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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1897)
ft ii U' i m ET l' - f L a5,-v? - .- ,' -- VOL 12X0i- v' t- .-;. " X - 1 V ENTERED IN" THE POSTOKFICE AT LINCOLN" AS HECOND CLASS MATTEC. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE COiRlER PRINTIIG AND PUBLISHING GO Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs Telephone 384. SARAH H. HARRIS. DORA BACHELLER Editor Jiusiness Manager Subscription Rates In Advance. Per annum : S2 00 Six months 1 00 Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 M'1 OBSERVATIONS. In the short time that he has been at work, Mr. McArthur Iiasftilly justi fied liis appointment as water inspec tor. Ills report made to the council last Monday evening presents the re sults of an inspection of the south side of O street from the viaduct to thirty-second street and includes the Lindell hotel. The most startling item of the report concerns the Brace building which has not paid any water rent since Octolier lS!o. Water commissioner Byers' register shows that although there is a meter in the Brace building, no one has inspected it since he assumed the office. Mr. McArthur found that the meter had been moved from the st where it liad originally l)een located by an of ficial of the water department, into a place almost inaccessible under the elevator. It has proliably been dead for many months. "When Mr. McArthur shut off the water mains he found that water only flowed from the faucets ou the first floor. When the city water was turned on it was a few moments before the water reached the fifth story. Of course if the water had come from a reservoir in the roof the faucets on the fifth story would have leen the first to respond. Such immunities, secured by un scrupulous rich men. from a tax whicn is supposed to be shared by all is what makes a man a socialist and if he is not careful he becomes what the ultra conservative calls, an anarchist. Oppression of the whole community u f ' ESTABLISHED IN 1936 LINCOLN, NEB., SATURDAY, OCTOBER .. 1897. by an outlaw who holds the com munity up by cleverer and safer means than foot jkhIs use should bring the oppressed to the siipMirt of the law instead of causing them to cry out against the system. Now the system that the iwople have evolved through centuries of institutional growth is all right. It is organic and can not without danger be radically changed. All the trouble is with the men. whom year after year the voters elect to see that the system is carried out. Therefore the trouble is with the community itself. The ring that has so long Ieeii in control of the city of Lincoln has brought it to a condition where the many are made to bear the burdens of the few and their own too. lie who hath much has laid hi load on the back of his neighorand by an occasional gift to the neighborhood lersuades him that the load is not so heavy as it feels. The rate of assess ment in the last four years has been constantly increasing. Why? Is it liecause as in the case of the Brace block, certain landlords have Immmi en abled by manipulating the mayor or the heads of municiiKil departments to have their taxes remitted or over looked? Through these pinchingyears of want the small holder of real es tate in this town and county have laid their tuxes with increasing dif ficulty. The fire, school, police and "administrative excuses of the city remain the same but the individual owner jkijs more and more. Why? Is it as easy to get out of paying a tax on re.'Il property as it is to elude the water tax? AH those citizens whose property has been sold for taxes in the last three or four years or who have paid them at the cost of privationsare interested in these questions and should encourage Mr. McArthur who is fearlessly inspecting the revenues of the deiKirtmeut to pay the ex penses of which it has Iwen necessary to raise the levy. When the citizens of Lincoln once realize and confess that the heavy taxation is due to the boodling of the ring so long in con trol, they will rise up and forget the names they once answered to. they will be no longer republicans or dem ocrats, but citizens banded together to protect their proiierty from hood lers. The Slot machines are the primary school of gambling which the most resectable and worldly-wise resNt with difficulty when away from home. Yet the slot machine is pre sented to the small 1mv on every IM'uuut and candy stand in the city. Tlie professional-gamblers do not ojh ixise the slot machines for they ad mit that it is educating "a clientele from which in a few years they will 55rT .-lp?mK:1 t V "" t Wto St -IA l -r reap a heuctlt. It is so easy to make a little tree crooked. County Attorney Munger says it is very difficult to get rid of the machines. If the present chy ordinance is hard to construe against the slot machines, it is easy enoiigh for the city council' to make one esjiccialb formed to destroy this IKirticularevil. Something ought to Itedoue Itefore the potential states men and philanthropists are all turned gamblers and hangers on of fortune's skirts. J The Dingley bill is creating trouble in more than one way. A letter from a corresiHiiulant in Paris says: "We drove morning and afternoon and the great city was finer to me than it had ever been lcfore. I had no shopping to aloorb my time as there is general cessation of that oe ciiKitiou under the iernicious tariff. I lxiught one gown which absorbed the entire sum allowed me by the govern ment. We all feel as if we were un der an autocracy that limits our free will and 1 hear curses loud and deep against our legislation. Already the governments on this side are plotting counter restriction and already the system is beginning to cut off com merce with other nations. The AVip York Evening Pout publishes daily statistics of this falling off. Some wise heads think that the policy tii'ust le moderated owing to the pressure of general indignation. It is mortifying to me to feel ashamed of my country."' The foregoing is written by a woman of unusual acumen and knowledgeaud her observations are worthy of atten tion. The yellow fever scare is frighten ing much business away from New Orleans. Even those migratory families who leave the north when the mercury drops below zero navedej cided not to go to any of the Gulf re sorts this winter though they must know that all fever germs are killed by the first frost. 'ew Orleans, after the first frost, is as free from yellow Tever germs as the arctic regions. Since Ben Butler's day no germs have ever deveIojed there. The fever is brought into the city from South America by steamers insufficiently quarantined. Of course when, once started in that warm, moist climate, the evil is done and an epidemic rages of greater or less extent ac cording to the strictness of the quarantine and the sanitary condition of the city at the lime of infection. The feeling in the southern states whose commerce has leen so greatly damaged by this last attack of yellow fever, is very strong against allowing ships from fever infected ports to PRICE FIVE CENTS J." ,? touch at any United States iort. The sanitation in cities of islands in the South Atlantic and in cities of South America is very bad. American ports should le strictly protected from these places where ellow fever flourishes the year around, where there is no frost to destroy genus in ambush a hundred years or more waiting for a human animal, not inoculate by climate in which to develop. There are quarantine regulations but that they are not strict enough is indicated by the present epidemic. Mr. Thomas Doane, who died last Friday at West Towiishend. Vermont was known in Nebraska ast he founder of Doane college. In the east his fame was established by the construc tion of the Hoosac tunnel of which he was chief engineer. As a civil en gineer Mr. Donne's reputation was among the lirst in this country. His work will live long after this genera tion is dust. He built the first line of Burlington track into Nebraska. After the fire in Boston lie straightened the streets which was perliajw a greater feat than loring into opiosite ends of the Hoosac mountain and meeting in the center with a variation of only a quarter of an inch in the alignment. Mr. Doane was a fervent member of the Congregational church, and a life long believer in Christian education. It was largely by his iiiflucnjte that Doane college was established at Crete where Mr. Doane then lived. Every year at commencement; time, lie was present at the exercises. In appearance and character he was theereet uncompromising I'uritiin of colonial history, with the puritan's sternness modified by a sunny, warm hearted nature which made bin the center of a large group of friends and relatives. An unprejudiced onlooker at the football games at the university feels nothing hutadmiratinii for the splen did young fellows who meet each other in shocks which would loosen the tendons of an ordinary human leiug. They are fearless, eager and very seldom unfair, they cast themselves on the ground between touch downs, with an abandon, an unconsciousness that the ground is made of dirt that heljis the spectator to get rid of any over fastidiousness that has been accumulating since the time when he was but a handful of dust himself. The game requires, courage, brawn, a quick eye and a quick wit. Fatalities sometimes occur, but considering the utimlcrof games and the twenty-two plavers engaged in each one. foot ball lias very few victims. The Wesleyan and State university teams are sam ples of young Nebraska manhood, that KJU-J Ji i 'J- 'J
