mm a I
VOL. XVI, NO. XLIV
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2,
&&r
ESTABLISHED IN 7SS6
OBSERVATIONS
BY SARAH B. HARRIS
ON Monday of this week the stock
of The Courier Printing and
Publishing Company was trans
ferred to the State Journal Company.
The paper will continue to be edited
by Miss Harris, who has been the edi
tor for five years. The Courier was
founded in 188C by Mr. Lew Wessel
and Mr. Harry T. Dobbins, who
sold it to Mr. Morton Smith, who
in turn, in 1890, after a short period
of joint ownership, sold it to the re
cent owner.
A weekly paper is a curiously per
sonal piece of property. It should not
be Nold or transferred to a person or
corporation who will not conduct it,
in the opinion of the owner, to the
entire satisfaction of the subscribers.
Or rather, for no paper was ever en
tirely satisfactory to the subscribers,
the owner must see to it, in trans
ferring his circulation, that the pa
per or magazine still possesses the fea
tures for which the subscribers were
v induced to take it year after year.
The Courier has been sold with
exactly this creed in mind. Un
der the present and much more able
management the typographical and
mechanical defects which have rnorti
Ged the owner of the paper and an
noyed the subscribers wili be
entirely corrected. The advertising
will appeal to over three thous
and readers. If there were rea
sons, and there were sound ones, for
advertising in what is already the old
Courier, these reasons are reenforced
and multiplied for advertising 'In the
new Courier.
In retiring from the management
of 1 lie Courier, Miss Harris is very
1,'rateful for the kindness and cour
tesy so uniformly shown her. The
business wor'd ha3 a code, signs, Ian
guage, methods, conventions of its
own. There is nothing like it in
church or society or associations
'founded on relationship. In society
People meet on a somewhat false
basis. Everybody pretends to be
fonder of everyone else than he really
s. There are elaborate conventions
which no one is deceived by, but in
which it is rude not to occasionally
pretend to believe.
In business the realities are nearer
the surface. A business man under
stands the code, and that hypocrisy
accomplishes nothing. He competes
with everyone else in business. And
this is one reason why it is so ex
tremely difficult for one individual
to conduct more than one business,
or to have many intimate friends or
to be a social success and a banker,
for instance. Every relationship
wakes more complicated the duties
and essential administration of com
mercial management. No tale or
essay about the laws and conduct of
"USine5 Mn mnl.n ! I t 1 1 :1 1.1 ,. o
...... mum; in uiirciugiuiu b"
tate its vital function. But in spite
of its rigid code and merciless lessons,
in spite of the inevitable destruction
of pleasing illusions, every man and
woman who humbly tries to learn the
ways and language of the business
world is benefitted thereby. It is a
Mr. J. C. Seacrest, te publisher of
The Courier, besides possessing busi
ness acumen of a high order, has de
veloped a special knowledge of pub
lishing which distinguishes him a
mong the publishers of the west. He
has the ability, the knowledge and
the will to make The Courier rank
with the best weekly papers, and its
immediate improvement under his
supervision is assured.
.t 9 9 9
Dc Gustibus.
In a matter of taste there can be
no dispute. No man from the north
can convince a man from the south
that it is de rigeur to dine with col-
VHL CWTIlH K
IL v''' K
JUDGE S. n. SEDGWICK, YOEK, NEBRASKA.
region of the. realities first of all, and
realities are good for the soul. Busi
ness teaches humility and democracy.
The economic value of an individual
is frequently quite different from his
social value, but one who looks at the
world from the vantage of social or
family position never learns that his
basis of classification is as false as
dicers' oaths.
In retiring from the business man
agement of The Courier.therefore. the
editor and sometime owner is grate
ful to the original impulse.to obedience,
which introduced her to the veri.
ties of life and to the real inhabi-
She is also grate-
rants of the world
ful to the many friends and wellwishers
whose natience anrj courtesy enabled
lno and no business college can imi- her to complete her apprenticeship-
ored men. To be sure Frederick
Douglas and Booker Washington have
been invited to dine and have dined
with the most distinguished Euro
peans. In Europe the matter of col
or is not an insurmountable bar to
social acquaintance or intercourse.
Othello, a Moor, once married a
daughter of a doge of Venice. The
mother of Alexandre Dumas was a
negress. He had kinky hair, thick
lips and the spreading nostrils of his
mother's race, yet In Paris he was
welcome to the tables of the nobility
and of the lion-hunting rich. Du
mas inexhaustible fertility and his
opulent imagination he owed to his
mother. But unless he bad also in
herited a sense of form and stability
from a white father, it is probable
that he would not have accomplished
anything in the world of letters
whose laws are the most rigorous and
most mercilessly enforced of any
realm we know anything about. I
think there is not a single instance
in history of a pure black genius, un
less it ba tbe Moor of Venice, and his
victories belong rather to romance
than to history. Frederick Douglas
and Alexandre Dumas were onlv half
black and Booker Washington him
self inherits his stable quality, ad
ministrative ability, logic and clear
vision from a white ancestor.
The people of the soutii know these
facts and they also know the valuable
qualities of the pure-blooded negro
better than we of the north do. Now,
as in the days before the war, they
object to any solution of the negro
question by the north. Interference
from this side of the line Is not eth
ically importunate in these last days
of 1901 as it was in 18G0. The negroes
will not obtain social recognition in
the south till they have earned it,
and that will be several hundred
years hence. In the meanwhile it is
of little consequence how the north
treats the negro, for he does not live
north in sufficient numbers to make
his social status our problem.
Next to making a present of some
thing which does not belong to us is
the pleasure of reforming some one or
some section remote "from our own.
Some portion of the money subscribed
to missionary funds owes its dona
tion to the pleasure everyone feels in
reforming other people. Armies of
men and women spend energy enough
to earn millions of dollars in one year
trying to bring around other men
and women to their way of thinking.
Dearer than a dollar, more precious
than old-fashioned salvation, is the
consciousness that our oratory has
convinced some one. This particular
temptation has been too mucii for
Massachusetts ever since the articles
of confederation were signed. Mas
sachusetts, more than any other state
in the Union, was responsible for the
civil conflict. The war was, perhaps,
inevitable anyway;but Daniel Webster
the senator from Massachusetts and
one of the most prescient statesmen
of his day, was willing to make fur
ther concessions to the south in order
to avert a conflict. But his seventh
of March speech in reply to Hayne
alienated all Massachusetts from him
and hastened the development of the "
underground railway and the progress
of a fatal misunderstanding.
At the present moment there is
great reason for gentleness and tact
in the bearing of tbe north toward
the south. We are just beginning to
get on good terms again with Eng
land, although the Revolution is more
than a century and a quarter deep in
time. The estrangement with south
erners is not healed. The scar is very
apparent and at the least excitement
itglows red and angry. National unity
is a vital matter. Race development
proceeds from within. Philanthro
pists a long way off from the Indian
used to think that he could be civi
lized by dressing him in white man's
clothes and teaching him the white
