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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (March 20, 1903)
vntttt i TKr- w t1 pr'.'p'TiwCT'-'',' ir j'jff .'w.Tarflr-wwwcrf: The Commoner. 7 :Vfi & '."jt e;:& --& "vf lit I8K3KK1 T A.TL.1 8T &r A; MARCH 20, 1903. visitors to the shrines of Shakespeare and to tha shrines of Burns are presented as follows: Shake speare's shrines Shakespeare's house at Strat ford, 31,748; Shakespeare's museum at Stratford, 20,144; Shakespeare's tomb in Stratford church, 25,731; Ann Hathaway 's cottage, 13,652; total, 91,275. Burns' shrines Burn's birthplace at Ayr, 50,092; Burns' monument on the banks of the Doon, 66,lb8; total, 116,250. This writer contends that this statement shows that 24,975 more people did homage to Burns than did homage to Shake speare by way of pilgrimages in the year. THE CONSCIENCE FUND IN THE FEDERAL' treasury is growing rapidly these days. Ac cording to the Washington correspondent for the New York World during the week ending March 7, $5,500 was contributed to that fund. Contri-' buttons to the conscience fund attract considera ble attention in the treasury department. The ."World correspondent says that from fifty to seventy-five contributions are received every year from persons who have defrauded the government and want to make reparation. The contributions range from a two-cent Btamp to thousands of dollars, and ihey come from children and gray- haired men and women. The government guards the fund most, carefully, jtfa prosecution is ever 'based on the -remittance from a person with a Sjtrouble'd .cp'n.sclehce and the names of the senders are never maae puDiic. iNot many oi tue icitera sent with money are signed, but there are often cases where -the, identity of the senders could bo asily established, but there is no effort to trace them. The government is content to get the j&vmoney. Most of the letters are signed "(Jon 'fscignce''. and the writing is often disguised. Each contrtDuuon is,acimowieagea oy a ouneun pos.iou l, in the secretary's office, . giving the amount and the place it came from; ..;. J? . .. ji-npHAT THE LARGEST ADDITIONS TO THE X conscience iuna come irom Dusiness meu mr who have given undervaluations' in importing goods and -who have cheated the government out of duties and have since experienced a change of heart is an interesting fact presented by the "World correspondent It is explained that many contributors are received- from women, inpay ment of duty on articles smuccled into -the tooun- w try. '-The. small sums are usually for- stampsf'that were used twice. The following letter was re ceived from a Baltimore woman on February 16: "Inclosed find $20 American money which should have been paid at the New York "custom house." This one came in a few days agov'from a woman in Santa Ana, ..Cat.: "United States Conscience Fund: "When I was a very young girl I once used a two-cent stamp which had been cancelled. I did not realize the sin then, and did not know of the conscience fund until a year" or two ago. I am sorry I did it, but God has revealed my duty to me, so I send the inclosed stamps, eight cents." A New York man sent four $100 bills to the fund this week by open mail. With the money was this note: "Inclosed please find $400 conscience money." The largest contribution' ever received was a draft for $14,000 sent by a minister in Eng land He said the money was given to him to send by a man who was converted in his church. The most peculfar contribution came from a man who cut a pile of $8,000 in bills squarely in halves. . He sent ono-half, and said if that were acknowl edged he would forward the other. He evidently feared that the money might not reach the proper authority. The receipt of the first half of the bi sected currency was acknowledged and the other half was received a few days later. The following shows the total additions to the conscience fund in recent years: 1902, $35,808.22; 1901, $2,263.30; 1900, $3,816.22; 1899, $8,666.11; 1898, $5,110.70; 1897, $2,842.22; 1896 $16,740.56; 1895, $2,693.07; 1894, $3,663.01. NEW ORLEANS CLAIMS THE HONOR OF being the first city in the United States to erect a statue to a woman. The New Orleans cor respondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat says that "the monument stands in Margaret place, at the intersection of Camp and Prytanla streets. It commemorates the charities of Margaret Haugh ery, a woman reared in poverty, ,who accumulated a fortune in the milk and bakery business. Sho spent freely in the care and help of the poor in the city, and when she died her money, was di vided among the charitable institutions' of New Orleans. Margaret was a young, ignorant woman when she lost her little boy, and, although sho had but -servant's 'wages, she began at once to spend her- money for the children of the poor about. her. She used to carry bread and milk to the orphan asylum when she had no money to give, and no matter how little money she pos sessed she divided with those who were poorer than she. When she died the people of Now Orleans erected this statue in her .memory. Mar garget is represented in the woollen shawl and cotton dress familiar to residents of tho city for so many years, with a little child by her side." THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER IS NOT Ex empt from trouble, if one is to accept tho opinion expressed by Maximilian Toch, a mem ber of the Now York Chemist club. In an ad dress recently delivered in New York city, Mr. Toch said that several large buildings In New York are doomed to early destruction. He pre sented tho pictures of two of the doomed struc tures and pointed out that because of the faulty construction in steel work these buildings wero subject to corrosion by the elements. Mr. Toch showed lantern slide pictures of tho girders taken from certain large buildings . in which it was shown that these girders were badly eaten with rust, although they had been in use for only five years. He expressed the opinion that when these buildingd wero properly constructed with steel " girders and- beams imbedded in tho proper ma terial they would last hundreds of years, and yet the dangers of corrosion by the elements have not yet been properly considered by builders. THERE IS NO MORE INTERESTING CHAR' actor in the world than Helen Kellar, tho talented woman who is deaf and blind and yot who in spite of her afflictions is actively engaged in a great educational work. Recently Miss Kel- '' lar appeared before a committee of the Massa chusetts legislature in support of the bill provid ing for the appointment of a commission to in vestigate the condition of the adult blind with a view of establishing a state industrial training school where such afflicted people may learn to "become self-supporting. Speaking before this committee, Miss Kellar said: "If this common wealth will establish a commission to place the blind in positions of self-support it will be doing three thingshelping the blind, relieving itself of tho burden of caring for them and setting an ex ample for other states. Already Massachusetts has delayed too lbng in a work In which she should lead. It is not higher education the blind need; it is not Greek and Latin, butjndustrial training and some one with influence and authority, to help them to a place in the industrial world." V? A GALVESTON, TEX., SCIENTIST HAS DE termined at least to his own satisfaction the cause of tho unusually heavy rains this sea son and speaking to a representative of tho Gal veston News, this scientist explains that it is a recently established fact in weatherology that ev ery drop of rain must have as a nucleus a par ticle of dust, therefore an increase in the dusty supply may cause an increase of rain. This nucleus is not, of course, dust such as is blown up from dry roads and plains, but extremely fine volcanic dust such as falls on ships thousands of miles from land. Hence, he attributes the recent increased rainfall to the millions of tons of dust thrown into the upper air by the eruptions of Mount Peleo and Soufriere, coupled to the circum stances that tho drift of tho higher air currents as proven by the course of cyclones is from tho Antilles towards the gulf and Atlantic coasts. It seems at least a more reasonable theory than that of attributing weather conditions to the po ' sition of Jupiter. ALTHOUGH IT HAS FREQUENTLY BEEN said that the veterans of the civil war are rapidly disappearing from public gaze, it is a fact that among the membership of the United States senate there are fourteen men who served in the confederate army and thirteen who served in the federal army. Among this number Senator Pettus of Alabama served in the Mexican as well as in the civil war. SOME ONE RECENTLY SAID THAT VEN tilation is to be the fad of the future. Tho citizens of Anaconda, Mont., have taken time by the forelock and are undertaking to provide ven tilation for the entire city. Anaconda is one of the copper cities of Montana and the people there have been sorely afflicted with the stifling va pors that ascend from the chimneys of the smelter. The Portland Oregonian says: "Loaded with tho fumes of arsenic, antimony, zinc, and sulphuric acid, these vapors have been anything but agreeable or healthful. Experiments looking lo their elimination havo been carried on for tho past threo months, and it has finally been discovered that by cooling tho gases of the volat ilized compounds they will condenso, and by build ing flues sufficiently largo so that tho Velocity of tho gaseB will bo very low, tho condensed par ticles will settlo at tho bottom of tho flue, allow ing only tho permanent gases to escape. These aro not injurious, cither to vegetable or animal life, honco it Is thought that tho 'smoke hulsanco' of the copper city can bo abated. A flue sixty feet In -width and twenty foot deep will be constructed at once in connection with tho now smelter of tho Anaconda company, which will pass its gases Into a monster stack 30 feet In diameter and 300 foot high, delivering the permanent gages and products of tho combustion at an elevation so high above tho valley that nb trace of their fumes will load the air of the town or tho valley below. Tho ex pense will bo enormous, but If there is a busi ness that can stand it, It is tho coppor business. Tho offort of tho company to abate this disagree able feature of Its Industry cannot bo charged wholly to its regard for suffering humanity, since it was undertaken to quiet clamor raised against the location of its now reduction works. However, no ono Is inclined to look tho gift horse in . o mouth, and tho people will accopt tho relief prom ised without questioning tho motivo that prompted FORTY ACRES OF PURE PLASTER OF . Paris from ten to fifty feet thick, according to a news item In tho New York Tribune, is tho result of tho offort of two boys to smoke a rabbit out of a hole under a ledge on Gloss mountain, Woods county, Oklahoma. Tho gypsum ledge was formerly the homo of numberless wild creatures, which lived in tho crevices of tho rocks, using dry cow chips, sticks and other rubbish for their nests. The whole mountainside was a mass of flames almost immediately when firo was applied, 4and it burned for days. Only 300 degrees is re quired to convert gypsum into plaster of - parls, and tho ledge is being transformed into whito powder. A TREE LOVER WHO HAS RECENTLY Vis ited Mt. Vernon informed a representative' of tho Philadelphia Record that all tho weeping wil lows in this country are descended from a twig planted by a step-son of George Washington at his place at Abingdon a few miles from Mt. Vernon. This tree lover tells tho story in this way: "Young Custls, as a member of Washington's military fam-, ily, sometimes carried messages, under a flag, be tween tho belligerent commanders. In this ser vice he became acquainted with a young British officer who, like others, had come over with an impression that tho 'rebellion' would be speedily crushed out, and that he would then settlo on tho confiscated lands of the rebels. Ho had even brought a twig from tho weeping willow near Pope's villa, at Twickenham, carefully wrapped in oiled silk. As his visions of, a castle In America faded away he gavo a twig to John Parko Custls, who, on his return to Abingdon in the spring, planted it near his house. It grew and flourished. Just how It multiplied may bo noted from one end of the country to the other." AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION IS NOW ON among English scientists with respect to tho Star of Bethlehem. A London cablegram to tho Chicago Inter-Ocean says: "David Forbes haz ards the supposition that it was the comet called Halley's comet, which has an interval of ap proximately seventy-five years, ten months, and six days. It was last visible in October, 1835, and will probably, therefore, be seen again in 1911. Halloy, who saw tho comet in 1682, predicted Its return in 1759. Several reappearances havo been observed. Pompey's defeat of Mlthrldates in 152 B. C. was signalized by one appearance; Josephus mentions another at the destruction of Jerusalem, about 75 A. D. Mr. Forbes contends that one o the returns of the comet between thesetwo dates must have been about the date of the -bfrth of Christ Some months before the birth the wise men saw 'his star' In the east The comet "would then bo on its course toward the sun, on Its re turn six months later it would be In the zenith above Bethlehem about tho end of December. If the subsequent dates are computed It ylll be no ticed that the comet was apparently fifteen years out, and should have reappeared in 1820 instead of 1835. Mr. Forbes surmounts this difficulty by re marking that it was not until tho sixth century that Dlonysius made out the present chronology, and that ho then made an error of fifteen "years, -which became stereotyped. This year, therefore, should be 1888." -:,.-;? '-