Four Nebraska Traitors

The Republican State Journal criticizes Bryan and his Populists allies in Congress for their votes on the sugar tariff, a protectionist measure that, the paper asserts, practically killed the local sugar beet industry. Bryan is also criticized for his editorship of the Omaha World Herald.

An envious contemporary wants to know why our friend Billy Bryan stops in his great career to pick up a broken-down newspaper and attempt to put life into it by becoming its editor. But business is business and perhaps the newspaper in question will have as hard a time as the statesman. A busted senatorial boom goes very well with a broken-down newspaper. The one wants occupation and the other needs new blood.

FOUR NEBRASKA TRAITORS.

Bryan, Allen, McKeighan and O'Kem should hold a protracted meeting in Norfolk and another at Grand Island to explain how they voted on the sugar trust bill, and why. The sugar factory men seem to have a pretty clear idea of the individuality of the man who struck Billy Patterson. Sugar is of more real interest to Nebraska than the proposition to make the people of the United States pay the silver miners a dollar for every 45 cents' worth of bullion. Nebraska can produce sugar enough to supply the nation, but she could not furnish forth a wheelbarrow load of silver ore to save her blessed neck.

This charming quartet may represent he [sic] silver mining states in congress to the queen's taste and float in a sea of glory there, but here they are supposed to belong to the agricultural state of Nebraska, to whom the interests of beet sugar culture and manufacture are beginning to assumea [sic] very great importance. What did these worthies do in Washington to promote the interests of Nebraska as a sugar-producing state? They need not all speak pretty soon. Let them unbutton their mouths on that topic as soon as possible.

It is alleged by those interested in sugar manufacture that the bill these gentlemen fought, bled and perhaps are going to die for has inevitably reduced the price of sugar beets in Nebraska from $5 to $4 a ton if the factories are not to be shut up. Why did they do it? Would it not have been quite the thing to do to work for an increase in the price of sugar beets with at least as much zeal and fervor as they wagged their chins for the increase of the price of silver bullion from 45 cents to a dollar per $20 grains?

As between Bryan and Holcomb give us the latter every time. Bryan is too much of the Jim Weaver kind of politician for use in any party. He is everything and yet nothing.—David City News.

About this Document

  • Source: Nebraska State Journal
  • Citation: 12
  • Date: September 2, 1894