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VOL. XV., NO. XXXIX
ESTABMbhEDlN 1$SS
PKICB FIVE CENTS
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LINCOLN. NEBR.. SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 29. 1900.
THE COURIER,
Official Organ of the Nebraska State
Federation of Women's Clubs.
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''V'''oa'''
OBSERVATIONS. g
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Wealth.
The hope (,t the country is the man
who goes out from his father's house
to build one for himself, who ceases
to eat at his father's bountiful table
and eats the meagre fare he earns
himself, who chooses a wife and sets
her at the head of his household, and
who resolutely depends upon himself
in all things. Sucli men have made
Nebraska. There are thousands of
men in the state, old men now, who
have made it rich by building their
homes in it, rearing their children
here, developing the schools, planting
and cultivating the soil, and by estab
lishing manufactures. Men who have
done business successfully in Nebras
ka have enriched the state and made
its reputation. They have not gone
into business for philanthropic rea
sons, but the success of one man
means the inevitable and consequent
prosperity of many. The man who
builds his fortune is not afraid of for
tune; sure of the integrity of his in
tellect and purpose, he succeeds per
force of initiative, and he deserves
success. Mr. J. Sterling Morton of
Nebraska City and his sons have
established, and they conduct, a
starch manufactory there. Nebraska
is a corn state and a starch factory
and cereal mill such as they operate
at Nebraska City stimulate the pro
duction of corn. The former is the
of coal, costing $22,796. Factory labor,
largest of the kind in the United
States.
The Argo starch factory was.estab
lisiied in 1891 and the producing
capacity has been quadrupled since
that time. It is equipped with the
latest machinery, and a tour of the
works shows one hundred and fifty
men and seventy-live women at work.
The starch arrives in front of the
young women, who break it up, in
large slabs. They break it into cubes
with very rapid movements of their
fingers. An experienced worker earns
two dollars a day. The management
has never even been threatened with
a strike, and the entente between the
employer and the employed is cordial
and entirely satisfactory. Perhaps
this business was the only one in the
state that ran full time and full force
during the hard times.
Nebraska City did not have to vote
bond8 to get this factory started. The
masive tire-proof buildings of yellow
brick were built by the Morton family
because it is their birth place, and be
cause members of the family believed
that a factory in the center of the
corn-raising region would pay. Good
management, a confident initiative
and energy has produced a business
constantly growing, and, in its growth,
enriching Nebraska City. There is
not a citizen of any city that would
not be glad to hear that such a pros
perous manufacturing plant was to be
established in his vicinity. I know
Lincoln people would not get over
smiling and exulting at such news
for months.
Attorney General Smyth's attack
upon the Argo Manufacturing Com
pany is resented and condemned by
everybody who realizes what wealth
is and how it is made and distributed.
If he has made this attack on the
living of two hundred and twenty-five
men and women because of Mr. Mor
tou's criticisms in The Conservative,
he is unfit to hold any public ofllce.
If his motive is single, his knowledge
of economics is crude and his observa
tion of the conditions at Nebraska
Citj most prejudiced.
It is said that the Argo company
will not defend itself from assassina
tion, but if forced to leave the state,
will establish itself at Kansas City
or in some other welcoming commu
nity. The records indicate how prof
itable such a factory is to a corn rais
ing community. For the years 1897
'98 and '99 this factory purchased
1,543,000 bushels of corn and paid for
it $391,000. The production for the
same period was 46,000,000 pounds of
starch. The factory burned 22.300
tons of coal at a cost of 836,800. For
those yerTs 8156,000 was paid to oper
atives. Bought for the Cereal Mills for 1897,
'98 and "99: Corn ground up 1,753,976
bushels, costing 8419,403; oats, 1,052,
fc38 bushels, costing 252,133; 14,397 tons
an average of one hund-ed hands,
893,671, and the gross sales were
81,000,394.
Jt J
The Fairy Prince.
It is still debated whether to let
children believe that there are fairies
and a Santa Claus and other delight
ful, unseen beings who leave their
foot pnnts on the window-panes, and
gifts in stockings and on trees, or to
erase romance entirely from their
lives and to begin in words of one syl
lable to tell them the truth about
everything just as soon as they can
sit up straight or after their second
summer. To be sure, the first shock
of realization that Santa Claus is
many people, that he does not reside
in perpetual snow and ice, that he has
no reindeer nor furs, that he is not a
little hideous, pot-bellied elf, with a
round, red lump of fat for a nose, and
a face expressive of nothing but jol
lity, makes cynics of children. For a
year or two they look upon all grown
people as deceivers, who, for their
own purposes, have prepared an
elaborate scheme, utterly unrelated to
the facts of life. But adults realize
that fairy stories are truer than child
ren ever find out.
There is one familiar plot that the
brothers Grimm, Hans Andersen and
the author of the thousand and one
tales that the lovely, brave Schehera
zade told to the woman-hating sultan,
make use of many times. It is the
one where a king has a lovely daugh
ter, bewitched or imprisoned. The
man who attempts to cure or rescue
her must do it or die. He lias not the
chance of trying and escaping with
his life, if he fail. The guerdon is half
a kingdom, a whole princess (of daz
zling beautv), and an athletic and in
tellectual reputation, comprehensive
and bright as the dreams of a college
foot-ball champion. This plot is en
acted and re-enacted in the lives of
men who are living and dying now-a-days.
Where one man succeds a dozen
fail, and as the thirteenth man goes
into training, he can see, if lie wishes
to discourage himself hy looking,
twelve heads that once wagged on
shoulders, as strong and confident as
his. But the thirteenth man is a
hero, even if he Jose his head, for not
being daunted by the gruesome heads
of his predecessors.
Chancellor . Benjamin Andrews is
the right size to undertake the job of
steering the university of Nebraska.
He has never learned how to shiver,
and he contemplates history with no
arriire pensee that the same combina
tion of faculty, politics, students and
citizens will defeat- his labor and
plans. The chancellor's inaugural
address on last Saturday morning was
listened to by a thousand or more
people with judicial attention. We
are a critical, carping public, and we
do not regard the ditliculties of the
chancellor's place with consideration.
But there is always a thirteenth man
in every succession ot governors or
dynasties, and this big-boned charicel
lcr has come here to stay. Every
graduate of the university and every
loyal citizen of the state, welcomes
him. and is ready to give him his sup
port. The Nebraska State University
needs a man that looks exactly like
Chancellor Andrews. He announced
his creed and his policy last Saturday
morning, and it was unequivocal and
satisfactory to partizans of all politi
cal parties.
The students of the university arc
ready to respond to frankness. An ex
ample of simplicity in the treatment
of all university questions will have
an immediate efTect upon tlie stan
dards and traditions of the students.
Mr. Andrews has arrived at the'Ne
braska university at a favorable pe
riod in his career. He is not afraid
of politics and politicians, but he has
learned something about them and
their metiiods that will not be with
out value to him in Nebraska. With,
a scholar's enthusiasm for truth and
expression, lie possesses the subtle rer
sources of the stag who has been
hunted. The final impressions made
by the two addresses I have heard
him deliver are of sense and sanity
and large-mindedness. Perhaps we
will be patient enough to give this
stranger a chance to develop Lis
plans and show us what he can .do as
the head of one of the largest schools
in the United States, and potentially
one of the very few great universities.
Snobbery.
Andrew Lang regrets ia "The
Critic'' that Omar Khayyam is no
longer the poet of the few. "Long
ago," he says, "Omar was a favorite of
a very few persons. Mr. John Ad
dington Symonds gave me a copy,
nearly thirty years ago. which some
one bad given to him, and which 1
was to hand on to another, as I did."
The snobbery of literary men who
are snobs is more olfensive than the
airs of the opulent. It is less excus
able. Writers are supposed to be
within range of literature, and if they
are unaffected by its ratholicitytheir
own contribution, can have no per
manent value for mankind. A snob
who is exclusive and fastidious be
cause his father is rich, is like the
heathen who die unconverted they
do not know any better. If Om.ir
Kliayyam is a bore, as Mr Lang says,
because so many distinctly unlitcrary
people quote him, then Shakspere
probably wearies Mr. Lang. The com
mon people quote him so in their
daily talk. What is the use of enjoy
ing a writer unless the appreciation
can be kept in the family? Mr. Lang
says he knew Omar thirty years ago,
and had the Rubaiyat from a, man
who secreted the tent-maker's sayings
just as long and ha Jded them .on to
Mr. Lang, with instructions to keep
the book among the elect. When the
common people begin to quote Omar,
this unmitigated aristocrat twits
them with a desire to be literary, be-
