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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 1936)
Neb. State Historical Society v , The Frontier i VOL. LVII O’NEILL, NEBRASKA, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 1936 No. 12 Many Reform Schemes Are Now Brewing by James R. Lowell A number of issues already have been formulated in the contest for electing members of the unicameral legislature, and bills are being rounded into shape for presentation when this history-making body swings into action. The child labor fight will be in the limelight again, and the stand taken by aspiring legislators on i this question will have a bearing on their success in the general I election. The Nebraska committee for the ratification of the proposed child labor amendment to the federal constitution has begun reorganiza tion work which will include zon ing the state for an intensive cam paign of education and information. The proposal drew strong con sideration from the last legislature, but failed to wrin approval. It was first submitted to the states for ratification June 2, 1924, with no time limit. Nebraska legislatures have considered it for a decade, but the farm element in the legislature has defeated it heretofore. How ever, a survey by the American In stitute of Public Opinion this sum mer indicates that the farmers are swinging over to the idea. Twenty four states have ratified the amend ment so far, and 22 including Ne braska have rejected altho they have a right to reconsider. Nebraskans who hope to see the amendment ratified by the first unicameral session will be inter ested in reports received by the children’s bureau of the depart ment of labor regarding child labor after NRA codes were invalidated. A definite return to the use of child labor in the last seven months ^ of 1935 is disclosed in a depart ment of labor survey made this spring. The survey report states: “The totals number of 14 and 15 year-old children receiving employ ment certificates in the seven month period was 55 per cent larg er than the number receiving cer tificates during the 12 months of 1934 when the NRA was in effect in the 12 states and 107 cities in 20 other states for which reports were received for both periods. The children s bureau points out that numerically considered a total of even 12,000 children ex changing school life for work may not loom large in comparison with the thousands who continue their education until they become 16. But the fact that such an increase as is here shown could take place during a period when there was no scarcity of adult labor and im mediately following the experience under the NRA is of particular significance. As a matter of fact here are approximately 10,000,000 unemployed adults in the United States today. States bordering on Nebraska which have ratified the amendment include Colorado, Wyoming and Iowa. Kansas, South Dakota and Missouri have rejected it but will doubtlessly reconsider in their next legislative sessions. The state P. T. A. and dozens of other Nebraska organizations have adopted resolutions urging the next legislature to ratify the amendment. A dissenting opinion has come alone from the Nebraska Farm Bureau federation which adopted a resolution opposing the child labor amendment. Representative Lusiensk , of Col umbus, says he intends to sponsor a bill in the first unicameral leg islature next January if he is elected, for the submission of a constitutional amendment “to the effect that any measure that is voted in by the people of the state * shall be immune from attack thru the courts; the only method of at tack will be thru the same method by which it was enacted.’’ Lusienski also proposes to in troduce a bill for a constitutional amendment making power a state monoply. This is in line with the influence being exerted by Senator i Norris. Included among the bills to be ■ioj auo an ijia\ Xiqsqo.id paanpo.nui conslidation of the city of Omaha (Continued on page 4, column 1.) Mdyor Kersenbrock called the Council together Monday evening to meet with F. N. Hennington, of Omaha, an engineer working over the state in connection with muni cipal water supply systems. He gave as his opinion that O’Neill would have to reach out beyond the Elkhorn sooner or later for an ade quate water supply. The present wells are adequate for the needs just now, being no shortage this hot, dry season, but a growing city will soon need more water . Plans Developing for a Free Day Something like 100 citizens at tended a supper in the McDermott grove south of the river Tuesday evening, under the auspices of the Tigers. The matter of a free day celebration was taken up and plans made to have a free day during the last week in August. This is becoming a permanent thing in O’Neill, business men here thus manifesting an appreciation of the patronage of those from the country surrounding. Committees were appointed to work at details, take care of the financing and set a definite date. James P. Marron acted, as chair man and he has appointed the fol lowing committees: General committee: H. E. Coyne, chairman; W. H. Harty, Lod Janousek, P. J. McManus and L. M. Merriman. Finance committee: Ed Camp bell, chairman; F. N. Cronin and T. S. Mains. The committees will report at a general meeting to be held at the K. C. hall at 8 o’clock Tuesday evening, August 11. Frank Nelson, one of the suc celsful farmers of the Meek neigh borhood, went down to Omaha last Saturday morning for a few days visit with his father and other rela tives in that county. Frank’s father will be 90 years of age in September and he has always en joyed good health until the past few months, when the heat seemed to affect him and Frank thought it best to run down for a few days visit. Mr. Nelson has been a resi dent of Douglas county over a half century. Mr. Nelson returned home Monday night, having found his father considerably improved in health. Miss Margaret Rhode returned Saturday to her duties with the force of nurses at St. Joseph’s hos pital at Omaha, after a visit with her mother here, Mrs. Bridget Rohde. Prices at the At kinson Sale Ring Report of the Atkinson Live stock Market, Tuesday August 4: Hogs: 1650 head on sale, with the market generally steady on all classes except lightweight pigs which were from 75 cents to 1.00 a hundred lower. Butcher hogs and sows held firm with the last week. 180 to 220 pound averages at 10.20 to 10.35; best fat sows at I 8.50 and 8.85; thin sows at 7.00 to ■ 8.00; heavy pigs 7.00 to 8.60. Medium weights from 5.00 to 6.50; j lightweights 4.00 to 5.00 a hundred. \ Buyers were present from Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin and selling1 at a rapid rate. Cattle: 250 head sold. Market, steady on yearlings—cows gener ally 25 cents lower than a week ago. Best yeai'ling steers at 4.80, heifers at 4.50; fat cows from 3.76 to 4.40; cutters at 3.25 to 3.65; ! canners 2.50 to 3.00. There was a somewhat better inquiry for stock ers and feeders and some good fleshy feeding cattle would have sold well up towards the $6 mark. Horses: Not enough horses on sale to test the market. METHODIST CHURCH NOTES Sunday school 10 a. m. Morning worship 11 a. m. Ser mon subject, “Repentance and Faith.” Big out of door meeting on the lawn by the church in the evening at 8 o’clock. The band under the i direction of L. M. Durham will play again. There will be a short sermon on “God’s Out of Doors.” Come in your cars and park close by if you like and enjoy the service. County and City Levies Are Made The County Board Tuesday fixed the following levies for the year: State General . 1.76 County General fund 2.70 County Bridge fund 63 County Road fund .03 County Fair fund .05 County Judgments .74 Soldier’s relief .03 Unemployment relief .- .50 Mothers’ pension ..— .02 Coyote bounty 02 Court House bonds and interest .. -34 Total, County levy 5.08 Total State and county 6.84 The county levey this year, for county purposes, is lower than it was a year ago. The levy for this year is 4.74 and to this must be added .34 for the redemption and the payment of interest on the court house bonds, which, of course, was not in last year’s estimate. The county levy for last year was 4.95 and the state 2.15, so that the total of both levies was 7.10 or .16 more than the total levy for this year. The City Council Tuesday even ing also fixed the O’Neill levies. These are: General 5 mills, street lighting 4 mills, refunding bonds 2% mills water bonds Ms mill, pav ing bonds Ms mill, 1 mill each for interest in four street improve ment districts and 1 mill paving district 3. Band maintenance Mt mill. Total 18 mills. The school district levy for the O’Neill district is 15 mills, 1 mill less than last year. Beauty shop or hat shop are the natural commercial affinity for the ladies. The business of dealing in baled hay seems to be a masculine perogative but a successful busi ness woman in O’Neill is in charge of the largest hay concern in these parts. Miss Mae Keys, employed at the J. B. Ryan headquarters, is efficiently managing the daily ar rival by trucks and shipment of large quantities of hay. Her judg ment of qualities is reliable and readily classifies loads of bales. Haulers look to her for instructions where to unload and also has in hand the various details of the office work. The long period of service testifies that Mr. Ryan re poses confidence in the business sagacity of Miss Keys. An attractive little nook has just been finished at the McMillan & Markey bakery. A small room off of the north end of the main din ing room formerly a pax-t of the kitchen has been converted into dining quarters done in blue and white, with a touch of bright colors on the tables. The moon and stars on a deep blue floor covering add to the decorative scheme, which with the furnishing, is the work of a decorator from the Lincoln Fix ture company at Lincoln. The lighting is artifical and the current turned on discloses under a soft glow an artistically appointed place that will have its appeal to ladies of the community for social gatherings. July 4th corn sold for 40 cents a bushel. A month later the price had risen to $1.25 a bushel and nobody was selling any at that. Milk prices l-aised within a week 4 cents. Cream, for a brief spell, delighted the owners of cows and a separator by selling at 40 cents sagged back again to 33 cents. Such is the instability of the mar kets. " There seems to be more and bet ter tramps every day—better in that the up-to-date version of the! Weai y Willie has considerable snap and keeps his attire in a fair state of cleanliness. More because the empty flat cars in the ordinary train will not accommodate them all. The overflow sit with legs dangling from the open box cars. Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Brown and son, Wayne, came up from Custer county Thursday last for a visit at the home of Mrs. Brown’s father, R. II. Mills. All left Monday for a fishing trip to the Niobrara. STILL ANOTHER REMEDY! / EVERY TIME l that clock tick*. } You fellows A \ SPEND (A /k$222?/# jr ; >fr % r '*W 'Gotif f ?* -CLOCK lleproduced by courtesy of Los Angeles Times STREET SCENERY Will Graves, out the other morn ing a little after sunup with bucket and brushes washing the glass front, says he ha* to get it done early to be ready for the daily rush of business. In a trailer attached to a car with Buffalo county license plates passing through the streets recent ly was loaded boxes, a bed, a bundle of straw and a cow. Going places to find more fruitful con ditions. A roofless coupe of ancient structure and flapping fringes of once substantial finishings rushing gayly down the street with happy strains of music from a radio en cased somewhere within, may be said to be optomism personified. Weather-worn, wrinkled, be whiskered, bowed and grey—a vic tim of famine, indolence or ignor ance—a discouraged, worse than that—whipped— farmer said: "I’m going to let them have that d— farm, come to town and get a pen sion." A rift in monotonous swich of an endless car traffic through the streets came just for a moment as a fine span of bay mules stepped fancily up the hill on Fourth. Even they were hitched to a rig with pneumatic tires. The driver had the attitude of one who felt he had something worth drawing the lines over. Three feminine figures occupied the rear seat of a public convey ance. The one in the center struck a match which flared into a blaze and was applied to the little white fag held between seasoned lips, while nervous glances and hes itant movement indicated that, com mon as it has become, just as soon the man of the street didn’t see. The late make of automobiles are splendid for appointment, im parting that aristocratic air to the occupants, but for service in carry ing a load get an old Ford. The top removed from one of these earlier makes of the touring type, the driver was able to load eighteen or twenty heavy oak posts in the hack seat and proceed to his destin ation just like he was handling a two-ton truck. A check on the cars crossing Douglas street going south or north is being made to ascertain what per cent of the drivers stop their cars before proceeding across the street. Traffic on Fourth street was being checked yester day. At Sixth on Tuesday, a street with but little traffic, HO cars were counted, about 10 per cent of which were brought to a stop at the in tersection. Most drivers are tak ing the sign “Stop” to mean slow ing down the car. Nearly 100 cars an hour pass the intersection going noth or south at Fourth and Douglas. A modern maid or matron swung across Douglas street at Fourth. Bare arm swaying like the pende lum of a ten-foot clock and partly bare legs striding with the sweep of a marathon walker, a female counterpart of Icabod Crane in all but the figure. Not under a hund red and eighty, she moved with the air of one who proposed to get there without being hampered by the niceties of public decorum. According to an Associated Press report, which we have not verified, all the personal property of Clar ence Greeley, 18 miles southeast of Chambers, was destroyed by fire. Only his livestock was saved. His house, barn, grazing land, 60 tons of hay and 160 acres of meadow grass were destroyed and the dam age was estimated at $4,000. The Frontier’s Pleasantdale items tell of a considerable loss by fire at Andrew Johnson’s, near Emmet. Othef places throughout the county have been menaced by fire, citizens promptly turning out to save prop erty and control the fires. It is also reported that St. Joseph’s church at Atkinson was struck by lightning Saturday night, causing damage amounting to $200. I To Employ Farm Help on Roads Out of the crash of farmers’ hopes for a fruitful season may be born some road construction work in this county. M. G. P. Nissen, representative for Holt county of the resettlement administration, says his office at O’Neill has been advised that funds are now avail able for emergency drouth aid. Just what this means is clear only to those doling it out. As near as we can ascertain it will mean more government loans. Representative L. G. Gillespie has been carrying on correspond ence with the WPA at Lincoln to get action on the road out of Ewing to connect with the Elgin road and to ascertain if it can be built with farmer labor. His inquiries has been met with the following letter: Lincoln, Nebr., Aug. 3, 1936 L. G. Gillespie, O’Neill, Nebr. Dear Sir: In answer to your let ter of the 1st, relative to assigning farmers to road projects, in my opinion, the project south of Ewing, that you mention, can be taken care of with this class of labor. However, before we will be able to assign any farmers to WPA pro jects, the counties will have to be designated by the Department of Agriculture as drouth counties, and farmers will have to be certi fied to us by the resettlement be fore we can assign them to work. Yours very truly, D. F. Felton, State Administrator. It is understood that drouth suf fering farmers will be given jobs on the road construction work ir respective of previously being on relief rolls. Details of the plan are available at the resettlement ad ministration headquarters in O’Neill. A pile driven by Hank Mc Evony— “Old Hank”—something like fifty years ago for the bridge once spanning the Elkhorn south of the McEvony place was brought into town the other day. Timber experts call it Russian mulberry. The stick is about five feet long, 8 or 9 inches through, in a perfect state of perservation and heavy as so much iron. The stick will be worked into firewood by an O'Neill householder. Celebrate Their 40th Anniversary Last Wednesday Mr. and Mrs. H. W. Tomlinson celebrated their for tieth wedding anniversary. On Tuesday evening all of their child ren and grandchildren gathered at the Tomlinson home and proceeded to celebrate the anniversay. The evening was pleasantly spent play ing cards and eating ice cream and cake, and in all three lines “Hank” shines. The following children and grandchildren w'ere preseot: Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Tomlinson, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Tomlinson and son, Virgil, of Inman; Rodney Tomlin son; Mr. and Mrs. William Turner and children, Chambers; Mr. and Mrs. Henry Bruhn and children; Mr. and Mrs. James Coventry and children, Inman; Ralph Tomlinson. The following friends were also present to assist in the celebration: Miss Mary Richter and Mr. and Mrs. George Mitchell, O’Neill, and A. E. Rhodes, of Lenox, Iowa. Mrs. D. H. Cronin returned Wed nesday night from a six wtek^’ visit with relatives at Nebraska City and with friends in Omaha. Mrs. Cronin did not enjoy her visit very much, however, as she was under the care of a physician most of the time she was away. Mrs. E. H. Whelan arrived in the city last week from her Los | Angeles home for a few weeks’ visit w'ith her brother, T. A. Quilty and her sister, Mrs. John Golden and with other old-time friends in the city. SUMMERS-CANADY. Harold Summers and Miss Edith Canady, both of Middlebranch, were united in marriage at the Methodist church in O’Neill on Wednesday, August 5, at 11 o’clock, with the pastor, Rev. A. J. May. officiating. There were twenty-five of the near relatives of the contracting parties present. Following the ceremony the party went to the home of the grandmother of the groom, Mrs. M. A. Summers, where a bounteous dinner was served. Mr. and Mrs. Summers expect to go to the Black Hills for a honey moon trip. THOMAS J. MURPHY. O’Neill relatives received word last week of the death of Thomas J. Murphy at Fort Scott, Kansas, on July 2G, 1936, after an illness of a few weeks of gastric ulcers, aggravated by heart exhaustion. He was buried at Fort Scott on July 29. Thomas J. Murphy was born at Marysville, Mo., on February 24, 1882, and was a little over 54 years of age at the time of his death. The family moved to this county about thirty-five years ago from Johnson county, Nebraska, and lived on a farm northeast of this city for several years. Tom farm ed the old home place and for a time was employed in this city, and was supervisor of several road building jobs in this county fifteen and twenty years ago. About ten years ago he left here and went to Rawleigh, Kansas, where he lived for a few yeprs and then to Kansas City, Mo., for several years. For several years he had been in the employ of the Truman Smith Con struction company and was with a crew laying a pipe line near Fort Scott at the time of his fatal ill ness. Tom was a large, robust and good natured man and had a host of friends in this city and vicinity who will regret to learn of his death. He never married. Deceased leaves three brothers and two sisters to mourn his pass ing. They are: James T., Omaha; David, Tecumseh; Joe, Kansas City, Mo., Mrs. Margaret Shaunss eey, Tacoma, Washington, and Mrs. M. P. Sullivan, of this city. Congressman Visits O’Neill the Past Week To the few that knew of his presence in the city was brought in vivid and gasping horror the scene of a battle field in northern China on Monday evening by Con gressman Karl Stefan who drove in that afternoon unannounced from the west. Divested of the glamour of military trappings on parade the real business of war was thrown on the screen in motioru picture. Mr. Stefan, accompanied by Prof. Peterson, of Elgin, came in during the late afternoon. He had with him pictures secured on the trip to the Orient when he went with the group of senators and congressmen who were guests of the Philipinos at the inauguration of their new form of government as an inde pendent people. He is making a tour of the Third, district just now to get in touch with conditions as they are and talk over matters with constituents in various parts of the district who have business with the federal government. Mr. Stefan announced he would have an informal meeting in the evening at the Golden and show some pictures. Wi h but a short time to pass the word around the attendance was not lai-ge but a goodly number of prominent citi zens were present; The story of thePhilippineinaug uration in motion pictures was put on the screen after a talk by the Congressman giving the history of the connection of the United States with the Islands and the events that have developed into the pres ent relationship with them where by they are given a period of ten years to determine their ability for self-government. The United States commission went to this in auguration at the invitation and expense of the taxpayers of the Philippines. Japanese commercial interests are dominating the busi ness of the Islands, Mr. Stefan says, and he feels it is not unlikely that this will be extended in time to the ultimate control of the whole group. The Islands are without defense from without and any great power can take them over. Their relations as to trade with the United States continue as they have been, products from the Islands coming here duty free. Very little of United States manu factured goods find a way into the marts of trade over there as Japan is supplying everything from need les to automobiles. Many interesting pictures were shown, from the raw natives in the distant hill sections to the modern cities. Moving on to China’s battle-torn scenes, strewn with the fallen soldiers, belching cannon, hurrying infantry and galloping horses Mr. Stefan said Japanese influence is taking hold in that vast country and if in the future the keen little people from the flowery empire get the untold millions of China under efficient organization there will be “a real yellow peril and God pity the white race.” In addition to the pictures on the screen and some photographic views of shocking scenes of viol ence in Chinese cities where men were beheaded, Mr. Stefan drew some vivid word pictures of things witnessed in the Orient, a world without moral standard as known here. He saw a Chinese slave sale, where withered and repulsive old men with their long finger nails and honey hands claw over the naked bodies of young girls from 12 to 14 years of age being sold into slavery. Mr. Stefan and Prof. Petersen left Tuesday morning for Boyd county. W H. Allen, of Newport was in the city last Friday and favored this office with a pleasant call and ordered The Frontier sent to his address hereafter. Mr. Allen is one of the pioneer business men of the Rock county towri, having been in business there for nearly forty years. He is confident, too, that Nebraska will soon again come into its own and be blessed with bounti ful crops.
