tween the ' republican and democratic parties today consist in the
holding of the certificates of election. The results, so far as the
people are concerned, are just about the same.
Congressman Humphrey of Washington is 'bemoaning the fact
that with the largest commerce of any nation, we have the smallest
merchant marine. The reason is not far to seek it is in our foolish.
- criminally foolish, shipping laws, aided and abetted by fool tariff
laws. To be permitted to fly the American flag at the masthead
one must build the ship in an American shipyard, where the raw
material is double the price of the same raw material in Canada
or Great Britain, all owing to the tariff. As a natural result ship
builders go to the Clyde for their ships. Suppose you were to
build Jit Buffalo a vessel to engage in the lake-carrying trade, it
would cost you about 50 per cent more than if you built it in
Toronto. And suppose that vessel should "be caught in a storm on
the lake and seriously damaged. And suppose you had to have
that damage repaired in the shipyards at Toronto at an expense
cf $5,000 before you could return and dock at Buffalo. Well, before
you could dock at Buffalo and discharge your cargo you would
have to pay a tariff tax of about 40 per cent on the S5.000 worth
of repairs you were compelled to get in Toronto. Lovely system,
isn't it? And yet we bemoan the fact that our merchant marine
is nil! Our national lawmakers have been guilty of many foolish
things. One of the most foolish was the destruction of our merchant
marine under the guise of "protection to American industries." Ship
subsidy will not remedy the mistake, either; it will only In
tensify it.
Mayor Love has set a bunch of hornets buzzing around his
ears by his recent interview in a Sioux City paper. The mayor is
quoted as saying that labor was never better employed in Lincoln
than at present, and any man conversant with the fact knows better.
-Following the policy of a few so-called business men of advertising
abroad that Lincoln needed mechanics in the building trades, the
purpose being to beat down the wage scale and lengthen the work
ing day, the city filled up with mechanics in these lines. The result
i that building trades men were last summer idle in larger pro
portions than during any previous building season in ten years.
It is all easy enough to say that there is plenty of work; it is hard
to find it sometimes. And the man who has spent his life as a
carpenter would make a poor out at digging sewer ditches, or
surfacing railroad track. We opine that it would not be difficult for
flavor Love, who is a lawyer by profession, to get a job on a street
railway repair gang, but we also opine that he would starve to
death on the wages he could earn at it if paid in proportion to the
work he performed in comparison with men who have spent a life
time at that arduous and underpaid labor. Such interviews as
Mayor Love gave out can have but one result, that of inducing
more men to come to Lincoln in the hope of finding plenty of em-p!o-ment,
and thus adding to the already large army of unemplojed.
The railway postal clerks are at last showing symptoms of
asserting their rights, despite the edict of the postmaster general
that they must remain content to act as mere machines, deprived
of the right to petition congress for redress of grievances and com
pelled to wear padlocks on their mouths. It would be merely show
ing their independence and their sturdy citizenship if they went on
sirike.- Postmaster General Hitchcock's so-called plan of economy
is nothing more nor less than compelling the already underpaid
and overworked postal clerks to bear the burden imposed by ante
deluvian methods in the postal department. Men who point to
the postal department as an argument in favor of government con
trol and operation make a sad mistake. The fact is that the "P. O.
D." is about the best possible argument against government owner
ship and control.
TALKING OF MEN AND THINGS
Governor Woodrow Wilson has disappointed his enemies and
-made good the boasts of his friends. We say this because here
tofore we have not held Governor Wilson in high esteem. During
the last campaign this humble little paper said some .very harsh
'things about Mr. Wilson, which harsh things were widely quoted
-by his opponents in New Jersey. Up to that time he had not given
evidence of being friendly to organized labor interests, and had
shown signs of being quite willing to be used as a stalking horse
for special and selfish interests. Maybe we were laboring under
a mistake, but we. are inclined to believe that the sududen assump
tion of responsibility aroused Mr. Wilson to a better understand-'
ing of some things. Whatever the cause, it is quite evident that
Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey, is not the same Woodrow
Wilsons who was at the head of a great educational institution.
When he succeeded in defeating James T. Smith, jr., who wanted
"to return to the senate after an enforced vacation, and compelled
the legislature to carry out the expressed will of the people by
electing James E. Martine, he elevated himself immeasurably in the
opinion of all good citizens. The indications point clearly to the
fact that Governor Woodrow Wilson is not going to be the stalking
horse that the special and selfish interests imagined he would be.
view the best for the city. If every "knocker" in Lincoln were to
throw his hammer dowTi at the same instant, we greatly fear the"
shock would jar some of the big buildings from their foundations.
It seems that Senator Cummins, after making "progressiveness
a good enough Morgan to ride into the senate upon, is now willing
to slough , off some of his progressiveness if it promises to help
him in holding on to the job. When Cummins stood up in Chicago,
and later in Lincoln, and declared in effect that the poorest. kind
cf a republican suited him better than the best kind of a democrat,
he exposed the fact that his progressiveness was only skin deep.
Now that he is working for the confirmation of Walter I. Smith
he adds to the evidence. Smith is his old time enemy, the repre
sentative of the Iowa "standpatters," and the man Cummins most
fears when the time comes for the election of a successor to Cummins.
City Councilman Michael Bauer left Tuesday for New York,
from whence he will soon sail for Germany, his native land, where
he will visit for a couple of months. If "Mike" has as good a time
in the Fatherland as thousands of Lincoln people hope he will the
danger is that he will not care to return, and in that case we'd
lose a citizen who is too good to lose. After "Mike" has properly
shouted "Hoch, der Kaiser," a few times, walked up and down
the Strasse until leg weary, and properly assimilated some of the
real brown goods, we hope he will turn his face again towards
Yankeeland, and hurry back to tell us all about the good time
he had.
The unprovoked murder of David Graham Phillips, newspaper
man and novelist, inflicts a sore loss upon the reading public. Phil
lips was of the new school which writes of red-blooded men. deals
with present day problems from the standpoint of the public's
interests, and calls a spade a spade. His first succeed ml novel. "The
Great tGod Success," was the stirring expose of the methods that
obtain in modern daily newspaper offices, and was the beginning
of a series of novels that had much to do with shearing the daily
press of its pow-ers of evil along lines of making "big business"
rather than the interests of the people paramount. That he should
be cut down in his prime, thus depriving the nation of his splendid
ability and service, is deplored from one end of the land to the
other. Phillips, like William Norris, was stricken just at the mo
ment when ability was in its best flower.
Senator-elect Luke Lea of Tennessee is an independent demo
crat, and his election is a merited rebuke to the democratic wing in
that state which put whisky ahead of principle. Pattersonism in
Tennessee put the Tennessee" democracy "on the bum." Nebraska
democrats now know what kind of "ism" put Nebraska democracy
"on the bum" last November.
When public-spirited men like Col. C. J. Bills take hold of a
public enterprise like the city hospital project, it always happens
that a bunch of "knockers" jump up and begin shouting that there
is a "nigger in the woodpile." It is this sort of thing that dis
courages men of means and willingness from performing distinct
service for the municipality. CoL Bills makes redrhot reply to the
"knockers" on the hospital project," arid makes it clear that he and
his - associates in the project are wholly disinterested, having in
Fred Warren, editor of the Appeal to Reason, has refused to
endorse a petition.. for his pardon. Acceptance of a pardon is taken
usually as an evidence of guilt, and Warren declares and we so
believe that he has not been guilty of any crime. He w?s sentenced
to one year in the military prison for having offered to pay a reward
to any man who would perform an act exactly like one that the ,
supreme court of the United States declared to be perfectly propc..
When Mover and Hay-wood were kidnaped from Colorado and run
over into Idaho, Warren offered $10,000 reward to any man o men
who would kidnap ex-Governor Taylor of Kentucky, then and now
a fugitive from justice in Ohio, and return him to Kentucky. The
supreme court declared that the kidnaping of Mover and Haywood
was all right, but a federal judge sentenced Warren to prison for
asking some one to dp for .Taylor, what had been done for Moyer
and Haywood. Under the circumstances Warren does well not to
consent to a petition for his pardo5. -Warren in jail under such