The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965, September 24, 1914, Image 4

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    I Children’s bank accounts j
in this bank draw the same interest as the
g accounts of grown up people. Open an
account for your child today, It will be
|j drawing interest till he or she grows up. |
THIS BANK CARRIES NO INDEBTEDNESS OF OFFICERS
OR STOCKHOLDERS.
| O’NEILL NATIONAL BANK f
ON KILL. NEBRASKA
Capital and Surplus, $80,000.00
p M. Dowling, Pres. S. J. Weekes,. Cashier
j| O. O. Snyder, Vice-Pres. C. P. Hancock, Asst. Cash, jj
riiBEl aiBMBISEIBiai SIBJfflaiBEIBEJ BJBIIB BEIBIBISJfflaEI ISlEJSEEMSJi? ElEJiiMiSMEIBI ISE lEEEIEIW
The Frontier
Published by D. H. CRONIN
One Year.•.$1.50
six Months.75 cents
Official Paper O’Neill and Holt County
ADVERTISING RATES:
Display advertisements on Pages 4,
5 and 6 are charged for on a basis of
50 cents an inch (one column width)
per month; on Page 1 the charge is
$1.00 an inch per month. Local ad
vertisements, 5 cents per line, each
insertion.
Address the office or the publisher.
THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE
FOR GOVERNOR
State Journal: On a day in the late
eighties a tall young fellow dropped
into Omaha between trains enroute
from Michigan to the healthful high
lands of the west. The clerk at the
hotel where he took shelter proved to
be an old acquaintance. “Why go
farther?” said he. “Nebraska air is
as good as the best. We’ll get you a
job here.” They did. That is the be
ginnig of how the name of one of Ne
braska’s candidates for governor is
Robert Beecher Howell of Omaha.
Thus a cough and threatened con
sumption gave Omaha municipal
water, Nebraska its irrigation laws,
and this campaign its republican
condidate for governor. Robert
Beecher Howell would probably have
been an admiral by this time but for
that cough. Howell is known in
Omaha as a fighter. Well, from his
boyhood Howell wanted to be a fight
ing men. He wanted to go to West
Point. His father, a strapping, big
peaceful lawyer of peaceful Adrian,
Mich., frowned upon the ambition.
His mother, under a hundred pounds
in weight, the finder of homes for up
wards of five hundred waifs, landed
him in Annapolis, the next best place.
Young Howell graduated from An
napolis and reached voting age to
gether in 1885. He was not at the
head of his class, but he graduated
while 60 per cent of his class were
flunking out.
Talk about fate and destiny. The
boat on which the young Michigander
was sent to sea was the United States
ship Omaha! It was while serving on
this ship that the cough and hemor
rages came. Lieutenant Howell re
turned to his Michigan home on sick
leave. He grew be*fer and settled
down in Michigan. Then he grew
worse, and headed for Colorado like
other lungers before him. How he
was intercepted at Omaha and never
got any further we have already seen.
The man of magnificent physique who
has just landed a hotly contested gub
ernational nomination by a whirlwind
campaign is the invalid who dropped
MR. DEPOSITOR:
We invite you to Deposit your funds
in this bank for the reason that all depositors
are protected by the Depositors’ Guarrantee
Fund of the State of Nebraska.
That the Deposits are amply protected
in State Banks was exemplified in the failure
of the State Savings Bank of Superior, Ne
braska, a few months ago. Shortly after the
bank closed the depositors were paid in full,
j together with interest up to the time the bank
suspended payment.
At the same time the First National
Bank of Superior failed and up to this time
the depositors have not received a cent, and
prospects of ever receiving a substantial por
| tion of their deposits are not very bright.
The harvest of the farmers and stock
men is now at hand and they will soon be dis
posing of their products and will want to de
posit their surplus funds.
Kindly keep this bank in mind, as this
is the only bank in O’Neill operating under the
Guarrantee Law of the State of Nebraska.
Nebraska State Bank
into Omaha twenty-five years ago. It
is a Nebraska preserved pair of lungs
that is to carry the Howell issues into
all the hamlets and court house towns
of the state in the course of the next
eight weeks. Howell is a living ad
vertisement of Nebraska as a health
resort.
An Annapolis graduate is a civil
engineer. The job Howell found in
Omaha was, strangely enough, with
the Omaha Water Company, then
owned by the American Waterworks
Company. A little of this, and he
entered an engineering firm to follow
his profession on his own account.
His first operations had to do with ir
rigation in western Nebraska. This
interested him in irrigation and irri
gation laws, especially as he soon be
came the owner of a ranch fifty miles
west of North Platte which he pro
posed to irrigate. Nebraska had no
irrigation law at that time. The re
sult of this situation was a first hand
study of irrigation in Wyoming and
Colorado and the preparation of an
irrigation code for Nebraska. How
ell offered this to the legislature of
1891. That legislature was too busy
with other things.
The bill did not get through the
committee. In 1893 he urged Senator
Darner of Dawson to introduce his
bill. “Young man,” said the wary
senator, “you are from Omaha. Why
are you interested in irrigation?”
Even that far ago the back counties
wondered whether any good could
come out of Omaha. Darner, hip
suspicions allayed, introduced the bill,
but it made no progress. By 1905,
uiuutu times imu mauc iixigauun
popular in Nebraska. At the session
of the legislature of that winter How
ell’s irrigation code was adopted with
out serious opposition. For his part
in this performance Governor Hol
comb appointed him Nebraska’s first
state engineer.
In the fall of that year Captain W.
J. Broatch was elected mayor of
Omaha. Here begins the water fight
which was to play so large a part in
Mr. Howell’s later career. Broatch
picked Howell to be city engineer and
would not take no for answer. And
with a decision of the city engineer in
the fall of 1896 the water fight, with
Howell at its center, began.
The Omaha Water Company had
twelve years of franchise left. It re
quested the council, however, to grant
an extension with automatic renewals
amounting virtually to a permanent
franchise. In return the city was to
have some additional fire hydrants.
The accommodating council obeyed the
request, and the ordinance went to
Mayor Broatch for his approval. The’
mayor called upon the city engineer
for an opinion. Mr. Howell gave it
and the mayor vetoed the ordinance.
Thereupon a mass meeting was called
by the council and Howell was pub
licly grilled for lending himself to
efforts to harass the water company.
That day the movement of municipal
water began. It was sixteen years
from the franchise fight of 1896 to the
taking over of the water plant by the
city of Omaha, under the management
of the man who had started the move
ment, R. B. Howell. I
meanwnue noweii naa given nis <
country the benefit of his Annapolis ]
training in the Spanish war. He '■
served on the Prairie, the battleship
which a few months ago covered with 1
its guns the landing of United States i
troops at Vera Cruz. He entered the ;
war a lieutenant and came out second i
in command of the ship. The war '
over, he took a year to fight off the 1
southern fever, contracted in Porto
Rico, and transferred his fighting
energies from the Spaniards to the
enemies of municipal water in Omaha.
Beaten in Omaha, the friends of the
water company always appealed to the
legislature. The wide acquaintance in
the state which has made him so
strong a candidate this year must have
come from the necessity he was under
of spending every second winter in
Lincoln blocking legislative schemes
of Omaha members bent on defeating
municipal water for Omaha To the
glory of Nebraska legislature’s be it
said that they never fell into the trap.
An act of the legislture of 1897, which
Governor Holcomb was pulled out of
bed to sign a few minutes before mid
night, was indeed the salvation of the
municipal ownership people. It for
bade extensions of municipal fran
shises without a vote of the people.
Another day and the water company’s
franchise extension might have gone
through the Omaha council. With
that law in effect, municipal owner
ship was only a question of time.
That water fight was too long to
recount here. Waged by a small
group of men with Howell at the
head, it called for more courage and
persistency than any mere blood
letting war. Suffice it here that it
finally succeeded, though appraisers
fastened a price on the old plant which
Howell believes was a million and a i
quarter dollars too high.
During the last ten years of the
water war Mr. Howell has carried on!
a real estate business with such sue-1
cess that he felt able to retire from
money making. Here comes his ad
vent into state politics. Came 1912, a
No Use Waiting]
You'll like
any number
of the fall
models that
are ready for
you now. No
time - wasting
delays; just
step in and
we ar your
new suit
away if you
want to.
Halt Shaffner &
Marx 1
have made
clothes - mak- /
ing a perfect )
science; they
have careful- !j
ly classified
the human
figure and
have p r o
duced models
to meet every
demand.
This is im
portant; fab
rics are chos
en that bestr_I
suit the indi-\
victual irom copyright I art Schaffner & Marx §§
an artistic as well as practical standpoint. For $18.00,
$20.00, $25.00 and more you'll get clothes a custom
tailor would charge double the money for.
Remember the Style Show
On Monday afternoon and evening, September 28, at 1
the Royal Theatre, / will give a complete show of the I
latest styles produced by the Chicago Style Show. Three I
hundred beautiful scenes showing all the latest ideas of 1
dress. Don't miss it. Next Monday night. Admission 25c |
P. J. McMANUS
The Home of Good Merchandise 1
i mi I
presidential year and a direct election
of national committeemen. Howell, a
progressive republican, had been for
sixteen years in opposition to Victor
Rosewater on the water issue. Now
he contested Rosewater’s place on the
national committee. He was elected,
and at the one meeting of the com
mittee since that campaign was mark
ed as a leader of the progressives of
the committee.
In 1914, with the Omaha municipal
water system going merry as a mar
riage bell and Omaha drinking clear
water for the first time in its life,
Howell appears again on the state
wide scene. He wants to clean up the
Omaha police force, which he believes
is dominated by Tom Dennison, king
of the Omaha underworld. He has
plans for making the South Omaha
fctock yards more serviceable to the
state. He proposed extensions of mu
nicipal ownership in Omaha. While
in engineering work he became im
pressed by the possibilities of putting
cheap electric light and power on most
of the farms and in most of the towns
of the state by legislation encouraging
the people to co-operate in developing
their water powers. With an en
gineer’s love of efficiency, he sees
ways to make the machinery of state
simpler, light running and more
efficient. These things can be pro
moted best from the state house, and
to the state house next January Mr.
Howell proposes to move his office.
The winning of the nomination takes
him half way. Howell never stops
with halfway measures. He is no
compromiser. The whole population
cf Nebraska is going to hear from him
while he races the other half of the
way from now till election day.
What R. B. Howell is like person
ally, everybody will have a chance to
see for himself in the course of the
coming campaign. His robust frame,
full six feet tall and well proportioned,
gives no hint of the health-seeker of
twenty-five years ago. Whatever he
might have been as an officer of the
navy, his work in Nebraska has made
him democratic to the core. “I never
got anything in Omaha,” he said once,
“but by appealing straight to the peo
ple for it.” That is the only politics
he knows. It must be he fights fair,
for after fifteen years’ war in Omaha,
during which he made bitter enemies,
no unmanly or dishonorable act is so
much as charged against him. It is
said of him that while he has made
some enemies, he has never lost a
friend. The little group of Omaha
men who were with him from the be
ginning of the political struggle in
Omaha are with him yet. Most peo
ple think there is something devious
and secret about a political campaign.
Howell’s political methods are open to
the sun. They are nothing but that
appeal “straight to the people.” His
campaign will be nothing but that—
his own speeches and a poster or two
to think over after he is gone.
A tall, handsome, forceful appearing
woman occupies a seat in the Howell
automobile as it skimmed the state
before the primaries. She will doubt
less be there when the car appears in
the second heat of the race. That is
Mrs. Howell, Mr. Howell’s most confi
dential adviser, the only “boss” who
will have a word to say if Howell is
governor. The young mna who drives
the car will also be seen about the
executive mansion if present plans
carry out. He is Sidney, the third
member of the family.
Lincoln Letter.
Lincoln, Sept. 21.—The state cam
paign is under way. The republican
candidates are on the road for a town
to town tour of the entire state. The
republican committee is rounding up
the state organization into an ag
gressive attitude. Among the re
publican candidates and campaign
workers there is harmony, with a
keen relish for the work on hand. The
republican voters, except very few of
the more stubborn standpatters and
the other few who are with the new
party, the progressives, are gathering
with enthusiasm around Howell and
the entire state ticket.
The remembrance of the last re
publican legislature, that of 1907, and
what it gave the state, the two-cent
passenger rate law, the anti-pass law,
the direct primary law, the pure food
law, the fifteen per cent reduction in
freight rates on live stock, lumber
and coal, the law providing for mu
nicipal taxation of railway terminals,
the employers’ liability law, the law
compelling a twenty-five per cent re
duction in express rates, the law es
tablishing the railway commision and
iaw giving that commission the power
to prohibit rebates and special rates
for corporations, all this record of the
last republican legislature, the best
legislature the state ever had, coming
back now into remembrance of the re
publican voters, in contrast with what
has happened in the state since un
der democratic rule, giving zest and
instinct of victory to the republican
cause.
Practically all of what was the re
publican party before the split at
Chicago is regathering into an army
of determined men bent on the re
capturing of the state government,
including the legislature, and the com
mencing of its work where the re
publicans left off six years ago.
There is harmony, enthusiasm and a
general expectation of victory among
the republicans.
A truthful statement of the demo
cratic situation as seen from this view
point must necessarily picture that
party in an exceedingly embarrassed
situation. The old feud between the
Bryan and the anti-Bryan factions
has grown in intensity during these
last four or five years. Since Bryan’s
bold denunciation of the liquor traffic
after his last defeat as a presdeintial
candidate and the brutal discipline
administered for that to him at the
famous Grand Island convention, the
steadily increasing and more deter
mined purpose of his enemies to bear
him down and to put him and his co
workers out of the party control in
the state has been achieved to such
an extent that the Bryans and their
friend have but little to say now as
(Continued on page five.)
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