THE COURIEIt
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coff, whose Boriea of socialistic studies.
"The Workers" published in Scribner's
Magazine aroused so much dlsucneion,
made a conscientious tour into this
Darkest Africa, and slept in unpleasant
places and ate ill-tasting food and in
haled unsavory odors for a worthy
object. Hisobssrvations will be valua
ble to sociologists, but when all Ib Baid
they are but stiff-necked, colorless re
ports, thorough and conscientious, but
with no more life or color in them than
statistics for a college thesis. Like Mr.
Richard Harding Davis' account of the
Cuban war, thoy have the supercilious
attitude of tho man who stood afar off
and watched the battle and Buffered
because his linen was not clean. This
may be because Mr. Wycoff is a student
and a sociologist and not a poet, and
because he receives hiB impressions
solely through his cerebral apparatus.
Nobody ever yet acquired any wisdom
worth tho having through study alone,
much less is one able to impart knowl
edge to others by a purely intellectual
process. To know anything about any
class of people, one must ascertain how
those people regard the great issues of
life, how and what they feel, And to do
that, it is necessary to feel one's self,
and that is what it never occurred to
Pror. Walter Wycoff to do. The sculp
tured figures on the old Egyptian monu
ments of the slaves who drew the water
and fed the oxen and plowed the rice
fields and quarried Bandstonn, bIx thous
and years ago are quite as much alive
bb Mr. Wycoff's "Workers." But Rich
ard Whiting has learned to feel with
hi9 head and think with his heart. In
"Number 5, John street," we enter no
lecture room, but an actual world, a
world that comes very close to us and
seems very real, because a man who baa
that touch of nature which makes the
whole world kin, reveals it to us. And
he speaks in no dry scientific phrase
ology, but in the common language of
pain and pleasuro and love and sorrow,
which is the same in John street and in
Piccadilly.
After divesting ourselves of Mr. Wy
coff's statistics and memoranda, it is
good to step into John street and laugh
and toil and live with men again. It ia
a world of outcast men, it is true, men
with the gypsy thirst for pleasure ready
made and the gypsy trick of incom
petence and inability to stick to any
thing, but Mr. Whiting must have a
little of that restlessness in his own
blood, and he knows and lovea that
"Submerged Tenth" of which he write.
He says:
"There is a John street in every shin
ing city of civilization in New York,
Chicago, Boston; in Rome, St. Peters
burg, Vienna, Madrid. There is a sort
of liberty in John Btreet, and a fellow
ship of blood and gin-fire. If the
Tzzgany from Budapest walked in here
at Number 5, we should know him for
a brother, though he wore a bandana in
lieu of a cap. He would be as greasy as
we are. He would itch with another
kind of vermin, that is all. The chil
dren would pelt him for a time, because
they are silly enough to think that
strange boots makes a strange man.
But their seniors, a6 soon as they bad
taken their Btock, in one swift glance,
of the holes in his uppers and the devil
in his eye, would yield him his ap
pointed place without a word. Every
village in the land, if it has not its
entire John street, has its Number G.
It may be only the cottage at the end of
the lane, but it is there; and there the
feckless find their pallet and their roof.
We are a mighty corporation, and I foel
sure that we should not look in vain for
quarters if we tramped into a settle
ment of the Samoyeda. There would
be surely one tent foulor and more open
to the sky than the others tent No. 5."
Mr. Whiting finds tho life of the very
poor almost an absoluto reduction to the
slavish feeding of the primitive physical
appetites, "Tis an unlovely life, this
life of the poor, he says, "destitute of
beauty far more than of bread and but
ter. A meal what a function if served
with art, if only with the art of clean
liness; without that, what an act of
sensuality!"
The book is alive with vivid portrait
ures of the people among whom Mr.
Whiting's hero lived. First among
them is Tilda, the flower girl, and the
next Low Covey, the coster, -who is
frequently out of a job, and who spends
more time making musical bird calls on
glas3 tubes submerged in water than he
does at his trade. In him Mr. Whiting
finds the primitive artist of the people.
Old "Mammy" says of Covey:
"Cleverest bird call in London, bar
none. If he was more genteel-like to
look at he could make a fortune in the
music halls. But there, you can't get
him to put on a black coat. He splits
it if its anything of a fit, and some days
there ain't a note in him."
And Mr. Whiting adds:
"She spoke half in pity, half in ad
miration, as though the devine finger
had been laid on Covey and oppressed
him with its weight, it is the attitude
of all simple natures and of all simple
races toward genius or gift. They
reverence the burden; they pity the
bearer."
Tilda, the flower seller, is worth a
whole book in herself, that big, vigorous
piece of womanhood, with the bearing
of a goddess and the grammar of the
slums, who carried her sick friend in
her strong arms and always interposed
in street fights when she saw a good
fellow getting the worst of it.
"She helps one to understand litera
ture, sacred and profane. The earlier
women of spirit were furies of this sort,
I feel sure. She is Boadicea, skipping
centuries of time Boadicea, strong of
her hands and generally none too clean
of them, spfendid in reasonless passion i
and decidedly foul-mouthed, no British
warrior queen of nursery recitation, but
a down right 'naughty gal' leading her
alley to battle agaiust the Roman
'slops.' With a trifling difference in
costume, but none in spirit, she is Hera,
the furious and proud, The ferocity in
these types of womanhood is the secret
of their enduring charm."
This same ferocious coster girl, when
she hears the "Arabian Nights" read
for the first, time, overcome by a new
and nameless pleasure so solemn that it
ia almost pain, cries and says she is
"going to be a better gir." Having
created her in such splendid proportions,
the author dignifies Tilda by a martyr's
death. He can scarcely leave her in
John street, he cannot lift her to his
hero's world, so he leaves to her the
tragic interest which is usually found
somewhere in every great work of art.
She dies at one of the Queen's Jubilee
celebrations in an effort to save a noble
man from an anarchist's bomb. If
there are many such staunch hearts in
John street, I don't wonder that Mr.
Whiting's hero used to slip away from
his own gay world and go back thore
where people, having nothing else to
give in friendship, give themselves,
splendidly, unreservedly, magnificently.
Not long ago, in the great iron mills at
Homestead, Pa., a steel worker fell into
a live cinder pit, crippling himself in
his fall and lying helpless on the coals.
A friend of his, a workman like himself,
leaped in after' him and stood in that
fiery pit, holding his romrade's body in
his arms until a ladder was lowered to
them. He will never walk again. One
would rather like to live in a world
where such things happened, even it
the people tbere ate onions and bathed
infrequently.
A spocial opportunity is offered to se
cure a modern home by John J. Gillilan
110 eoutb 12th street, ground floor.
IMMIMIIMMII MMIIMMMMII
LBBS-
LOUISA L RIOKETT8.
'MMMMMMHtlMimn iia
Treasurer, Mrs. Phillip N. Moore. St.
Louis, Mo.
Auditor Mrs. C. P. Barnes, Louis
ville, Ky.
State Chairman Mrs. Louisa L. Rick
etts, Lincoln, Nebr.
Officers of tho State Federation of
Women's clubs;
President Mrs. S. 0. Langworthy,
Seward.
Vice President Mrs. Anna L. Apper
son, Tecumseh.
Recording Secretary Mrs.F. H. Sack
ott, Weeping Water.
Corresponding Secretary Mrs D. G.
McKillip, Seward.
Treasurer Mrs. H, F. Doane, Crete,
Librarian Mrs. G. M. Lambertson,
Lincoln .
Mrs. A. B. Fuller, Auditor, Ashland.
In a neat brochure with white covers,
to which is pinned with the old quill
pen a scroll, which as it unrolls re
veals the laurel wreath and the mono
gram of the club defined in pale greens
and gold and tied with soft pink colors,
the Friends in Council of Tecumseh
present their plan of studying English
Literature for the coming year. From
Shakspere to Tennyson,, celebrated
authors and their most important works
will be considered.
The constitution and by-laws of this
club are models of 'conciseness. The
secretary ia Mrs. Mattie Hedrick, Te
cumseh, Nebr.
Representation in the G. F. W. C. has
been greatly reduced by the amendment
adopted at Denver whereby federated
clubs of fifty members or less can only
be represented by the president or her
appointee. By the old rule each club
was entitled to one delegate besides the
president. Tnerearo over six hundred
clube affiliated with the general federa
tion, take away the extra delegate and
if none of these clubs have over fifty
members the number of delegates en
titled to a seat in the biennial ia reduced
to six hundred. Thus this question is
solving itself, without' debarring any
club that may wish to receive the per
sonal benefit derived .from affiliation
with the national organization.
At the Denver biennial .Nebraska was
entitled to twenty-four votes, viz: from
the nine clubs belonging, eighteen, from
the state federation, five, and one from
the state chairman. At the Milwaukee
biennial according to the amendment
Nebraska would be entitled to only nine
votes unlesH some of those clubs should
represent more than fifty members.
Each club between fifty and one hun
dred members is entitled to be repre
sented by the president or her appointee
and one delegate and for each additional
one hundred members or major fraction
thereof it is entitled to one more dele
gate. By the same amendment there
will be a slight increase in the repre
sentation from state federations. Each
state federation, no matter how small,
will be entitled to five delegates, one cf
these the president or her appointee,
Each state federation of over twenty
five clubs shall be entitled to one addi
tional delegate for every twenty-five
clubs or major fraction thereof. Thus
if Nebraska has eighty federated clubs
it will be entitled to seven delegates at
the Milwaukee biennial as compared
with five at Denver. ThuR making the
whole difference in representation from
Nebraska brought about by these
amendments, 6even less than we had at
Denver. Of course this difference is
marked in the states where a large
number of clubs belong to the general
federation, In Massachusetts there are
sixty-seven lees, in Colorado thero are
seventy-one. Thus from necessity tho
next biennial will have a smaller roj r6
eentation than the last one.
The New York Tribune has published
a valuable compilation of statistics on
"What Women Can Earn." These
figures have been made from a series of
articles published by this paper on the
occupations of women and show that
while there is a decrease in the percent.
age of those employed in the more la.
borious occupations still one fourth of
the women employed are factory girls
Of the 4,000,000 of women in the ranks
of labor 050,000 belong to the profess
ional classes, 250,000 to the clerical
classes, as against 1,200,000 in the man
factures and 2,000,000 in domestic and
agricultural service. The lowest wages
paid are to shop girls, the scale of re
muneration increasing through the
various clerical branches to the highest
paid salaries in the.learned profusions, V
The compilation is valuable as showing
not only the resources open to women
but it gives an idea of the chanced for
securing a livelihood therefrom.
Crete, August 21, 1899.
Dear Mrs. Ricketts: I know so little
about the question on which you ask
my opinion that I hesitate to give it
It, eeems to me, however, that the same
principle might be applied to represent
tution at the general federation which
applies to the various state federations,
There is no question in my mind but
that individual clubs are much more
interested in their state federation be
cause they are pereonally represented,
whereas if we were only represented by
delegates from our city federation we
should feel that it waa not a personal
matter at all. I have never attended
the general federation meeting though
I have always wanted to so I can say
nothing about the number of delegates
mnlrinor t.Viom ihibIsUu k-ri:....
age. I don't krow whether or not I
nave oovered the ground, but this
seemed to me the vital point.
Adelaide L. Doane,
State Treasurer.
CITY OWNERSHIP OF STREET
RAILWAYS IN GLASGOW.
From the beginning Glasgow owned
ita own street rail way lines. It was too
careful of its streets to allow any com
pany to control them. Though the con
ditions under which a company leased
the lines for twenty-one years were
highly favorable to the city, at the ex
piration of the lease it waa decided not
to renew it. An offer waa made to take
over the companj's rolling stock, stables
etc., on an arbitrator's valuation, on
condition that the company should not
put on a rival line of 'buses. As this
was declined, the council started car
shops, and equipped the line with new
material entirely. On the day of the
transfere the competing omnibuses ap
peared, but the citizens had long ex
perienced the advantages of loyal sup
port of their own government. All the
blandishments of the omnibus-conductors
were unavailing; the omnibuses
ran empty; while the Btreet cars wore
crowded, and soon the chagrined rivals
withdrew from the uneven contest.
Scotch shrewdness has been justified of
her children. For short distances
system of one cent farea has been intro
duced; the cars have been made more
elegant and comfortable; electric trac
tion ia being installed. In one year the
number of passengers was doubled; and
after paying interest on the capital,
and providing an adequate reserve fund,
a surplus of 9200,000 is left to pay for
open spaceB, bath and wash-bouse,
river ferries, art exhibitions, music and
improved sanitation. Harper's Magazine.
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