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VOL 12 NO 17
ESTABLISHED IN 1SSG
PRICE FIVE CENTS
3$
LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY. APRIL, 21. 1807.
mnnn offiobatw
AS UCOXB-CLAM KATTKX
PUBLISHED XVEftY BATtTBDAY
BT
CIDBIER PRIMING 1RD PDBUSHIH II
Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH 1?. HARMS.
DORA DACHELLER
Editor.
Husiness Manager
Subscription Rates In Advance.
Per annum 82 00
:Six months 1 00
Three months 50
One month 20
Single copies 05
OBSERVATIONS. :
vrm
The Aububon club movement has
awakened tho interest of lovers of
nature all over this country. In Eng
land and Frauco the birds are protected
-and also in Germany. The daughter
of birds has been must terrible in North
and South America and in Africa. Toe
war upon the Roseate tern which in
habits the North Atlantic American
coast has almost exterminated the
specie?. From New York to Maine they
are rare where once they Hocked in
aquatic sociability. Last summer five
Indians were employed by a wholesale
New York millenery house to kill these
birds. Their average kill a day for the
season was 500 birds. They left their
bodies on their way north, stripping
from each bird tho pinkish feathers
from the breast. Like tho track of a
famine they blazed their way with
skeletons. Tho valuable function which
this bird performed in the floral econ
omy of tho North Atlantic states will
hereafter bo unperformed and the con
sequences will bo disastrous even if the
sequence of the events which was
caused by the slaughter of tho
bird be hidden. In England twenty
five or thirty 3 ears ago the
government thought tho penalty
for killing hawks and owls might
ba removed without destroying the
balance of power. Indiscriminate
slaughter followed. With the disap
pearance of their enemies, the field mice,
8b raws and gophers increased in such
quanties that pasturage and grain were
immediately affected. The sheep died
by hundreds and Johnny Bull was
taught a lesson Le never forgot. We
are a little slower to learn over here.
The game birds are protected by law
because their distruction in the nesting
season would have an immediate effect
on the market and upon sport. But the
law which protect? robins, meadow-!arko,
thrushes and tit-1 1 Lirds in general is
not enforced. The murderous small
boy who is only really happy when bo i
killing or torturing something can kdl
as many birds ts his skill, which, pro
videntially, is as undeveloped a 3 his
sympathy, will permit. With the ex
tinction of the bilds in the cast, the
army of tuft-hunters is gradually work
ng it3 way westward and it is only a
matter of time when the fields will be
silent savo for tho shrilling insect, safe
to lunch all day long on tree or grain.
Prof. Bruner's mission to South
America is to find out a way to kill in
sects as well as the birds used to. South
America is the home of bright plumagcd
birds and hundreds of companies have
been organized to supply the increasing
demand for wings and breasts on hats
and bonnets. 1 he regret for such a
state of things has been futile, until
now, to improve it. At the present
time the death of the birds has been
considered by the Women's clul)3 or the
east, The Aubutna soe'ety has been
started and all thinking women are
joining it. The menbsrsbip roll is in
creasing every day. By next fall the
leaders calculate that there will be a
perceptible decrease in the demand for
birds. If the mysterious source of
of fashion could be reached the mis
sion of the society wou'd be accomplish
ed. The leaders of fashion do not make
it, but they have a negative influence.
They might not be able to mako the
wearing of fishes and mice on hats
fashionable, but by not doing so they
render such a custom very bad form.
In every place small or large there are
those who have an instinctive feeling
for color form and style. Tho dowdy
multitude watches them with an imi
tative eye. Their influence in a matter
of the kind under consideration is most
valuable. Among the members of the
joung Audubon 6ccietyof Lincoln there
are a number of such leaders who have
pledged themselves to discourage by
example and influenco the wearing of
"the sad, dead bodies of birds" as orna
ments. Many reply to the request to
to jcin the society with the
remark that, '-People ought to be
allowed to wear what pleases them.''
The south thought slavery was no busi
ness of the north's and the north had
to take a club and reason it out. The
destruction of so beautiful and essential
a part of nature as the birds ia every
bodie's business and the women of this
country are going to prevent it, with a
club. There is another raison d'etre
for clubs besides the studying of Roman
history and literatine. Individual effort,
unless it be inspired, is ineffectual. Tho
common ever day woman in a club can
organize effort so that it will clear a
city, ornament it, and preserve tho lives
of the birds. Unless tho club discipline
and opportunities result in blessings of
the kind enumerated it will not become
the institution that it seems likely to.
Tho wearing of birds is a reproach to
the sex as slavery was to the south. It
belie3 gentleness, womanliness and
reason and the urbanization, supplied by
the club will enab'o the sex to ac
complish, this and all other reforms.
Mis Caher has written a story, where
in the scene is laii in Brownville
'Brownville,' she says, "had happened
because of the steamboat trade, and
when the channel of tho river had be
come so uncertain and capricious that
navigation was impossible, Brownville
became impossible tco, and all tho pros
perity that the river had given, it took
back again into its muddy arms. And
ever since, overcome by shame and re
morse it had been trying to commit sui
cide by burjing itself in tho sand.
So it was that the tide went out at
Brownville and the village became a
'ittle Pompeii buried in bonded indebt
edness. The sturdy pioneers moved
away, and the river rats drifted in and
bought up the b g houses for a song, cut
down the tall oaks and cedars for tiro
wood, and plowed up tho terraces for
potato patches. Brownville was not
always the sleepy, deseited town that it
is today, full of empty buildings and
idle men and boys growing up without
aim or purpose. It is a yonng
town, with a brilliant past."
These gifted ladies who have moved
out of Nebraska do not refer to us with
much pride. Mrs. Peattie, Miss Cather
and probably Miss Gaylord, who is also
making a name for herself, do shake
theirheads and mourn when Nebraska is
their theme. It is bad politics to t 11
stor'es about one's native stat". Mr
Bryan, Mr. Sterling Morton, even Char
he Dawes, who only lived here in the
moulting period, do much better by us.
Mrs. Peatf.e's. stories give Nebraska a
brassy sky, a choking air, burnt out
fields, watched by desperate farmers
with starving wives and wan babies.
The actual deep, tencer blue of the sky
COO dajs of the jear, thebeety farmer
legislators, tLe'r buxom wives and
applecheeked babies are not picturesque
and there is not one story out of a
hundred in which Euch a reality can bo
used. The hot winds and ths drought
are gcoJ material, and in literature they
have come to be characteristic of the
wes. If it were not for tha politicians
aforesaid, who are not hampered by any
artistic limitations, the west is in the
way of getting a reputation that will
injure the value of real estate. Although
many a western town is tnrpid.it has Iifo
and vigor. Any one of a number of events
not at all unlikely to happen will create
activity without much effort. Compare a
western town in tho path of a flood of im
migration which hasswoptand will sweep
again from Massachusetts to Culifor.
nia, with a town in tho Whit? mountains
or with one of those places out of tho
beaten track in tho state of Ohio. In
tho west, however small tho place, thero
is enterprise and encouragement for
any endeavor. Tho atmosphere is
speculative. Nothing is bounded by
tradition, by what other men havo tried
and failed to do. Having turned a
desert into arable land, air-ships, expo
sitions and universities aro everyday
events. Verily tho breadth of tho hori
zon, the extraordinary purity of tho air
everlastingly rinsed in sunlight, is stimu
lating. When once the boundaries aro
removed from human effort as they have
been in the west, as they aro from every
new people, creative effort is stimulated'
Nebraska more than any other western
Etate has shown her succeptibility to
this influence, and the gifted writers
who expatiate upon the misery of living
in Nebraska are themselves examples of
what residence in Nebraska can make
out of one.
a
If correspondents and special writers
can be believed the new tariff bill is un
satisfactory to everybody but stock
holders in the. largest trusts. William
E. Curtis in the Chicago Record says in
regard to schedulo E which relates to
sugar: "Under the McKinley law sugar,
from recipiocity countries, was free.
Under the present law of 1SIM the duty
is 41 per cent ad valorem. The imports
last year were valued at 573,001,003, and
producad a revenue of ?29,!J10,01G. The
sugar trust next to the Standard Oil
the largest manufacturing corporation
in the United States, is the only buyer,
the only beneficiary of this duty. Tho
Dingley bill not only protects the trust
in its monopoly by imposing a duty of
oe. eighth of a cent a pound on refined
sugar from all countries, but imposes
one eighth more, or one-fourth of a cent
a pound upon refined sugar from Ger
many, France, Austria and Argentine
Republic, and other countries from
which all our imported refined bugar
comes, because their governmsnts pay a
bounty upon all sugar exported.
"A simple mathematical calculation
will show what the protection of one
fourth of a cent a pound upon 84.0CO,
000,000 pounds of sugar is worth to tho
trust, but that is only a part of the
damage that is done by schedule E of
the Dingley bill. By imposing tho extra
duty upon Carman, French and Aus
trian sugar our congress prrvokes re
taliation from those countries in the
form of embargoes upon our breadstuff's
and provision. The trust rrak's a
profit of 310, "00,000. The farmers of th