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ESTABLISHED IN 1866
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PRICE FIVE CENTS;
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LINCOLN. NEB.. SATURDAY. APRIL 16. 18U8.
EXTKBED-IN THK FOSTOFTICB AT LINCOLN AS
8XCOHD CLASS UATTO.
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
TIE C01RIER PRIHTIK1 1ND PQBLlSllllfG GO
Office 1132 N Btreet, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH B.HARRIS,
Editor
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Per annum 22
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OBSERVATIONS. 8
The election by the council of Dr.
Winnett to the chairmanship of the
city council was a wise choice. The
doctor has made a record for keeping
still and voting according'to the die
tates of an unusually enlightened con
science. Mr. Mockett's exhortations
and Mr. Webster's exegetic expound
ing of the economics of city water,
paving, franchises, sewage, etc., are
too valuable and have resulted in too
substantial benefits to the city to be
lightly suppressed. Besides both the
latter gentlemen recognized the pro
priety of making the silent doctor
with the judicial mind, president of
the council. It would be in the way
of a penance for the other two to
listen to speeches by councilmen with
not half their gifts and be obliged
either to keep still or give up the
chair. Whatever is, is best. Allah il
Allah.
J
Why the president and the diplo
matic correspondence should ignore
the destruction of the Maine as a
casus belli has to do with the mys
teries and intricacies of international
communications. But supposing we
bad blown up an English or a Russian
or a German ship while it was fastened
to a buoy in New York harbor? There
is no doubt that war would be de
clared against us for that reason just
as soon as the proofs of the crime
could be presented to Queen Victoria.
Emperor William or the Czar. The
few German missionaries who were
killed by Chinese roughs were paid for
by an immediate seizure of Chinese
territory which gives Germany a foot
hold in Asia that will be added to as
fast as Russia and England will allow.
But we permit the Spanish to blow up
a ship and 266 United States citizens
and refer to it only casually in com
munications to the Spanish govern
ment. The comrades of the marines
who are thus ignored are rightfully
indignant. The negotiations now be
ing carried on between this country
and Spain are supposed to have for
their object the independence of Cuba
which is, strictly speaking, none of
our business. They neglect the real
point at issue which is our business,
viz., an attack on a United States ship
and the murder of 266 United States
sailors. Yet no one except the sailors
that are left seem shocked at the
country's desertion of Americans for
Cubans to whom it owes neither grati
tude nor protection. If the destruc
tion of the Maine is to be diplomati
cally considered as a mere unimport
ant incident the loyalty and bravery
of the marine service is in danger of
being seriously affected.
People who live and move and have
their being around among the public
men of the city say that Street Commis
sioner Lindsey is cot blamed for the
faults of the administration, although he
is known to be a friend of the mayor.
It is generally believed that "Bud" al
ways raised his voice against the prac
tices of the mayor and told him in em
phatic language that crooked work
would bring him in more trouble than
the office was worth. Among the men
around town Lindsey is regarded as a
man of brains and political honesty. The
chaucesare that if be goes on and saws
wood in the street department there will
be no howling demand to have him de
capitated. Stare Journal, April 8.
A few sidewalk ordinances which
appear on another page of this paper
may explain this editorial commenda
tion in the foregoing paragraph. The
Journal is doing its affable bestto play
up to the lofty patriotism of the Ham
ilton club without losing the commer
cial advantages of Bud's friendship.
"The men around town" who regard
the street commissioner as a man of
brains and political honesty are those
who laugh at reform, who admit that,
the people can never be represented
by any one unwilling to buy political
support, by men in short, whose own
business interests overbalance any and
all considerations of public welfare.
Such men recognize the fact that the
street commissioner has political
sagacity and accepted his assistance
in the days before the Lincoln system
of nominations made it less essential.
A newspaper policy which allows
the counting room to dictate the edi
torials, not alone as to what and
whom they shall ignore but as
to the persons and principles
they shall commend, may gain a fev
dollars from printing sidewalk ordi
nances and lose reputation and influ
ence which in time of a crisis may
have fatal results.
j
The report of an electrician printed
in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune as
to the danger of electrolysis attacking
the iron foundations of the high build
ings is very alarming. It is well
known that iron piping after a few
years contiguity to the electric cur
rent crumbles like soft chalk. The
water and gas pipes of this city have
only recently had to be renewed in
many of the streets through which the
electric street railway passes. Those
who examined the pipes that were
taken from the street were appalled at
the extent of the destruction which
the electric current had accomplished
in a few years. When the immense
weight of the sky scrapers of Chicago
is considered, the danger which
threatens to disintegrate foundations
which were capable when laid of bear
ing thousands of tons mere weight
than that erected upon them, assumes
a more threatening aspect than any
foreign foe. Hundreds of people occu
py the Masonic Temple and buildings
like it, hundreds of human beings en
compass it at all hours of the day, and
it cost hundreds of thousands of dol
lars. Yet the iron girders, eighteen
feet deen in the earth, protected only
by cement which absorbs water a
conductor par excellence of the cur
rent, have been exposed to the electric
current ever since they were laid.
The money invested in the street
car plant and the convenience the
cars are to the public must be set
over against the cost of the buildings
and the lives of the people in and
around them. Unless means of abso
lute insulation are quickly discovered
and applied, intra urban electric
transportation is doomed. Thelossof
life and property that the crumbling
of the foundations of a building six
teen stories high would cause cannot
be estimated. The fact that millions
of dollars worth of property as well as
human life is threatened by this
metallic disease insures quick action
to avert such disaster.
In consideration of the expense
which all cities traversed by electric
street cars have incurred by reason of
the damage done water pipes and pav
ing the street car companies should
pay their taxes cheerfully and, as
quickly as possible, get into complete
rapport with city councils.
J
The suggestion made in Thk
Coukier last week that the city gov
ernment select a chief from among
the employes of a metropolitan
fire department, has been re
ceived favorably. The chief of
a division in New York or Chicago has
risen to his place by a series of bravo
deeds and exhibitions of quick intelli
gence as to the source of a tire and the
means of extinguishing it. Such a
man has scores of rivals in a large
city. In Lincoln he would be alone in
bis glory with none to dispute his
right of way. He would save many
thousands of dollars worth of property,
he would have the confidence of the
people and the insurance companies
and would be in a fair way to become
distinguished. Of course euch a man
would need to be paid twice the salary
he was receiving when discovered by
the mayor or committee of the city
council of Lincoln in order to induce
him to leave a metropolis for glory and
the west. But the extinction of one
one hundred and eighty thousand dol
lar fire, like that of the recent Davis
fire, would pay an expert chief's salary
for a century. There has never been
a fire in Lincoln large enough to
frighten the spectators that the chief
and firemen have not ap-arently
shared their panic. The prompt ac
tion of a cooicxpert who has qiu nched
hundreds of fires in the sky scrapers
of a city is something that our bucolic
eyes have never seen. But the windy
city needs a man of heroic proportions
who knows and knows that he knows
and in case of a fire will take supreme
control and allow no one. be he mayor
or councilman, to dictate to him. Re
crudescence oer the mistakes of the
Davis fire is futile unless it indicate a
way to secure the city against a recur
rence of the same kind. That fire
which smouldered for two hours and
was not checked until it destroyed a
half a block of the most valuable prop
erty in the city is proof enough of the
need of a chief who has learned how to
control fire and men and direct water
where something is burning, rather
than on columns of smoke.
"England and the United States are
now virtually the only representatives
of liberty and law against militarism
and despotic government." Our Irish
friend and fellow citizen will not ad
mit that England across the water Is
the only representative of constitu
tional liberty and that the two na
tions are united by blood, law and
literature so strongly that not even
the fear of offending the Irish vote
