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VOL 12 NO 32
ESTABLISHED IN 1886
PRICE FIVE CENTS
St- T -
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AT. j m
of
LINCOLN. NEB., SATURDAY, AUGUST 7. 1807.
sS:
$l&
iMIlsFE1t
ENTERED IN THE P09TOFFICE AT LINCOLN AS
SECOND CLASS MATTER.
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
BT
THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO
Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH K. HARRIS.
CORA BACHELLER
Editor
Business Manager
Subscription Rates In Advance.
Per annum 2 00
Six months .' 1 00
Three months 50
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Single copies 05
"
S OBSERVATIONS. Z
Considering that Lincoln, which is
an average American citj has been
trying to get good water for more than
half a decade, and that it has been
defeated, not because good water is
not within reach, or within our means,
but purely and simply by politics, is it
not foolish, or rather inexact for ora
tors, preachers and leader writers
to keep up the old fiction of a free
government? The government of the
United States is free in form but
actually every man, .woman and child
in it is daily deprived of his inalien
able rights to pure air and pure water
by the schemes of a few politicians
who are helping themselves to a seat
in congress or to a county or munici
pal oflice by ignoring the comfort and
health of the citizens and by serving
faithfully inimical interests which can
reward, and has, loyal service. ''Repub
lics are ungrateful.' Soare municipal
palities. Let a nun do his best for
the city and no one-will recognize his
labors, but let a councilman or a
mayor use his influence for a company
or lawbreakers, like gamblers, and he
immediately secures a "support'
which will help him from one oflire
to the next higher as long as he likes
tos.tay in-politics. Such reciprocal
relations have delivered over most of
the cities of this country, bound and
gagged and utterly helpless to the
most unscrupulous, ignorant, and
selfish amohg the citizens who oper
ate the free government for them
selves and their relatives regardless of
the liberties and rights of most of the
people who neither hold office nor
have political influence that they
are capable, ordinarily, of using with
effect. I say ordinarilh because some
times when the people realize that
they have been robbed, they rise up as
one man when voting time comes
round, and turn the hucksters out. The
fever-infected, lead-eating, poisonous
water which the people of Lin
coln are being forced to drink
now, may, while destroying their
stomachs, at the s:ime time sweep
away their long suffering patience.
Things will not get better until they
get worse. Party allegiance will not
stand the strain of prolonged and ag
gravated personal discomfort. It will
not surprise The Courier if the low
grumbling and muttering, which is
heard everywhere, develop into some
expression before long.
It is asserted by Mr. Geo. "Woods,
who is anxious to drive more wells
near the F street station, that this
first vein, which is only 30 or 35 feet
deep, is an inexhaustible stream of
pure water. Mr. "Woods also says that
if the ioints which have been driven
into the salt stream, underlying the
fresh water vein be plugged, the salt
water will not infect tlie fresh water
because salt water is the heavier.
Against this statement is the state
ment of Prof. Nicholson, of the State
university, in the case of Kendall &
Smith against the sanitary district.
In that case he testified that an analy
sis of the water furnished by the city
for public use, produced the following
results:
A gallon of water taken from the
South street station contained 15
grains of solid matter, of which solid
matter (2 grains was common kilt.
A gallon of water taken from the F
street well contained 40 grains of solid
matter, of which matter 25 grains
were common salt. A gallon of water
taken from the Rice street station
contained lti grains of solid matter, of
which matter one-half a grain was
common salt. "Water from each well
was taken in August. 18S)5.
Although public sentiment is all on
the side of the miners and against the
mine-owners, the strike is no nearer a
settlement now than when it Iegan.
Because of the number of mines in
widely separated parts of the country
it has been impossible to secure a
complete strike. No class of labor is
so oppressed as mining: no laborers
work under harderor more dangerous
conditions. On their knees, or with
back lient like a clasp-knife, they
lalor with the heavy pick in solitude
and semi-darkness. No labor with
like dangerous conditions, is so poorly
paid. Rituminouscoal is no cheaper
now than five years agoryetthe wages
of the miners have been steadily re
duced. The difference has increased
directly the profits of the mine-owner,
which, with the expedient of the corn
pan' store, has netted him fifty ier
cent profit. The scale of living among
the miners and their families has been
reduced to the point of starvation.
For the sake of humanity, not for any
enlightened or impossible philan
thropy, this strike ought to succeed.
It is not much that the miners ask,
only the discontinuance of the com
pany stores, uniform scales and
screens. "With these reforms the
miners can live like other -laborers in
decent cottages, their children can be
clothed and sent to school and they
themselves will not look like hungry
wild beasts. If there be any compul
sive force in public sentiment, any
power of the press, it ought to le
exerted in favor of the miners who
are fighting a losing fight against the
mine-owners and starvation.
j
Those who are not running for
some oflice, and they are in the mi
nority just now, are trying to select
the winners. Considering the num
ber of slates that are made and
changed every day, it keeps those who
desire to be on the winning side,
either very quiet or denying on one
day the sentiments and the friends
they had the day before. A round
Sheriff Trompen loyalty flickered
for awhile but when Mr. Jim
Parker was. confronted with ar
guments which seemed to prove that
he could not be elected and withdrew,
it tlared up again and has only leen
occasionally dimmed by reports that
as soon as he was elected. Sheriff
Trompen had promised to replace the
capable and honest Deputy Sheriff
Iloagland with Mr. L. L. Lindsay.
Such rumours and rumours of rumours
keep the olla podrida on the turn and
the watch. An account of a rousing
Harrop meeting in an evening paper
is matched in a day by a "Woods
meeting crammed with enthusiasts
who clamor for the place of register of
deeds for the pet pie's favorite. The
situation is comic inly to those en
tirely on the outside. "When bread
and butter is mixed up with any ques
tion it is no longercomic to those, the
quantity of whose bread and butter
will be determined by the result.
The proposition to repave that por
tion of the city paved with cedar
blocks at the expense of all the citi
zens is an injustice to those who did
their utmost before the worthless and
expensive blocks were laid, to prevent
the city from using that material. It
will be remembered that when city
paving was under discussion, the coun
cil visited cities where wxdeit pave
ment was in use and where the pres
ent condition of Eleventh street was
in prophetic evidence. Nevertheless
the council, in spite of indignant pro
tests from honest and intelligent
citizens decided to pave a district
with wooden blocks. There is a strong
analogue between the attitude of the
council then and now. Only then it
was pavement, now it is water. Then,
no one who had ever used wooden
blocks advised their use; now, no
chemist who has ever analyzed the
F street water advises its continued
use. Then it cost money to get the
council to change its mind about the
worthlessness of cedar 'block pave
ment. "Trow-there is an influence at
work on the aldermen to make them
admit that salt water is fresh. There
is no reason now why the decision
should be any more disinterested
than it was then. Only four or five
years from now the deaths which
have been caused by infected water
will be irremediable.
To replace the wooden block district
at the expense of those citizens who
are still paying for the brick paving
which abuts on their property is an
injustice to them. Eleventh street
should not be repaved until the pro
jerty owners on that street or any
other, paved in rotting wooden blocks
can offord to pay for it. If the
wbeden block district is repaved at
the expense of all the taxpayers the
wooden block district property owners
should help iy for the brick paving
already laid in other parts of the city.
There is too great a favoritism dis
played by the mayor and council for
certain thickly settled parts of the
city bristling with voters. An even
handed justice will in the end win
the resect and erhais the suffrages
(though that is another and more
difficult reward) of the citizens of
Lincoln. The wooden block streets
are in an almost impassable condition
exactly thestate that these who laid
them and those who authorized them
to be laid knew they would be, but there
is no justice in increasing the taxes
of an already overburdened people
to enhance the value of the property
on these streets. If there were any
thing like retributive justice in poli
tics the aldermen who awarded the
contract to lay cedar blocks on those
streets should now lie be assessed for
their lack of judgment as well a. for
the well-founded suspicions of their
disinterestedness at the time. Rut
such an Utopian plan is imjiossible in
a republic. In Turkey an officer who
made such a mistake would be be
headed. In America the ward poli
tician is the tyrant. The people go to
the polls as the herd g(es to and from.
