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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 1894)
THE COURIER Y . divine compound and alligation of a hundred steaming savors. What does a Burgoo contain? Everything that it ought to contain. The mystery of making it I do not profess to understand. It is a stew of beet and mutton and chicken and turkey and quail and squirrel and potatoes and peppers and fifty other things more or less blended into a masterpiece of which he who eats is made so happy that he is ready to kiss his Nunc dimittis. You bring your own whisky, whisky blander than Orpheus and sweeter than love's first kiss, and take it with a Burgoo take it in quantities to suit. Was the inventor of printing a greater man than the unknown inventor of Burgoo? I vote No." The recent trial of Dr. Edward T. Ely, professor of economies in the state university of Wisconsin, for political heresy will be fol lowed, it is said, by many similar trials, some of the professors in danger being George D. Herron, of Iowa college; Henry C. Adams, of the University of Michigan; Edward W. Bemis, of the University of Chicago; and John R. Commons, of the Indiana University. The Ely trial has, by the way, brought the Herron, who figured so conspicuously at the commencement exercises of the University of Nebraska last spring, prominently before the public. Herron, it is said, is pretty secure in his place, because a woman of means en dowed a chair of applied Christianity in Iowa College with the express stipulation that he should occupy it as long as he choose. Attention has also been directed to Chancellor Can field of the University of Nebraska by the following statement from the New York Herald: "The trial of Dr. Ely is probably the first instance of its kind which ever took place in this country. Probably the nearest ap proach to anything of the sort was the flurry which occurred a few years ago over the spread of free trade doctrines in the colleges. At that time there were a number of professors who were warned that it was for their best interests not to preach free trade too vigor ously. But as near an approach to an open trial as any was that noted of Professor Can field in the State of Kansas. About four years ago Professor Henry C. Adams, who, by the way, is a very warm friend of Dr. Ely, was put through a very friendly trial for certain of his teachings at the University of Michigan." Dr. Ely, it appears upon reliable evidence, out-Herrons Herron. Oliver Wells, superintendent of public instruction in Wisconsin, in a letter for publication says: "Professor Ely, director of the School of Economics, believes in strikes and boycotts, justifying and en couraging the one while practising the other. Somewhat more than a year ago a strike occurred in the office of the Democrat Printing company, the state printers. An agitator or a walking delegate came from Kansas City to counsel and assist the strikers. He was entertained at Professor Ely's house, and was in constant consulta tion with him. A little later a strike occurred in another printing office in this city in which Professor Ely was also an abettor and counsellor. He also demanded of the proprietors that their office should be made a union office, threatening to take hij printing away if they did not comply. (They were publishing a paper for him as secretary of some organization or association.) Upon the refusal of his repeated demands Professor Ely withdrew his printing, inform ing them that he had always been in the habit of dealing with union offices. In conversation with one of the proprietors he asserted that .where a skilled workman was needed a dirty, dissipated, unmarried, unreliable and unskilled tramp, if a union man, should be employed in preference to an industrious, skillful, trustful, non-union man who is the head of a family. He also stated that the latter would have no ground of complaint, as he could easily remove the object ions to him by joining the union, and the conscientious scruples against joining the union would prove the individual to be a crank. Such is Ely, the citizen and the business man an individual who can say to citizens and taxpayers, stand and deliver or down goes your business; and to laboring men, join the union or starve with yonr families. Professor Ely, director of the school of economics, differs from Ely, the socialist, only in the adroit and covert methods of his advocacy. A careful reading of his books will discover essen tially the same principles, but masked by glittering generalities and mystical metaphysical statements, susceptible cf various interpreta tions, according to a literal interpretation might seem for the time likely to work discomfort or loss to the writer." It is also said that Ely sympathized with the Chicago anarchists, had bitterly denounced Judge Gary, upheld Governor Altgeld's par don, believed in the late Pullman boycott, and has all his life been preaching dissension and revolution. -' The censorship of the press which prevails to a greater or lew ex tent in nearly all European countries might be substituted in the United States by a supervision of public instruction with profit to the public peace. Anarchy and lawlessness are in a very healthy state of development already and need no encouragement from wall eyed pedagogic dreamers. The religious newspapers continue to ignore the discussion now going on concerning the danger of the use of the common chalice, or wine cup, in the Eucharist The innovation of individual com munion cup has been introduced into both a Baptist and a Presby terian church of Rochester for the purpose of avoiding this danger, as pointed out by important medical societies; but the subject has been barely mentioned in the papers especially representative of those denominations. We do not find any reference to it in any of the leading religious papers of last week, and at no time since the question of the sanitary necessity for such a change was raised, have we seen in any of them a discussion of it on its merits. Obviously, they do not thus thrust it aside because it is not of in terest to their readers and is without serious importance. The dis cussion of the subject is proceeding earnestly in every church which uses both elements in the communion, and it is engaging the atten tion of both clergy and laity. Physicians in the east are receiv ing inquiries on the subject from their patients, and many letters treating it at of great gravity are 'addressed to the daily newspapers. The number of communicants, who are passing by the wine cup at the Lord's supper for fear of contracting disease from it, must be large. At the celebrations of the ordinance in Rochester when the individual chalices were introduced the pastors of the churches explained that one of the reasons inducing them to make the change was the neglect of the sacrament by many church mem bers because of that dread, thus manifested even before the subject began to receive the formal discussion whieh is now going on. This alarm had been provoked, undoubtedly, by the cautions of attending physicians, and by the admonitions against the old practice which had been uttered by medical societies. Such a society in Ohio made them public more than a year ago, and they were repeated by another in Rochester itaelf. Within late years, morever, medical associations have awakened people to the danger of the communication of disease in other ways of which they had not Teen mindful. They have warned them even against the kiss of affection, hallowed in poetry and romance. Prudent mothers nowadays will not allow their chil dren to be kissed on the mouth, after the freer fashion of the past. Women have taken to kissing each other on the cheek as an expres sion of friendship. Physicians are putting their patients on their guard against many chances of contagion unrecognized by the medi cine of a generation ago. The whole reading public, too, has acquired general information as to the subject, from the diffusion of the re sults of modern scientific investigation into the origin of disease. We are surprised, therefore, that the religious papers do not see the importance of this discuseion, so far as it affects the use of the common chalice, and improve the opportunity which it affords them of giving it thorough treatment in both its scientific and theological aspects. A great number of physicians, probably more of them comparatively than of any other of the secular professions, are com municants of the different churches punctilious in the observance of religious ordinances. Hence, when criticism of the use of the common wine cup comes from them, it does not have its source is irreverence or a light regard for the holy mystery of the Eucharist. Neither does a change in the method of administration of the ele ment involve necessarily any interference with its essential religious importance. It would not affect the doctrine of communication in both kinds which distinguishes Protestantism from Roman Catholi cism It conserns only an existing method of administration, hal lowed, it is true, by many centuries of pious observance, but which
