VOL.13. NO. 51.
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LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY. DECEMBER 24. 1898.
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OBSERVATIONS.
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The appointment of W. S. Summers
as Uoited States district attorney is a
strong one. Mr. Summers is an elo
quent speaker and a clear thinker.
His recognition strengthens the re
publican party in this state and opens
the way for a career which there is
every reason to believe will be a very
brilliant one.
The navy has become disgusted with
young Hobson and I believe a large
part of the country has. A naval olli
cer who was present at Guantanamo
during August and September says
that Hobson was actually placed for a
short time under suspension by his
senior officer for his officiousness in
connection with the repairs on the
Maria Theresa. Scores of officers were
clamoring to perform the pyrotechnic
errand that Hobson was sent on. yet
for some reason Commander Miller of
the Merimac was superceded by Hob
son, who is now making so unsoldicrly
and unprofessional exhibition of him
self that the newspaners which have
conceded and advertised his heroism
.are forced to acknowledge that he is
insisting a trille too much upon a
triumphal progress.
The extracts printed on another
page are only a few of the comments
cut from the country papers on the
senatorial situation. I know of only
one paper in the state that is urging
Mr. Thompson as a candidate for sen
ator. Most of the editors regard his
ambition as an impertinence to the
republican party and its accomplish
ment as a very serious blow to the
j)arty for which he has never done
anything. Tiik Coukikh has from
week to week printed the facts in re
gard to Mrv Thompson's true relations
to the paity and his designs upon it.
That these articles have not been
without effect upon the country press,
the excerpts printed herewith will
show. Most of the editors of the Ne
braska country press are unacquainted
with Mr. Thompson, though all of the
leaders of the party are well known to
them. Therefore they have obviously
accepted the testimony of a publisher
whose acquaintance with Mr. Thomp
son is sufficiently thorough to warrant
an analysis of his record, diameter
and commercial and political methods.
The chicken ordinance introduced
by Councilman Mockett to the Lin
coln city council provided that the
owner of a llower bed or kitchen gar
den, who found chickens scratching
up his seeds and plants was at liberty
to catch and impound them and exact
a line from the chicken owner before
releasing them. The council passed
the ordinance and the mayor vetoed
it, saying that it would work an in
justice to poor people. The veto is in
favor of some poor people against oth
ers. Those who love (lowers and fresh
vegetables and are willing to prepare
the earth and plant seeds and weed
and water are deprived of their harvest
by a man who takes the unwarranted
liberty of pasturing his chickens on
his neighbors door yard. The hus
bandman has rights which the poultry
man is bound to respect, but never
does. The ordiuance, instead of cre
ating neighborhood quarrels would
have gone far toward settling and pre
venting them. Small plantations,
the work and the pride of the day
laborer in other men's vineyards, are
destroyed by the hundreds every sum
mer by witless hens, whose owners are
smoking black pipes in sellish uncon
cern of the destruction of their neigh
bors' labor.
The chicken ranchman has no more
right to pasture his Hocks on some
other man's agricultural triumphs,
than he has to send his children to
eat at a strangers' table. It is im
possible to keep the hen at home un
less she be enclosed in a high fence,
which is said to be bad Tor her health,
or unless she have a herder, which is
unamerican The sheep is the small
est animal herded in this country and
it is well enough to let it go at that.
Europe has goose, turkey and swine
herders, but American youngsters
have larger and more money making
occupations.
Birds have less intelligence than
four-footed animals and of all birds
the hen is the most aggravating!
stupid. Uues which would merely
amuse a donkey and make a crocodile
weep succeed with the nen, who is not
susceptible to the intuitions which
keep an adult trout from swallowing
a hook without investigation, and
trout have had much more limited
educational opportunities than poul
try. The amount of damage that a
criminally stupid hen can accomplish
in a half hour'sscratchingand crowding
of her fat body into the teeming earth
is only fully realized by him who has
risen with the sun and spaded and
raked and planted a plot of ground,
and who has thereafter weeded and
watered and watched it early and late
and counted the buds on tomato and
pea vines onlv to have it all looted by
hen devils belonging to a neighbor.
The ordinance onlv granted the right
of husbandry to the small landowners
in the un fenced portion of Lincoln,
and the voto rescinded it because the
mayor thought it worked a hardship
to the lazy poor who have been in the
habit of pasturing their coveys on
their neighbors' kitchen gardens.
The Chicago people have made vio
lent threats to the aldermen who
should dare to vote for Yerkes" tifty
tive year ordinance, but no one sus
pects the threats were idle. There is
an opposition of unusual strength in
Chicago, which has been developed by
the labor unions (and reinforced by the
university settlements and sociologi
cal classes and professors), to institu
tions which make money by occupy
ing a street. The people are com
ing into their own with remark
able rapidity in Chicago. It is
only a little while tiiat they have
realized that the streets were theirs
and that no council or legislature
could sell them for a consideration
which went into the councilinen's or
legislators' jacket. The streets are
the city's and the right of way thereon
must be paid for. Mr. Yerkes says
that the publishers of several Chicago
newspapers made overtures to-him to
support his franchise fora certain per
cent of what it was worth to him. He
refused to divide and they combined
against him. Hut the newspapers
have very little to do with it. They
could not excite the people's wrath to
such an extent if there were no basis
for the suspicion that the couucilmen
were belling the people's property as
if it were their own. The indigna
tion grew, not from what the news
papers said, though they started it,
but from the pertinacity with which
the coiincilmen stuck to their original
intention of granting the franchise.
The Chicago city council is nothing
if not politic and the mass meetings
seemed not to effect them in the least.
Therefore the people concluded the
briDe must have been large enough to
offset the political suicide of every
man who voted for the ordinance.
Then, and not till then, the people
threatened personal violence and the
politicians knew the great common
people were not making idle threats,
and just as 6iire as there were lamp
posts they would lie utilized as in the
days of the French revolution and the
ordinance was superceded by another.
We have progressed so far in the
ideas or holding property in severalty
that the old English and early Ameri
can habits of thought and practice of
holding forest and pasture in common
had begun to disappear. The present
revival of communal sentiment is a
consequence of trade unionism and
the large place given to the study of
economics in all the most modern
colleges. In Chicago communal edu
cation is progressing perhaps more
rapidly than in any other American
city. It is the most American of the
large cities and is freer from tradi
tion and habits. It is there that an
archy and absolutism will probably be
throttled and a new sjstem iuaiigu.
rated. This populnr demonstration of
the distrust of the people for the
oligarchy which changes its personelle
but never its methods or character, is
an evidence of the truth of what has
been said concerning the growth of
communal ownership in Chicago.
The city has outgrown the districts
into which it was devided in the early
days. This advice of the charter re
vision committee will therefore meet
with approval and probable accept
ance. The proposition to limit the
number of couucilmen to live elected
at large contains dangerous possibili
ties which it is well to consider. Un
der the present system two coiincilmen
are elected from each ward and it has
been claimed that they are more in
terested in the ward than in the whole
city, but it is not disputed that the
composition of the council is fairly
representative of the city. It is nat
ural fora man to be more interested
in his own ward and in his own
neighborhood than in remote parts of
the city in which he has no property
arid only a philanthropic interest.
The fourteen members of the present
council hold each other in check. If
money is spent in one ward the other
six watch an opportunity to secure
a corresponding outlay in theirs. The
first and the second have the same
number of representatives as the
fourth and tifth. As an agent for the
transaction of business the council is
slow, and the city has frequently to
wait a long while for the accomplish
ment of a reform, but the council is
democratic and very near the people.
It is not comioscd of a few men from
one part of the city but of fourteen
men from suven parts. Residents of
the fiist ward might tind it impossi
ble to convince five couucilmen from
the fourth that their district needs
as good water and as complete lighting
as the districtaround the capital. So
long as all men are sellish it is much
safer for wards containing the poorer
residents to be represented by coiin
cilmen who reside in them.
w
It is difficult to tell from a table of
city and county taxes printed in one
of the city papers what it proves. The
tables, one of city and one of county
taxes, are copied from the county
treasurer's books, but they do not
prove anything because the compiler
has failed to indicate the identity of
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