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VOL XIV. NO. XVIII.
KSTABLISHBD IN 1880
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LINCOLN, NKBR., SATURDAY, MAY G, 189!).
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OBSERVATIONS.
8
i00
The dark and sellish deeds of cor
porations is tho favorite llieine of
orators whose meat and drink is
encores, kindled eyes, wild bursts of
cheering, etc., from crowds gathered
about the rear end of a railroad train,
or around a temporary platform so
sympathetically constructed that it
trembles at the orator's periods and
squeaks at his anti-climaxes. In
every suit or dllTercnce of opinion be
tween a city and a corporation it is
apparently forgotten that the city is
a corporation also and quite as sub
ject to the temptations which beset
corporations, as any other corpora
tion. The sins of overreaching, for
instance, and of refusing to deal
Justly (as man to man) with other
corporations who have invested money
in the precincts which the city cor
poration controls, of employing Irrele
vant popular prejudices to influence
cases which might be equitably ad
justed, are frequently committed by
city corporations without danger of
the rebukes which the commission of
affronts to Justice by a railroad, a gas,
or a traction company would surely
receive.
Tho case of the City of Lincoln
against the Lincoln Traction Co. is
too complicated to be exhaustively
treated In a newspaper article. There
are a few points however in tlie series of
experiments in street transit InLiucoln
which may have been forgotten. The
first kind of public conveyances trav
cling a specified route, at nominally
regular intervals, woro the herdics
which appeared on the streets of
Lincoln in tlio eighties under the
chaperonage of a young man who
later trod the alcohol way and died a
violent death. He replaced the her
dics by horse cars, of which there are
a few stranded here and there on the
prairies, or were a few years jiito.
After a few years of trial, electricity
was found to be a cheaper energy than
discouraged and depressed horse
power. The electric machinery and
motors were put in by Mr. Little at
the beginning of the electricity per
iod, when the machinery was most
expensive and very imperfectly ad
justed to street railway service. The
new company succeeded to the fran
chises, debts, litigation, and rather
doleful prospects of the old company.
Mr. Little built a large house and
made an assignment. The present
company took the same old law suits
witli the additional burden Mr. Lit
tle's bad judgment had imposed upon
the company. During all thesechanges
other companies were granted fran
chises in various and several parts of
the city, found the routes unprofitable
and either tore up tho tracks or
abandoned them, and the only pur
pose they now serve is the llendish
one of dishing and tearing oil buggy
wheels. All these various lines have
been consolidated into one line The
city claims paving taxes on all the
streets whore rails were ever laid,
whether they were used longer t han a
few months or not, For instance, the
city claims paving taxes for two
blocks on II street, south of the cap!
tol between fourteenth and sixteenth
streets, yet there are very few old
residents who can remember the time
when the cars passed in front of tho
lots on which now stand the resi
dences of Dr. Rightor, Mr. H. II.
Wheeler, Mr. L. C. Burr, Mr. D. E.
Thompson, and Mr. Wright (John U.)
The company is ready to pay all its
just taxes, but not those assessed
against one of the branch lines while
experimenting on routes. The dema
gogical letter in one of the city papers
clamoring for the payment of every
dollar by the Traction Company as
sessed against it at any time by the
city, makes use of some popular terms,
and ignores everything but prejudice
and one side of the question. I hope
the council will come to some arrange
ment with the Traction Company, av
cept the best oiler It can secure, and
place part at least of the money in a
sinking fund to pay olf the city debt.
If tlio city were not corporation
but an individual such an arrange
ment would be speedily consummated.
Mr. JJixby advises those who want
to do something to prevent ihe lynch
ing? of colored peoplo in the south to
plead for a higher standard of moral
ity. He means among the black peo
ple who arc lynched and not among
the lynchers. Was it a righteous de
sire for punishment of a criminal
which led the Georgia mob to slowly
torture their captive, to cut on" his
ears, hands and nose, to fight over the
charred bones after the llesh had al
most burned olf them, and the next
day to hang an old man against whom
there was no evidence of crime; Or
was it because the white mob, barbar
ized by slavery, wanted to show the
black people that they were still mas
ters, cruder than ever because they
had had to bottle up their hatred ex
cept on occasions when two thousand
are gathered together to "tuko ven
geance" on one poor wretch for that
his race is emancipated and legally
immune from the beatings and tor
tu rings of the depraved and barbar
ized white man. The crime of the
negro sinks into insignificance beside
the crime of the two thousand white
men in Georgia who cut him to pieces
while alive and screamed exultantly
as the flames tortured him. It is
doubtful if two thousand black
men of Georgia can be found who
would be capable of such cruelty to
cither a white or a black man. There
are black degenerates and born crimi
nals as there are white degenerates
and born criminals, but it is rare to
find in any one place two thousand
criminals of the most depraved char
acter such as composed the mob of
Georgians which clamored for horrid
souvenirs on this occasion. The white
people who feel any sjmpathy for the
black men of the south who are denied
trial by jury, are advised herewith to
rid themselves, if possible, of racial
hatred and endeavor to do justice, if
only in their minds, which can not
have much elfect upon the course of
events, to the black men of the south
who are still the victims of the tiger
ish white men who not forty years
ago bought and sold and butchered
them like cattle. If the state govern
ment of Georgia can not prevent such
lynch) ngs or punish the leaders of
such a mob, the federal government
can, and the time will come when
"those who want to do something to
prevent the lynching of negroes in the
souJi" will petition the federal gov
ernment to disfranchise all partici
pants in lynchings. Let alone having
the privilege of voting, such men ought
not to be allowed loose though it
might depopulate Georgia to lock
them up.
It is extremely popular to gush
about the advantages of the proposed
national university but it is some
what difficult to see just why we need
one. Washington's bequest Isscarcely
cogent enough, especially as there is
none of it left. Washington vas a
great and good man but lie did not
foresee the growth of America and
the establishment of universities in
the cast, the west, the north and the
middle west, each one of which is
greater than the national university
he planned. The future educational
history of this country will bo made
by the state universities. They i. re
tlie fitting cap to the public school
sjstoni. Without the universities tlio
public schools would bo head less. The
taxpayers should not be asked to pay
for post graduate courses either in
state universities or in a national
university. A man with a university
diploma should be able to pay for any
further and more specialized training
he may desire. If lie can not earn
enough to carry him to the goal lie
seeks to attain, the gift of the state
has been injudiciously bestowed, and
If he can earn it, why should the price
be extorted from the citizens of the
state whoso average income is less
than live hundred dollars a year? A
national university would have to ho
supported by Increased taxation, and
the people are already supporting a
creditable public school system, cul
minating in state universities' It Is
difficult in Nebraska to get an appro
priation every two years from the
legislature large enough for one of the
best and most promising universities
in this country. Should Nebraskans
be still further taxed to support a
national school the biennial approprl
tion would come harder than ever.
rt Is understood that the national
school Is to boa sort of German uni
versity where any man who desires to
specialize on any subject, no matter
how remote from human Interest,
may have a professor, a laboratory,
apparatus, and a library on that sub
ject provided for him. Very few
btudonts would go from Nebraska.
Most of tho student body would be
drawn from within a radius of three
hundred miles of Washington. The
Justice of making the tolling millions
pay for an education with such fancy
and expensive finishings, so remote
from the homes of most of the con
tributors that their children can not
expect to enjoy its advantages, is
questionable, yet no one, so far, has
thought best to crltlciso so undemo
cratic and so impracticable a propo
sition as the one for the establishment
of a national university.
The southern states do need a uni
versity. There is none in the southern
states that equal the universities of
Michigan, Nebraska, Minnesota, or of
Wisconsin. With the rapidly in
creasing wealth or tho south, state
universities will undoubtedly be built
and to them, as to us, a request to
put up money for a national school
will be recognized as the superroga
tory impertinence that it really Is.
'In Ills Steps,'' by the Kansas pas
tor, has had an unprecedented sale In
London. Mr. Abel Chevalloy in Le
Temps finds tlio book as "badly writ
ten as a feulllton, as theatrical as a
melodrama, and as moral as a sermon."
Ho refers its popularity to tho "mad
ness of the Anglo Saxon," whose ten
dency, says Literature, Is to forgive a