j.iraisa&'i t .
l .At * Ay1 : . .lai. " JYJA A. , . . . ' . > . ; : . . . . ' , MI-.TE :
Conservative. 9
mer as the most independent Man on
Earth.
Next week there was a familiar Name
baok on the Time-Card at the Planing
Mill.
Mill.MOUA.L
MOUA.L : "Ju oW the Learned Profes
sions , Mann nrc Galled but Few are
Chosen. "
PRESIDENT OP THE SOUTHERN
PACIFIC.
The Southern Pacific company has
made a great acquisition and the Grand
Trunk railway has suffered a correspon
ding loss in the decision which trans
forms the general manager of the latter
into the president of the Southern Pac
ific system. Charles M. Hays is a
gratifying example of what a young
man with ability and a tremendous
capacity for work can accomplish in
this country , without capital , political
in naeuces or favoritism. For four years
he was an office clerk ; for nearly ten
years more he was general manager's
secretary a splendid school for the all-
) > -.nd railway man ; for the next nine
mouths he was assistant general man
ager ) and then he reached the goal of
most railway men's ambition by be
coming general manager , at the early
age of thirty-three. For eight and a
half years the Wabash was able to re
tain him in that position , until nearly
five years ago , when he accepted the
larger and more difficult work of opera
ting the Grand Trunk. His success in
rehabilitating that great property has
been warmly acknowledged at the half
yearly meetings of the English stock
holders gentlemen who are generally
less ready to praise than to blame and
the announcement that the company is
to lose his services will cause general re
gret , as well as surprise. The presidency
of a vast corporation , such as the
Southern Pacific , with its nearly 10-
000 miles of railway lines , directly and
indirectly controlled , operating thousands -
\ ands of miles of steamer lines , reaching
i to the south sea and the Orient , and
numbering its employees by tens of thousands -
\ ands , is a position of power and usefulness -
\ ness that may well satisfy the ambition
' of any man , and the man who has
1 attained this was a clerk sixteen years
ago. In addition to the rapidity of his
rise two facts are noticeable in exam
ining the dates of Mr. Hays' railway
( career that his official service thus far
* has been with two companies only and
V that from his entry into railway work as
' a boy of seventeen he has never been for
a day out of employment , stepping from
i one position to another that was higher
by a continuous progress. Such a record
* in full of vicissitudes
is rare a professien so -
, tudes as that of the railway official , and
i it is proof of extraordinary and varied
1
abilities.
The accession of Mr. Hays to the
, i presidency , with his office and residence
, in San Francisco , will , it is believed ,
, * .
begin a new era in respect to the attitude
of the California public toward the
Southern Pacific company and its man
agement. For thirty years and more
this company and its predecessors have
labored under the open hostility or the
secret suspicion of a large part , if not
all , of the people of the Pacific coast ,
the chief beneficiaries of the pioneer
transcontinental lines. The Central
Pacific and its outgrowths were origin
ated and controlled by four men , and it
was easy to start the cry of monopoly ,
tyranny , despotism against those who
ruled the sole and indispensable means
of transportation in a vast territory.
The forceful men who dared to stake
their all on the venture of the first rail
way across the desert and the moun
tains seemed to many arrogant and
overbearing in exercising their great
powers. The great cost of construction
in those experimental days , the sparseness -
ness of population and traffic and the
expensiveuess of operation on many
parts of the new roads compelled the
builders to fix high rates for transporta
tion , and when offended applicants for
lower charges began to agitate for legis
lation against the great monopoly , the
railway company had to use its political
influence also , and so the Southern Pa
cific became in time the object of war
fare of extraordinary bitterness and per
sistence. Conditions have changed of
late years and the company and the ma
jority of the people now have a better
understanding of each other , but there
is still a considerable faction , represent
ed by several of the strong papers of
San Francisco , whose voice is ever
raised against the Southern Pacific , in
regard to which they continue to be
lieve that whatever is , is wrong.
It is time that this profitless war
should cease. The four men whose
achievements evoked it Stanford ,
Crocker , Hopkins , Huntington have
passed from the scenes of their mighty
labors , of which California is in the
prosperous enjoyment , their millions
have been dispersed through countless
channels of industry and usefulness , the
ownership of the vast railway system
which they originated is distributed
among tens of thousands of holders in
many states and many lands , San Fran
cisco has developed from a provincial
town , jealous and fearful , into a strong
and growing metropolis , another great
railway has crossed the continent and
built a new highway for commerce to
and from the Golden Gate , and the
days of monopoly in transportation on
the Pacific coast are forever ended. The
Southern Pacific is under a new regime ;
its president born since the Central
Pacific came into being succeeds to the
chair of Huntington and Stanford un
hampered by the prejudices , misunder
standing and mistakes which have char
acterized the attitude of presidents and
people of the post , and comes bringing a
clean sheet for a new record. He is a
just , broad-minded , pnWio-spirited man ,
duly appreciative of public sentiment ,
deeply impressed with the duty of the
railway to the people , up to date and
progressive in his methods of manage
ment , a twentieth century executive.
Now let the people of California forget
their old grievances , stop their fault
finding with men and conditions that
are gone , and begin to co-operate with
and encourage the new head of the
Southern Pacific and the able men who
are now conducting that great property
with such signal success. Railway
Age.
WHERE WOMEN VOTE FOR , PRESI
DENT.
Women voted for president in four
states Tuesday. In three of them
Colorado , Utah and Wyoming they
had the suffrage four years ago. In
Idaho they voted for president for the
first time. All four of the states went
for Bryan in 1890 , three of them by
heavy majorities. Colorado gave him
186.000 plurality , Utah 51,000 , Idaho
17,000 and Wyoming 583. Tuesday two
of these same states went republican
and in the others the democratic vote
was greatly reduced.
Utah is believed to have given Mo-
Kinley a plurality of 4,000 , which would
indicate a flop of more than 27,000
voters. Wyoming is republican by
2,500 , so that 1,600 of its 21,000 voters
have changed their politics. Colorado
shows the greatest landslide. Bryan's
plurality of 185,000 in 1896 is reduced by
100,000. It would appear that 60,000 ,
or more than a quarter of the state's
citizens , turned republican.
In Kansas , where woman do not vote
for president , the deviation of only 5
per cent of the total voters transferred
the state from Bryan to McKinley. In
South Dakota only 9 per cent of the
male electors changed their faith , while
the percentage of deviation in Colorado
was 26 , and in Utah 84.
The electorate of Colorado , Idaho ,
Utah and Wyoming is evidently not of
a rock-ribbed political cast. It certainly
manifests a remarkable open-minded-
ness on political questions. Just how
much of this is due to the feminine part
of it cannot be determined. But under
the circumstances a democrat could
hardly be blamed for sighing with Vir
gil , "Always changeable and capricious
is woman. " Kansas City Star.
The H. W. Johns Manufacturing Co. ,
of 100 William street , New York , have
issued a little booklet on the subject of
Asbestos. This little booklet , which is
entitled "Something About Coverings , "
includes some illustrations which show
the advantages of their Fire-felt Cover
ings. This booklet is of interest to
manufacturers and builders and a copy
will be sent free to any address upon re
quest sent to the H. W. Johns Co.