Conservative.
THE PRESERVATION OV IIEA1/TH.
The first and primary duty of fnthors
and mothers is the preservation of the
physical health of their children and
themselves. There cannot be a usefxil
man developed from a hey who is not a
constitutionally , functionally strong ,
vigorous , healthy animal , nor can a girl
of delicate organism over ho grown into
a useful woman without vigilant and
effective effort by her parents and teach
ers to preserve her health. The obliga
tion to nourish and conserve the animal
health of offspring is the fundamental
and sacred duty of parenthood. When
it is properly discharged a great service
has been rendered to the state.
But government itself , of whatever
form , finds no graver responsibility than
in making and enforcing sanitary regu
lations for its subjects or its citizens.
Drainage and ventilation of school
houses , hotels , depots , theatres and
apartment and tenement houses , in con-
junation with compulsory cleanliness ,
are proper and beneficial functions of the
civilized administration of a government.
There is too little attention given to
the value of health and its maintenance
in the smaller cities and villages and
hamlets of the United States. In the
great populational centers like New
York , Chicago , Boston and Philadelphia
sanitation is better understood , observed
and enforced than in the rural districts.
In every township there should be a
health officer. His duty should bo to
see that the drink-
BOARDS OF iug water iu hjs
HEALTH.
district is pure and
wholesome , and that cesspools and out
houses are not breeding typhoid and
enteric fevers. And in every village or
city there should be a competent board
of health empowered by law to use all
reasonable moans for preventing the
spread of infections or contagious dis
eases. An experience of forty-four
years in Nebraska , whose health laws
are very imperfect , leads TIIK CONSER
VATIVE to these reflections and suggests
the necessity of a sanitary code for Ne
braska which shall provide and affix
penalties for its violation a code which
shall compel vaccination for all children
before they can be admitted to the pub
lic schools. Health to all the people ,
ought , as far as possible , to bo preserved
and perpetuated by a rigid sanitary code
in this and every other state.
TIIK CUI18K OF A TREELESS REGION.
Any one who has traveled through the
comparatively treeless countries around
the Mediterranean , such as Spain , Sicily ,
Greece , northern Africa , and large portions
tions of Italymust fervently pray that oui
own country may be preserved from so
dismal a fate , says President Charles W.
Eliot in the January Atlantic. It is not
the loss of the forests only that is to bo
dreaded , but the loss of agricultural re
gions now fertile and populous , which
may be desolated by the floods that rush
down from bare hills and mountains ,
> ringing with them vast quantities of
sand and gravel to bo spread over the
owlands. Traveling a few years ago
through Tunisie , I came suddenly upon
a fine Roman bridge of stone over a
wide , bare , dry river-bed. It stood
some thirty feet above the bed of the
river , and had once served the needs of
a prosperous population. Marveling at
the height of the bridge above the
ground , I asked the French stationmaster -
master if the river over rose to the
arches which carried the roadway of the
bridge. His answer testified to the
flooding capacity of the river and to the
strength of the bridge. " Ho said , "I
liave been hero four years , and three
times I have seen the river running over
the parapets of that bridge. " That
country was once one of the richest
granaries of the Roman Empire. It
now yields a scanty support for a sparse
and semi-barbarous population. The
whole region round about is treeless.
The care of the national forests is a pro
vision for future generations , for the
permanence over vast areas of our coun
try of the great industries of agriculture
and mining upon which the prosperity
of the country ultimately depends. A
good forest administration would soon
support itself ; but it should bo organ
ized in the interests of the whole coun
try , no matter what it cost.
A COIIKGK NOT A HOME
INCURAttl.KS.
A college is not a home for incurables
or a limbo for the dull and inefficient ,
says Le Baron R. Briggs , dean of Har
vard college , in The January Atlantic.
Moreover , as a Western father observed
to President Eliot , "It does not pay to
spend two thousand dollars on a two-
dollar boy. " Though a firm believer in
college training as the supreme intellec
tual privilege of youth , I am convinced
that the salvation of some young men
( for the practical purposes of this pre
sent world ) is in talcing them out of col
lege and giving them long and inevitable
hours in some office or factory. I do
not mean that all success in college oo
longs to the good scholars ; for many a
youth who stands low in his classes gets
incalculable benefit from his college
course.
# / : #
It is the weak-kneed dawdler who
ought to go , the youth whoso body and
mind are wasting away in bad hours
and bad company , and whose sense of
truth grows dimmer and dimmer in the
smoke of his cigarettes ; yet it is pre
cisely this youth who , through more
inertia , is hardest to move , who seems
glued to the university , whoso father is
helpless before his future , and whose
relatives contend that , since ho is no
man's enemy but his own , he should be
allowed to stay in college so long as his
father will pay his tuition fee as if a
college wore a public conveyance
= = = = = = = = = = = =
p
wherein anybody that pays his fare may
abide ' 'unless personally obnoxious , " 3
or a hotel where anybody that pays
enough may lie in bed and have all the
good things sent up to him. No college
certainly no college with an elective
system , which presupposes a youth's
interest in his own intellectual welfare
can afford to keep such as ho. Nor
can he afford to bo kept. One of the
first aims of college life is increase of
power : bo lie scholar or athlete , the
sound undergraduate learns to meet dif
ficulties ; "stumbling blocks , " in the
words of an admirable preacher , become
"stepping-stones. " It is a short-sighted
kindness that keeps in college ( with its
priceless opportunities for growth and
its corresponding opportunities for de
generation ) a youth who lies down in
front of his stumbling-blocks in the
vague hope that by and by the authori
ties will have them carted away.
TIIK FREMONT TKI1JUNK TO TIIK
CONTRARY.
Notwithstanding the palliating state
ment of The Fremont Tribune , TIIK
CONSERVATIVE reasserts that , in its judg
ment , seventy-fivo per cent of the capi
tal running plants of manufacture in
Nebraska always omitting the silver
smelter at Omaha is owned by men
who desire the continuation of the gold
standard and believe it essential to the
prosperity of our common country.
And if every manufacturing establish
ment in Nebraska ( outside of the silver-
producing smelter at Omaha ) which is
owned and operated by men who favor
the free coinage of silver in unlimited
quantities at a ratio of 16 to 1 should
withdraw from business there would be
no perceptible disturbance in the indus
trial life and welfare of this common
wealth.
There is not in southeastern Nebraska ,
so far as known , any silver-currency-
advocating citizen , corporation , or co
partnership which is employing labor to
work in manufacturing establishments ,
or , upon a large scale , doing any other
practical and useful thing to develop
and build up Nebraska.
VKKIl A /
. , - . _ _ , _ . .
of Nebraska City
rejoice in the prosperity of their homo
and in the wonderful productive capa
bilities of the fertile farms tributary to
it in Nebraska , Iowa and Missouri.
There is no other town of its size on the
Missouri river which consumes as much
raw product of the land by converting
it into commodities for the markets of
the United States and Europe. The an
nual output of manufactured goods ex
ceeds four thousand cars. There is
more coal used at Nebraska City for
making steam with which to run ma
chinery to make food and other products
than in any other community of its size
in either Kansas or Nebraska.
