Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (March 12, 1898)
1 I v . . i VOL 13X0.11 JTA ESTABLISHED IN 188C PK1CE FIVF CENTS LINCOLN. NEB., SATURDAY. MARCH 12. I8US. ESTEREDIH THE POSTOFTICE AT LINCOLN AS SECOND CLASS MATTES. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BT THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS. DORA BACHELLER Editor Business Manager Subscription Kates In Advance. Per annum $100 Six months 7o Three months 50 One month 20 Single copies 05 2 OBSERVATIONS. 8 jaaaja A whole day of the council's investi gation into the conduct of city affairs by the mayor was spent in trying to ex tract evidence from Melick, the former chief of police. The futility of the attempt was apparent early in the day. The incident Is only another illustration of theditticulty of proving in court, actions which everyone out side of it admits have taken place. The progress of the impeachment proceedings and tho real relations of Chairman Giesler to Mayor Graham is pictured very graphically and indis putably by Harry Gage in his car toons, which, although crude in ex ecution, arc well composed and already have Uncharacteristic which no stu dio can teach, viz: that of telling the truth forcibly and without circumlo cution. M The decision in the maximum freight rate case by the supreme court has been long foreseen. There isnoth ingsocomplicated nor dependant upon so many and so mysterious proposi tions as freight rates. The intellect of the ordinary legislator is built on simple lines of construction of which the basis is: "What's your's is mine, and what's mine s' my own." Any thing so complex as freight rates can not be grasped by the ordinary law maker, nor even by the legal talent which stands ready to help him com pose his bills. The study of freight rates is like the study of a system which ramifies in many directions and is dependant on so many laws and principles that simplicity lias long been destroyed. "When such a sj-stem is undergoing inspection with a view to comprehension and revision by a legislator who is thinking of getting up a bill to show the blamo railroads what's what, there is no especial rea son why the victims of his passion for composition should bealarmed,so long as all bills must not be contrary to the constitution and its interpretation by the supreme court. It is very much to be regretted that one of the republican nominees for the school board is not a woman. The education and training of the young is peculiarly the province of woman. Most of the public school teachers are women. A clear headed wjinan on the school board without political de signs on congress, the legislature or what uot, might be a harmonious ele ment in a body, which, up to date, has established a reputation for quarrelsomeness not surpassed byeven the noisy deliberations of the Lincoln city council. A woman has very little chance to secure such a nomination because, in the first place the party has nothing to gain from naming her and, in the second place, should she be nominated and elected, she cannot be made to see the political ex pediency of awarding co.'il or other contracts to this man or that. She is such a simpleton, such a novice, that she is bent on deciding a question on its merits and she will not, or does not admit the necessity of trading votes with her associates. Of course such a member of the school board is impossible from the practical politi cian's standpoint, yet for the welfare of the children there should be a woman on the school board. oRichard Harding Davis has a story in the current Cosmopolitan called The Man With One Talent. It is the story of a young American who goes to Cuba and fights with and for the insurgents, is taken prisoner, a rope fastened tohiswristsand dragged by a man on horseback until the rope cuts through to the bone. He is imprisoned but escapes to America in order to en list the sympathies of somebody pow erful enough to aid the men, women and children whom the Spaniards are not warring with but butchering. He meets a senator whose oratorical abil ity can sway people to vociferous shouting or sniffling, but whose power stops there. He can rouse neither others nor himself to action. Wall street owns him and presses the but ton which sets his automatic soul in motion. The young man, Arkwright, not having had much experience with orators, takes him at his word, accept5 his burning words as evidence of a heart and endeavors to show him how much good he can do by visiting Cuba. The orator consents to go but is de terred by those who work the buttons which open or close theorator's mouth and start or stop him on errands of mercy or the devil's. The story is fervid and without any of the mani cured foppery that makes Van Bib ber, to whom Gibson has given tiic features and figure of Davis, and into whom Davis has written his own character, such a bore. Spain's humble acceptance of the snub in regard to the preference of the United States to allow Consul Lee to remain just where he is, is an indica tion of her reply when asked to make all possible reparation for the Maine. The strength of the Carlist party, the poverty of the national exchequer and so far SiKiin's failure to negotiate a loan from any other nation, put her at the mercy of the United States gov ernment which has plenty of money and men and which can buy ships and borrow from any country on the globe, rich enough to loan money. Moreover the United States can go to war witli no fear of a revolution. Preoccupation of the central government only in creases the loyalty of north, south, east and west to the union. Spain is a divided, bankrupt, nation, whose king is a boy. She has no credit and her internal resources are still unde veloped because of the indolence of a laissezfaire people. Under these cir cumstances a war with a nation of the size and vitality of the American means for Spain an overturning of the present dynasty and in the event of defeat disastrous concessions to the conqueror. The foe is in reality pros trate now and by the use of diplomacy and by making a great show of the ships we have and those we can buy there is reason to hope that the wise McKinley can pcevent a war and se cure peace to Cuba as well as repara tion for our own wrongs. Of all the clubs which women have organized, since the club movement legan, which is quite different from a statement as to the first club, for no one will ever find out when that was started, there is only one species that seems to me to have been organized more especially for self aggrandize ment, not for culture or to afford op portunities of good fellowship or to express the Sorosis idea of helping one another, but to exhibit and em phasize aristocratic descent, which the founders seem to have feared would be forgotten in the rush for culture and the cultivation of the new sociablcness. The Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Order of the Crown, to the latter of which nobody can belong except, those who can read their title clear to a descent from kings, belong to the species referred to and there are many others which have not a potent enough reason for being. The nominal plea for the or ganization of such associations is that they serve to keep alive the interest in the achievements and honors of our ancestors who are a long time dead and growing more so. In so far as the D. A. It. and other socie ties of the same kind stimulate love of country and the cherishing of tra dition they are of service to humanity, but their meetings seems to an out sider to be given up to struggles for the high places where men can see and envy. The National society D. A. R. has twenty Vice-Presidents Gen eral always printed with capitals. The duties of a vice-president of al most anything are scarcely ever oner ous, but the honor is great and doubt less recompenses for a sense of use lessness which must occasionally, in the silence and retirement of mid night, overwhelm the twentieth Vice President General. Margaret Hamil ton Welch says of the recent meeting in Washington that "an important piece of organization work was the abolishing of the ollico of the First Vice President General, as distin guished from the other nineteen who makeup the list of the twenty Vice Presidents General. It was felt that the discrimination in favor of one Vice-President General was unneces sary; the only hesitation in regard to the matter arose from the fact that the then acting first Vice-President General, Mrs. A. G. Rrockett, has most ably filled the office, and it was feared that to abolish it might be some rellection upon her official record. With a full recognition of her ser vices and ability the vote was taken, which resulted in the suppression of the office " At this meeting the chair man of the Continental Hall Com-mittec-the necessity for capitals in all reports of the D. A. It. nearly empties the uppercase-reported that' 840,000 had been raised for the erec tion of the hall, I mean Hall, at Wash ington. It is the recommendation of one of the founders of the society, Mrs. Ellen II. Walworth, that the Hall when erected shall be called the Memorial Manor of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Such a Hall would be of great historical service in providing a fire-proof building for relics of the revolution, and there is besides mucli commendable work that
