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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (May 18, 1901)
VOL. XVI., NO. XX ESTABLISHED IN 1886 PRICE FIVB CENTS . ' t . t- iv - v v " LINCOLN, NEBR., SATURDAY. MAY 18, 1901. THE COURIER, r Ektzudiv tbx wiiomcx at liscoln as SBCOHD CXAMHATTZB. PUBLISHED EVEBY 8ATDBUAY TIECNI1EINIIIIKIRDNBUSBIR6C0 Office H32 N street, Up Stain. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS, : : : EDITOR Subscription Rates. Per annum , fl 50 Six months 100 Rebate of fifty cents on cash payments. Single copies 05 Thx Coram will not-be responsible for vol nntary communications unless accompanied by retain postage. Commanlcations. to recelre attention, must be signed by the full name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, bnt for publication if adrisable, 2 OBSERVATIONS. f Trusts. One of the reasons.wby the public objects to the sale of the Burlington railroad to the owners of the Great Northern, is that it so largely in creases the power of one corporation. The public is a jealous divinity. Power in and of itself is not objec tionable. But when power is related to our intimate concerns, if it be too overwhelming, it excites apprehen sion and finally hatred. Trusts de crease the price of any product by economizing effort and eliminating competition. Yet the trust is a bogy not for what it has done, but because it has so much power and the public is afraid it will exercise this power. The immutable laws of commerce and trade will prevent the new railroad company from increasing freight rates. There are other considera tions based on fear of retaliatory leg islation equally as effective In keeping down prices. In a small community every man is inclined to be jealous of his neigh bor. In a large community combina tions are jealous of each other. In the strife between Mr. J. Fierpont Morgan and Mr. E. H, Harriman thousands of people are personally in terested. But it is a foregone cer tainty that the results will be in the interests of commerce, and the suc cess of this or that man will not af fect the country at large. Municipal Bargains. The city should be able to buy labor in the open market in competition with private employers. If firemen working for the gas works receive, for L -eleven hours work per day $45.00 a month, the city should not be obliged to pay fifty-five dollars a. month to firemen working eight hours a day. A fireman at the gas-works shovels sixteen tons of coal a day. A fireman in the city water-works shovels about a ton and a half a day. Let the two firemen represent energy, and the city is paying more than twelve times more for its energy than the private corporation pays for it. Now the city is composed of people, most of whom, the very large proportion of whom work harder than the fireman who shovels a ton and a half of coal a day and they receive less for it. Corpora tions and individuals go into the la bor market to purchase labor.and they pay and expect to pay the price cur rent. The new salary ordinance rais es the price of unskilled labor, not because the same labor cannot be bought for the customary price, but because it is the way of politics and politicians. Forty-five dollars a month to a fireman who shovels a ton and a half of coal a day is at the rate of a dollar a ton. It is proposed to pay him more than a dollar a ton for shoveling in the coal. The city is just bearing a share in the spring housecleaning by repairing cross walks. The street commissioner is connecting broad stone or asphalt walks by two narrow boards on which two pedestrians can, by exercising care, continue to walk abreast. The street commissioner or the city or dinance prescribes the width of side walks. If a private house-holder in the best part of the city should lay a walk in front of his property, con sisting of two narrow planks, the street commissioner would imme diately pay him a shocked visit or else send a shocked emissary to represent his indignation. Yet if broad walks are to be connected by narrow ones, all might as conveniently be narrow, for couples meeting, one must drop .behind and the result is that conver sation is broken. Remonstrances with the city authorities elicit the information that such abominable cross walks are all that the city can afford. Yet the councilmen are not satisfied that a dollar a ton, for put ting in coal is enough. The salary raising ordinance which Mr. Pentzer introduced last Monday night raises the salaries of employes performing clerical work beyond the rate paid by other employers of that labor. The price of a commodity may not represent the value or worth of it, but that is too fine a point for the city to settle. It is the business of the council to see that the laborers, merchants and very modestly remun erated professional men who pay the taxes of this city do not pay a fancy, arbitrary price' for services rendered the city. Just an ordinary fireman capable of moving a ton and a half) of coal a day will satisfy the Lincoln taxpayers one tenth of whom cannot sell their labor at so high a rate. Municipal ownership of public util ities is susceptible of glittering demonstration, but practically it is rendered impracticable by this ten dency of politicians to sacrifice the public to individuals who want their salaries raised above the current rate. If Lincoln were to put in a lighting plant, the council would consider the wages to be paid the firemen, engin eers, etc., not on the basis of the price of current labor, but by some mys terious,hypothetical reasoningof their own would establish a scale twenty or twenty-five per-cent higher than the local price. Mr. Pentzer's ordinance is arbitrary and illogical. The two men, who more than any other employers of the city,(always excepting the May or) have siaved the city "large sums of money, and whose services can not be easily duplicated are the city attorney and bis deputy, Mr. Flaherty. Yet both of these men are ignored in the new ordinance, which should be defeated. All the men now serving the city were glad to be elected. They knew the present salary schedule and there is not a book-keeper or clerk or fireman or treasurer among them who has shown his capacity to earn more than the city is paying him. The eccentric conduct of the pres ent council has caused more than one groaning taxpayer to sigh for the days when O. W. Webster's shrewd m financial wisdom inspired the delib erations of the council and when Scbroeder's insight was of constant service. "Gran-Dad." Last week Governor Savage com muted the sentence of an old man seventy-one years old, sentenced to the penitentiary for twenty years. Cuyler Schultz was known to the oth er convicts and to the officers as "Gran-Dad." He was a trusty. Faithful, good-natured, humble-minded, the old man has expiated his crime. He was poor and a vicious neighbor set fire to his haystack, the only crop of a lean year. The neigh bor imprisoned his stock, taunted him with poverty, swore at him, re viled him, and the old man who was shot in the head during the civil war, shot his neighbor. Beloved by every other member of his community, the poor old soldier bad yet to suffer for taking life. His release has been earnestly desired for years by every one familiar with his character and the circumstances of his crime. Reconstructed. The elimination of the southern negro from politics means the break ing up of the solid south. The negro question was .the only subject that kept the south solid and on the cur rency question, expansion, on the Isthmian canal question, on all vital and broad national issues the south .era people are with the administra tion. President, McKinley's speech at, New Orleans, and its loud acclaim proved that. Not that a republican presidential candidate can yet receive the votes of- southerners. The south is still in bondage to a name, and the people will vote for a democrat all of whose opinions they disapprove rath er than for a republican with whose policy they are in complete accord.. With the darkey bogy out of the question, however, a democratic can didate utterly . objectionable to the soutli cannot again be foisted upon it. The south has been hampered and re stricted, since the war, by fear and hatred of negro domination. The re moval of this fear by the temporary disfranchisement of the negro is the very best possible fortune that could happen to him. The southern white man has placed a reward for learning before the southern negro which not one of the youths of the race will ignore. In twenty years an illiterate darkey will be hard to find, while the mountains will still be inhabited by whites who cannot write nor read. That is the 'point of time when white supremacy in the south will really be in danger. A Church Trust. In the process of changing from a worm that crawls to winged color, the soul of the worm which is the same in worm and butterfly doubt Jess revolts against revolution and the loss of so much good fuzzy cover ing and so many feet. But when the revolution is accomplished the worm finds that it does not take him a halt hour to get over a yard of space, that instead of crawling on the earth, by a flutter or two he is out of the heart or the rose and deep in a honeysuckle blossom thousands of worm-miles-away. The old way could not have lasted: for many more centuries. Competi tion produces so much friction that it wears out machinery and dissipates energy. Competition is friction. The world's business is being reor ganized. Not Pierpont Morgan, not James Hill, not Rockefeller nor Schwab, not any one man is accom plishing the change. A universal impulse of reorganization has seized upon the men of the world. They do not know why they are making these enormous machines and organizing" opposing forces into one magnificent engine, ballbearing, that after a while an ordinary engineer can at tend to. Doubtless Mr. Hill or Mr Carnegie think their Ideas original. Such men have receptive minds. The spirit of the age communicates Im pulses directly to them. Fifty years ago, they would not have been suc cessful in the same attempts. They illustrate the times. They are la themselves America, modern emblems of the unification of man's interests and of the development of the tribal,, the family; the brotherly idea. The Reverend William Manss plan to unite the denominations now only divided by unessential, human, arti ficial distinctions into one magnifi cent engine of conversion and salva tion is but another expression of the spirit of combination. There are half a hundred or more struggling: , I V