VOL. 10, NO 38.
ESTABLISHED IN ISS6,
PRIGE FIVE CENTS
B"
. W.J M
LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 1895.
ENTERED IN THE POST OFFICE AT LINCOLN
AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER
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WILLA CATHER
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Associate Editor
Associate Editor
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Recent disclosures, however, make it
clear that the riso in political prices had
its beginning a good many months
prior to tire lately vanished August. To
Mose Oppenheimer, good, kindly old
Mose, belongs the distinction of being
the tirst to realize the true value of poli
tical service and effect a readjustment
of prices in correspondence therewith.
Time was when Mose used to offer the
one or two country precincts he claimed
to control to aspiring democrats for
something like S10 each, and it is a tra
dition in political circles that the pur
chaser from Mose invariably had to
buy up the delegates in the purchased
precincts afterward. But 810 was ;ill he
asked. Now comes the information,
through developments in certain legal
proceedings, that Mose has recently put
a proper valuation on his services and
OBSERVATIONS
V
2
Senator W. V. Allen has the populist
propensity for making an exhibition of
himself. When a man delivers himsel
over to the populists ho somehow seems
to lose all idea of the fitness of things,
and he is able, with singular facility, to
make himself and his cause ridiculous.
The mental strabismus that causes a
man to be a populist apparently renders
him foolish in many other ways. Men
who before becoming populists, lived
along, doing things decently and in
order, having a due regard for the pro
prieties in speech and conduct, seem to
develop a remarkable proficiency, after
conversion, in the art of clap trap and
hocus pocus. Senator Allen went to
the Hastings encampment last week,
and being prevailed upon to make an
address he did so, and now the whole
state is laughing at the female Bpy
V '
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Political economists tell us, and ob
servation confirms the tale, that high
prices mean prosperity. Throughout
the country prices of all commodoties
are uow on tho ascendant. Bradstreets
and Dun give us weekly bulletins of the
progress of tho advancing market, and
the press dispatches contain every day
some hopeful intelligence. In Lincoln
the advance has not been so marked as
elsewhere, owing in part, to the continu
ed agricultural depression. But of late
the general upward tendency has not
been without a local manifestation I
note with interest, and I am sure tho
information must be of importance in a
community where every other man is a
patriot, where politics is perhaps the
chief industry of the people,, that all
kinds of political service command a
much higher price than formerly.
There has been a sudden and at the
same time a very material advance in
this particular instance. The inflation
may be said to have commenced, or
rather the effect of the rise was first
noted, at the primary elections held in
August. The politicians were startled
to discover that, as an illustration, tho
votes of a certain class of citizens in the
Fifth ward that for years have been
hawked about among candidates for 50
cents a piece, had, without warning,
gone up to 81.50 and frequently to 82 00
and higher. That meant the beginning
of a new era in the largo and well work
ed field of practical politics. It meant
that thoso disbursing agents who had
formerly gone down on the bottoms on
the day of the primaries -with a pocket
full of eiver half dollars would have to
take along a bag of whole dollars or a
wad of $1 and t2 bills.
AUGUST HAGENOW.
precincts. Mose said, and therefore it
is a fact, that he was offered 81.C00 for
his precincts and also for tho nominal
service of boosting Mr. Redford and
knocking out the cause of free silver and
downing one Billy Bryan. Truly prices
have gone up when the dusky denizen
of the bottoms will not sell his sovereign
right of suffrage for less than 81. 50 an'
Mose Oppenheimer demands 81 COO for
"his precincts" and "knocking out Billy
Bryan.'' Just how this sudden advance
is going to make things more prosperous
in this community, I do not know, but
it will probably come about somehow.
In the meantime there is a belief that
the gentlemen who dealt with Mose on
the 81.000 basis were somewhat extrava
gant. The query naturally suggests
itself, if 81-000 was spent in the pur
chase of Mose what was the total am
ount spent by Mose's buyers in the
game deal? There is money in politics.
story. I do not for one moment
imagine that Senator Allen ever had
the experience he described at the
Hastings encampment. He just drew
on his populist imagination and the
result was disastrous, Whether Sen
ator Allen talks twenty-four hours or
twenty-four minutes he invariably
makes a spectacle of himself. It's a
pretty bad thing for a good state like
Nebraska to have a populist United
States senator, especially when his case
is as hopeless as Allen's.
Although there are two women on
the editorial staff of Tue Courier
there will be no special woman's depart
ment in this paper. There is no aex in
literature or journalism. Women are
interested in news, politics, society,
music and the drama just as men are.
Two or three years ago, some one wrote
a Woman's History of England. I think
it was written in England. Never a
copy got across the ocean. It was not
a history ot women but a history spec
ially written for women. There is no
subject so impossible to expurgate as
history. If it were possible it would be
criminal to attempt it. Therefore tho
day of women's columns is short.
When a woman enters any business
previously filled by men, she must
accept the standard of excellence estab
lished by men in it or fail.
Mr. John Currio is at work with a
hammer and chisel on what looks like a
cast from a clay model. He stands in
Mayer Bros, window on 10th St. and
scrapes and cuts as he might on u stone
reproduction. The head of the statue
is that of a man that looks like Abraham
Lincoln. It is said that tho face is taken
from the death mask of Lincoln. Any
one who has seen that mask will
wonder how Mr. Currie was able to en
tirely leave out the power, repose, sol
emnity from that face. The hands look
like corrugated iron, tho arms and legs
like stove-pipeB. If this awful thing is
cast in bronze and set up in the 1'ost
Ollico park it will be a disgrace to tho
city. What does John Currie know of
anatomy, drapery, composition, light
and shade? Look at the mass of plaster
he is working on and the question is
answered. If this city allows this pro
fanity to bo placed in the Post Ollico
6quare it will probably remain there for
years to comfort our children when they
regret too poigantly their grand-fathers
death.
Mr. Currio has done some very good
work on the Y. M. C. A. building and
the Rock Island depot. Probably he is
the best stone-cutter in Lincoln. All
honor to him for his honest skil If ul
labor. But just because he lives in Lin
coln and makes something ugly it
should not be erected a blot on the
landscape where the people swarm.
The Journal's encouragement of Mr.
Currie is as insincere aud suspicious as
its treatment of Mr. Howell and Mr.
Croan.
We hear that an early autumn
wedding was very nearly postpon :d be
cause the white shoes which had been
ordered for the bride and bride's maids
did not arrive in time. Lincoln is not a
particularly satisfactory town in the
matter of shoes and as the slippers
ordered were of a new style point it was
impossible to find satisfactory substi
tutes. After fretting and telegraphing
in vain tho bride finally relieved the
groom's anxiety and decided to walk the
Way of Roses in her dancing shoes and
let it go at that.
It is amusing, but a little incident
which for the last week has been the
theme of the gossip of the town, the
subject of smiles among men and hur
ried whisperings of astonishment among