VOL 12 NO 5
ESTABLISHED IN 1886
PRICE FIVE CENT
I
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LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1807.
BiwTnrorr ojtiobat
AS SSOOKD-CXAM HATTM
rUILMHXD XYttY BATUBDAT
MIEi PRINK III mUSlIM H
Office 1132 N Btreet, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH If. HARRIS.
Editor.
Subscription Rates In -Advance.
Per annum 82 00
8ix months 1 00
Three months 50
One month 20
Single copies 05
OBSERVATIONS. I
t
nm
Young Mr. Rosewater, who is one of
the directors of the Transmississippi ex
position, sends out a circular letter
every wee k to the country editors con
cerning the benefits that the exposition
will confer upon the state. Perhaps it
will. But the "per capita" is only a
few cents now and more people would
divide the per capita into still smaller
fractions. The merchants do not want
anymore shops started here, the Lord
knows there are enough lawyers, doc
tore and ministers, and with corn at ten
cents a bushel we do not need any more
undiversified f aimers. Yet Mr. Rose
water, one of the editors of the "great
dailies" of the met ropolis, asks the editor
to use his influence and his paper to in
duce the present legislature to vote a
large-sized appropriation for an Omaha
exposition to be expended as the direct
ors see tit on the plea that it will bring
people into the etate. Some of the editors
have been beguiled into exhorting the
legislature to "help poor Omaha." Other
remember that the part is not greater
than the whole even if the part has for
gotten natural philosophy.
Chicago is but just recovering from
the evil effects of the World's Fair. In
dividuals borrowed money to put up
hotels which did not pay- Real estate
in the vicinity of the grounds rose in
value as soon as the Bite was determined
upon, and dropped below its starting
point as 60on as the fair was over. Re
flecting upon the history of ex
positions there i9 no reason to
suppose that the Omaha show
would have any different influence
upon real estate or business. An expos
ition is 1 ke an overdose of stimulants
upon the human system, or like a ba!oon
ascension. Both experiences havo ex
hilerating advantages but in the long
run the stomach and the head suffer
and the baloon hits the ground with a
sickenirg and fatal thud. It may bo
the duty of the state legislature to keep
Omaha from getting a financial jsg on
that will ruin a naturally healthy con
stitution. Meanwhile Omaha is a fine young cit
and it would be a pity to destroy poten
tialities that in fifty years may be a
source of blessing to the state for the
sake of a few men who want to sell dirt,
dry goodd, whiskey and hotel accommo
dations. The Xebrnskan, a paper published at
the State University, printed last week
a page containing the entite contents of
"The Hesperian another and a rival
publication at the university. It is in
timated on another page that the ex
cerpt is pi inted in derision, but to the
unbiased reader that particular page,
which happens to be tha fourth, contains
the only matter of any liteiary merit in
the paper. The poem signed by Annie
Prey and entitled "Rache 1." is s nsuous,
simple, and full of poetic feeling. The
criticism on Kipling's "Captains Cour
ageous' shows critical acumen and is
very interesting. The rest of the page is
made up of college news and witticisms.
The other three pages contain dreary,
commonplaces sweetened with a self
complacency and self-con6ciousness that
would nauseate everybody but the par
tizan readers of a college paper. The
Hesperian, on the contrary, shows no
tiaces of such crudeness. If the page
reprinted by the Nebrtskan is a fair
sample of its issues the latter paper
should study it with a humility that
might improve its style. The following
is Mibs Prey's poem :
R VCII EL.
"And Herod killed all the children that were
in Bethlehem."
My arms aro empty.
See. when I roll the linen
Back from my elbows' whiteness.
One blue vein
Within the hollow.
There. I feel the pressure
Where a dead cheek has been.
My arms are 3mpty
See, no barm can follow
Now if 1 drop them idly
Straight at my side
Or lift them high to ease the pain that
smothers
Here where the first-born died.
An.siE Pbet.
The Journal of Tuesday relates the
case of a teacher wLo reads the Journal
and informs her pupils of the current
events contained therein. The editor is
indignant and says the teacher has no
business to purvey Police Gazette news
to her pupil'. In his sharp spasm of
virtue the joung man forgot what he
was calling a "Police Gazette." The
particular crime that the school teacher
is charged with, is telling her small
pupils about Daniel Osgood who took a
handful of poison after he had aided in
setting fire to a mill in Tecum-
B3h. A full account of Daniel's
doirgs was published in the Journal oJ
Sunday with regular "Police Gazette"
headlines as: A Handfull of Poison.
That was Daniel Osgood's way out of
Disgrace. Dared not Face a Charge of
Aiding Arson at Tecumseh. Was Pump
ed Out Juet in Time, etc., etc.
There is nothing more deplorable or
discouraging. to those who believe in the
evolution of the race than the tendency
to make crime, debperation and disease
humorous. It is commonly asserted
by the newspapers of this coun
try that the American newspaper
is the last expression of journalism, that
American newspapers contain more news
for the money than any other papers.
Classes in journa'nm are taught that
the European paper is the expression of
an effete and unenterprising people, who
are not interested in a burglar's tools or
the latest methods of cracking a safe, in
hangings, murders and suicides, which
make up so large a part of the American
newspaper. These crimes appear in
dady print for a people who
have reached the stage of civil
ization that Nero bad attained when he
played an adagio to burning Rome.
Although the telegraphic and editorial
department of a "Great Dail' has no or
ganic connection, still the editorial
writer is supposed to be au courant with
the first page. However, in the case
referred to the young man appar
ently never leads an thing but
what he writes himself on the
fourth page. There is a great risk in
reading the works of ac unknown writer.
You never know what you my be get
ting into. It is better in your spare
time to think. Mr. Jones knows good
literature and classic, and he never ven
tures into the Tenderloin district of the
first page. His round, pink cheeks
would blanch with horror at the sigh's
there. Yet it would have been safer,
would it not, to enquire of sone of the
people who are obliged to read that
page, where the young teacher read the
"Story of Daniel Osgood,' before point
ing eo s-vere a moral?
"Juvenile Offenders"' by W. Douglas
Morrison is a study of juvenile criminal
ity. After explaining that it is very
difficult to formulate a body of percent
ages owing to impei feet statistics as well
as to the fact that there are diverge
ways of tating what is juvenile and what
is not juvenile in the various nations.
"For example in England the age of
juvenility is often extended to eighteen
or twenty, white in other places sixteen
is the limit," Mr. Morrison's de
duction is that "the percentage of
juvenile offenders is increasing all over
the world, and is likely to increase with
the growth of cities, with the huddling
together of humanity and with the end
less opportunities for theft offered by
goods carelessly exposed. In the matter
of juvenile crimes of violence, this coun
try takes precedence, but an undue per
centage of this sort of crime in tho
United States is duo to tho negro popu
lation, who maturo early, aro hot tem
pered anil havo a small regard for human
life, as have also our largo number of
Italian emigrants, a people who learn
the uw of the knifo in oarly boyhood.
The most significant statistics given ara
tbosa that relate to the relationship be
tween crime and physique. In the En
glish reformatories it is found that the
staturaof a criminal at the ago of 16 ia
five inches less than that or an ordinary
public school boy of the same age. It ia
distinctly shown that, although drink
often leads to crime, the larger part of
the alterations of the criminal are dun
to physical unfitness to make a living by
work. Those poor weaklings, get crowd
ed out of the labor market and tako to
theft for a livelihood. It is very sad,
and there seems to be no posrible reme
dy at all competent to cope with the
conditbns."
The bill which either congress, or a
committeo from that body, s now con
sidering. which proposes to remove the
tax on the alcohol that is used in the
arts, for heating purposes, and in short
for everything except as a beverage, is
wholly wise. In Germany when the tax
waB removed from the not-beverage al
cohol, a wood alcohol was manufactured
and added to the corn or potato prcduct
which made it bitter and of a very d.sa
agreeabla odor. It was thus rendered
enti-ely unfit for drinking and the gov
ernment has had but little trouble with
illicit distilling. As a household agent
for cleaning purposes alcohol is excell
ent, but the price has prevented its freo
use. The alcohol fiama is clean, frea
from smoke and very hot. The inly
disqualification is the pre. Ex
perts say corn alcohol can be manu
factured for 7 or 8 c?nts a gallon, ranch
ing the retail buyer with tho usual ad
ditions. If the tax, which amounts to
more than a dollar on every gallun, were
removed, the demand for alcohol and the
corn from which it is made would in
crease incalculably, and th? Nebraska
product would once more be King. If
the thirty millions of corn in the stato
could be turned into alcohol to run en
gines and lamps, preserve bugs and pro
vide the university students with the
experimental fluid and flame, together
with the hundreds of other uses that
alcohol may be applied to, commerce
would feel the impetus immediately, and
the fifty-fifth congress be forever distin
guished. There is much to learn rrom
European countries. Americans can
take a hint unless jingoism blinds them.
The American bird might be trained to
be much more useful than he ia without
interfering in the least with his freedom
or bis scream.
There seems to be but oneopinioain
regard to the double primaries, so far as
the expression of opinion in tho news
papers is an evidence of what men really