The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923, April 30, 1909, Page 6, Image 6
f "t - ' v tipf- t- -KgT"fa wi wnymi wr i II ( The Commoner. VOLUME 9, NUMBER 1 6 autMtMVtow3W CURE6NT 'itgujVJilH r "Tropics vfiS ttf IjL.- Ife THE NEW prlninry law of California will bo tested for tho first time next August. A writer in tho Nashville Tennessee Banner, says: "This law provides that all candidates for mu nicipal, county and stato offlccs shall be nom inated by primary votes, and that a' primary advisory volo may bo taken for United States senator. Ono feature of the law is the require ment that nominations of candidates before tho primary shall bo made by petition, and that tho 'signers of petitions shall represent different parts of tho election district. For instance, be foro a man may become a candidate in tho pri mary for a nomination for a state office tho petition in his behalf must be signed by at least ono per cent of the voters of his party in each of at loast ton counties in tho state and in the aggregate by at least ono per cent of tho total number of party voters in tho state. Similar provisions apply to tho smaller election districts." O THE GOEBEL murder case is now only a part of history. An Associated Press dispatch under dato of Frankfort, Ky., April 23, says: "Governor Wilson at 6 o'clock this evening cleared tho Kentucky court records of all charges growing out of tho murder in January, 1900, of Sonntor William Goebel, who was declared to Jmvo been olocted governor, oxcopt those hang ing over state's evidence witnesses in the alleged conspiracy, by granting pardons before trial to former Governor W. S. Taylor and former Sec rotary of Stato Charley Finley, who have been fugitives in the stato of Indiana for nine years; to John Powers, brother of Caleb Powers, who 1b bolleved to be in Honduras; to Holland Whit taker of Butler county, John Davis of Louis ville, and Zeach Steele of Bell county, under Indictment, and who did nob- flee from the state. Those over whom Indictments are left hanging are Wharton Golden of Knox county, now in Colorado; lrank Cecil of Bell county, now a railroad dotective In St. Louis, and William H. Coul ton of Owsley county, said to have died in the west a fow months ago. These cases, with the possible exception of Cecil, will be dismissed, leaving Henry E. Youtsey, now serving a life sentence in tho state penitentiary, the only per son to Buffor for the taking off of Goebel. The petition asking for the pardon of Taylor and Finley was presented to Governor Wilson re cently by Caleb Powers, who himself had only recently been pardoned by the governor upon indictment and after four trials for alleged con nection with tho same crime. The petition was largely Bigned In Kentucky and other states. Reiterating tho belief he expressed some months ago, when ho gnu ted pardons to Caleb Powers and James P. Howard that no ono but Youtsey had part in the murder, and that it was not a conspiracy, Governor Willson says that he be lieves it a 'sacred duty, which I must no longer delay, to carry this belief into effect.' " SENATOR STONE, of Missouri, addressed tho senate advocating his plans for Philippine independence within fifteen years or some sim ilar period to bo determined upon and free trade with the Philippine Islands in tho meantime In the form of an amendment Mr. Stone pro posed to strike out section 5 of the Aldrich Payne tariff bill and to substitute a pulsion S1U U t0. Wuo policy of the United States to grant independence to tho islands IrZZT thT, hay "oreanlZed stable gov ernment capable of maintaining public order;" to negotiate agreements with other powers to insure tho islands' independence by neutralizing Stote. untn'nJf fref, futy into the United States until this policy has been fulfilled "all articles wholly the growth and product of the islands," n consideration of which agricultural implements and machinery, cotton and pohSI manufactures, books and pubCtionsancl ma chinery for use in manufactures of all kinds "wholly tho growth and product of tho TTnitSi States," should be admitted free 'into tho iSSd? While not opposing tho section In question on protection grounds, Mr. Stone admitted that he had been much impressed by the contention that tho free imnortat nn nf crm,. .i j, " " U1UL ill Phiiinni;;", ,";?" .tum lucco irom i'i". ouuiu uu disastrous to the grow- crs of tobacco and sugar beets and cane in this country without a corresponding benefit to tho consumer. He admitted that free trade might so alarm those interested in the devel opment of tho growing beet sugar industry in this country as to check its expansion. Further more, he questioned the wisdom of encouraging tho investment of American capital to build up industries of a foreign country to tho detriment of our own. Summarizing his reason for not supporting the section of the bill as it stands, Mr. Stone said ho could not do so because "First, If tho islands are to bo regarded as an American territory, then they are within the union, and their products should have free access to all our ports without restriction or limitation. Second, If our occupation of the islands is in tended to be only temporary, and if it be our policy to surrender them to their own people, then wo should pass no law which would tend to create such commercial or political conditions between the islands and this country as might dolay or embarrass the final completion of our purpose; and, third, We are under no such obligations to tho Philippine people as to make It our duty to support their government or to build up their industries at the expense of our own. I prefer to stand squarely upon the dem ocratic platform, and do for the Filipinos what we have already done for the Cubans set them upon their feet and let them work out their own destiny." THOSE ROOSEVELT republicans who be lieved that Mr. Taft could be depended upon to support real tariff revision will be interested in the following Washington dispatch to the St. Louis Republic: "All hope of a revision down ward disappeared and the chance of the enac tion of an income tax was materially lessened when President Taft's indorsement of the Aid rich bill minus an income tax became known today. The immediate result was the display of absolute confidence by Senator Aldrich, who, after Senator Cummins introduced his income tax amendment and delivered his speech de fending it, started his tariff bill upon greased ways and down towards its final passage. The formal reading of the bill paragraph by para graph was begun. Those persons who hitherto have doubted are now convinced that President Taft has lined with the 'reactionary forces in the senate and against the western element, known as the 'progressives.' Until now other developments have indicated that such is the position chosen by the new president. He stood with Speaker Cannon and assisted him in pass ing the 'gag' rule whereby the Payne bill, some what mutilated, but still a measure carrying higher average duties than the Dingley law, was put through the house. He permitted At torney General Wickersham to whitewash the threatened new prosecution of the beef trust for rebating. Appointments have been made under the machine system which obeys the wishes of the politicians working through the senators. In these and other minor ways those of the 'Roosevelt policies' in line with western radical sentiment have been obviously tossed into the discard." TIE OLD question "who wrote the Junius letters" is being revived. Charles R. Brock writes to the Denver News this note: "Apropos the recent and interesting article in the News on the identity of 'Junius,' copy of a clipping from the Cornhill Magazine is herewith submit ted. This clipping I found in an edition of Junius, presented to me nineteen years ago by le..latS,uCol??el. John - Hodees of Lexington, Ky." The clipping from the Cornhill Magazine follows: "It seems strange that a love letter should supply another link in fixing the author ship of the most scathing invective and the bit terest sarcasm in the language. But there is published at the end of Mr. Chabot's book, as the work of another well known expert, Mr Netherclift, the fac-simile of an epistle to a lady' in a disguised upright hand of Sir Philip Francis1 that is identical with the disguised upright hand nf 'S8; Za r,Itten at Bath ln th winter of 1770 to a Miss Giles, daughter of one of the officials of the Bank of England, afterward gov ernor when in the time of Mr. Pitt the Bank of England stopped payment. In those days it was customary at the assembly rooms for a lady to retain her partner during the whole of the evening and for several evenings Mr. Francis and Miss Giles danced together. The result of it was a very tolerable copy of verses, delivered to Miss Giles with an anonymous letter, wherein tho writer declared that, having found tho verses, which were unaddressed, he. could not conceive for whom they were meant, unless for her. At the time tho young lady suspected the author, but said nothing, and it was not till years afterward, when, through the wife of Mr. King, of Taplow, she still kept the papers, that a scrap of Junius' writing was being handed round the company in which she happened to be.' 'Why,' exclaimed Mrs. King, when the pa per came to her, 'I know that writing. The person who wrote that wrote me some verses and a letter.' And on comparison, though the verses were plainly by another hand, the letter was as plainly in the hand of Junius. The verses, Sir Philip's composition, were afterward proved to have been dictated to his friend, Tilgh man, who spent the winter of 1770 with him at Bath, in one of whose letters from America part of a verse is jokingly quoted, in proof of Fran cis' capacity for poetry of the highest order." IN AN EDITORIAL entitled "Mr. Bryan Should be Heard From," the New York Tribune says: "It will be remembered that shortly after the election Mr. Bryan, with ar fine minatory air, called upon Tammany to explain why it had done no better for the national dem ocratic candidate. He reminded the public that four years before it had also made a signal failure, although that year 'it was understood that both the ticket and the platform suited Tammany.' And he asked the very pointed question: 'Is the national party to have Tam many used as an argument against it, and when Tammany is powerless to help the national party, even when it does its best?' In other words, must the democracy continue to suffer from the discredit of harboring the Tammany organization without any compensating benefit? This we have always thought was one of the most promising lines of inquiry ever opened by the democracy's moral leader. Nothing is more likely to stir the democratic conscience than the thought of a dishonorable connection, with 'nothing in it for the party. We have been waiting eagerly for Mr. Bryan to proceed along this line. If he has been pausing only until further occasion should provoke him, he has his occasion now. One of his issues in the last election was reform in the house rules and im provement in the conditions of legislation in congress. Yet when the democratic party had it in its power, with the aid of the republican 'insurgents' in the house of representatives, to reform the house rules, Tammany, with its ally, McCarren, deserted, preventing the democracy from putting a substantial achievement to its credit and leaving its representation in the house demoralized. Mr. Bryan has thus a new count against Tammany. Not only is the connection discreditable to the democracy at election times, but it is disadvantageous at all other seasons, lammany is not only a disgraceful but a treach erous ally. Let Mr. Bryan give this practical situation a moral turn and rouse the conscience of his party, for if he does nothing after what has just happened in Washington his party's conscience will surely go stale." WILLIAM MARION REEDY, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, knows something about tho kind of prosperity which the republican party !?Jii .?Bt th?v.Am.?,rican pePle In an editorial printed in the Mirror, Mr. Reedy says: "O, yes; prosperity is here. Men are selling them selves on the block in Brooklyn, to the highest bidder. A man in Baltimore offers himself for sale in a want ad' in one of the papers. What a ghastly damnable fraud the papers foster with their edito-ial proclamation of returned good times and revived business. There may be 'white Jies.' This prosperity lie is not one of them, it is the blackest sort of lie, for it nurses V yrtmjtyw.t (n4n-"Mk -tt