each year to about 50 per cent of the original cost of the car. The
railroads do not charge the express companies a penny for car rental.
The government pays the railroad companies 800 per cent more,
lound for pound, for hauling the mails than the express companies
pay for hauling their stuff. To wipe out the deficit in the postal de
partment Postmaster General Hitchcock is taking drastic action. By
making the railroads carry the mails for a fair price? No! By
knocking out the grafting system of weighing the mails? No! By
abolishing the infamous "car rental"' scheme? No! How, then? By
compelling the already overworked and underpaid mail clerks to work
longer hours under higher pressure, and proposing to cinch the maga
zines that do things while practically exempting the magazines that
endorse "Big Business" and all the graft and chicanery that the term
"Big Business" implies.
Of course, if you want to read the real truth about the gar
ment workers' strike in Chicago you are not reading the Tribune,
the News, the Times-Herald, the Post, the Inter-Ocean or the Ex
aminer. If you are reading the truth it is because you are a sub
scriber to the Chicago Daily Socialist. The Daily Socialist- is the
only daily newspaper in Chicago that is not edited in the department
store business offices or the headquarters of the beef trust.
"Profit patriots" is a new and very good expression. It fits a
great many men in this country. It is quite as clever as Dr. Johnson's
definition of "Patriotism." Dr. Johnson defined the word as "the last
refuge of a scoundrel.
A few days ago the dispatches announced the death of Mel
ville D. Landon. Very few people gave it a second thought, yet a
generation ago Landon was known in every village, hamlet and city
in the republic. No platform orator was more in demand, no writer
was more sought after. Under the nom de plume of "Eli Perkins"
he made millions laugh, and therefore made millions happier. Lan
don. however, appealed to the brains of the people. The man with
out any brains could not appreciate the delicate humor of "Eli Per
kins." Such men must be entertained by the cheap "knockabout ar
tists" and "slapstick" exponents of the vaudeville stage. Men who are
tickled almost to death by the sight of a stage Irishman with green
whiskers sinking an axehead into the caput of a stage German with
an impossible paunch, or a stage "nigger" with red lips who never
saw a full-blooded negro with red lips being kicked all around the
proscenium arch by a stage club man who wears his swallowtail
with about as much grace as a cat would wear breeches men who
find humor in that sort of thing never would be able to appreciate
the subtle wit and the delicate sarcasm of "Eli Perkins." That's
vhy Melville D. Landon's death a few days ago conveyed a mes
sage of sadness to so few people, and they of the generation that is
now swiftly passing from the stage of action.
Andrew Carnegie has just given $10,000,000 to establish a fund
for the promotion of universal peace. Whose millions did he give?
Certainly not his own, for no man can earn that amount of money
honestly. The millions he gave were wrested from the muscle and
bone and flesh of underpaid labor ; from the tears and heartaches of
wives widowed and children orphaned by the remorseless maw of,
his iron mills; from a silly and supine people that allowed Carnegie
to write the iron and steel schedules of a robber tariff law. He robbed
the men who produced the commodities he sold, and he robbed the
consumers who were forced to buy the commodities. Labor on the
one side and consumers on the other, then, gave the ten millions.
Labor because it could not help itself, and the consumers because
they are such blooming chumps that they were deluded into believ
ing that they could tax themselves rich. This country is still full of
men whose advocacy of "protection" gives color to the belief that
they hold to the opinion that a man can lift himself over a fence
if he pulls hard enough upon his bootstraps.
During the year ending December 1, 1910, there were 25,171
births in Nebraska. There were six sets of triplets, and 102 pairs of
twins. The total number of deaths was 10,371. Yet with all these
births, and the promiscuous distribution of twins and triplets, there
are a great many too many homes made up of husband, wife and a
fiea-bitten poodle dog. But perhaps Dame Nature is wise, giving
the aforesaid poodles into the keeping of those most likely to waste
upon them the caresses that any normal baby would bitterly resent.
The people of Nebraska want an initiative and referendum law
that means something, not a miserable make-shift. They want the
right to initiate legislation, state-wide and not merely local. They
want the right to veto legislation, state-wide and not merely locaL
And they want the recall system so that faithless public servants
may be discharged. The party,, the interests or the man who at
tempts to thwart the will of the people as to these matters will meet
up with disaster.
Edgar Allen Poe is finally to have a place in the Hall of Fame,
the managers of that institution having so decided after several
refusals to admit the erratic genius. We are quite familiar with Poe
and his writings, but who the devil are the fellows charged with the
c'uty of selecting our literary honorables for us?
The eminent democrats who framed up the Baltimore affair
have bowed to the inevitable and invited Mr. Bryan to become party
to their conferences. Mr. Bryan may never be president and it wftL
perhaps, be better for his future fame if he is not but he does not
need the title to that high "office to fix his name permanently upon
the pages of the country's history. One thing, however, is quite
sure : the democrat who is elected to the presidency during Bryan's
lifetime, if such a thing shall come to pass, will be a democrat whose
principles square with the Bryan principles. The democrat who
seeks the presidency on any other basis, and the interests that back
him, will merely have his trouble for his pains, and a pretty bill of
expense for money squandered in a fool chase. "
PARAGRAPHS APPERTAINING TO MEN AND MATTERS
Thomas B. Hord. the largest cattle feeder in the world, died
suddenly in Minneapolis on December 24. Mr. Hord's' home was
at Hord, Nebr., a village on the Union Pacific named in his honor.
The world at large knows very little about Mr. Hord, and very
few people even in Nebraska are aware that he was the world's larg
est cattle feeder. This is due in large measure to the fact that Mr.
Hord never courted publicity, did not pose as the discoverer of any
new road to wealth, and was quite content to attend to his own busi
ness. Yet Mr. Hord's success might have been made a valuable
asset to Nebraska, by making it known of all men. But that has been
Nebraska's chief trouble for the past two decades she has neglected
every opportunity to advertise herself for what she really is the
state of golden opportunities for the industrious. The success
achieved by Mr. Hord should be made known everywhere, for by
making it known Nebraska wilL advertise herself.
"Given the same amount of care and attention that is bestowed
upon the orchards of Oregon and Washington, and the orchards of
Nebraska will beat them in production and in profit," said G. G. Mar
shall, secretary of the State Horticultural Society. "We have the
ideal fruit country in eastern Nebraska, and especially in southeast
ern Nebraska. The trouble is that so many orchard owners were
raised to believe that an orchard would take care of itself, and when
it quit bearing on account of bugs and fungus and San Jose scale
they jumped to the conclusion that 'fruit growing won't pay in Ne
braska. That idea is being wiped out by the experience of men who
are cultivating their orchards by improved methods. ,1 expect to
see Nebraska one of the leading fruit producing states of the Union
within the next ten or fifteen years."
men wrho will go into it sensibly and conservatively, and Lincoln
would benefit amazingly. Lincoln ought to be the center of a score
of diverging trolley roads reaching from twenty to one hundred
miles. This would add immensely to the value of farm property,
provide, easy and cheap access to market, and make Lincoln a great
commercial center. Lincoln capital ought to take hold of the.Omaha,
Lincoln & Beatrice project and push it to rapid completion. There
should be a line running southeast down into Nemaha and Rich
ardson counties; another due west, and still another running to the
northwest. Just, as soon as we can quit the foolish habit of scran
ping among ourselves over matters that should lie with the indi
vidual concience, and quit "knocking" because we harbor malice
just as soon as Lincoln can quit that sort of thing well begin making
a real city here.
Senator Ollis of Valley county is really the author of the pres
ent primary law -which fact is another proof that even so able a
man as Senator Ollis is liable to make mistakes in his zeal for re
form. The primary law as it now exists is a sorry blotch. Either
it must be amended so as to provide for a closed primary or made in
fact what it is now only in name, an open primary.
M. I. Aiken of Lincoln has the right "huch" concerning the inter
urban line business. There is big money in this sort of thing for the
If organized labor is to secure the enactment of any; laws safe
guarding life and limb at the coming session of the legislature it will
have to show some signs of life pretty soon. To draft a bill pro
viding for these things and then let it drift into a pigenhole will sim
ply mean the usual result failure. The legislative committee of the
State Federation of Labor ought to have all of its bills drafted by this
time, and preparations made for maintaining a committee at" the legis
lature during the session. Up to date nothing of this kind has been
provided for. This means that when the legislature adjourns with
out recognizing the needs of labor, union men are going to again
