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VOL. XV., NO. XVIII
ESTABLISHED IN 18S6
PRICE FIVE CENTS
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LINCOLN, NEBR., SATURDAY. MAY 5, 1900.
m&
EXTUXDIN THE P08TOFF1CE AT LINCOLN AS
SECOND CLASS MATTES.
THE COURIER,
Official Organ of the Nebraska State
Federation of Women's Clubs.
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
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Editor
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OBSERVATIONS
"1
4.'Voo''
Small Churches.
Ten small, expensive churches and
some smaller inexpensive church
buildings are enough of the kind for a
town of forty thousand people, not
ten thousand of which arc habitual
church goers. What Lincoln really
needs is a large church auditorium, a
big room that will seat four thousand
people and with room enough in it for
a big organ. It is not likely that the
Methodists, who are about to build an
expensive new church, will build one
big enough to hold the people that
wish to hear Dr. Wharton morning
and evening. The Oliver, with a
capacity of 1,100 seats on the first and
second floors, will not seat all comers.
But to its full capacity it is filled, not
altogether by those who are in the
nabit of going to church, but by the
casual crowd that drifts up and down
th? streets of a Sunday. Attracted
by the simplicity and close logic of
Dr. Wharton's address and the unpro
fessional character of the theater, the
young men and women come again
and again to, nobody knows, what
future benefit. In conformity with
Methodist usage, Dr. Wharton will not
remain many years in Lincoln, but if
the congregation builds an auditorium
Dr. Wharton's size, another preacher
with his purposefulness, oratorical in
stinct and that peculiar and un-named
gift which induces repentance, re
news high resolve, and culminates in
action, may be appointed by the con
ference. If the Methodists should de
cide to build such a church and sacri
fice to it hereditary and conventional
notions of church architecture and
ornament, they might with propriety
ask the assistance of all citizens. It
does not appear, however, that the
audience which have filled the audi
torium at the corner of Twelfth and M
streets, nor the bi-Sunday crowds in
the opera house, nor the expression of
approbation of The Courier's sugges
tions by the people and the news
papers of Lincoln, have had any influ
ence upon the board or committee,
which has decided to build a church
like all the other churches here; only
a little larger, only more expensive,
thicker cut glass in the windows,
more elaborately carved stone, a higher
steeple and, finally, a steeper mort
gage. In the new church there will
be no room for the restless five or six
hundred pieces of flotsam and jetsam
with no religious opinions in particu
lar, who have been attracted by the
magic of tenderness and purpose in a
man's voice and the fascination of a
splendid intellect wholly devoted to
humanity. There is no hope that the
Methodist people will build a taber
nacle for the multitude. The fetich
of steeples, rose windows, the pointed
arch, all the sacerdotal architecture
which we have come to thinkasseem
ly and essential as a plumed hearse
at funerals, still effects our plans an'd
obscures the picture of the Man stand,
ing on a mount, speaking gently but
audibly to the ten thousand rich men,
poor men, beggars, thieves, doctors,
lawyers and Arabs of the desert.
o
Famine, and Speculation in Bread Stuffs.
The traveller over the prairies of
Nebraska in winter, in spring, in sum
mer, when the beautiful tropical look
ing corn plant is green, or in the fali,
when it is yellow and rustles sharper,
like the stiffest silk, notices more
than anything else, the corn cribs.
Big and little, along the tracks of the
railroads, and behind every farmer's
barn, are the corn cribs. Their hori
zontal lines radiate in every direction
from the railroad station, and the
cribs are never empty. From no phil
anthropic motive, but taught by spec
ulators in food products, the farmers
of Nebraska have learned in years of
plenty and low prices to store their
grain for the lean years, when grain
brings a high price.
Speculation In the future keeps the
price lower when it is high and pre
vents it from sinking too low when
the granaries are bursting with corn.
There are summers when the rain falls
not, when the green blade is parched
and withered by the sun; then the
farmer drives his team up to the full
cribs and fills his wagon with corn for
delivery to the local grain dealer.
He watches the daily market quota
tions and he sells his corn as his judg
ment directs. He is not the yokel of the
eighteenth century. He is a farmer
and a merchant, a grain dealer and a
cattle dealer. He buys of and sells to
his neighbors cattle, grain and fodder.
If corn is a failure, he has already
harvested a fine crop of oats and, per
haps, of wheat, and he has a few acres
of beets in the ground. Left over
from last year he has a thousand or
more bushels of corn, and the current
season's drought has doubled their
value. Speculation brings the present,
the past, and the future together.
The undervalued surplus of last year
is the high priced scarcity of this,
whose value is lessened by the cer
tainty of next year's rain and har
vest. The population of India is so dense
that the small farmers in the years
when the monsoons from the Indian
ocean bring the rain in due season can
raise only enough for their own con
sumption. There is nothing left over
for speculation on next year's harvest
of rice and wheat. In other phrase,
they have no capital. The traveller
in India sees no stored grain on the
farms. The population which, under
English rule, has not been depicted by
epidemics, is too large for the terri
tory of an unspeculative, child-like,
hand-to-mouth people. Whenever
the rain falls, there is no surplus, and
the men and women and little child
ren of India die the horrible death of
starvation. In Russia the rich, with
thousands of acres of rolling prairie,
with a population in proportion to the
total area about the same as in
America, there are also regularly re
curring years of famine, when the
peasants die by thousands. But the
mujik does not speculate. On the
prairies, which resemble Nebraska
prairies more than anything in Amer
ica, unless it be Kansas, there are no
corn cages backed up to the little
isbas that look exactly like a Nebraska
sod house. The grain dealers and ele
vator men build the cribs, but the
mujik has not yet imitated him.
When the drought kills the grain, he
Is at the mercy of the money lender,
and as he has nothing but his labor to
offer as security, he mortgages that at
the rate of the famine year when the
market is glutted with harvesters.
He pays his debt next year when corn
is plentiful and labor scarce, and by
the same token, well paid.
The speculative instinct and daily
newspapers with accurate market re
ports can do more for the comfort and"
well-being or well feeding of the
mujik than all the socialists.
Co-Education.
The action of the 1,900 male stu
dents of the University of Pennsylva
nia in demanding that female
students be thereafter.excluded from
the school, is a consequence of the
disfranchisement of women. That
spirit, more or less active, exists in
every state co educational institution
in America. Supported by taxation
levied without regard to sex, the male
students assume that the university
is theirs and the girls are on suffer
ance. As the number of women stu
dents increases in any state school,
the tendency of the male student ia
towards reflection upon the room oc
cupied by and the time devoted to the
intruding sex, a room and a time to
which she has no real right. If this
were a government of the people and
by the people, these reflections and
demands would be of no consequence.
But these male students will vote In a
few years. They will be legislators,
regents, judges and congressmen.
Women are legally powerless if law
makers should conclude to exclude
them or their daughters from the
State university, They control softer
arguments, but after all is said, It is
unworthy to plead for a share in the
benefits of an education we all are
taxed to pay for. Leland Stanford
and the university of Chicago have
declared against co-education. Both
of these are endowed institutions.
The Pennsylvania students are con
sistent enough. City, state and cen
tral government tax women and re
fuse them representation in spending
the taxes. It is no greater Injustice
to refuse them an education
in an institution which their
labor has helped to build and main
tain. There are many sound reasons
for a segregation of the sexes while
they are receiving their education.
This one, urged by the Pennsylvania
students, has no ethical foundation.
Inasmuch as the State university of
Pennsylvania is the completion of the
public school system, if the girls are
refused admittance there, they should
be enjoined from attendance on the
common schools. Their admittance
to both is on the basis of taxpayers'
children.
It Is a matter of record that the
scholarship of the girls is sounder
than that of the under graduate boys
in all co-educational institutions.
This fact is a constant irritant and is
the immediate cause of the under
graduate and sympathetic faculty
expression of disapproval of the sys
tem of coeducation.
American Energy.
It is the fashion of touring foreign
ers who visit America for a week or
a month to take notes and after re
turning to their country publish
them. These men aided by a few
discursive, literary, leisurely Ameri
cans are shocked and feel that the
time has come to protest, and they
are the men to do it, against the
American habit of hurrying. The
literary man is ruminative. Poems
on daisies, skylarks, hoes and Grerian
urns are not written by men in a com
petitive hurry. But neither have
the railroads, factories and cities been
built by men fond of cigarettes,and ca
pable of felicitous English but mostly
opposed to exertion and the strain of