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The Commonere
WILLIAM J. BRYAN, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
Vol. 6. No. 21
Lincoln, Nebraska, June 8, 1906
Whole Number 281
CONTENTS
Mb. Bryan's Letter
MionAEL Davitt
The Eight-Hour Bill Reported
Dishonest Dollars
Increase in Cost ov Building
Barnes and the Muck Brush
Tremendous Disclosure oir-Facts
How the Beef Trust Poisons Food
Miles on 'Embalmed Beef" '
Comment on Current Topics
Home Department-
Whether Common or Not
News of the Week.
PLAYING WITH FIRE
The appeal to commercialism made by those
who are anxious to avoid rigid inspection of
meats can not be effective. Meat packing is a
great industry and stock raising is a great in
dustry; but it would be better that every packing
house in the land be closed, and better that the
raising of cattle for food purposes be abandoned
than that the men, women, and children of Amer
ica be fed upon poisoned food; ;
Those politicians who are temporizing upon,
this serious matter are playing with fire. Al
ready the meat industry has suffered because thou
sands of people have ceased for a time to eat
meat, driven from that food through the fear of
poison. The only way to save the industry is
by a system of inspection that will inspect. To
establish this system the co-operation of state
and municipal governments with the federal gov
ernment will be necessary.
The beef trust, made bold by its "immunity
bath," has vigorously fought proposed reforms in
the matter of meat inspection. It is not strange
that these men exaggerate their power and in
fluence. They do have great influence with pub
lic officials, but they have never before faced the
poisoned food issue. They will lose in their con
test with the people on that issue.
JJJ
FETCHING
The New York Evening Post says: "Its moral
..and political turpitude, however, is not in the
least relieved by the court's decision. Perkins
slyly took ' money belonging to widows and or
phans, and applied it to a purpose which he had
no reason to suppose they would approve, though
he well knew that, if the gift of insurance money
to the republican campaign fund were made pub
lic, it would cause a scandal Qf the first magni
tude, and defeat its own end. Hence the secrecy
observed, the round-about method of giving the
money, and the arrangement to keep the 'sum
off the accounts till after the election. This,
the court now says, was not the act of a criminal.
It was, at any rate, the act of a trickster."
The Post certainly has a fetching way of put
ting things.
JJJ
APOLOGIZE TO GENERAL MILES
Charles P. Neill, commissioner of labors and
James B. Reynolds, sent to Packingtown as com
missioners from the president, have reported that
conditions are terrible, and that all manner of
diseased meat is palmed off on the public.
Did not General Nelson A. Miles tell us some
thing about "embalmed" beef soon after the
Spanish-American war? If memory is not at
fault General Miles was roundly denounced by
republican newspapers as a "trouble breeder."
WiWW 1M
FOODSTUFFS FOR THE MILLIONS
EASTERN INDIA
Mr. Bryan's Twenty-First Letter
'.
-. We have at last reached India and what
extremes are here! Southern India penetrates
the Indian Ocean and is so near the Equator
that the inhabitants swelter under the heat of
v a perpetual summer, while the rocky sentinels
that guard the northern frontier are clad in the
ice of an eternal winter. As might be expected
in a land which has every altitude from sea level
to nearly thirty thousand feet, one finds all varie
ties of vegetation, from the delicate fern of the
tropics to the sturdy edelweist that blossoms In
the snow from the grain and orchards of Agra,
Oudh and the Punjab to the cotton, rice and
fruits of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The
extremes are as noticeable among the people as
in nature's realm. In learning there is a great
gulf between the Hindu pundit and the ignorant
ryot; there is a wide sea between the wealth
of the native prince and the poverty of the
masses; and there is a boundless ocean between
the government and the people.
Eastern India is entered through Calcutta,, a
city of more than a million inhabitants which
has been built up under British occupancy. It
Is the capital of the province of Bengal and the
winter capital of British 'India. I say winter
capital because the higher English officials have
their headquarters at Simla, eight thousand feet
up in the Himalayas, during eight months of the
year. Calcutta is on the Hooghly river; one of
the numerous mouths of the Ganges; and the
Ganges, it may be added, Is a little disappointing
to one who has read about it from youth. In
stead of being a large river, flowing down from
the .Himalayas directly to the aea, It is neither
of great length nor of great width, and It; runs
for hundreds of miles along the foot of the range
and joins the Brahamaputra which comes from
an opposite direction and apparently Is much
longer. The mouths of the joint stream form a
delta like that of the Nile, which at the coast
is something like two hundred miles wide.
Lacking the antiquity of the cities of the
interior, Calcutta does not possess many things
of interest to the touriBt, no elaborate tombs,
no massive mosques and few temples of impor
tance, although all shades of religion are repre-
sentcd here. There is a very pretty Jain temple
in the suburbs, and in the city there is a Hindu
temple whore goats are offered as a sacrifice, but
the center of Hinduism is at Benares, while Agra,
Delhi and Lucknow furnish the finest specimens
of the taste of the Mohammedan rulers. There
are at Calcutta some fine public buildings and
less pretentious private blocks, some beautiful
parks and a very extensive museum.
In this museum one can learn more of the
various races of India, of their dress, implements
and weapons, more of the animal and insect life,
more of India's mineral wealth, more of her
woods, stones and marbles, more of her agri
cultural products and manufactures than he can
in weeks of travel. He sees here mounted speci
mens of Bug and butterfly, bird, fish and beast.
It is the very Mecca of the student and we saw
a number of groups thus engaged. Among the
insects there are several which illustrate the
mimicry of nature to a marvelous degree. Some
I
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