Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (April 11, 1896)
av e. ?.' Ii -x,. '-"4" rrv , ,r -Vwv,ia ,- j"r. ; - ri v ?-$' k - r .- - -- taJvWr,- . ". - 17 x-Ti HBBHBWSBT 'cyjrswwewwpspFv" ;r ' S' ;i f jy v - r 3hs- y "A' ' YbLitfWis ? &" '" s'1 ' ESTABLISHED IN 1896 " " PRICE FIVE CENTS jy, ?. ' i " - - MW i amm x '. K!ffaV 5 . jgsFr ! H-p"HBHBVsH3BtbBnB"Bl LINCOLN NEB., SATURDAY. APRIL tl 1896 kJZrv KXTKUD IX THK POST OWICI AT LIXCOLU AS BBCOITIMXAH M ATTXX PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY TKC Killing JM NILISIIIK CO Ofie 217 North Elerenth St. Jelephone 384 W.MORTON SMITH SARAH B. HARRIS Editor andMBfer AMocUto Editor Subscription Rates In Advance. Per annum t2.00 Six months 1-00 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 5 I OBShRVATIONS I The future of Lincoln! What of it? Just now. in this critical period when derjreeeion has deposited its heavy bur den on the people, when poverty is over taking the prosperous, and Hard Times are tracing hard lines on human faces, we are looking into the future, and each man is an interrogation point. The future of Lincoln! Undoubtedly brick blocks will be built and streets will be paved, and men will resume their interrupted race for wealth. Business will be restored to something like its ac . customed activity, and prosperity will come to the enterprising and to the avaricious and the unprincipled. But there is something be-?s brick blocks and street paving and bank ac counts in the sum total of incidents that constitute success. Lincoln may have a thousand brick blocks and a thousand miles of street paving, and a thousand Wealthy Men, and yet be a place to be shunned by orderly respectable people with children of tender age and youth ful impressionability. There is a cer tain sort of prosperity in the region of the diamond fields of South Africa; there is a certain sore of prosperity in the stimulated, struggling, sinful city of Cripple Creeks Yot thtse are not desir able places for people who would live in a wholesome atmosphere, and rear their children under proper influences. It is much more certain that brick blocks will be built and that streets will be paved and that men will get rich in Lincoln than that the moral sentiment of the community will so improve as to justify the statements of those enthu siastic persons who are wont to dilate on the social advantages of citizenship in this modern Athens. There is no public conscience in Lin coln. ' The moral sentiment of the com munity is vitiated with viciousnees. It is so impregnated that it makes scarcely any discrimination between right and wrong. It accepts without a murraer the evil conditions thrust upon the peo ple. It condones crime and exalts base and unprincipled men. There is something radically wrong with the people of a community who are never BUrred to revolt or protest by the commission of great wrougs. There is something lacking in a community where crime is excused and vice allowed to assert itself unrestrained. In a com. munity where there is no public con science and little or no moral sentiment there must be a woful lack of individual moral health and sturdiness. Is there to be any change? Are we to go on condoning monstrous crimes; extending the hand of fellowship and sympathy to embezzlers, defaulters, financial confidence men of various de grees; patronizing law breakers and en couraging open outlawry; exalting to high positions men of degraded lives, re warding with honor deeds of infamy? Is this condition of things going to con tinue to render ridiculous the claim that Lincoln is a cultured moral,community? It may occur to some people with old fashioned ideas that it is important that Lincoln should cultivate a healthier moral sentiment. It has been said many times in these columns that the curse of Lincoln is politics, and 'this is the truth. Politics and the State Journal are largely re sponsible for the low state of public sen timent. The Journal is improving a little of late. Politics is, it anything, getting worse. The following from the Bee is apro pos. Here in Nebraska we greatly need a "quickened conscience." The constitution of Nebraska bars from public office of trust or profit every man who is in default as collect' or custodian of public money or prop erty. Embezzlement and defalcation are thus singled out by the framers of our constitution among all the crimes in the calendar whose commission wcrks ineligibility to public office with out conviction. It is only by reason of a demoralized public sentiment that nofonly has this provision of the con stitution been ignored, but self-confessed defaulters and embezzlers have been granted immunity from civil aB well as criminal prosecution. Thus we have seen state, county and city de frauded of large sums of money by custodians of public funds. The more flagrant the offense, the less seems to be the disposition to vindicate the law. Twenty years ago, when General Grant, then president of the United States, made the discovery that mem bers of his own political household were involved in whisky ring swindles and star route frauds he planted him self firmly upon the impregnable position of absolute honesty in public office by declaring, "Let no guilty man escape." It was in response to this historic utter ance that the republican national con vention of 1876 enunciated in its plat form the following pledge. tVe rejoice in the quickened conscience of the people concerning political affairs and will bold all public officers to a rigid respon sibility aad encage that the prosecution aad punishment of all who betray official trusts shall be swift, thoroagh and unsparing. Only by living up to this high stan dard of official integrity can our govenment b? guarded against corrupt ion and dishonesty in public office. No where and at no time has there been a greater demand for enforcing the pen alties of of official delinquency than in this city and state at the present time, when criminal indifference to the re quirements of the law seems to perme ate so many branches of the public service. It is said that plans are now making in this city looking toward the pardon of O. W. Mosher. The scheme is to work up public sympathy and then in duce the people to sign petitions in such large numbers that the president of the United States would be justified in par doning the fallen Napoleon. The fact that the republican county convention refused to endorse the can didacy of the editor emeritus of the "greatest republican newspaper in the state" for delegate to the national re publican convention was a trifle pathetic. Mr. Gere waa unceremoniously turned down. It would seem that a newspaper that is unable to secure an in dorsement for its editor emer itus for an empty honor like that of delegateship has but a small hold on the community. Judge Erraticus Sockdolager Dundy with his interesting family is still among the towering temples and multitudinous gods and small-eyed women of Japan, and it is reported that he will spend the remainder of this month in that highly colored country. The Dundys recently made a tour of China and Erraticus Sockdolager was delighted with it. He found it, if anything, more interesting than Japan, and it is said he went so far as to make a tentative proposition to the natives to bring over Scip and Elmer Frank and set up his celebrated court on Chinese soil. But the natives were indifferent. They made the Honorable Erraticus Sockdolager understand that they get about all the excitement they can stand, and a Dundy court, even with such fancy trimmings as Scip and El mer, had eo attractions for them. So the judge abandoned the idea of going to China to grow up with the country. The Omaha Excelsior, in speaking of the Dundys trip, saysf "Judge Dundy is reported as quite anxious to see a Chinese beheading, but whether the judicial inquisitiveness was gratified or not we have not heard." I hope not. There's no telling what effect such a spectacle would have on the delicate sensibilities of Erraticus Sockdolager. A nature like his might be permanently wounded by the sight of a Chinese be heading, and it would be too bad to have the beloved judge come back to us in any wise changed from his old self all gentleness and almost feminine sensitiveness. Seeing a Chinese behead ing might ruin the judge for life. Bet ter far that he should content himself with admiring the beautiful petite wo men and the Chinese lanterns and ex ploding Chinese fire crackers, or hunt ing Chinese bear. But as they do not run Union Pacific Pullman train in China he could hardly have enjoyed hunting bear. It will be several weeks before this most just and upright judge, is restored to us. Meantime aa anx ious people waits midway between fear and hope. A rainy forenoon Bpoiled the milliaery department of the Easter ceremonial. Disappointment, dire and distressing, settled over fashionable femininity as the fine rain fell softly last Sabbath. But there is yet time for the birds of plumage .o show their fine feathers. Lent has comt and gone, and now the papers are according to frivolous hu manity the privilege of disporting inthe realm of fashion with renewed zeal. Just as if Lent made any difference with the majority of people. In Lincoln there are a few old fashioned people who stopped to think of the real significance of Lent and conducted themselves with, a due regard for the proprieties. But Lent had no special meaning for the greater number and through this period they made no sensible change in their way of living even those connected with the Church. Sack cloth and ashes' indeed! In Lincoln the supply of sack cloth has apparently given out and the ashes have been dissipated to the foar winds. Frivolity instead of fasting, pleasure instead of prayer marked the local observance of Lent, and abstinence wasn't even a name. So that, so far as the majority is concerned, there is no condition of self -denial to emerge frnm. no renewal of interrupted gayety. The chief significance of Easter is the annual depletion of millinery stores and tailor shops. a The public generally has grown so ac. customed to passing the Journal's edi-' torials unnoticed that, probably, only a small number of people read the amaz ing editorial published in that paper Sunday morning. The few that read it sustained a severe shock. The Journal should not make such Budden changes in its policy. From a quarter of cen tury of the most able silence the morn ing piper unexpectedly comes out into the open, and lifts up its voice. And what a surprise! The Oldest Inhabi tant says there was never anything like it in this city. The Journal said, in part: Some resolute men went jut yester day afternoon and began the woric of clearing Lincoln of open gambling houses and other places where the law has been defied during the past year. They promise to keep up the work un til the job ia completed, and then they will ask the people to take some action to prevent a return to the conditions that have prevailed since the present city administration came into power last April, We believe they will receive substan tial support from the business men of Lincoln and also from the general pub lic. The people have waited patiently for the city officers to act. They have listened indulgently, it not approvingly, to the explanation that "reasonable and practical control" of gambling houses and similar places would prove more satisfactory than harsh repressive meas- "ill 4 1 i 5-