132 ANNUAL EEPORT. 



millions of half naked brutal Arabs, and the greater part of the once- 

 fertile lands are now drifting sands. Thence onward they rode to 

 the ruin of other well-to-do nations that lived on the south coast of 

 the Mediterranean, now nearly the entire stretch a part of the 

 great Sahara desert, dotted here and there by the most poverty 

 stricken of mortal beings ; rode down there after self aggrandize- 

 ment, and following little else than war, piracy, theft and murder. 

 The Arab's greed made ruin at home, and ruin wherever he strode. 

 At his tread fertile fields turned to sands, and to match his breath, 

 balmy breezes mounted up to great desert storms, often burying 

 or suffocating whole caravans of thousands in one drift. And of 

 the plagues of Egypt all are familiar, and so of all other oppressed 

 nations, all beset with plagues, and they on the increase in 

 number and kinds, so that insects, blight, mildew or rot, is on 

 every goodly thing we grow ; and from year to year there is a 

 falling off of crops per acre, new lands not yielding what new lands 

 did twenty-five years ago. In the south, the negro was made a 

 beast of burden — sold, whipped, and driven to unpaid labor — and 

 the result, millions of acres of once fertile lands are now w^orthless. 

 And in the north the Indian is driven from lands to those of less- 

 worth, and year by year on those lands our crops grow less, with 

 insect enemies, blight, mildew and rot on the increase — a warning 

 that worse is ahead, that utter ruin is the reward of persistent evil 

 doing. The history of all ages, of men and nations, proclaims 

 trumpet-tongued, that to be prosperous, is to be at peace ; that 

 evil, like good, brings its own reward. Though justice often ap- 

 pears to lag, the history of the past shows it is sure, that like great 

 storms, the slower it comes the greater the shaking up when it 

 does come. 



Therefore, it behooves every thinking person to ponder well the 

 signs of the times, bearing in mind the fact that Nature and 

 Nature's God are one, and proclaim, though hand joined in hand, 

 oppressors shall have a fall, and woe be to those who look calmly 

 on oppression when that fall shall come. 



The nation's foot has made one slip, and with the accumulated 

 sins, frauds, oppressions and murders, another slip will be a crash 

 as never seen before, and naught but a speedy change to the right 

 can stay the nation and banish the evils that now beset us — mo- 

 nopolies, saloons (hell dens), wherein whisky, beer and tobacco 

 are dealt out — a thousand fold more ruinous than insects, blight^ 

 mildew and rot combined. 



PETER M. GIDEON. 

 Excelsior, Minn., Dec. 10, 1883. 



