The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, March 04, 1899, Image 1

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

    M
t
VOL. XIV. NO. IX.
HSTABLISHKD IN 1880
PRICE PIVK CENTS
LINCOLN, NBBR., SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1801).
M
ENTERED IN THE P08TOFFICB AT LINCOLN AS
SECOND CLA88 MATTER.
PUHLI8HED EVERY SATURDAY
nt
THE COURIER PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO
Office 1132 N street, Up Stairs.
Telephone 384.
SARAH B. HARRIS,
Editor
Subscription Kates In Advance.
Per annum 1 JJj
Six monthB "
Three raonthB 0
One month 20
Single copieB Oo
The Courier will not bo responsible for vol
untnry communications unless accompaniod by
return poxttifto. .
Communications, to rocolve nttontlon, must
bo siffnod by tlio full namo of tnp writer, not
meroly as a RUiirantoo of good faith, but Tor
publication if advisable
r
k OBSERVATIONS.
4'V0'1
Dr. Wlnnett's candidacy for the
uiiiyoralty is growing in strength
dally. All sorts and conditions of
men approve It. For many years, in
common with many good physicians,
Dr. Winnctt has given a large share
of his time to poor patients whom a
htrictly commercial doctor would have
dismissed with scant attention. These
patients have a vote if they have not
money and will remember Uieir debt
on election day. Dr. Wlnnett's record
in the council has secured for him the
approbation of all citizens who care
enough about city business to inform
themselves as to the share of his time
which each councilman gives to city
affairs and the Integrity and Intelli-
genco which have guided his vote and
' deliberations. Dr. Wlnnett is also a
taxpayer and appreciates the hardens
of the taxpayers. He Is not a member
of any corporation, but he Is a man of
property and can be depended upon to
treat a corporation with what fairness
an individual would receive. For a
long time the city has needed a man
of conscience and ability as its chief
executive. The nomination of Dr.
Winnett would not bo in the way of
an experiment. His experience In the
council has familiarized him with city
business and with the citizens. It is
so long that tho ring has been In con
trol that this opportunity of defeating
them and nominating an experienced
and reliable man should be Improved.
One of the clubs In this city dis
cussed tho occupation of woman the
other day. Tho question upon which
all seemed to have a dliTerent opinion
was the expediency of women earning
their own living at all. It is deplora
ble that the competition of women
has lowered the price of wages in many
callings, but it is inevitable. Tho entry
into any market of a new set of labor
ers has a tendency to reduce the price
of labor. For the last one hundred
years the number of women who earn
their own living and that of others
has been increasing and the number
is .increased by the very effects on
the market of their competitive
labor. Trices for male labor have been
depressed In direct proportion to
the Increase. On the other hand,
no one labors for the fun of it
There are no women in the wide circle
of my acquaintance who work by the
day unless there is a necessity for it.
Hut accord I ng to the arguments of the
opponents to female competition, the
widow and tho spinster without
means, either with or without those
dependant upon her, should beg or go
to the poor house, where they will not
be in competition with male labor.
Such a declaration is absurd but it is
the ultimate result of the denial of an
open market to women. The social
ists who demand protection from
women insist that man is tho stronger,
yet they want the weaker handicapped
still further, which is as unsportsman
like as it is illogical.
The anxiety shown in regard to the
illness of Rudyard Kipling by almost
everybody who knows how to read is
an indication of how large an influ
ence ho has had upon life as well as
literature. Long ago he entered the
large circlesurrounding the small cir
cle of literary men. Ills influence
upon literary composition is not to be
computed now, but it is already ap
preciated by those who keep watch of
the development of English verse and
the novel.Not Wordsworth nor Sir Wal
ter Scott, nor Byron, Keats or Shelley
had greater influence upon literature
and the habit and style of thought
than has Rudyard Kipling upon late
nineteenth century writing. Ills books
are as eagerly read by the patrons of
a public library as by those few lovers
of books who make a collection of
their own. The consciousness of his
importance to his generation and to
the history of literature which Is
more truly the history of life than
history itself can make has inter
penetrated the people as well as the
literateurs. Ills death now would be
a calamity which all of us dread and
appreciate the magnitude of.
Tho soldier, sleeping on marshy
ground in the neighborhood of Manila,
oltten by whatever is the Manilaese
for fleas and mosqultos, fed on less
palatable food than he has ever eaten
in his life, and subjected to the strict
discipline of an army In time of war,
remembers with disgust the time he
played soldier with the militia. When
he stood guard then under the stars,
his imagination helped him through
the night. As he strode up and down
with the white tents gleaming in the
moonlight, for the militia always went
Into annual encampment at the full of
the moot) and in the spring time, he
scared the white rabbits hopping
about on the prairie by his realistic
military bearing. Then he felt all tho
stimulation and glow of a stage sol
dier, of war in the abstract, a sort of
historical sulTusion of feeling, all that
which remains of Coeur de Lion, of
Amadis of Gaul, and of Alexander.
But in Manila tho ground is wet at
night, home is very far awag. there
arc so many other soldiers, one man is
as an ant among ants In Manila lies
death and oblivion perhaps, in Amer
ica there is at least one family who
make him an isolated hero, who, on
his return, will feast him according to
his deserts. "No wonder the boys want
to come home and that the discipline
seems too severe. They have played
the soldier long enough to be tired
and not long enough to have grown
indifferent to the hard things in a
soldier's life and enamoured of the
open air, the comradery, and the free
dom from a competitive system of
living.
When the war Is over the term of
enlistment for many or the soldiers
now in Manila will have expired. In
order to till their places the govern
ment will have to send out, enlisting
officers and probably will be obliged to
offer a bounty to every soldier who will
enlist. The raw recruits must be
drilled for months before they are of
much account as soldiers. The Ma
nila soldiers are acclimated. The new
comers must pass through the dis
agreeable and dangerous process of
getting accustomed to the climate and
the foods of a tropical country, a pro
cess which decimates an army faster
and with greater regularity than bul
lets and lighting. It has been sug
gested that the government olfer a
bounty of live hundred dollars to each
Manilasoldicr who will reenllstat the
expiration of his term. The govern
ment would save money by such a
bargain, counting the passage money
of those it must send home and of
those who go to take their places, of
the increased hospital cost after each
arrival of recruits, and of their ineffi
ciency while being drilled into shape
and the months of residence it re
quires to defy the climate. The troops
at Manila have learned how to be com
fortable though iq camp and reason
ably happy. Discipline has lost its
sharpest edge, Dulled by custom the
peremptory commands of the officers
and their oversight of what an Ameri
can considers nobody s business but
his own, no longer cause a rebellion of
the spirit harder to calmly endure
than poor fare, heat, cold and a bed
on the ground. Old soldiers rather
like to be ordered around, to have
their clothing inspected, and to sleep
in the open, but about rations they
always grumble-that is one of the
privileges of being a soldier. And
the young and old soldier grumbles In
concert at Uncle Sam's menage.
The live hundred dollar bounty, be
sides being a saving in the way I have
pointed out would have a tendency to
diffuse throughout the army a spirit
of content, as conducive to the health
and effectiveness or troops as favorablo
sanitary conditions and good rations.
Wherever the Anglo-Saxon has con
quered a primitive people and settled
among them, the process of clvlliza
tlon has not been effected without
acts of aggression on the part of the
soldiery. The complaints of the Phil
ippinos against tho occasional insults
of the American sjldlers are doubtless
Just. Among them are many who
Joined the armv not from patriotism
but from a love of adventure and they
mean to have it. Such men asthese will
cheat and betray simple natives and
bring discredit upon the very civiliza
tion the nation is seeking to intro
duce. The strict discipline enforced
at Manila is as much to protect the
natives against designing soldiers as
it is for offensive purposes. The
American Indian has been subjected
to centuries of what the bad white
man considers "smartness." Warned
by the injustice done the natives on
this side tho ocean it would be pleas
Ing to the really civilized people to
learn that the natives in the Philip,
pines were being protected against the
sharpers in the army by the most
stringent retaliatory measures against
such offenders.
Brigadier General Leonard Wood,
according to an article by Mr. Henry
Lewis in the current number of Mc
Gl lire's, has by Incessant super vision
and the exercise of autocratic power,
rescued the Cuban population from
starvation, cleaned the city and begun
to pave it, and by so doing reduced the
averago daily death rate from two
hundred to ten, has reformed the cus
tom house service, reduced municipal
expenses, has corrected abuses in Jails
and hospitals, has liberated many
prisoners held on trivial or no charges,
rerormed the courts, maintained law
and order, established tho freedom of,
the press, and Anally restored business
confidence and stimulated trade and1
commerce. This revolution has been
wrought by a man who is at once a
soldier, a statesman, a physician and'
a man of affairs. It may bo difficult
to find another General Wood for
Manila, but from all accounts of the'
sewage of the place Just such ah all
around master of trades Is needed. '
The session of tho Daughters of the
American Revolution In Washington
last week was stormy. The ruling of.
Spoaker Reed, who had been appealed
to to decide u parliamentary question,
was rejected, and the man who has
heretofore had everything his own
way, was somewhat miffed at the
Daughters and said such conduct was
"lamentable," that "Mrs. Reed warned
j.