The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, May 26, 1900, Image 1
4 I ! s f r- t X VOL. XV., NO. XXI ESTABLISHED IN 1SS6 PRICE F1VECBNT5 LINCOLN. N5BR., SATURDAY, MAY 2G, 1000. 4 BVTKBXDIW THE POSTOFFICE AT LINCOLN At SECOND CLASS MATTES. THE COURIER, Official Organ of the Nebraska. State Federation of Women's dubs. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY bt- TIE COURIER PRimiRG AND PIBIISIIR6 GO Office 1132 N street, Up Stain. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS. Editor Subscription Kates In Advance. Per annum $100 Six months 75 Three months 50 One month 20 Bingle copies 05 The Courier will not be responsible for toI nntary communications unless accompanied by return jitage. Communications, to receive attention, must be signed by the full name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication if advisable. s VOOVi OBSERVATIONS. 1 ' The Milk Trust. The Five States Milk Producers Association for the purpose of raising the price of milk to New York con sumers has tested the sincerity of farmers' disapproval of trusts. Sev eral thousand farmers have combined to raise the price of milk, either from a desire to get even with the vendors of oil, barbed wire, agricultural ma chinery, and binding twine, or from the love of money, which most farm ers are green enough to declare them selves uninfected with. The New York distributors of milk claim a daily shortage of from 1,500 to 2,000 cans of milk, yet the price has not been forced up. Nobody has de nounced trusts so loudly as the farm ers. The party that can prove its willingness and ability to destroy them can count upon a solid farmer vote. The milk trust and the eager ness with which the farmers have accepted its conditions and oppor tunities shows why the farmer dis approves. If the milk trust gradual ly raises the price of milk it may not be impossible to form a farmere' cat tle trust. Absolute concert in action would raise the price of meat before ft reaches the packers and the farm ers themselves might experience the effects of a corner. The time may come when the food producers will organize but it will scarcely be before the next presidential election, wise and precocious as the farmers are. When the producers of staple food3 are protectively organized, the trades unions, the trusts, and all sorts of combinations formed for the benefit of the few and the taxing of the many will find themselves just where they started. Napoleon. One of the most original and dar ing minds that ever thought, a mind whose owner overturned Europe and finally united it in opposition to him self, yet it was only great when he was doingsomething. When its owner was exiled to St. Helena the mind lost its sparkle and power of self illumina tion. A search through the Boswell ian diary, that was kept by his phy sician on the island, for a remark in dicating extraordinary insight has been fruitless. Commonplace opin ions, a vulgar and commonplace sus picion and jealousy of the officials who surrounded him, are the striking characteristics of Napoleon at St. Helena. Far from standing on a bluff in a monumental attitude gazing towards the empires he had won and lost, the diary shows him after fatty degeneration of the brain and the heart had begun and it is a mournful, inexpressibly depressing spectacle Boswell's memoirs of Doctor Johnson are photographs of a powerful, if not especially keen or original mind in action, and it is interesting reading. Napoleon's conversation was the fee ble echo of a mind from which every thing but the memory of the cere monial deference paid to an emperor was fled. Not the memory of his bat tles, nor the careful arrangement of his forces.and his knowledge of every stream of water, of the location of timber, and of low and high ground, occupied him in his exile. He did not fight his battles over again. He regretted the loss of his outward magnificence, the homage of men and women, their fear of him, his rights of bullying, the isolated apex where he sat alone with a sceptre in his hand and ruled. France and French men were but names to him. ''Tommy and GrizeL" Mr. Barrie's sequel to "Sentimental Tommy" now appearing in one of the monthly magazines is an example of what uninteresting, inconsequential stuff a publisher will accept from a popular writer. The author is .con stantly making apologies for standing off and admiring Tommy who is a poseur, an egotist and himself Bar rie. Tommy, is to himself the most interesting and mo?t lovable object in the world, the greatest writer, the most adored of women, their constant and worthiest hero. He is an en tirely subjective study. As a hero he is as interesting as those portraits of artists who have not painted any other particularly striking likeness. Mr. Barrie has presumed the interest in himself greater than it- is. Many writers make this mistake. But I know of no modern example where a man has taken so much for granted. He has already made a long story of his feelings, his thoughts about his thoughts, and his Impressions of the impressions he has made on men and women and those he might have made. What the demagogue is in politics Tommy is in literature every avenue is closed with a figure of himself, his opinion of every sub ject is an adjustment of himself In a new position and under a different light. The autobiography of a man who is still young and still alive should have some other excuse than a publisher's willingness to print and pay for it. Mr. Barrie's story, while it is not a diary of dates the weather and events is a still more intimate dissection of his own character. As one reads he can see the author in front of the looking glass drawing his own inconspicuous, unattractive ego and the spectacle is irritating. Paul Kruger. If Paul Kruger had known that the world revolved on its axis and in its orbit and that no human power could make it stationary the outlanders and the Boers might still be living in peace in the land beyond the Vaal. In that case the outlanders would not have been a majority of outlanders for only the newcomers who had come to visit would have no part in the government. Augmented con stantly by emigrants from all coun tries and refused representation in a government to which they contrib uted nine tenths of the taxes, the position of the outlanders who had settled in the Transvaal was un natural. To the pressure from the outside of increasingly overwhelming numbers the Boers on the inside were forced to yield. The sort of govern ment the Dutch in Africa attempted to maintain was outworn long ago. The conduct of the Dutch envoys who are visiting this country now, in joining the enemies of the admin istration to which they were sent for sympathy, is a replica of Kruger's blunders in his treatment of English overtures for justice to the outland ers before the war. For many years before the war President Kruger foresaw that the only result of his policy of exclusion of settlers and absorption of their taxes was war. He prepared for it by secretly organizing the Boer farm ers into militia companies and train ing them to shoot and by Importing arms into the Transvaal country. To succeed by war he knew he must have the aid of the men of the Orange Free State and of Cape Colony and finally of some other country. To establish and maintain a republic in the Transvaal, President Kruger knew that the bona fide settlers and tax payers must be admitted to a rep resentative share in It. So great was his prejudice towards all blood not Dutch, that he preferred the al ternative of war against the greatest military power In the world, and in evitable defeat unless outside aid was offered. Hence the declaration of war from the Transvaal to England, the widespread appeal through the newspapers of this country for help. A republic which was not a republic, and a president who is an antiquated autocrat posed as an example of the struggle of the American Colonics In 1776 for liberty or death. Historical parallels are rare. The English and most Americans insist that the Eng lish and not the Dutch are fighting for the cause of liberty and democ racy in the Transvaal. Moreover, every country must fight its own bat tle. Ambassador Genet was toasted and received with more or less en thusiasm by some Americans, but the United States did not form an alli ance with the French Republic. Kos suth was the rage and the toast of a day, but the United States did not interfere In the affairs of the Austro Hungarian empire. Fortunately the President of the United States at the present time Is a man, whose mis takes are not those of a demagogue. He is the president of this country and he does not feel called upon to pose as the champion of every weak nation that chooses to attribute its misfortunes to the persecutions of a tyrant rather than to Its own lack of modern and common sense. The es tablishment of order, the revival of business in the Transvaal, the begin nings of a real republic will follow, in accordance with English precedent, hard upon English victory. The peace and prosperity of the Transvaal have been interrupted and obstructed by Boer legislation. As soon as the Boers realize that none of their liber ties are destroyed by the war, that they have lost only their power to tyrannize over their neighbors and fellow citizens and that for all the satisfaction in such tyranny, pros perity is greater without it, they will begin to reflect upon the mistakes of Kruger while they herd their sheep among fragments of shell and cannon balls. By that time the Americans who are always looking for an under deg to weep over and extend a maud lin sympathy to, will begin to ex perience the peculiar embarrassment of a misdirected and unwise condo lence. They will remember that on the whole, history does not record an instance of the success of a small nation, calling itself a republic, and bankrupt except for the taxes col lected from emigrant settlers, exclud ing those settlers for fifteen years from all share in the government, taxing them to the limit of their power to pay, and vesting all author ity in the person of one man. Na poleon tried something like this, but all the nations objected. He thought it was none of their business and sent