THE COURIER.
X
France. Men are to her but checkers
and when a few thousand are killed
it Is as though she swept her hand
over a huge checker board crowded
with tiny pieces wasting to be moved
this way or that as the players please.
Tsi An is not a pood woman but she is
a good plajer, the best in Asia and
much the best in Europe for she is
beating while heavily handicapped.
"What could William the loquacious
do, he of the operatic mustachios
such as bass warriors wear, if he were
InTsiAu's place, a member of a de
spised and butchered sex, and heir of
no hereditary rights? He might strut
and prate of the divine right of em
presses all the time end the Tsung li
Yamen and all the other cabinets of
the Chinese department of state would
pay no attention to the woman thing
who persisted in talking. This tiny
woman of China with the doll face,
and the abstracts Iook has made
Chinaman, Englishmen, Americans,
Germans, and Russians nervous. Hid
den in the recesses of the sacred city,
tins little woman is teasing the world
and not a wrinkle has yet marred the
serenity of her inscrutable old ori
ental face. She is as placid ordering
the execution of a squad of men as she
Is when she orders her breakfast,
brought to her by a cringing, creak
ing slave who wriggles in and out of
the Empress' presence on his stomach.
India Famine Fund.
A movement to aid the 10,000,000 in
India who are starving to death has
been started In various parts of this
country. In Lincoln Doctor Manss,
of the First Congregational church,
has assumed the charge of such con
tributions. Were our own people starving In
any part of this country aid would be
sent immediately. The distance
should not decrease our benefactions.
There is grain enough stored in In
dia to feed" "every person and every
animal in the affected district,but the
people, through the failure of crops,
have not the means to buy it. It is
popular to lay the famine at the door
of England and over taxation but In
dia starved whenever the monsoon
rains failed long before the English
occupation. The famine destroys
more people because there are more
people to destroy. English sanitation
and the sanitary police have cleaned
the houses and the alleys and lowered
the death rate so that when the crops
fail there are many more mouths to
feed than in the old days when only
the strongest lived. Funds received
can be telegraphed to the proper
agency so that the starving in India
may be immediately relieved.
dub Ethics.
The Royal Yacht Squadron recently
held an election and blackballed a
number of applicants for admission
to the squadron of which the Prince
of Wales is commodore. In conse
quence the Prince called an extra
meeting to alter the rules so that the
next election would be by a club com
mittee and not by the whole member
ship. Butjhe smart set of England
is not subservient and the club not
only voted against the Princa's prop
osition but made the conditions of
election more stringent than ever by
decreeing that one blackball In five
shall exclude instead of one in csn.
Club ethics is a special and very
technical department of the science.
A set of people have agreed to
gether to pay a certain amount for
the accomplishment of an end or a
purpose only attainableby association.
They have a right to protect them
selves by strict rules govering the ad
mission of new members. The object
of most social clubs is to have a good
time. Happiness is impossible in the
enforced society of obnoxious people.
The Prince's nominees were his
friends and he desired to please them
and himself Dy" securing their admis
sion to the most exclusive club in
England. Some of the men he pro
posed were obnoxious to old members
of the club. Their admission meant
a lowering of the tone of the club and
Englishmen are not to be bullied into
releasing their right to congenial
company even by royalty itself. So
the Prince was snubbed and the prin
ciple was once more insisted upon
that the old members of a club have a
right, by the use of the blackball, to
keep the membership of a club the
same in quality as when it was found
ed. The principle in question is even
worth sacrificing the Prince of Wales'
friends and hurting his feelings to
establish. A club is founded by cer
tain people, not for business but for
pleasure. Theologians have decided
that Hades is not so much a place of
flame and burning, as it is a club of
very disagreeable people, bad man
nered, bad tempered souls forcibly
restrained to each others' society. If
obnoxious members are allowed in a
club against the protest by blackball
of a minority equal to one in ten of
the membership, of course the pleas
ure for which they subscribed and
paid their fees, is destroyed and royal
ty cannot change this syllogism.
The St. Louis Strike.
After fifty-six days duration, the St.
Louis strike has been declared off.
Representatives of the company and
the executive committee of the strik
ers signed an agreement, which, for
the present settles the trouble.
The Agreement:
1. The provisions of the agreement
of March 10th, 1900, as to rates of pay
and hours of service will be continued
in force by the company.
2. Every employe of the company
to be free to join or not to join any
organization, and no discrimination
to be made for or against him be
cause of the manner in which he ex
ercises his freedom.
3. Any attempt on the part of any
employe to induce another employe
by intimidation or threats to join or
uotto join any union shall be cause
of the immediate discharge of the
person guilty of such attempt.
4. Any attempt to influence any
employe by an official of the company
to join or not to join any union shall
be cause of the discharge of such of
ficial. 5. The company will meet any em
ployes or committee of employes,
whether representing themselves, oth
er employes or an association of em
ployes, regarding any matter of mu
tual interest.
6. For the purpose of tilling vacan
cies which may now exist or hereafter
arise, the committee of former em
ployes, of which T. B. Edwards is
chairman, shall prepare a list of the
men who were in the company's ser
vice May 7th last, and as the company
now or hereafter needs additional men
it will select them exclusively from
this list until it is exhausted, not in
terfering, however, with men now in
the service. No person shall be eligi
ble to this list who has been guilty of
any acts of lawlessness or violence.
St. Louis Transit Company.
By Edward S. Whittaker, President.
T. B. EDWARDS,
Chairman of Committee.
The strike is hereby declared off.
T. B.Edwards, Chairman Committee.
Section 3 recognizes the rights of
the employer to hire labor not be
longing to any union and grants some
assurance of immunity from attack to
non-union labor. The last part of
section 6 releases the street railway
company from the obligation of hir
ing men who have destroyed railroad
property, attacked the men whom the
company employed to fill vacancies
caused by the strike, or who attacked
women and other passengers who rode
on the cars the strikers do not claim
to own. The agreement is remark
able for these two clauses which ad
mits over the signature of strike rep
resentatives that the employer has
rights.' The other four paragraphs
relate, of course, to tha privileges of
the striking employes. The two
clauses, referred to, were insisted
upon by the company. No union man
in his senses and without coercion
has before admitted that an employe
of labor has any right to object to the
coercion of some of his employes
(non union men) by their fellow labor
ers to join the union. So far as I
know there has been no such privilege
granted to employers of labor in re
cent years. It marks an extension of
the rights of man to a class whom an
entirely sentimental and one-sided
consideration of the labor subject has
excluded from consideration.
The St. Louis strikers, were at first,
as in the beginning of every strike,
the recipients of sympathy from those
who, always sympathize with strik
ers, right or wrong. When the brutes
attacked women they lost even this
ignorant, unreasoning sympathy.
Many lives have been lost and mil
lions of dollars worth of trade divert
ed from St. Louis as well as the prop
erty that was actually destroyed to
attain this agreement which the com
pany would doubtless have signed in
the first place, if the walking dele
gate had not ordered the men out be
fore attempting a reconciliation.
Walking delegates are responsible for
many lives lost. They are so anxious
to earn their salary and to be the cen
tral cynosure of excitement.
Youthful scholars full of sincere zeal
and love for their kind are apt to think
thelaborer is always right,and the com
pany or employer always wrong. They
do not discriminate until they come
into personal conflict with an organi
zation every member of which Is pledg
ed not to work, whatever the emer
gency, but a certain number of hours,
and not to produce more in those hours
than the average stint designated by
the union. When the young student
of economics by unmeasured and un
stinted energy becomes the owner of
a business and tries to hire men
to do the labor he has so hopefully
and confidently performed him
self, and is met with remonstrances
that the work he has done himself is
too much for one man and that his
principles and the rules of the union
will not allow him to undertake it,
his ideas of the hardships of the labor
er and the unjust demands of capitol
are reversed.
Youngsters' Patriotism.
The week has been devoted to the
small boy who began setting off fire
crackers on Monday and the last of the
week finds him still using up crackers
asfizzers which refused to full HI their
desti ny and explode as crackers.Smoke,
explosions and yells the small boy has
enjoyed, not to his heart's content,
for firecrackers burn up quickly and
the explosion is only a delicious sec
ond, and a conflagration but teazes
him by its brevity. But the fathers
who have burned their money and
the mothers and sisters whose nerves
have been wilted watch with irre
pressilbe relief thef small boy poking
about in the grass looking for unex
ploded firecrackers, rocket sticks and
Roman candle cylinders. The in
qusition of Fourth of July week is
fixed by custom and it is idle to pro
test. But the small boy turned loose
on a community armed with explos
ives and seizing the liberty of yelling
is a trial. It is a mysterious change
from the tastes of youth to those of
non-explosive middle age. In the
former period, laughter, anger, en
thusiasm explodes to the touch of any
dying flame, It is harder to set the
old fellows off. The present way of
celebrating the Fourth will last as
long as the ears of youth are delight
ed with the unexpected roar of an
explosion that breaks up the air from
here to China into warring atoms.lt is
as impossible for youth to comprehend
why age does not like it as it is for
age to understand the pleasure of
youth in the unnatural report, And
youth is king. Vive le Roi
Our School System.
Mr. Marion Hill has made some
very interesting experiments on
school children and their apprehen
sion of patriotic songs and themes.
The experiments are recorded in the
current McClure's, which bears olf the
palm of the month from all the maga
zines. A monthly reading of maga
zines for a number of years has a
curious effect. Unless the reader has
an insatiable love for tliB printed
word, the time comes when, no mat
ter how gorgeous the cover is and how
clever and fascinating are the illus
trations, the sophisticated reader is
sure, before he cuts the leaves that he
will find nothing new. He keeps on
from month to month cutting maga
zine pages because he occasionally
comes across something drawn from
life, like this "Star Spanglec' Banner"
of Mr. Hill's.
Some grown up people at a dinner
party, Mr. Hill says tried to repeat
the "Star Spangled Banner," and
failed. "Amidst the comments arous
ed by this not unprecedented inci
dent, the host's ten-year old daughter
volunteered to help the big folks out
and did so by correctly reciting all
the verses." She said she had been
taught the verses at school and after
wards wrote them out for the com
pany, And this is what she wrote:
AMERICA
My country, tissuf the
Sweet land of libaet tea,
Oi thee I sing.
Land where my father died,
Land where the Pilgrims pried,
From evry mountain side,
Let fridmen ring.
My native country the
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love.
I love toy rots and chills,
Thy woods and temper pills,
My heart with latcher thrills
Like that above.
Children of ten years and there
abouts learn more readily by ear than
by eye; and this little girl's version of
the Banner is a reproduction of what
she thought she heard. Her expla
nation of the meaning of the stanza
shows that she bad thought of the
meaning of the words, translated
sonfe and hopelessly given up others.
Children listen intently at times, and
their rendition of grown up peoples'
speeches has at all times the merit of
originality.
We are too complacent about our
school system. It has not progressed
rapidly in the last one hundred years.
It has changed, and tUe children
study about twice as many subjects as
parents or rather grand parents were
obliged to study. It may be because
the classes are so large that teachers
have not the opportunity of finding
out how obscurely and dimly the pu
pils know what has been taught them.
Public schools are commendable and
hopeful institutions because they are
public and because every child has an
equal chance and is on the same plane
with the rich and the poor. But it is
questionable if the public school
teaches the child to think, to concen-
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