers of
wealth, culture and refinement, have sprung into existence, while
the people of the east are still contemplating the tales of the
"wild and wooly west" - the echo of a racket that has gone into
history.
It is not necessary to review the
past at length, for it needs but to be remembered that Nebraska's
history as a state dates only from 1867, that her population in
1860 was 28, 481; in 1870 it was 122,993; in 1880 452,342, and
that today, considerable over a million of people dwell within her
borders. One-half of this vast number have made this state their
home within the past six years. To know that they dwell in
contentment and plenty, that the per cent of illitracy (sic) is
less than any other state in the union, that the average wealth is
proportionately high, and that all this has been developed from
the varied and inexhaustible resources of the state is sufficient
to realize that her growth is one of the wonders of the age.
Nebraska is in extent double the
size of Ohio, and larger than all New England. She has no waste
territory, for where the lands are not adapted to agriculture,
they furnish as fine pastures as ever drank the dews of heaven.
Although strictly a prairie state, Nebraska is relieved by a
variety of scenery and soil not shared by any of her sister
states. The soil is alluvium or lacustrine, black and rich with
organic matter, and from five to 100 feet in depth. Its ability to
hold the moisture and withstand drouth is phenomenal. Analysis
shows it to contain over 80 per cent of silicia, which absorbs the
moisture like a sponge. If the season be warm and dry this
moisture is drawn to the surface by capillary attraction, and a
good crop is matured in what would, in less favored localities, be
a hopeless drouth. Its fertility is almost inexhaustible. Crops of
corn have been grown on one field for twenty years in succession
without any failure in quantity or quality. The one hundredth
meridian as the limit of agriculture has disappeared. A material
evidence of this fact was to be found in the products of the soil
collected at the last state fair, where some of the finest
specimens of vegetables and cereals came from beyond that line. It
is not necessary here to discuss at length the increase of rain
fall, which has been the chief influence in producing this result.
That there has been an increase, and that it has the assurance of
a scientific basis is notorious.
It is said that among the crops
of this western country, "corn is king," and it may be so well
distinguished, considering the ??? this cereal cuts in the
agricultural reports. The crop of 1885 is put at 153,506,370. It
may convey more idea to the mind if it is said that it grew on a
corn patch equal in area to the state of Connecticut and that to
move it by teams and wagons, each carry ing forty bushels and
occupying thirty feet of space would form a line procession
reaching one and one-quarter times around the globe. To convey
this crop to market by rail, calculating five hundred bushels in
capacity and forty feet in length to every car, would take a train
reaching from Lincoln to New York and three hundred and eighty
miles to spare.
For the same year, the wheat crop
was 19,630,802 bushels; Oats, 24,973,293 bushels; also heavy crops
of barley, rye, flax, broom corn and potatoes.
The interest which is universally
being taken by the people of the state in the planting of forest
trees is gratifying to note. There has always been considerable
timber along the water courses but the deficiency, which, as a
prairie state, has been experienced, is being rapidly supplied. It
is estimated that there is growing and prosperous in the state
over 250,000 acres of forest trees many of which have reached
considerable size. As a fruit growing state also, Nebraska offers
peculiar and exceptional advantages. Soil, climate and rain fall
combined to produce the most abundant results. Nearly every
variety flourishes satisfactorily.
Although classed among the
agricultural states, every indication shows the possession of rich
mineral resources which are to be developed in the future. Several
coal mines are now being profitably operated, while the salt
deposits near Lincoln are destined to prove among the richest and
most productive in the country.
The first settlers who came to
this land found the prairies covered with vast herds of buffalo,
elk, deer and antelope, attracted here from all the great
northwest by the abundant and nutritious grasses, and the ???
sweet water of the streams. Nature made Nebraska a stock raising
state and as such she will always take an important place. Her
herd law is universally commended. Little ?? is required to bring
all classes of stock to the highest state of perfection, and so
more profitable method can be devised for disposing of the surplus
corn crop. There is in the state, as shown by the last report of
the board of agriculture, 499,871 cattle, 94,549 horses, 3,155,797
swine; 466,822 sheep. Mines and manufactories, forests and, of
late, climate have been quoted ??? in the prosperity of states.
But it is the commonwealth that supplies bread ???, those staff
commodities, sources of the ??? new of commerce as well as the
individual that is bound to lead in the long run. From our broad
fields the granaries and ??? of the world are to be filled. The
increase of grain and stock growing, the combining of farming and
dairying, support this prediction that in ten years no western
state can compare with Nebraska in agricultural wealth.
A realization of the incalculable
advantages of general education has been a characteristic of the
settlers and inhabitants of the state, and finds it expression in
a well patronized and admirably conducted common school system to
which state and private enterprise has added every advantage of a
higher and broader culture. It is an interesting fact, showing
that the ??? is one of the first things to which the pioneer turns
his attention, that ?? of the "temples of learning" in the state
today are built of the prairie and it should also be stated in
this connection that the state has more public institutions and
well constructed buildings for its age than any other state in the
union.
The administration of the affairs
of the state is marked with prudence and public spirit, and not a
little of the prosperity which dwells within her border is ???
thereto. The present state debt amounts to $449,977.55 consisting
of twenty years bonds, maturing April 1 1897 and drawing 8 per
cent interest. The assessed valuation of the taxable property of
the state in 1885 was $122,418,209.83; an increase of $9,862.98 as
compared with the assessment of 1884. The property of the state
for the purposes of taxation is $143,932,570.51, giving a total
in??? for two years of $20,315,858.56.
Nebraska's situation gives her
every advantage in point of a pleasant and healthful climate. She
lies in the last portion of the temperate zone, where the season
are adjusted to fit the highest development of the race. Upon the
parallel that cuts her in twain sat the city that ruled the Golden
world. Far enough north to escape the parching heat of summer; far
enough south to escape the ??? of extreme cold; at an elevation
which, without robbing the atmosphere of its moisture, gives it
all the invigorating qualities of a mountain region.
It was evidently not designed
that all should be wealthy, but everyone who aspires to a position
of influence in the community realizes the importance of that
indispensable requite - a competency. What energy and industry has
done, can be repeated, and it is upon this proposition that the
assertion is based, that not a place on the globe furnishes more
ample opportunities for securing that great desideratum of
independence than Nebraska.
That all these vast resources
have been for ages lying untouched, and come a birthright to the
present century, should be an inspiring thought to the young men
of the nation. A multitude of streams are waiting to turn the
machinery of manufacture. Acres of splendid fruitful soil await
but to be stirred by the husbandman to give forth an abundant
harvest. Railroads are penetrating every quarter of the state;l
new towns are springing into existence and rapidly taking their
place among business centers of the commonwealth. Every year
increases the aggregate of improvements, brings nearer the
settler's door the modern conveniences and enhances the value of
his property. This constant and rapid change of values furnishes a
most fascinating field for speculation, and score of ample
fortunes, are the reward of a grasp of the spirit of the times,
and a realization of the possibilities at hand. To give some idea
of the progress that marks the present and what it indicates for
the future has been the effort of THE
JOURNAL in this edition. Leading features
have received the attention of some of the ablest specialists of
the state. The testimony given by the large number of towns should
also challenge attention. To those who contemplate making a home
in the west, or who would be thoroughly informed regarding the
opportunities, and advantages offered by the great state, their
careful perusal is heartily commended.
|
LINCOLN
Lumber Company
Office Potvin Block, 116 So. 13th
Street
|
Lincoln Stone and Marble
Company
MANUFACTURERS OF
Artificial Stone, Marble
and Tile.
House Trimmings, Sidewalks,
Tilewalks, Pavements of all kinds. Carriage Drives, etc.
Contractor of all kinds of Cement Work.
Office Corner
12th
and P Streets.
|
DAILY NEBRASKA STATE JOURNAL, LINCOLN, SUNDAY 5 JUNE
1887 p22
LIVE STOCK.
Nebraska's Facilities as a Stock State
Unexcelled.
A Grand Opening for Enterprise and Capital - Statistics of
Crops and Prices - What to do With the Surplus Product - The
Remarkable Success Attending Stock Feeding - A Summary of the Fine
Stock of the State.
[Written for
THE
JOURNAL by L. L.
Selles, Editor Nebraska Farmer]
The state
of Nebraska is 210 miles wide, 430 miles long and has an area of
76,855 square miles or 49,187,200 acres. There are probably
upwards of 65,000 farms in the state which in 1885 produced as
follows:
|
|
ACRES
|
BUSHELS
|
|
Corn
|
3,782,013
|
153,506,370
|
|
Wheat
|
1,279,415
|
19,630,802
|
|
Oats
|
895,000
|
24, 973,203
|
|
Barley
|
158,561
|
4,643,822
|
|
Rye
|
141,498
|
3,770,390
|
|
Flax
|
65,728
|
627,254
|
|
Total
|
6,255,287
|
207,131,341
|
From the above it may safely be
assumed that there are today not less than 40,000,000 acres of
land in this state that have never been plowed. All of these lands
plowed and unplowed, load themselves season after season with
crops of grass and grain sufficiently for the support of our
present live stock many times multiplied, and year after year over
75 per cent of these magnificent crops go to waste from lack of
capital to put on them cattle, horses, sheep and swine to consume
them in their season as bountiful nature holds them forth. These
are facts of vast interest and the reported prices obtained for
the grain crops but enlarge this interest. Below are given the
average prices for Nebraska, the lowest average by any other state
and the average for the United states as reported by the
department of agriculture for December 1886.
|
|
Corn
|
Wheat
|
Oats
|
Rye
|
Barley
|
Hay
|
|
Nebraska
|
30
|
47
|
19
|
32
|
33
|
$3.75
|
|
Low at oth'r states
|
37
|
48
|
25
|
46
|
36
|
$4.40
|
|
United States
|
36.6
|
48.5
|
29.5
|
53.1
|
38
|
$7.06
|
This table shows that in every
instance the Nebraska crops sold for less than the crops of any
other state. Stock raising and stock feeding has always been
profitable in all parts of the country. No country in the world
surpasses Pennsylvania in the quality of its beef, and feeding
there is profitable and steadily carried on with corn at 47 cents,
rye 58, oats 34, barley 60, and hay $12; as against ours at 20
cents, 19, 32, 31, and $3.75 respectively. All classes of stock
are raised and fed off in Vermont on corn at 36 cents, rye 73,
oats 37, barley 63, and hay $10.40. If the Pennsylvania and
Vermont farmers can make any profit at all on stock fed on so
costly food certainly the Nebraska farmer ought to make very large
profits on his as the ultimate and regulating market is the same
for both. In January last the live stock of Nebraska in number and
value stood as follows:
|
ARTICLES.
|
Number
|
Average Price
|
Value
|
|
Horses
|
382,290
|
$78.75
|
$28,348,719
|
|
Mules
|
???
|
$92.10
|
$3,716,???
|
|
Cows
|
331,851
|
$28.63
|
$8,841,316
|
|
Other cattle
|
1,048,319
|
$24.29
|
$25,161,335
|
|
Sheep
|
489,706
|
$1.92
|
$844,204
|
|
Hogs
|
2,362,164
|
$5.19
|
$13,076,???
|
So far as the consumption of
crops is concerned these animals are about equivalent to 2,500,000
adult cattle. The crop report shows 3,752,013 acres of corn. Prof.
Sanborn, of the Missouri agricultural college, after a thorough
test of the matter, asserts that a careful saving of the corn
fodder will enable the farmer to add to his stock one steer for
each acre of corn raised. In the absence of waste, therefore, our
cornfields alone are more than sufficient to subsist all of our
livestock and leave the corn - amounting to over fifty bushels for
each animal - as a surplus, except in the case of fat and dairy
animals. We have over 150,000,000 bushels of grain, besides the
corn and all the hay. What ought we to do with them! We ought to
feed every grain and every straw. In the absence of money how can
this be brought about? Proclaim the facts to the world. let the
matchless advantages for investments be known to every owner of a
dollar. Let the farmer by his stability and honesty of purpose
inspire the faith of the capitalist so that the clinking current
of hard dollars will be turned this way, and the work is a matter
of little time and the prosperity of the state such as no other
state ever enjoyed. In fact these advantages have already been
discovered and are being used by a few of our keenest farmers. The
Standard Cattle company at Fremont, and the Union cattle company
at Gillmore - the largest feeding establishments in the world -
are the outgrowth of these conditions. Each has a capacity of
about 10,000 steers at a time. One hundred more such
establishments could be set up in the state without increasing the
crops.
In the improved stock lines we
may mention the Fairmount Cattle company, who have 290 Herefords,
275 Angus, 500 grades and 125 draft & grade horses; George
Borland, Stanton, 125 Herefords; Turlington stock farm, 100 Angus
and 500 to 600 steers annually; A. S. Harrington, Odell,
forty-five Herefords; C.M. Searls, Aurora, thirty-five Herefords;
J. M. Severy and Son, Aurora, fifty Holstein-Friesland; R. M. Day,
Weeping Water, thirty-five Herefords; Richard Daniels, Gilmore,
130 Shorthorns; Hon. J. Fitzgerald, Lincoln, 125 Shorthorns and
over 1,000 steers annually; I. Johnson, Lincoln, fifty Shorthorns;
C. M. Leighton, Lincoln, thirty Herefords, and forty Shorthorns;
Lownes, Martin, and others, Lincoln, 100 Shorthorns.
Claudius Jones and Son, Seward, 75 Holstein-Friesians,
40 Shorthorns.
Wm. Gill, Seward, 80 Shorthorns.
J. O. Chase and Bro. Fairmont, 50 Holstein, 40 Herefords, 45
Shorthorns, 125 Galloways.
J. B. Stout, Beatrice, 80 Shorthorns.
Dinsmore and Hamilton, Sutton, 50 shorthorns.
C. M. Branson, Lincoln, 60 Shorthorns.
Importing Draft Horses company, Lincoln, 50 draft horses,
Shires and French draft.
Mark Coad, Fremont, 50 French draft mares, 250 grade and native
horses bred to French stallions.
Joseph Watson & Co., Beatrice, 35 Shires and Clydes.
O. O. Heffner & Son, Nebraska City, 25 drafts.
Frey & Fahrbaugh, York, 25 drafts. Doubledee and Black,
Raymond, 30 Clydes, Shires and Harabletonians.
I. N. D. Solomon, Omaha, 20 Shetland ponies.
Graham P. Browne, Omaha, 40 to 50 Jarseys.
Jas. Schulz, Yutan, 20 French drafts.
M. Kenyon, Raymond, 30 Shorthorns.
James W. Eaton, Syracuse, 35 Shorthorns.
C. Wood, Berlin, 50 Shorthorns.
R. T. Scott, Pawnee City, 80 shorthorns, standard bred horses
and Merino sheep.
William Ernst, Tecumsah, 30 Shorthorns, 10 French draft
horses.
Rev. O. Compton, Bennett, 35 Jersays.
William Clark, Lincoln, Jersays.
H. D. Leonard, Lincoln, 30 Holstein-Friesens.
H. C. Stoll, Beatrice, 100 thoroughbred swine.
Holdrege fine stock establishment, Holdrege, French drafts, and
Poland China hogs.
Odgers & Morton, Unadilla, Poland China hogs.
This must be considered a very
incomplete list of the improved stock in the state. Still the
showing is quite creditable. A very hopeful feature is the
discrimination now exercised is the selection of stock. The best
is being called for and the lower grades are neglected. The best
stock state in the union will not long stand before Nebraska.
Will make the Season 1887 at
JOHN FEDAWA's BARN, 715 Q
Street.
Rys Duke has some of the best colts ever foaled in
Nebraska.
For tems and particulars call at 715 Q st., or address
Pete Johnson, Supt., P. O. 708,
Lincoln.
DAILY NEBRASKA STATE JOURNAL, LINCOLN, SUNDAY 5 JUNE
1887 p24
Delivered at Falls City,
Nebraska. Before the District Court and Members of the Richardson
County Bar, May 27, 1887.
May it Please Your Honor. At the
last term of the court it became the duty of the members of this
bar to announce to the court the death of two of its members, the
Hon. August Schoenheit and the Hon. T. C. Hoyt, and to ask your
honor that certain ceremonies of respect to their memory be held
in the usual way. Again it becomes our melancholy duty to pay a
similar tribute of respect to the memory of another fallen
brother, who has passed away since we last met, a little more than
two months ago. Judge Archibald J. Weaver, a member of this bar
and for seven years a judge of this court, departed this life at
his home in this city, at 8:35 o'clock p.m. on the 13th day of
April last, at the age of a little more than fort-three years. I
shall not attempt any extended biographical sketch of our honored
professional brother who has gone down to death so prematurely, as
the greater part of those who hear me, as indeed all the people of
the state of Nebraska, know the fact of his history quite as well,
if not a great deal better, than I do, and I shall confine my
remarks to what I know of him as a citizen of this state.
Judge Weaver was born in the
state of Pennsylvania and in the morning of his early manhood
removed with his family and settled permanently in this city. I
first met him in the early spring of 1869, and was introduced to
him by his brother in law, Mr. Chas. Steele, who was laid to his
rest, preceeding Judge Weaver to the shadowy world just fourteen
months to the day, and almost to the very hour. At about the time
of Judge Weaver's advent into Nebraska, duty called me to a
distant territory, and for the next four years I knew very little
of him, only seeing him occasionally and at long intervals, when I
happened to be at home, and therefore could have but the most
general idea of him in a professional capacity, as most of his
active practice at the bar took place during my absence.
This, however, must have been
entirely satisfactory, both to the bar and the people, for he had
been here scarcely two years before he was elected to the
constitutional convention of 1871, and to the office of district
attorney in 1872, both of which offices he filled with signal
ability. At the state convention of the republican party in 1874
he was readily nominated for the office of state treasurer but by
some trick of politics, best known to crafty and unscrupulous
political wire pullers, he was defrauded of his rights and the
place given to a person in no way fit to receive it, or deserving
of so high an honor and trust.
The constitution framed and
submitted by the convention of 1871, having failed of adoption by
the people, another convention was called by the legislature of
1875, and Judge Weaver was again chosen by the people of this
county as one of the delegates thereto. In this latter convention
he stood among the very first of the many eminent gentlemen who
composed that body, as your honor can very well attest, having
been a member of the same convention yourself, representing
Richardson and Nemaha counties therein. The constitution framed
and submitted by this convention was adopted by the people and has
ever since been, and now is, the fundamental and supreme law of
the state. At the election in November, 1875, and the one at which
the constitution was adopted, Judge Weaver was almost unanimously
elected judge of the First judicial district, a circumstance that
rarely occurs in the life of any public man. He held and executed
the duties of that highly important office for the constitutional
term of four years, so ably and satisfactorily that in 1879 he was
again unanimously nominated and triumphantly elected to the same
office for another term of four years. Of this latter term he
served only a little less than three years, being prevented from
further service in that capacity by the people themselves. They
desired his service in a more enlarged field of usefulness, and in
1882 he was nominated and elected to the office of representative
in congress, and again re-elected to the same place in 1884, his
term of service in that great office ending only a little more
than a month previous to his death.
I have thus rapidly enumerated
the many public trusts committed to his hands by his fellow
citizens since he came among us a stranger and unknown, eighteen
years ago, but I have not paused to give in detail the history of
his official life, nor do I consider it entirely appropriate on an
occasion like this. It is perhaps enough to say and I say it in
the full confidence of its truth, that in all public stations he
proved himself an able, honest and conscientious servant of the
people that he has never been weighed by the balance of public
opinion and been found wanting in any of the essentials that go to
make up the full rounded character of a purely representative man.
But while I must omit details in his history in other capacities,
I do not feel disposed to allow this occasion to pass without
giving expression to my appreciation of him as a legislator and a
statesman. It is as such that he is best known to fame and it is
as such that the people and the history of this nation will
remember him longest.
I hold in my hand a copy of the
interstate commerce act, which was passed into a law by the last
congress of which Judge Weaver was a member. This act, while it is
largely experimental, stands alone in point of importance, on the
statute book of the American government., This copy I purchased at
a book store in St. Louis the other day, and for no other reason
than because I found appended to it the names of the gentlemen who
conjointly framed and formulated this chef d'oeuere of modern
legislation, and the name of Judge Weaver is among the illustrious
number. No one can thoroughly understand the momentous character
of this law without some knowledge of the vast enterprises it is
intended to regulate and control. It is a practical solution of
the long agitated question of transportation both by land and
water, on the railways and waterways of this country and the
oceans of the earth.
There are now in the United
States nearly 150,000 miles of railway, costing $1,500,000,000,
and including a capital stock of a much larger sum, the legitimate
accumulations from the operation of the roads, and it has long
been apparent that some legislation on the part of congress was
necessary, limiting the powers and defining the duties of the
giant corporations touching their relations to the people and
business of the country. Many of the states have attempted to
regulate the operations of railways by local laws, but experience
has demonstrated that this was impracticable, owing to restricted
jurisdiction and the want of power; and it needed little sagacity
to know that the source of power for the purpose was the national
legislature. This power is derived from the constitution of the
United States by positive grant in terms; and while it is true
that nearly a century has elapsed since the adoption of that
instrument by the people of the states then composing the union,
and the provision empowering congress to regulate commerce among
the several states has all the while been in it, it is a
significant fact that no act has ever been passed by congress
giving operative force to that provision until the passage of the
act in question last winter. It therefore marks an epoch in the
history of this country in cooperation with which the Emancipation
proclamation and all other acts are dwarfed into utter
insignificance. Judge Weaver's competition with the bill was this:
There were two bills looking to the same end before congress, one
in the house and one in the senate. The Reagan bill passed the
house and the Culloon bill passed the senate. Neither bill
satisfied a majority of both houses and a conference committee
composed of members from each branch became necessary -- two from
the senate and three from the house. This committee when appointed
consisted of Culloon of Illinois and Harris of Tennessee, on the
part of the senate; and Reagan of Texas, Crisp of Georgia and
Weaver of Nebraska on the part of the house. These gentlemen met
in conference last November a few days before the meeting of
congress and matured the bill that finally passed. This was done
by selecting the least objectionable parts of both bills referred
to, and by adding such other provisions as in the judgment of the
committee were necessary and proper for the accomplishment of the
common object. The bill this matured, having received the assent
of both branches of congress and the approval of the president has
become the law of the land not to be repealed until commerce, and
civilization shall have ceased to exist.
This act, far-reaching and
comprehensive as the trade and commerce of this mighty nation,
whose iron roads span the continent in all directions, and the
sails of whose ships whiten all the seas on the globe, belongs to
that class of laws that have the stamp of immortal life upon them
from the very beginning. Human history has furnished many such
laws and they are alive today among which is Magna Charta of
England; the Descendents Law of 21st of Henry VIII; the
Declaration of Independence; the Constitution of the United
States, and the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln.
These can never die until all human liberty dies with them.
I have dwelt thus long on this
fact in history with which our honored and lost fellow citizen had
intimate connection, only for the purpose of showing how
invaluable his services have been, not only to us, but to his
state and nation. He was a young man, scarcely in the prime of his
vigorous manhood, with the horizon of his future rose-tinted with
the promise of greater things.
"He should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word."
Judge Weaver, like most public
men, has come in for a large share of adverse and unfriendly
criticism. This is the ordinary experience of men who by the
impelling force of genius urge themselves to the front in any
calling in life. To make way for the coming man somebody must be
pushed to the wall, and hence the infelicity of things as a
necessary resultant. But I am prepared to say, and I believe my
judgment in this particular is of some value, that at the close of
his life, he stood as unsmirched and as clean in the public
estimate as any man who has ever held an office of trust or profit
in all the state of Nebraska. It has fallen to my lot to know much
of him as a jurist and a member of congress, and while not always
agreeing with him in certain particulars, I have ever admired his
rugged honesty and his bluff, forcible manner of carrying his
point when success seemed almost an utter impossibility. He was a
natural leader of men, and would have attained marked distinction
in any of the multitudinous walks of life. In fact, I believed him
to have been a much older man than the most ardent of his friends
claimed him to be. I had peculiar opportunities of judging him in
this respect, and I do not think that I can justly be accused of
partiality in the premises, or of adding undue coloring to my
words in giving expression to my estimate of the man. However much
his opponents, in or out of his own political party, may have
differed from him in matters of policy or principle, all have been
compelled to acknowledge his native intellectual strength, and the
purity and honesty of his acts in the public service. The same may
be said of him in his private relations. In business and in his
professional career. He was bold in his conceptions, aggressive in
his methods, and perfectly fearless in the maintainance of his
convictions in matters of duty. In these respects he certainly was
exceptional. As a party leader he had no equal in this state and
hardly any in all the great northwest. At the time of his death,
he was at the head of the party machinery of his own party, and
the leading spirit in the direction and control of all its
affairs, down to the most minute detail. Always equal to any
emergency that fate thrust upon him, he had drawn to him the
universal confidence of the people and his party, and all felt
that interests confided to him were in absolutely safe hands. But
he has passed from the busy scenes of this life, and we shall
scarcely look upon his like again. There was something so
startling in his sudden demise -- it was so unexpected and
unlooked for -- that it is difficult to realize that he is,
indeed, gone forever. We may not murmur against the decrees of
Providence, but somehow, poor human nature, like Jeremiah of
ancient days, cannot help exclaiming in the agony of its sorrow:
"How is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod!" It is some
satisfaction, however, to know that he has been with us, and of
us; that his community took delight in honoring him in his life,
and that it honors him in death.
After all, the grandest and the
most enduring product of any nation, is men. When all else of
national life has faded out into absolute nothingness the names of
the most illustrious of its people, are the last to succumb to the
effacing hand of time. History whispers vaguely of nations long
dead and buried, whose claim on the universal remembrance is
asserted only in a name -- sometimes that of a man, or a ruined
city; while the manners and customs of their people, their
institutions, religion, language and laws, have all gone to mingle
with the things forgotten. Cities in the long past were frequently
nations in themselves. It was so with Baalbec, which today is
little less than a mass of carved rocks in the desert. The very
origin of this ancient city is lost in the remoteness of
antiquity, and the hands that fashioned those stupendous temples
of Jupiter and Apollo, mighty in their ruins, have been dust for
forty centuries.
His untimely taking off is
inexpressibly sad in many particulars. With a young family that
needed his fatherly care more perhaps than at any other time; his
loss at this juncture is a calamity immeasurable in its desolating
effects to them. In this, however, there is nothing exceptional.
It is the common fate of all families to be disintegrated and
broken up; but where this is brought about prematurely, the
consequences are often disastrous and hurtful, and sorrowful
beyond description. This family was already divided. The two
eldest and the youngest of the children had gone before and the
father was the next to follow; while the mother with the remaining
four of the broken circle, yet linger on this side of the Stygian
pool. Was there some hidden purpose in the divine economy in thus
taking away the head of this already afflicted community of home?
We may not know, for we are told that "clouds and darkness are
round about him; righteousness and judgment are the habitations of
his throne." But may not those little ones in heaven have yearned
for the companionship and tender sympathy of some one who had
loved them on earth; and may not the merciful father of all have
called from hence their earthly parent, to bear them company in
that limitless house of the many mansions. Who shall tell! We see
now as through a glass darkly, but then, after the river of death
has been passed, we shall see face to face and possibly may come
to know the mysteries of God and nature. The death of Judge Weaver
has orphaned his children, widowed his wife, desolated his home,
and scattered widespread regret throughout the whole state.
Orphanage, however, is the possible lot of all the children of
men, and the actual lot of untold thousands. It was so in the
beginning of the race; it has been so all through the ages, and it
is so today.
But in every case it is simply
human experience, like human history, repeating itself. Judge
Weaver, himself, had known all that is meant by that synonym of
desolation -- orphanage. At the early age of two years he lost his
father, and the battle of life was thus opened for him on the very
threshold of his existence. He probably never had any distinct
recollection of his father, and certainly, as I am informed, never
received any material assistance for him. He was therefore, thrown
entirely on his own resources; and from his infancy up to the day
of his death, was the architect of whatever of fortune and fame he
attained as a man, and a citizen. The career of this exceptional
man is highly interesting, and I only regret that I cannot give
the minutes of his history on this occasion, for the emulation and
stimulus of the youth of this country. Turn the kaleidoscope of
time, from the neglected boy of eight or nine, earning a bare
subsistence by herding cattle on a diminutive pony, to the capital
of a great state, and we see a tall vigorous man in the early
flush of his intellectual maturity, standing among the most
imminent constitutional lawyers of the commonwealth, assisting
with his counsel and his learning in framing its fundamental law;
from the pale, this youth, whose winters were devoted to teaching
that he might gain the means of following his academical studies
during the summer, to the bench of a distant state, and to find
sitting thereon, by the almost unanimous voice of the people, this
same struggling youth, now metamorphosed into the stern judge,
holding the scales of justice with an impartial hand, and wearing
the robes of office, which for seven years never received a stain
of corruption, not a spot of dishonor -- from the toiling student
of law and the science of government the office of Gov. Hoyt of
Pennsylvania to that magnificent pile of marble and iron at
Washington city, the capital of the nation, and again we find our
acquaintance of the play of small things, standing proudly among
the mighty men of the American nation, the equal of any and the
peer of all, representing with eminent ability and marked
distinction, the wealthiest and most popular district in all this
great republic.
The Institutions of this country
find their best illustration in the lives of such men as Judge
Weaver. No man under the aegis of the American constitution is
born into any special privileges. True, some men inherit greater
estates than others, but the inestimable inheritance of brain and
heart, energy and pluck never reach a man through the medium of a
will or the operative force of the descendents law. These are the
gifts of God, and their utilization the special work of their
recipient. The mightiest men of earth, have been those who urged
their way from obscurity to fame by their own unaided exertions.
England is 2,000 years old but she never had but one Cromwell, and
he, born of the people, came to be greater than any king.
Europe is older still, but her
continental destiny had been shaped by three colossal men --
Charles Martel, Charlemagne, and the First napoleon. Whatever
follies these men may have been guilty of afterwards, two of them
at least came up from the ranks of the people, and attained
greatness and immortal fame by their own exertions. Lincoln went
from a camp and a cabin in the wilds of the forest, to a seat of
power unequalled in the palaces of the Caesars. Garfield trod the
bow path of the canal in his youth, and the marble halls of the
capital of his country as its chief magistrate before the bullet
of the assassin put an end to his life. And so, with scores of
others who have likewise written their names high up above the
decay line of men and things. Words of eulogy fail in their office
on an occasion like this, and I refrain from attempting anything
of the kind. The flowers I bring to the grave of our professional
associate and fellow citizen, have been gathered by the wayside
and are sad, but I scatter them in kindly remembrance of the man
who has added a new luster to the manhood of the state of his
adoption.
The frequency of these
visitations of the arch destroyer serves to remind us, as nothing
else will, that in the midst of life we are in death. In the busy
affairs of active life, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that
we, too, must one day die, as all the dead of ages past have done
before. There is something inexpressibly lonely in the thought
that absolute forgetfulness among men follows our departure from
this life. In the long future, the mass of those who have lived
will have no more remembrance among men than if they had never had
an existence at all. Of the 60,000,000, who now live in this
nation, there are not 100 whom the world will care to remember a
century hence. Some grand poet -- I think it was George D.
Prentice of Louisville, Ky. -- has told the whole story, so
beautifully and so truly that I cannot refrain from reproducing it
here:
Alone I walk the ocean strand;
A pearly shell was in my hand.
I stooped and wrote upon the sand,
My name, the year, the day.
And onward from the spot I passed,
One lingering look behind I cast --
A wave came rolling high and fast
And washed my lines away.
And so, me thought, it soon will be
With everything on earth of me;
A wave of dark, oblivious sea
Will roll across the place,
Where I have trod the sandy shore
Of Time, and been to be no more.
Nor leave no track nor trace,
But with Him who counts the sands
And holds the waters in His hands,
I know a lasting record stands
Inscribed against my name.
In this, there is a suggestion of
forgetfulness here, but an eternal remembrance in the hereafter.
All the way from the old patriarch of Uz, to this very moment, men
have been asking, and are now asking: "If a man die, shall he live
again?" The question implies a possible doubt; but possible doubts
are entertained in connection with all things of the earth
earthly. Outside of revelation, there is no solution of the
question. No process of reasoning, scientific or philosophical,
has satisfied the longing of the human soul, which "Uneasy and
confined, lives and expatiates in a life to come." The
metaphysicians, the transcendentalists and the materialists have
proceeded upon hypothesis peculiar to their respective schools of
philosophy, to find out the inscrutable thing of nature, and have
succeeded only in arriving at a point in their researches, beyond
which they are pleased to say lies the unknowable. In this weary
march of ratiocinatious each school contradicts the other, and in
the long procession of the ages, from Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle, to Descartes, Kant, Mill and Spencer, antagonistic
theories have been the result of all their labors, with nothing
absolutely settled as an affirmative fact. None of them, Socrates
excepted, has ever been bold enough to assert the immortality of
the soul. But the assertion has been made, and uncounted millions
have believed it to be true, during the slow flight of nearly
nineteen centuries. It was the word of One; it came to be the
belief of twelve, then of seventy-two, and thence forward, of the
millions and the ages.
The simple Gallilecan peasant
spoke strange words in the wilderness of Time, from which has
sprung that irresistible influence that has lifted empires off
their hinges; transformed the face of the world, and altered the
data of time; has sown the earth anew with the fragrance of the
garden of man's original innocence, and preaches the resurrection
and the life. Whoever has looked upon the dead, has somehow tried
to look beyond, and has wondered whether consciously or
unconsciously, as I did when I looked upon the cold, dead face of
the man whose memory we honor tonight, what has become of the
vital element, the once living man. Is death what the dissolute
but eloquent Mirabeau said it was, La mort est ensomil eternel or
is it only the gateway to a better life? If it is not the latter,
and the so-called revelation shall prove as fallacious and
unreliable as the theories of the philosophers, who shall wonder
that toiling humanity, which in this world is given away to
misery, tortured in life, and in the end is swallowed up in death,
should cry out in the hopelessness of despair: "Watchman, what of
the night?"
© 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 for NEGenWeb Project
by Ted & Carole Miller
