Robert Emmett Barrett was the soothing and patriotic cognomen my father
fastened upon me when I first opened my eyes and I looked him squarely
in the face. I say my father named me and I honestly think he did. The
first two-thirds of the name proves my contention and opens the book
wide enough that the reader has no trouble in discerning the nationality
of my father. Mother was an English woman and I knew it the first time
she called father "Arry." If mother had had her equal rights in naming
me, I might have been a Gladstone; but somehow or other father
monopolized mother's half interest and she finally became disgusted and
told him to name me any blooming thing he wanted to. If mother could
have foreseen this savage war across the orient, I believe, she would
have handled the center name, but the way it stands I wouldn't shoulder
a gun for England and I can't use my undeveloped oratory against
Ireland, and I am about half persuaded to let them settle their own
troubles. It being no fault of mine that I am half Irish and half
English, I let it go at that and get along with everybody the best I
can. It's hard to separate the halves from the whole, and so, from a
perpendicular standpoint, I give the Irish the top half and the English
the bottom half; I'd rather let the English have the running half
anyway.
So far the name Emmett hasn't done me much good, I've only used it nine
or ten times since I had it, thrice at political speeches, a couple of
Fourth of July addresses, once on Decoration Day, once at a church
wrangle, and a few times when I was mad. I find it doesn't help me much
on bank cheques, they get turned down as quickly with the Emmett signed
as without it. If the name is ever going to do me any good I wish it
would hurry up and be a progressive or I will be compelled to think
father was impartial and talked mother out of her rightful one-half
interest.
After the ordeal of naming me had been fairly or unfairly dealt with, I
was told I was a free born American citizen and some day I might be
President and have absolute dominion over the blue room, where I suppose
the chief executive goes when he has the "Blues." I never considered
this encouragement very seriously, for, as I have read in some almanac,
there is only one chance in eighteen million, the odds are against the
slim chance and it's sort of a blue skim milk proposition or a church
raffle affair, and if it's the only time that opportunity is going to
knock at my door I don't think I'll be at home, I'll let Wilson do the
best he can and let some live Republican Progressive have my chance.
If Wilson would only hurry up and get the Government to make those loans
they've been talking so long about and loan it, at about four per cent,
to citizens like myself, irrespective of names and nationality, and not
have the principal come due too quickly, but in periods, like twenty
year franchises, I believe he ought to have a second term; but if he
doesn't get some loans placed pretty soon I don't know what hard working
men like myself are going to do.
The only thing I ask Wilson to be careful about when he loans the money
is the rate. I don't want to see the rate on loans as high as it was
during Cleveland's second administration.
I borrowed eighteen dollars in 1894 to settle up a partnership fanning
deal with a Methodist preacher. It seems that outside of the banks no
one had any money, and you had to call on the gentleman banker, get down
on your knees and have tears as large as pullet eggs rolling down your
hollow cheeks, if you succeeded in your desires. Somehow the bankers
knew they had a good thing; they not only got the fat and tallow but
they stripped you clear to the bone.
The eighteen dollar note was dated August 28, 1894, and read in part;
"With interest at the rate of ten per cent per annum"; and from here on
comes the craftiness of the banker: He interlined thus: "From January
18, 1894, if not paid when due." On October 23rd the same year I paid
ten dollars on the note; September the 11th, 1895, six dollars; and
December the 5th, 1895 the final payment and accrued interest was eight
dollars and twenty-five cents, making a total of twenty-four dollars and
twenty-five cents on a loan of eighteen dollars for one year, three
months and seven days. What was the rate of interest charged? That
banker is retired and worth a hundred thousand dollars; hadn't he ought
to be?
To borrow money under that rate you needed the health of a bear, a
cataract of energy, a colossal mind, unlimited self-respect, boundless
self-confidence, all impregnated with an iron honesty. That kind of
interest makes me feel like the investor, who bought some unseen land
from an honest real estate man, and, when he went to look at his
property he found it submerged in water. The real estate man told him it
could be irrigated, but he had no idea it was susceptible of such
profuse moisture. After he gazed at it a while he said "Instead of
buying this land by the acre I should have bought it by the quart." He
probably has an unrecorded deed, I have the paid note in my possession,
I feel proud I got it paid; but my pride halted suddenly when I got it
paid and in all these years it hasn't advanced much for men who can take
a nickle and make it into a dollar so all fired quick. Some time I'll
frame that note with a glass on both sides of it.
Coming back to the early events. I was born beneath the shadows of the
Rocky Mountains where the placid and sleepy Platte wound leisurely
through the broad meadows and sleeping undeveloped valleys and had
abundance of God's elixir before the day of the great reclamation
projects that sapped its mountain waters.
Because I mention the Platte here, don't get me mixed with that other
fellow that has made the Platte famous and was until recently holding a
cabinet position on an underpaid salary, he's no relation of mine and I
never knew him until he ran for President. He did the opposite from what
I did and took that one slim chance, made three strikes and fanned; I'm
glad I let it alone.
When I was six years old and my parents still said what I should do they
took Horace Greeley's advice and went a hundred and six miles farther
west. At their destination there was no buildings except the section
house, depot and a little building that sheltered the hand car. The
entire population was not over a baker's dozen. I don't believe there
was a quieter place on God's footstool.
One good thing about those days was the taxes; I think a week's
compensation on the railroad would pay the taxes, County, State and
Municipal from 1887 to 1890. How we have progressed in taxes since then!
Especially Colorado.
In this little dreary place where I had no associations to lead me
astray I took account of my surroundings. I was away out there on the
barren plains where the grass curled and burned under the blazing sun,
where foliage was scant, where the lonely cactus and prickly pear
awaited the step of man to imbed itself and cause more pain, no trees or
flowers to whisper words of encouragement, no cheerful forest or shady
dells, nothing at all to cause the deeper emotions of a queer nature to
assert themselves. Nothing but the broad miraged prairie stretching as
far as the eye could see.
No cooling breeze to alleviate the pain on a youthful face or the faces
of those careworn early pioneers who blazed the way for future
generations, who would erect homes, till the soil, plant trees, and
endeavor to further promote civilization, until succeeding generations
would reap the pleasure and peace that was purchased through these
sacrifices and hardships of their forefathers. We owe to the pioneers
such a vast debt of gratitude that we never can pay the the principal
with no interest attached, and it's a different kind of interest than
four per cent a month.
After I had grown to manhood and my lot had been cast in other places it
was over fourteen years before I saw much of the old scenes, but when
returning to the old places I noticed great changes. The town had grown;
few of the old places were left and the old haunts and nooks were hard
to find.
A dreary and quiet sadness steals over one when looking at his boyhood
and manhood earliest recollections, and as I glanced at the old scenes I
stood and looked longingly, earnestly and lovingly at the old familiar
places. There was the locust grove I helped to plant two decades ago;
there was the little stream after which the town was named: there was
the old pump which so many times quenched my thirst; there was the exact
spot where dearie said the joyful word; there was the old house where
our first baby was born; there was the farm patch I used to plow, and
the meadow where I pitched the hay. All seemed different and as the
pathos of the change surged in my breast I walked away longing for
something I couldn't get, and would never get again.