Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The independent. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907 | View Entire Issue (May 19, 1904)
8fe ST - u ft ? Vot. XV. LINCOLN NEB., MAY 19, 1901. - No. 62'. Speed Mosby, Prophet iFnruSSunt (The railroad assessment In Nebras ka this year" will be piace'd in the neighborhood of about . $45,000,000. Last year the total was $27,000,000. !The Increase of $18,000,000, therefore, represents an increase of twothirds, or 66 2-3 per cent." . This statement Is made- on the au thority of a prominent delegate to the state convention who will be a mem- ber of the committee on resolutions and who received his information from Governor Mickey, . a member of the board of equalization. -Item in Lin coin Evening News,, Wednesday, May 18, 1904.) Some weeks ago The Independent . had occasion to mention editorially Speed Mosby's book, "aen Biunt," a . novel picturing things political in that Royal Baking Powder state, Missouri. It is said that denizens of that great health resort," where alum baking powder is much scarcer than thou sand dollar bills, have to "be shown." Well, Mosby has "shown" them the Inside workings around the state house in such inimitable style that "Ben Blunt" would be regarded as a classic of political literature if it were not so painfully apparent that he's been painting from life instead of drawing upon his imagination. The Independent has been watching the proceedings before the Nebraska state board of equalization for some days with much interest. Tba Eireiv uous efforts of the railroads tor ft lowering of theSr assessment, fcnd Utt equally strenuous efforts of theMg republican papers to have the board raise the railroad assessment as viewed by The Independent are more than half "horse-play" to fool the un initiated and to stop the clamor for equitable taxation. . How the farce will end is so graphically told in the : following quotation from "Ben Blunt" as to need no elaboration by The In dependent: ' CHAPTER II. The Auditor. No wher so besy a man as he ther was And yet he semed bisier than he was. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, i Prologue. Hon. William Rounder sat in his easy chair, smoking and sweating and puffing, and sorting his mail. He was evidently clearing his decks for ac tion, and his magnificent corpus of nearly three hundred pounds pre sented an imposing spectacle a3 he dashed into a phalanx of some two or three dozen letters, cutting and slash ing them here and there, till he had laid their inwards bare upon his desk: incidentally pocketing the accompany ing railroad passes, as the spoils of battle. -! "Oh, Sib!" he called out to Mr. Sib ley his chief clerk, "here, take these letters to the bond clerk, and these others you may attend to yourself and, say, Sib, hold on there! Sib, tell Blunt to step here a. minute. .wont you please, sir?" And then adding, in an undertone, with many a fervid sigh: "That'll leave me fully a half dozen letters to answer. Great balls of fire! Heavy mall, sure heavy mail, by grit! And the board of equTzatlon meets today, and Snyder RAntft Fe will be here, and Jones of the Rock Island, and Cran dail of the C B. & Q.. and the Lord knows who all!" t , "And the Lord knows ho all, echoed Mr. Sibley. "Was It not the poet Cong eve who said, 'Misfortunes coiue not single uplca. but In tatallions." queried Mr. Blunt, good naturedly, as ho entered the room. "I don't car whcthn It was Lon grcv or iMme other gud of a greve, but tie thing that's grleUn' iuo Juivt now In thU pila of mall.' reiotuld the Auditor doUfuUy. "Hut," Mid he, "we mli'.ht as U l ll ntl tear tha bona right out o( It now. I'm Etilng to dean up mj desk tUt morn ing If it rot a doctors bill and a lawimlt. Now. Mr. Iilunt. If jjuII lit down there, pleaa sir. I'll Jaat dic tate a fw eptntlea to the Corinthian. Oh. Nell (thU to a acgro Janitor) bring ni a drink of water, won't you Ida?" Nwl omUed out ftnd toon reutrned with a gourd-dipper full of the cooling liquid. "Ah-h-h! Mighty thin, Ned," said the Auditor, as he gulped it down. "Yes, sah, 'deed it is, boss,-but it's de bes' you kin expect out'n dat Put nam county goad dippah." . In his office Mr. Rounder never kept a glass for drinking purposes. He thought the gourd would be more popular with his country constituency. And so It was; and the people went home and talked about the uncontami- nated democracy of plain Billy Koun der. who drank his ice-water out of a gourd. Mr. Blunt had picked up a morning paper in the meantime, and was glancing over the head-lines. The Auditor settled his avodiiiois back into ms chair and was manliest ly preparing for another exertion. ."Now, Benjamin," said he, "my fel low Christian traveler to the judg ment bar o God, when you come to a period, we'll get ready to proceed Whet up your pencil there, and we'll send in a few lines to the Epheslans. Ready?" . Mr. Blunt 'said that he was. "I'll declarer ' said the Auditor ex citedly, "L aimed to get my beard de capitated as I came tmouh lon this morning. Now, let's see. The board meets at ten, don't It. The sun, moon and stars may vary, but we never do. Well, I'll have time. Take this letter first. Are you ready?" ' The secretary again responded that he was. Mr. Rounder then grasped a letter to which he intended to dictate a re ply, first trying to tead it upside side, and then inside out. roaring at the same time, in a voice loud enough to fairly shake the frundatlons oi the capital, a couplet from his favorite "The mother was , changTier son -. round the room ; : Chasing her son round the room." . At last finding the address he so violently . sought, exclaimed: "Let 'er go, Blunt. Oh, yes, I didn't give you tbe adaress," did I? Ready? ' . " Mi Blunt again said that he was teady, and the dictation began: "Dear Mr. Ctodgett: "Hold on, there, Ben! wait a min ute; tear that up. Now, ready?" ,And then, after taking another deep breath, an- expression of determina tion in his face, and with the air of a strong man about to run a race, he gathered his wits . for a supreme ef ui t, and dictated, without a struggle, the following letter: "Hon! J. H. Clodgett, Gen. Sol. Wa bash R'y Co., St. Louis, Mo. Pear Mr. Clodgett: Yours of the 13lh ImsL re ceived, containing pass from here to Buffalo and return for myself and 26 friends, for which please accept thanks. I await an opportunity to reciprocate.' Command me at your pleasure. With every assurance of my high regard fci y0u.. personally, I am. your friend, WM. ROUNDER." And then, with a final gasp, he ex claimed: "Hold up, there Bon! don't rut the signature on; I'll sign it my self." So saying, he sank back into his chair, from sheer exhaustion, and !iguid a fre-sii cigar. , . . ; AJtti an Interval o recuperation he again turned to his secretary, declar ing, as he tossed tho remaining letters over to Mr. Blunt, . "Now, Ben, I must have m beard amputated, aud you can look after this mall as wei, as 1. There's ouo t l.i IP from the Friscolook that up ior him. and gtvd"him what Le wants; and hero's a blamed fool wanting to know something about taxing fran chises sa high m farm landa you'd better refer him to the attorney gen eral aud, hold ou; wa.t a minute; 1 wih you would il'tuo acknowledge eeelit ui that frank from the Wells I aim and thank Mm for It; nd then Juist drop littl not to tho Wntrrn Union, and enrltwa m my empty rotnpltmrntary utatnp tMwk, and ak 'rni to replenish It f f me won't you, pleas, Kir? Now you attend to that, Hen, and I'll make Xhm ruler over many cltlnr. I've rt to eo and get my banl pruned a lltl! aj tl ilr. Snyder or any of them come in, just tell 'em I'll be back directly. - With these few parting observations he waddled off. Mr. Rounder was not a bad man at heart. He was a lover of good-fellowship, and was himself the prince of good fellows. He was the son of a preacher a Baptist and a Virginian of the old school but he rarely attended church as often as once In a month, and now bore small indication of his early re ligious training, except such scant In dicia as might be gleaned from his ludicrous Biblical references and quo tations. JHe had always been some what of a rake, and naught but Jhe expected happened when he was trans mogrified into a politician. He went from bad to worse, and from worse to politics. - As auditor of the state he had gath ered about him a corps of assistants wholly to his liking, excepting two. The political views of Mr. Blunt were entirely too radical, and those of Mr. Sibley altogether too slippery. But both Mr. Sibley and Mr. Blunt, the one as his chief clerk and the other as his private secretar, had possibly acquired more knowledge about the inner workings of the administration of Mr. Rounder than that gentleman cared to have made public, so he made swift to .endure what could' not be altered, grunting and puffing his life comfortably away, and accumulating fat and fees as he went rolling and lolling along. " "Sib," said he, "when I stepped into the gilded palace of sin around the corner to get me something cool, the gentleman in , the white apron in formed me that a fellow had just been In there whd ' was going to make ? a talk to the board this morning against Mr. Snyder and -Mr. Ciahdall and' all of them, and, try to get us to raise the assessments ' on franchises; says he represents some kind of a People's Welfare Society, or some such fool thing or other now wouldn't that singe your eyebrows?" "It certainly would," was the prompt reply. "But say, Sib; we oughtn't to listen to that fellow's talk tryin' to drive capital out of the state. Why, if we should listen to that dumb fool, we might turn Mr. Jones and Mr. Snyder and all of 'em against the party.": "He must not be heard," said Sibley. "But we've got to hear him, Sib." "He must be heard," said Sibley. ' "Hold on there a minute," the per plexed statesman suddenly exclaimed, "here comes Mr. Snyder now; we'll just talk to him about it." '. ' ' At that moment a tall, elegant look ing gentleman, with a pleasant face and a merry, twinkling eye, walked briskly into the room, and the robust Auditor sprang joyously to his feet, with rather more alacrity than might have been xpected, considering hl3 weight. "Why how are you, Co'001! how are you," said he; "how's every sixteen foot of you? Be seated, Col onel, be seated." . v "How have you been, Billy," the brevetted Colonel Inquired. - 1 "Oh," responded the Auditor with a heavy sigh, "I've been keeping on tho reservation pretty wclk. I , thank you treading the winepress alone, Colonel tramping out the vintage of the Lord at the same old stand; ach ing a bit at tho elbows and knee-caps, though. But I'm able to tit up a lit tle, and take nourishment." And Mr. Sibley wlncd with pain, at thought of the aching knets-caps and elbows. "Gout, ch? lllr.li living. I suapect.? "No. no; "tlsu't that. Colonel. 'Tian't my homely faro that's troubling me., I can't account for It at all. un Ichji It come from sitting In damp churches, and entlni? lata meals o' Sunday, caused by listening to long Mrmont. I tuppo you know, Cd unel. there'i A fellow up hero trying to give ua trouble about the asaeaanienU today." Th 'colonel" had heard of it: had. In fact, ben observing th movement (or touo time, and tu sow prepare! to relieve the strain upon the mind of the worthy Auditor. ; , "Yes," said he, "I've heard of it" And closing one eye significant he sat there like a cycla xfjr essae mo ments. ; ... .. . ..... " .. "I have had a talk witi the oCr solicitors and some of their tax ibn missioners and the heads of tSw) de partments, and we have about con cluded to give those franchise agita tors a compromise. It isn't well, you know, to antagonize those people too much; public sentiment is a tri?;3 against us now, anyway. We realize, of course, that public patronage cre ates to a certain extent our franchise values, and if we go to acting ugly those cranks may conclude to absorb the whole business, , and we don't want to have rouble with them Just now. In short, we are prepared to consent to an increase In our assess ments nowand there will, of course, be no trouble in reducing themy'whea this absurd sentiment begins to wane.? "I believe you are right, Colonel," said Rounder. "You are right, Colonel," echoed Mr. Sibley. The board met in due time, and concluded its deliberations. Next morning the papers told, in glaring head-lines, of its patriotic work: "Corporation Assessments Raised Many Millions Hon. Wm. Rounder Strikes a Blow for the Common Peo pleAdvocates Franchise Taxation Board's Action Largely, Due to Him.' And' the People's Welfaie league wired Mr. Rounder its vote of thanks. Mi. Rounder sat In his easy chair, and grunted and smoked and smiled, "That was a good day's work we did yesterday, Ben," said he to his pri- vate - BBCTetttryiw ' ' .Yes, yes, , it was," cMr. Blurt thoughtfully replied; very thoughtful ly, for he was thinking of what Lin-' coin said about the impossibility, cf fooling all of the people all of , the time, and was trying to determine to ' his own satisfaction whether Honest Abe was really dishonest, or simply misinformed. - " t He Denies It Editor Independent: 1 see your pa per is reiterating the statement oiig inating in the Des Moines Register and Leader that I was instrumental with my influence in urging Governor Shaw to issue a parole to a convict. Kindly give space to the accompany ing enclosure which was addiessed to the Register to set it right. j Thanking you in advance, sincerely, VICTOR ROSE WATER. Omaha. Neb. Omaha, Neb., April 29, 1D04. To tho Editor of The Register, Des Moines, la. Dear Sir; Your story, based upoa a partial exhibit of documents on tite in the governor's office, makes out that I exerted my influence with Gov ernor Shaw to procure a parole for Sherliffe, the prisoner convicted for the Pollock diamond robbery. I do not know anything of Shcrcllffj except by hear-say and have navcr had any Interest in his liberation. It seems that a letter of introduction given fcy me in 18(J to Chief of Polio Whlto was presented by him to Gov ernor Shaw when he called on aa er rand in behalf of Shcicllffe If yoq had printed this letter It would b seen that it Is no moie than a per functory letter of Introduction such r3 any business man gives to a friend ev ery week In tho year. The letter redj as follows: "Omaha, Neb., May 15, l8D3.-tlon. Leslie M. Khaw, Covet nor of lows. Den Moines, ta. My Iear Sir: Thi will" Introduce to you Mr. Martla White. Omaha's eHkleut chief of po ller, ho has som business to trans act in the Iowa capital. Any favora you may show him will b greatly tp predated. Very tiuly your. VICTOR KOiiKWAinU, Managing Editor." At the tlm this letter wai wrltlo I tud no knowlcdfA what sort cf t'ii tncaa railed Chief Y.'hlU to lio