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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 1901)
T VOL. XVI., NO. XXXI ESTABLISHED IN 1SS6 PRICE FIVE CENTS mH rs Sfr'ittb H B m B 3 SP LINCOLN. NEBR., SATURDAY. AUGUST 3, 1901. THE COURIER, EKTKEXDIN THE P08TOFFICE AT LINCOLN SECOND CLASS MATTER. A8 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BT TIE CH PRINTING AND PUBLISHING GO Office 1132 N street, Up Staire. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS, : : : EDITOR Subscription Rates. Per annum II 50 Six months 1 00 Rebate of fifty cents on cash payments. Single copies 05 The Cockier will not be responsible for vol notary communications unless accompanied by return postage. Communications, to receive attention, must be turned by the full name of tbe writer, not merely ai a guarantee of good faitb, bnt for publication it advisable. amused themselves all their lives un til the boat sprung a leak or caught tire. For the moment, which may be their last, the7 are convinced that, close at hand, there is a loving and protecting divinity only waiting to the prayers of the sixty righteous and credulous ones who assembled them selves to pray publicly a prayer which men and women by tbe million have been praying many times a day for six weeks as they went about their be convinced of their love and loyalty, affairs. It may be that if before he places them in safety on had not come together in dry land or on another boat. Whether the prayers make any difference in the fate of this boat and its passengers, I do not know. The sea is strewn with skeletons of men and ships. Phoenician galleys, vik ing long-boats, and transoceanic steamships with their crews lie in heaps on the bed of the ocean. The the sixty a church formally dedicated to religion, and prayed in the designated forms and phrases of prayer, that we would still be cohered with the dust of six weeks. galleys in which the Phoenicians and Greeks sailed are a little further down in the layers of the museum which has preserved samples of all the styles of boats that have ever been launched on it. It was not for lack of praying that they sank. For man acknowledged God before the first which come from the dusty-dry throats of Xebraskans every summer, the informal, sometimes inarticulate petitions lrom the farmers, mer chants, insurance agents and grain dealers are not sent from a church. They are dispatched many times a day from the wheat field, shop, otlice or street and the harvest fails only once in a cycle. To be sure, even God likes to be asked and thanked. This observation is not intended to r g OBSERVATIONS. 8 Prayer and the Weather. Agnostics, atheists, and all grades of disbelievers in one god pray to Jiim instinctively, when they are on board a sinkingship, when they are in extreme agony, when the surgeon's knife is severing nerves and muscles, or in the last breaths of conscious ness before the anaesthetic has dulled sense. Those who die from disease are apt to expire in a state of coma or in that kind indifference to living or dying which has gradual ly, without frightening or startling the doomed ones, taken the place of an eager desire for life. These do not pray hard, like the strong man or woman in perfect health and sanity who is suddenly threatened with death. The strong man whose mind and body are normal, revolts from death. He will not have it so. The gentle voices and welcoming airs which the slowly dying hear, he has not heard: and soul and body are in arms against death. By entreaty or energy or defiance, the man who loves life and is confronted with sudden and unexpected death, tries to avoid it. He may be a brave man. but a sudden and an unexpected attempt to deprive Lim of life, by an element, as of fire or water, throws him into a panic of fear. And this horrible fear is the worst part of death. The rest is easy. You cannot pick out the believers from the unbelievers among the pass engers of a ship which is sinking. They are all praying to one god. They pray as to a responsive, sympa thetic, sure-to-help divinity. There is no mention of an all-pervading force or energy. The agnostics and atheists have forgotten all the fine phrases about an impersonal, unre sponsive force with which they solvable riddles of the labor question. The "Working Women of America"' have adopted the following rules: Rule I. Work shall not begin be fore 5:30 A. M., and shall cease when the evening's dishes are washed and put away. Two hours each afternoon and the entire evening at least twice a week, shall be allowed the domestic as her own. Rule II. There shall be no opposi tion on the part of the mistress to club life on the part of the domestic. Entertainment of friends in limited The innumerable petitions for rain """rs shall not be prohibited, pro- refreshments. Rule III. Gentlemen friends shall not be barred from the kitchen or back porch. Members of the family shall not interrupt the conversation during said visit. Rule IV. Domestics shall be al lowed such hours off on Monday as will permit them to visit the bargain counters of the stores and enjoy the same privileges enjoyed by the mis tress and her daughters. Rule V. All complaints shall be made to the business agent of the union. The question of wage shall be settled at the time of employment and no reduction shall be made. Domestic service is hard to reduce to a system because of the unusual number of emergencies which arise in it. Children are magicians of the unexpected; and hard and fast rules The House-Maids' Union, made to apply to them, and which The housemaids of Chicago, Cincin- depend upon them for their regular nati and Wilkesbarre have formed operation, get the worst of it right unions, signed articles and agreed along. Then the unforeseen acci upon certain conditions to which dents of sickness and company pre every maid is entitled. If labor un- vent any woman from agreeing to ions improve the condition of the abide by these rules or any others ab laborers and educate employers to solutely. The rules themselves are respect the point of view of their very simple and just, laborers, the unions are indisputably Most of the domestics of Lincoln beneficent; and if for laborers in enjoy a much greater latitude than general, then for hired girls especially, those enumerated in the foregoing whose relations with the mistress of schedule. Some domestics are ad the house are so intimate and isolated dieted to company in working hours; from other forms of labor that petty and company in business hours is a tyranny is easily imposed. Wherever nuisance in otlice, counting room and two women meet the chances are that shop, as well as in the kitchen. Some within ten minutes of the salutation patient mistresses are obliged to make the conversation will be devoted to "jell,'' cake, and perform many of the the deficiencies of their "help." If special season and special occasion the hired girls talk so much about kitchen duties before the eyes of a their mistresses, this one relationship young woman who is calling upon her is more discussed than any other, deprecatory cook. The eyes of the The hired girls, though, have their visitor, more or less critical and curi beaux, church affairs and lately, ous, follow the nervous lady of the clubs, to talk over; and besides they house about the kitchen, until she think that talking shop is bad form, gets so rattled that she burns her and among the most fastidious maids syrup, puts salt in her cake instead complaints of mistresses are not al- of sugar, and makes other fatal errors- log was found to be buoyant, launch- discourage prayer but to remind the ed and straddled by the first sailor. faithful sixty that prayers can be It seems to me that storms on the mailed anywhere, inside a church or deep and droughts on land are caused out of it. The service is absolutely by the operation of natural laws, and perfect and no petition has ever been that miracles are rare. Xevertheless, returned marked, "No such address." if I were on board a sinking boat I jt ji could not take a general and philoso pliicalfcview of the situation but would be with all the passengers and crew, praying for a special miracle or act of intervention for that one time and for me. Last week Governor Savage of this state, in response to very urgent re quests from a few, set aside a day for prayer, last Thursday, to be spent by devout citizens in prayer for rain. Lincoln is a city of forty thouand inhabitants, the second city of the state. It contains perhaps fifty re ligious bodies and two universities. Whether the latter add to the depth of religious feeling or not is a matter of opinion. At any rate, if prayer could improve the meteorological conditions there was imminent neces sity for the whole people joining in the supplication. The First Congre gational church of this city of forty thousand was considered large enough to accommodate all petitioners, prot estant, Catholic, Jevish, Mahome dan, Buddhist or theosophic. who would come The church seats several hundred people and sixty came. Tn- quesuonaoiy .m li: uu vwx. ..u lowed Tn spite of the discussion the for which she will be twitted when thought that prayer would make any situation and the relations between she tries to induce her unsympathetic dllierence came. Deciiuse tiieie is not a business man, nor any one whom his earnings support who would not immediatelv gain by a copious rain. Among all the citizens who have been watching the skies for rain for six weeks only sixty answer ed the call to prayer. This shows that the other 39.940 either did not believe in the efficacy of public prayer for rain, or that they were disinclined to go to so little trouble to obtain it. The latter is inconceivable. It may be that the one-half inch of rain that fell Saturday night was in answer to mistresses and maids do not improve, family or friends to cat the result The inability of mistress and maid to of that morning's embarrassed work, consider the subject from botli sides In shops the workmen are not al- hinders the evolution of the relation- lowed to receive company in working ship and the development of the call- hours. Social amenities and labor are ing. in-so-iar as unions maice a call- incompatioie. -Many an employer ing more respectable and dignified, the amalgamation of domestic ser vants is a step towards its final solu tion. In-so-far as unions tend to increase the suspicion existing be tween the employed and the employ ers, this new expression of organized labor is only adding to the perplexi ties and unsolved and nearly un- lias longed to tell the bores who, hav ing nothing to do themselves, drop in to gossip with him, that the rules of the house forbid visitors; but the employer is usually the court of last resort and must bear the burden of all dismissals. The rule in regard to visitors being allowed on the back porch should specify when. I'M r n. VI M M i I . 1 r t.t i r 1 f i tf W I r ' i I Wh 'u