ing, and as a conversationalist Mr. Whedon is not reckoned
a among the leaders. He never uses language to conceal his
thoughts. Quite the contrary. '
Whes Charley Pool is elected secretary of state as he
will be if the voters of Nebraska are wisethat office will be
filled by a country newspaper man who has been so busy boost
ing for Nebraska during the past twenty years that he has had
very little time left in which to boost for himself. Charley
Pool is deserving of preferment at the hands of Nebraskans!
That's flat. And when he presides at th mahogany desk the
newspaper boys will have a representative of their own class
to go to when they want the facts.
There has been a great deal of dust thrown in the eyes of
the people on account of this county option issue. A sample
of this sort of thing is found in a letter written by William B
Ely from Ainsworth, Neb., and published in the State Journal
of November 1. In that letter Mr. Ely says :
"Under the law as it now stands the whole bill of costs for
the prosecution of (such) crimes falls upon the taxpayers of
the entire county."
Mr. Ely is either too ignorant to discuss the question or
too unfair to be worthy of credence. . The facts are exactly the
opposite to those he has stated. Section" 7165, ' Chapter 32,
Cobbey's Annotated Statutes, 1907, says:
"The person so licensed shall pay all damages that the
community or individuals may sustain in consequence of such
traffic, he shall support all paupers, widows and orphans, and
the expenses of all civil and criminal prosections: growing out
of, or justly attributed to, his traffic in intoxicating drinks;
said damages and expenses to be recovered in any court of
competent jurisdiction by any civil action on the bond named
and required in secti'on six (7155) of this act; a copy of which
properly authenticated, shall be taken in evidence in any court
of justice in this state; and it shall be the duty of the proper
clerk to deliver, on demand, such copy to any person who may
claim to be injured by such traffic.''
If Mr. Ely knows of any case wherein the taxpayers of a
county have been mulcted for costs in any prosecution, civil
or criminal, growing out of the traffic in intoxicants, and has
failed to invoke ths section of the Slocumb law, he is guilty
of failure to do his duty as a citizen.
If Nebraska had a law providing for the recall, with the
present Slocumb law, and officials who failed to enforce that
law discharged by an . outraged public, Nebraska would be in
better shape insofar as liquor legislation is concerned than any
other state in the union.
At the meeting which organized the Lancaster County Op
tion League Rev. H. H .Harmon was elected treasurer and at
- once began the task of raising money, going about it in regu
lar "raising money for a church dedication style." AVhen the
contributions began letting up a bit O. W. Meier, democrat can
didate for county attorney, arose and said he would give ten
dollars.
"Now that compels me to give ten dollars!" exclaimed J.
B. Strode, the republican candidate for the same office.
"Good!" exclaimed Rev. Mr. Harmon. "I wish we had
all the opposing candidates in the room !"
Following is the proposed amendment to the state constitu
tution that is to be voted on next Tuesday, It should be care
fully read, -and its adoption should be certain:
"Every malecitizen of the United States, of the age of
twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of this state
for six months next preceding the election and of the county,
precinct or ward, for the term provided by law shall be an elec
tor; provided, that persons of foreign birth who shall have de
clared their intention to become citizens conformably to the
laws of the United States and are voting at the taking effect
of this amendment, may continue to exercise the right of suf
frage until such time as they may have resided is the United
States five years, after which they shall take out full citizen
ship papers to be entitled to vote at any succeeding election."
That is a wise and sane provision and should be adopted.
Those who vote the straight republisan ticket vote for the
amendment, the republican state convention bp-n? elorsed
it as a party proviso. Those who vote the democratic ticket
will have to vote specifically for the amendment or be counted
as having cast a half-vote against it. There is no reason why
any voter should record himself against the adoption hereof .
HOW ORGANIZED LABOR
IS MISREPRESENTED
Another sample of ho worganized labor is misrepresented
by the daily press comes from Denver.
A few weeks ago the web pressmen of Denver went on
strike to enforce the findings of a board of arbitration, which
findings the employers refused to abide by after agreeing to
leave the matter to arbitration.
Recently Albert 1. Kreitler, third vice president of the In
ternational Printing Pressmen . and Assistants' Union, who is
in charge of the Denver situation for the strikng pressmen, ad
dressed the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. The next
morning the daily papers served by the Associated Press an
nounced under glaring headlines that Kreitler had declared
that the newspaper offices of Denver would be blown up, like
the Los Angeles Times building, before the pressmen would give
in.
Immediately the enemies of organized labor took the .mat
ter up and used the Associated Press report as a basis for fur
ther bitter attacks upon trades unions. No thoughtful mem
ber of the trades union believed that Kreitler had been guilty
of any such anarchistic utterance. Organizations like, the
Printing Pressmen and Assistants are not given to putting in
places of authority or responsibility men who would be so
silly or so anarchistic as to give voice to such sentiments.
The truth has no wcome out, as usual the daily papers
that printed the original lie under glaring headlines content
themselves with giving the truth in a most inconspicuous way.
The facts are these: ..
In a conversation between Kreitler and one of the struck em
ployers the employer said:
"I would see the newspaper building blown up before I
would settle with the Pressmen's Union."
In his address to the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly
Kreitler quoted this utterance of the employer. That was all.
But the Associated Press attributed the language of an in
cendiary employer to the representative of unionism.
Is this manner are the enemies of unionism seeking to poison
the minds of the public at large against the most beneficient
force now at work for the social and economic uplift of the
working masses.
The two Associated Press operators who testified that they
snielled gas in overpowering volumes in the Los Angeles Times
building the night before the explosion that wrecked the build
ing, have been discharged. A "rat" linotype man in' the em
ploy of the Times testfied that if gas sufficient to cause a'n
explosion had leaked it would have put the machines out of
commission. He still holds his job.
Mr. Bryan's scheme of renting his own halls and acting as
his own chairman has many advantages to recommend it. It
enables a man to say what he pleases regardless of party com
mittees. And just now the people are more interested in get
ting the honest sentiments of men than they are in getting the
usual nauseating doses of political "heifer dust" from party
hacks.
Now that Mrs. Raymond Robins and Miss Margaret Haley
have taken up the cudgels in behalf of the striking garment
workers of Chicago, the emploj'ers might as well emulate the
example of Crockett's coon and "come down."
Just as long as Nebraska can raise crops and live stock ag
gregating $50,000,000 a month in value she need not fear any
little old panic that Wall Street may see fit to precipitate.
It will be admitted that Senator Burkett's policy of "disdain-
Till S HI 'H IN MIHMfl, Ml (MM V Ulit? 1.1 C 1 Cttll V tUUlU UlX V Cliitl 1 1
the ternnc iaus administered oy jnaries j.