Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/546

526 world has so long looked with pride; away with Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and Ricardo and Bonamy Price. Away, also, with our own Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton and Gallatin and Crawford. We have now among us a new school of political economists who know better. With the Senator from Indiana, they exclaim, “Throw theory to the dogs,” as he said the other day; and it must be admitted they have thrown theory to the dogs most effectually. They rely upon nothing but the evidence of their senses, and how can that lead them astray? Well, sir, in this respect they are, however, not quite original.

Some ten or eleven years ago, during the war, I met in the South an old farmer who was called by his neighbors “Old Tatum.” He was a practical philosopher of the same kind, who relied upon nothing but the evidence of his senses; and inasmuch as he could but with difficulty spell out a word or two in large print, he had a lofty contempt for book-learning. I liked to talk with the old man, and once in conversation I happened to say something about the earth moving around the sun. “Hold on,” said old Tatum; “what did you say there? The earth moving around the sun! Where did you get that?” “Well,” I said, “I got it from the books.”

“There again,” cried old Tatum, and he would fairly roll over with laughter—“there again, from the books. The earth moving around the sun! And don't I see every day with these, my own eyes, the sun moving around the earth? Don't I see it rise there in the morning, and don't I see it go down yonder every evening? Ah,” said he, “you book-men can't fool old Tatum.”

What a shining light old Tatum would have been among the new school of political economists here! Would he not have thrown theory to the dogs like the very best of them? “Here I see a difficulty,” old Tatum would say;