THE WAGEWORKER
Published every Friday by The Wageworker Publishing
Company, 1705 O Street, Lincoln, Nebraska
WILL M. MAUPIN, Editor
E. L. GRUBB, Manager
-?
GLORY!
OOME few,years ago the World-Herald excited the ris
ibihties of its large family of readers, and the carp
ing remarks of envious contemporaries, with a day- after
election leading editorial on the engrossing subject of
Tea Culture in J apan. " If those who laughed and those
who jeered could only have known, from first hand ex
perience how trying it is, after spending exciting and
strenuous weeks in saving the country, to get down to
normal and write zestfully of other than political matters
on election day, they would have had a fellow-feeling for
the writer of that editorial. For it is on election day,
when the ferocious battle of the ballots is raging, when
the die of fate is being cast, when the result is clouded
in an agonizing uncertainty, that the editorial for the day
after must be written. The writer is wrapped in the one
subject he cannot discuss. Little wonder if he is some
times driven as far away as Japan in his quest for some
other subject!
npHIS year, however, we return our thanks to Collier's
J- Weekly for affording us the opportunity to stay right
here m Nebraska. In its current issue it prints an
editorial on Nebraska that ought to make mighty inter
esting reading for Nebraska people even on the day after
election; that ought to comfort the losers and swell the
victors with additional pride. Appropriately enough, it
is headed "Glory." This is it: 8 '
Nebraska in 1909 produced corn more valuable than all the gold
mined in the United States and Alaska, and worth more than our
total tobacco crop. , She produced wheat worth more than the
total sugar production of the United States; live stock worth more
than the crude petroleum of the whole United States; live stock
grain, poultry, butter, eggs and fruit worth more than the coal in
the United States, outside of Illinois; hay worth more than all the
gold ane silver produced in Alaska; cereals worth more than
the product of all our copper mines, grass and grain and live
stock worth more than all the iron ore. This is according to the
report of the committee of the legislature and the reports made
to the bureau of labor and industrial statistics. To be a little
more frivolous, if the eggs laid by Nebraska hens in 1909 were
placed in a double row end to end they would be three times as
long as the railroad mileage built in the United States in 1908.
If the permanent school fund of Nebraska were converted into
dollar bills and laid end to end, the line would reach from
Omaha to Salt Lake City, but it probably would not be left for
very long. Less than half of the tillable land in Nebraska is under
.cultivation, and less than forty years ago the region which is now
Nebraska was frequently designated upon the maps of school
geographies as part of "The Great American Desert."
"PRIENDS and fellow countrymen, we are the citizens
of no mean state. Politically speaking, Nebraska
will appear to about half of us at its very worst today.
It will seem to that half of us as if the' demnition bow
wows were growling at our very door. But they aren't.
Ihe ambitions and strifes of men are a passing dream, a
tale soon told and sooner forgotten. The "issues" that
today are "decided" one way may soon be "decided" an
other, and always the question will stare us in the face,'
"What is the Truth?"
But the corn and the wheat and the live stock and
the chickens will keep right on coming! The millions of
fertile acres will remain, and wax int their fertility. "The
Great American Desert" of forty years ago will continue
to burgeon and to blossom. In spite of republican here
sies or democratis 'vagaries, in spite of brewers or prohib
itionists, Nebraska, with its inexhaustible natural wealth,
its energetic and healthy people, its schools and colleges,
its culture and its conscience, will march onward to
greatness and power and increasing plenty.
Let us say "Glory!" with Colliers. Let us be joy
fulor as joyful as we can. And let us have peace.
Omaha World-Herald.
mTIMIIIIIBIIMIMII M-..I,
IT CURT CURRENT COMMENT J
In all candor," good people of Nebraska, what incentive is there
for a public official to endeavor to render good service to the state
after that official has achieved the honor of an election? From
the moment the official takes his seat until he is ready to give
way to his successor he is libeled and villified and denounced un
sparingly. No matter how faithful and efficient his services, he
is the target for every small bore politician and every writer who
is so narrow between the eyes that he can not see anything but his;
own party. Take the case of Governor Ashton C. Shallenberger
as a case in point. Did Nebraska ever have a more efficient gov
ernor? Not a single breath of scandal has touched his administra
tion. There was absolutely no abuse of the pardoning, or the parole
power. The departments under his immediate control have been
cared for efficiently, and the deficiencies will be the smallest in
the state 's history. He affixed his signature to the best temperance
legislation enacted in a generation the " 8 o'clock law." He gave
us the valued palicy law, the corporation tax law and other laws
in the interests of the people. His every appearance as the repre
sentative of the state reflected credit upon the commonwealth. Be
cause of his thorough business training he was enabled to command
business methods in every department over which he exercised
control. With an administration admittedly able and clean, and
with a record beyond criticism, Ashton C Shallenberger was de
feated for re-nomination by a combination , of elements that lost
sight of every regard for the state's welfare in their desperate
efforts to advance selfish interests. We again ask : What incentive
is there for a public official to render good service to the state
.after that official has achieved the honor of an election?
It might be well for the Lincoln city council to get busy with
its .fire escape ordinance and make it conform to the state law. As
it is now the city authorizes a ladder escape, which is not permis
sable under the state law. The result of this conflict has already
proved costly to several builders.
"Judicious Advertising" for November contains a picture of
the recently wrecked Los Angeles Times building, and beneath the
picture has the following words : "Wreck of dynamited Los Angeles:
Times building Plotters failed in their task the paper being issued
as usual the following morning." The editor of the Wageworker
happens to be a subscriber to "Judicious Advertising," therefore:
felt at liberty to address the editor, of that handsome magazine:
on the subject. After quoting "Judicious Advertising's" words;
as above given, The Wageworker editor wrote: "What I want to;
know is, have you any inside information on the dynamite business?.'
Or have you knowledge that the building was wrecked as the re
sult of a plot? I have watched the papers very carefully, but as
yet I have found nothing but the bald assertions of organized la
bor's opponents that the' building was wrecked by dynamite, or
that it was the result of a plot. Your words, quoted above, lead'