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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (July 21, 1905)
'""T"WT"'"T"innnwWMWJjPIMpH()lm(WjiJ i iff 6 A president's support of Mr. Root will bo of Uio strenuous kind. From now until convention timo in 1908 every important appointment that is mado will bo handed out with tho understanding, implied and understood if not actually stated in plain English, that tho man to whom it is given will work for Mr. Hoot. The word will be passed along tho lino to all tho present federal ofllcc holdcrs of tho rank which entitles them to active participation in politics, and with the quiet but always effective work of tho corporations and their agents, it is expected that a machine will bo created .that will bo powerful enough to secure Mr. Root's nomination on tho first ballot. It was not until the president promised Mr. Root this kihd of support that Mr. Root agreed to surrender his immensely lucrative, law practice which im pelled his retirement from tho cabirfet and which ho at first was docidely advers3 to giving up." . GOOD STORY is told by the .Ottawa cor respondent for the Now York World con- VnrnlnrrwrtnvGmor La Follette's recent address be fore tho Chautauqua at Ottawa. It had been an nounced that the governor would speak on "The Wdrld's Greatest Tragedy" and the correspondent says that everybody in Kansas believed it related lo the acts of tho Standard Oil company or tho bqef trust, adding "these are the only two trage dies they know anything about." A great aud ience assembled prepared to hear something with respect to the great public questions that are just now attracting general attention. What they really heard was a classical lecture on Hamlet. While it is not denied that the people of Kansas have an intimate acquaintance with the history of the mad prince, It is plain that they were dis appointed that, tho Wisconsin governor, who has mado such a gallant fight for public interests, failed to speak to them on the subjects that are now pressing heavily upon public attention. THE FOLLOWING extract from a private let ter recently received from a sojourner at Panama is given by a reader of the New York World: "This (the canal) is the most bungled up and worst-organized affair I have ever seen. The chi f sanitary ofllcor, Gorgas, wrote an art icle which appoared in Harpor's Weekly, com paring tho first year of tho French regime with that of the Americans, running the French down. But to give every one his due, if this American crowd should have to contend with the disadvan tages the French had, they would not get started In fifty years. It costg them at present $100 gold per cubic yard of dirt removed from the Culebra Cut, eight or nine steam shovels at work, and some days they only move about ten train loads of ten cars to a train, and then they throw the dirt excavated where they will have to take it out again, and between favoritism and grafting I don't believe they will finish the canal in a thousand years. They have been putting in the waterworks for over fifteen months and some streets mostly all they have ripped up live times. There are lots of yellow fever, smallpox, and to cap the climax, I believe, typhoid." PERHAPS the most interesting statement with respect to the Panama canal was made by J. D. Yeomans in a nowgpaper interview at Sioux City, Iowa. Mr. Yeomans served for many years on the interstate commerce commission. He said: "The Panama canal is the biggest hum bug of the age. I havo no hesitancy in saying that in my opinion there will never be a canal built there. No important American engineer, who was not paid for it, ever hazarded the opin ion that there would bo a canal there. The last monthly report of work done shows that it will take 110 years to finish it. The weeds grow in one end faster than they carry the dirt out of the other. No engineer has ever found a rock or a clay bod in that celebrated Culebra cut, where tho United States has done the most of Its work. There has been a cut of 350 feet there, and thirty inches of rain falls in thirty hours down those banks. Does anyone suppose that the alluvial soil won't wash down in there to make a r.mud canal too thick for a government dredge boat to keep afloat in?" THE Nicaragua route was generally admitted to be feasible and according to Mr. Yeo mans "for that reason it was abandoned." Mr. Yeomans adds: "I was a member of a syndicate prepared to build a canal there for $120,000,000 - which would have carried 27,000,000 tons of mer .uhandise annually. We were prepared to do tho work in four years. This looked too much like a canal, and the greatest influences behind the present transcontinental transportation business buimuuiy ceaseu opposing the canal project and iflke Commoner. pushed the clamor over to Panama. The men who run our big railroads know what Panama is. By the Nicaragua route as projected a ship could leave New York harbor and arrive in San Fran cisco in eighteen days.x No freight train is now scheduled to go overland inside of twenty-three days. That is what struck in the Nicaragua pro ject. Red tape, civil service reform and yellow eyes will do the rest. Do you suppose congress will go on putting up money for gravestones and quinine down there? I am glad I am not in it Everybody down there wants to do what Wal lace did, or what the boss of the whole works is , doinglive in New York and run it by proxy. Why should Shonts or Wallace be chosen to dig a canal anyway? They never did a piece of work in their lives of this sort, or anything calculated to equip them for doing it. Every man selected so far to do the work has been picked from a transcontinental railroad. Would you pick a com petitor to build a competing business? They may be all right, but none of it looks like a canal to me." A SPECIAL commission appointed by the pres ident is at work investigating the contract awarded by Public Printer Palmer to the Lan son Monotype company for seventy-two additional machines. The Washington correspondent for the New York World says that this commission has held star chamber proceedings, and that it is clear that "the scandal is so bad that the com mission dare not let it become public or an effort will be made to whitewash the affair." The World's correspondent tells of numerous and cost ly entertainments given by the Lanson Machine company to the officers and employes of the gov ernment printing office. CHAIRMAN SHONTS, of the Panama, canal commission, according to the Washington correspondent of the Houston (Texas) Post, said in a conversation with a friend recently that it would be utterly impracticable to build a lock canal across the isthmus, or rather that such a canal would be of such little practical service that it was essential that the canal to be built should be at sea level. Chairman Shonts is fur ther credited with the statement that the cost of a sea level canal will be $600,000,000. The esti mates of some of those who have figured out the probable cost cf such a canal reaches one billion dollars. THE Washington correspondent for the Hous ton (Texas) Post says: "Slowly but surely the almost insurmountable -difficulties that will confront the United States in the construction of a navigable canal across the Isthmus of Panama are coming to the surface. Most of those who have gone there in an official capacity while conceding that the difficulties to be met with could be overcome, made no denial that they were great and that it would require the highest en gineering skill and the expenditure of an even larger sum of money than was first estimated to bring the work to a successful culmination." CI OMMENTING upon the various developments J concerning the canal situation, the Houston Post speaking editorially says: "It will not be long at this rate before those who favor a canal will have to contemplate the l.ossible abandon ment of Panama and return to the Nicaragua project. In the event of such a shift and in view of all the expense and scandal of Panama, what will the people think of the flurry and fury of eighteen months ago? And what will they think of Mr. Roosevelt's part in forcing us to Panama when the road was clear to the clean and feasible project of Nicaragua? And if re are forced to Nicaragua as a final resort after all the scandal and expense of Panama, what wllli the people think of strenuosity and 'doing things?' Panama is pregnant with the greatest scandal in history, and the government is threatened with terrible retribution for its disregard of good morals in the preliminary stages of the undertaking." RODNEY B. SWIFT, formerly head of the ex perimental department of the McCor mick branch of the International Harvester company, has -filed a bill in tho Chicago courts In which he demands that the court require the Harvester company to cease taking rebates from railroad companies, and also to compel the company to return to the railroads moneys which Mr. Swift charges hr.ve been illeg ally exacted in the past. In his bill Mr. Swift makes several interesting disclosures, alleging that the Harvester trust has collected huge re bates, has reaped enormous profits, and that the harvesting machines sold by the trust can bo produced and delivered by the company for $57 .VOLUME 5, NUMBER He charges that the company receives for thr machines $95 from agents, who in turn soli S to the consumer for $125. Ule MR. SWIFT charges that up to September 3ft '1902, the McCormick branch of the Harvl ter company alone received through rebates and the operation of the Illinois Northern road mo than $3,000,000. The money received in rebates to the same date by the Piano branch of tho har vester company through the agency of the Chi" cago West Pullman & Southern railroad amounted to $500,000. He charges that since September 30 1902, the Harvester company has received largo rebates under the guise of "division of freight rates," and that these rebates since 1902 amount to more than $1,000,060. IN HIS LETTER to Tammany July 4, Judgo Parker said: "We sometimes fondly assert that greed and overgovernment, those inseparable evils, are new. However, the smallest reflection forces the conclusion that these perils havo been so manifested from the earliest days of history as to bring ruin to governments and desolation to peoples. And, curiously, the relations they bear have been so close that overgovernment has sometimes been suggested, by well-meaning per sons, as an antidote to greed, with the result of showing, in the end, that their interests and their effects are the same. Thus, because greed, left to run riot, has produced some bad conditions in cities and in great corporations, we are ad vised to run headlong into municipal or govern ment ownership and operation. This policy is advocated in spite of the fact that, in other coun tries, and in surroundings far more favorable for these experiments than our own, they have uni formly interfered with development and curbed initiative. In other words, the only alternative thus presented for the curbing, of greed is that of rushing wildly into all the perils of over government. It is thus made incumbent upon us to recognize, in the first place, that, as the dangers which confront us are not new, they require nothing but the old respect for law, a demand for rigid execution and a recognition of these doctrines and practices which fix unalter ably the limits of right and wrong. We do not need to look for new cures for' the old diseases; we have only to apply the old remedies in drastic doses." JUDGE PARKER'S remarks do not greatly im press the New York American. Commenting on Judge Parker's letter, the American says: "How stimulating a doctrine this is! If a beef trust plunders the land, let the 'old respect for law' rebuke it while the old and respectable law yers serve the trust. If the people suffer from the extortions of a eas trust, let them not think to make their own 'gas. The ancient law, formu lated when tallow dips were burned, will protect them unless the gas company can hire the best lawyers. If monopolists steal subways and streets, lax workingmen 5 per cent of their earnings, and take millions of dollars away from the people or the city, let us not think of building and operating our own roads. The common law, which keeps an uncommon lot of lawyers and judges in com 1 fortable circumstances expounding it, hasa sale and scientific remedy prescribed about the time of James I., when the people rode in sedan chairs. Perhaps the world does move. Indeed, we think it never moved so fast as now, but there is a cer tain type of lawyer and politician that can not keep step with the procession." PROFESSOR MEYER, of the University of Chicago,' has been traveling over the coun try and has delivered speeches at various poinw in the effort to show that great calamity wou u befall the country if railroad reform were brougnj about. Referring to Professor Meyer a writer m the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal says: ' He fj ' pea red also before the Elkins senate commit1 as a witness for the railroads, and of late, has been of valuable assistance to the Washing ton correspondents in furnishing them copy aiow, the same lino for their letters home at a tw of the year when the weather is too warm i write comfortably and news is scarce too. though the professor is necessarily at con8l(:i. able expense and great labor to keep up his i pagandum, he asserts that his is a labor of m an offering to truth, and that he receives no otnw reward than a beautiful consciousness of ojy done. In the absence of proof to the contrary the professor ought to be believed, but there wi be no end of people mean and thoughtless enob to shake the professor, Standard Oil and the uu versity of Chicago up together in their nmjj and explain everything on the ground of v they see there," w . J& h w WUfl j&g Vrmm r, , injrjgiMiial