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About Will Maupin's weekly. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1911-1912 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1911)
COMING ALONG WITH THE DOPE FOR THE LOVERS OF SPORT : : : Lincoln fared mighty well, thank you, at the schedule meeting. The season will open with Lincoln on the home lot, pitted against the Grizzlies of Denver. After a series ol three games the team makes the circuit. During the season the Antelopes will have fourteen Sundays and thirteen Saturdays at home, will have fair week at home, and draws Labor Day as its share of the holi days. July 4 and "Colorado Day" will find the Antelopes in Denver, which means a goodly slice of money. The decision to have four series of four games each instead of a three-series four games schedule, is a wise one. It will shorten the time of the teams away from home, thus preventing the ardor from cool ing, and it will shorten the home stays, thus preventing the enthusiasm from dying out. Manager Unglaub will hike to Lincoln just as soon as possible, and spend the in tervening time before the season opens in getting acquainted with local conditions and the team he is to manage. Unglaub looks like the real goods to the "bugs" who keep cases on the players. He brought a price that recalls the amounts paid for hu man chattels in ante-slavery days, and the oldest citizens will recall that some top notch prices were brought sixty or seventy years ago. Just as soon as Jack Frost goes away back and sits down President Despain will fill his pockets full of nails, shoulder his hammer and saw and hie away to Ante lope park for the purpose of building a healthy . addition to the south wing of the grandstand. A bit of grading and filling will be done to improve the field, and a slap or two of the paint brush will be used for the purpose of delighting the eyes of all lovers of the beautiful. AH the fans will regret the disappearance of Weidensaul from the lineup this season. He was a conscientious player who always tried to deliver the goods and usually did. His willingness and his uniform gentleman ly conduct on and off the field made him a favorite with all who follow the national pastime. He was given his release sole ly because the management thinks it has secured a better man for the second sack territory, and if the management is cor rect it certainly has secured a crackerjack. The pessimists who saw nothing but fail ure in the effort to maintain a state league will have to hunt up something else to gloom about. The first year of the league was highly successful, and every town save one comes back with brighter prospects. Only one transfer of franchise has been found necessary, and the change is highly advantageous. In addition to giving the state league towns a classy article of ball, the league is developing some almighty good timber - which the Lincoln manage ment will keep in view. For the first time in eight years Omaha draws an opening date contemporaneous with the opening of the season. In 1903 Milwaukee opened the season at Omaha, since which time Omaha has had to open the season, away from home. To celebrate the event Pa Rourke is going to turn things lose and expects to have his new grand stand as full as a 12-ounce bottle holding a whole pint of juice. Pa says his Vinton street park is going to . be the prettiest ball .ground in the country when he has it in shape for the opening day. But Pa is much given to tergiversation. . Only five weeks more ! . About all that is worrying the "bugs" these days is the matter of umpire. We had some pretty bum ones at odd times dur ing the last season, and it strikes the aver age "bug" that Prexy O'Neill and King Pin Haskell, chief umpirelets, ought to be able to get a better average without undue rumpling up of the gray matter. It took Gotch just an hour to pin the shoulders of "Americus" to the mat. It took "Hack" just two hours to turn the trick. Gotch has been out of the game for months; "Hack" has been in it all the time. Will "Hack's" manager accept the proposition to wrestle Gotch on a winner-take-all proposition? The Mink league is coming up strong as the sun progresses towards the center again. If you want to see some real "fans" just hie yourself to the Mink league towns in Ne braska and listen while they vociferate. A Deal in Nebraska Dirt The facts herein related are susceptible of proof. No names are given for the reason that the party of the first part is not proud of his foresight and avoids undue mention of his hindsight. Call him Jones and let it go at that. In December, 1890, the year of the big drouth, Jones helped a relative out of a financial hole by letting him have $150 in cash and taking in exchange a deed to a quarter section of land in a county border ing on the Colorado line. There was a mortgage of $150 on the quarter, which Tones assumed and later paid. Jones never saw the land, but let a neighboring farmer use it in return for payment of the taxes. In . 1898, after some correspondence, Jones sold the quarter for $800 cash, and was tickled to death over his deal in real estate. He had received $5 an acre for land that cost him less than $2 an acre. On February 3, 1911, that same quarter section again changed hands, the man who bought it" for $800 in 1898 selling it for $5, G00. or $35 an acre. The only improvements made upon the farm during that time, other than breaking and cultivating, were the erection of a four-room house costing less than $900 and a barn that cost about $200. Jones is no longer bragging about his success as a dealer in real estate. In the winter of 1890-91 the editor oi Will Maupin's Weekly, then a reporter on an Omaha paper, traveled extensively over what is now Scottsbluff and Deue counties, writing up the destitution of the home steaders after the fearful drouth of that year. He saw quarter section after quar ter section that could have been bought then and there for from $100 to $300 per quarter. He was like the man who could have at one time bought the whole state of Texas for a pair of boots, but didn't have the boots. Last summer the editor again traveled over that same territory, and didn't see an acre of ground that could be bought for less than $75 an acre, and much of it could not now be bought for $150 an acre. There are millions of acres of unimproved land in Nebraska that can be bought at from $25 to $50 an acre, on the easiest of terms, every acre of it as good corn and wheat land as there is in America. Fifteen years from now it will be worth from $100 to $150 an acre. Nebraska farming land is a better investment today than government bonds. Nothing for the "Hole" "Will Maupin's Weekly" will be the title of a new periodical issued from Lincoln, be ginning this week. It will succeed the "Wageworker," which Mr. Maupin has been publishing for several years, and is expected to cover a more extensive field of activity. The ambition of the publisher is to make it a state weekly which will be yearned for by all sexes and classes. Mr. Maupin has sufficient individuality and ability to make such a journal. It's a gamble whether it will be a gold-mine or a rat-hole. The goddess of periodical fortune is a fickle and capri cious creature. Here's hoping she will smile on Brother Maupin. Albion News. Will Maupin's Weekly may not prove to be a gold mine, but we are resting comfort able in the assurance that it can not be a "rat hole." or that if it is it will be the most thoroughly unfilled "rat hole" that ever ex isted. All that we could pour into a "rat hole" wouldn't waken an insomaniac rodent out of a light doze. However, Will Maupin's Weekly thanks its Albion contemporary,, for its hearty good wishes, and the editor thanks it for its complimentary references to himself. A Big Enterprise One of the largest reclamation enterprises ever undertaken in the west is under, way in Nebraska right now, yet there has been very little said in the public prints. The project is going to cost a quarter of a million dol lars, and it is going to reclaim a couple of million dollars' worth of the most fertile soil in Nebraska which means the most fertile soil in the world, the valley of the Nile not excepted. The task in question is the straightening of the Nemaha river channel between Hum boldt and that river's junction with the Mis souri river. By means of this huge ditch the Nemaha's channel will be shortened over one-half between the points named, thus preventing overflows that have for years made thousands of acres of land practically worthless, but which, when protected by the ditch, will be the finest corn and wheat lands in America. The farmers benefitted by the ditch are paying the bills, and doing it glad ly. Work has been in progress over a year, and owing to the mildness of the present winter it is thought that the ditch will be completed before the spring rains begin. SHORT ARM JOLTS While the house of representatives was discussing the "tax ferret" bill it was the opportunity of at least one member who is known to be a single taxer, to step to the front and make a few points. The longer a democratic legislature in New York refuses to elect a Sheehan to the -senate, the more we think of a democratic legislature in New York, and there is lots of room for our esteem to grow, too,