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LINCOLN NEB., SATURDAY. APRIL tl 1896
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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
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