Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 1897)
t 'VOL 12 NO 3 - -a W nrTnrovr omciitinwu AS UCOXD-CLASS XATTKB PUBLISHED KYZRY BATUKDAT T CMRIER PRINTING UD PQBL1SB118 ft Office 1132 N Btreet, Up Stairs. Telephone 384. SARAH l. HARRIS. Editor. Subscription Rates In Advance. Per annum S2 00 Six months 1 00 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 2 OBSERVATIONS 0 nm Dr. Charles Eliot Norton of Cam bridge, essayist, translator, and critic, in an address to the Industrial Art Teach ers association in Boston said that "chewing gum had such a large sale be cause young women have not risen far above barbarism.' If to chew gum is to be guilty of barbarism, in what ooze of savagery, what foul recess of the under world, shall the chewer of tobacco find his fitting place? Iti what circles of the neither hell shall the common expector ator be confined? The high hat nuisance is in the way of being abolished, but as long as women have not the suffrage they will be obliged to sit in a car that men hare made im possible with cigar and catarrh spit. The subject is unpleasant, but the daily contact with this filth is unspeakably more so. The inBtinct of cleanliness and of respect for other's rights is undevel oped, has not even begun to sprout in the man who will sit in a car and spit when he knows that a woman's dress must inevitably sweep over and be smirched with it. A woman looks very ugly when chewing gum aud sometimes the sound is very trying. It is annoying to sit behind a high hat in a theatre but it is much worce to sit in front of something which leans forward and squirts a foul smelling stream with in a few inches of your ear onto an in clined plane which will conduct it on to the folds of your dress which neces sarily touch the floor. Since tho laboratory student has de cided that tuberculosis is contagious and that the most common source of infection is the sputum which consump tives leave in public places, and which dried by the air of Colorado or other I , T M B IKSssSSjSSojiiyfltrt -srjfe.jrrSa g A r ESTABLISHED IN 1SS6 LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY, JANUARY 30. IS07 consumptive haunted places, is blown into tho cells of healthy human beings, several ctates are considering ways and means to make consumptives inocuous by compelling greater care on their part in this respect. If such legislation might prove effective this earth would be a pleasant place to walk on onca more, as it was befiro Sir Walter Raleigh discovered tobacco. Funny that Sir Walter, who thought the wet earth not clean enough for a woman to step on, introduced a vice which makes a walk, in trodden paths, a most nauseating expei ience. To bo suro tho high bat is a great nuisance, but "it is not the only pebble on the beach." Railroad legislation is pending an thirteen of the state legislatures now in session and six bills regulating railroad relations with the public through its agents have been introduced into con gress where Representative Sherman of New York has introduced a bill to com pel common carriers to provide all agents authorized to sell tickets with certifi cates of their authority which mint bo conspicuously displayed in their office. It makes it unlawful for other parties to sell or transfer tickets or passes under heavy penalties also of fine and im prisonment for counterfeiting tickets, and provides that nil unused tickets must bo redeemed by the companies by which they are issued. If the above becomes a law it will em barrass many newspapers which have sold taaneportation to scalpers for years. If it were not for the fact that any law can be evaded, under the conditions that this bili pro poses, the railroads would have to pay for advertising and the editor and his Btafl would join the small, the very small number who pay. and expect to pay, for transportation the same as for merchandise or any commodity in a market composed of buyers, sellers, and their wares. The senate committee on Pacific railroads authorized a favorable report on Senator Gear's bill providing for a commission of cabinet officials to set tle the indebtedness of the Pacific rail roads to the government. Another bill proposes to put sleeping car companies under the jurisdiction of the interstate commerce commission, and it declares that "it shall be unlaw ful for any person having control of such cars to charge for the use of ihe upper berth more than two-thirds of the price charged for the lower one, and that it shall be-unlawful when only tho lower berth in any section is said, to let the upper berth drop, or in any way prepare it for use as a sleeping place." Another sleeping car bill provides that all common carriers engaged in inter-state commerce by railroad and running night service chall accommo date the poor class of passengers with sleeping berths as good and as cheap as thoee available in second claeB cars. The prico of a night's rest shall not bo over 50 cents u passenger. Senator Sherman has offered a bill making a uniform classification for wheat, corn, rye, oats and barley. Our own legislature has introduced bills prohibiting the giving of passes under penalty, together with a bill re quiring the companies to give all etate officials free passes. In his inaugural message Governor Holcomb said: "Some action might very properly be taken to discourage discrimination be tween political parties by railroad com panies operating within tho state. Tho issuing of passes to an army of political workers and the giving of special rates for political meetings make tho railroad companies a power in shaping tho polit ical destinies of tho state. Railroad companies do the business of tho pub lic, and should be restrained by whole some legislation from active participa tion in party politics." In Montana petitions are being circu lated all over the state, asking the mem bers of the legislature to reduce tho fares from 5 cents to." cents per mile. In New York. Frank Sargent, chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, has prepared, and Assemblyman Bondy of Syracuse has introduced, a bill pro viding for the maintenance of employes of railroad corporations injured in the discharge of their duty. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire men has also presented a bill to the Indiana legislature of similar purport to the New York bill. In South Carolina a "Jim Crow' car bill, requiring separate coaches for the races, has been introduced in tho houee, and the indications are it will become a law. The roadd have been fighting such legislation for years. Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota are struggling with maximum freight rate bills and a 2, 2) and 3 cents a mile paEsenger fare. It is fortunate that state legislatures are composed of men of brain and brawn or the subject of freight classification might stump them. Conic sections is a game of alphabet blocks compared to the classes of freight and the charges when considered in relation to the vol ume carried. "Ho writes from far Nebraska, an tho story's mighty short; 1 just can't tell his mother; it'll crush her poor ol' heart ! An" so I reckoned, parson, you might break tho news to her Bill's in the IeKislatur", but he doesn't say what fur-" "The Triumph of Death," by Gabriele D'Annunzio, translated by Arthur Horn blow frm the Italian, is an end of tho century novel. It is without action and almost without incident. The move ment or action is internal. The external world does not appear in the four hundred pages except to give the author a chance to show his ability as a landscape and weather PRICE FIVE CENTS painter. Tho hero is a degonorate. When confronted by a necessity for action ho is incapable of taking it. Fol lowed from his birth by u hereditary tendency to suicide, he finally accom plishes it by jumping from a high preci pice with his mistress whom ho has draggod shrioking and imploring to tho edge of it. Tho wo am n loves him but he kills her because she has enslaved him and t'cadened his spiritual nature Utterly unconscious of any moral pur pose in life. D'Annunzio describes with tho power, and modernity of Zola, things which tho most depraved seldom Bpeak of. Liko Zola ho shows that tho end of sensuality is death in tho most ropulsivo form. Perhaps thero is no bet ter way of teaching this. To thobo who must learn tho les son it is batter than tho experience, be cause after an actual experience it is impossible to begin over again and tho literary xperienco leaves only the mind tainted and the soul has received a Spartan lesson which will at least pre vent ignorant Binning. But it is a ter rible danger which can warrant such a warning. It is a far cry from tho gentle persuasive saints of old Italy toGabrielo D'Annunzio who is moro tho voguo there today than the classics. Yet I can not thick it is worth whilo to read him. Tried by the sane, healthful literature of Shakespere, D'AnnunzIo's story becomes obsceno, fanciful scrawling on tho walls of a madman's cell. Ho is unsanitary and although his art is exquisite the English trans lation of "Ihe Triumph of Death" has no mission in Great Britain or America. The thirteenth biennial report of tho Nebrabka Hospital for the Insane shows, among other things, that the institution is overcrowded. Dr. Abbott estimates that the average number of patients for the coming two years will be 350, and that the expense per capita yearly will be 8171.45. Therefore tne amount re quired for the biennium is 8120.000. If, however, the legislature should deem it proper to grant the permanent improve ments asked for (sewing room for women and work shop for men), thereby per mitting an increase of the number of patients to 425, it would require a total appropriation for current expenses of 8134,500 00 for the biennial period end ing March 31, 1809. the same being a yearly per capita cost of 8153.25 a saving to the state of 813.20 for each patient annually. The report showB very care ful bookkeeping and attention to detaiL The State Journal has just issued an almanac which appears t) bo a val uable book. It is impossible to think of anything, off hand, that yo l cannot find in this book, but just wa t till you really want to know how to stop a run away horee, or to keep a baby from choking to death and you cannot find it. But politics, numismatics, marriage laws, associations, sporting recordf. I