Newspaper Page Text
Jeffersonian
VOLUME FOUR
NUMBER TWO
s ummary of Ebents as They Happen
By Tom Dolan
Is the salary of the President of
the United States to be increased to
SIOO,OOO a year? If some sycophantic
congressmen can bring it about, it
will be done. Each congress manages
to produce the kind of hair-pin who
has nothing better to do, and not
brains enough to conjure up anything
more commendable than the propo
sition to seek a little favor for him
self through fawning upon the presi
dential office.
This little dispatch, shorn of all
superfluous words and quite uncom
mented upon, to the effect that “A.
Deutscher had been elected president
of the Swiss Republic for one year”
conveys a world of deep meaning.
Their elections are ~:*unnotieed;
they have no scandal-mongering in
their official circles, no graft charges.
The President is indeed the
servant of the people, and on
his retirement resumes quietly the
walk of life he pursued before his
unostentatious executive service. Os
course, Switzerland isn’t a “world
power.” It is greater than that,
greater perhaps than anything else,
in that it is a true democracy. It
has no swollen fortunes, no heart
breaking bread-lines, few crimes. Its
people are self-respecting, save per
haps in those instances where the rich
foreigner has inaugurated the custom
of lavish tipping.
The United States could do many
worse things than to study some of
the customs of Switzerland. When
ridiculous adulation can no longer sat
isfy itself with material gifts, we can
expect that some congressmen at no
very distant day will suggest that
“Mr. President” is too plebeian a
term to express our hero-worship and
the conferring of titles will be in or
der as a forerunner to the complete
downfall of the republic. When a
people is not, apparently, great
enough, or rich enough, to cope with
constantly increasing pauperism, it
has not a dollar to vote towards en
abling its executives to put on any
more royal state than can be main
tained at the now lavish salary of $4,-
000 per month.
Reports since the terrible earth
quake that laid low Messina and Reg
gio are still further depressing in their
description of the condition of the
survivors, many of whom will never
y **%ver the reason which left them at
■ight of such frightful scenes.
w.«l slight shocks have since been
h scientists say that others
A Weekly Paper Edited by THOS. E. and J. D. WATSON
are entirely probable in that region
in the next short while.
The question as to whether or not
the Panama canal is not also in a re
gion likely any time to be devastated
by seismic shocks, or the eruption of
“el Volcan” the once fiery mountain
which lies but a short distance to a
good portion of the canal track. It
w r as the opinion that the canal should
be .so built as to take the possibility
of earthquakes into account and the
lock system has not been favored by
engineers who recognized this diffi
culty. It is stated that Mr. Taft’s
proposed visit to Panama will be to
decide about many of these matters.
Mr. Roosevelt, quite naturally, brush
ed the difficulty aside, probably term
ing it an “academic” one, but the
subsequent events in San Francisco,
and the California coast, the covering
of a large portion of the Gulf of
Mexico with a thin film of oil, shot
up, no doubt, through some submarine
disturbance and the disaster in Italy
makes it plain that all safeguards
possible should be thrown around the
work. The construction may take a
few years longer, but the canal is
expected to remain when finished un
til the end of time.
Six night-riders in the Reelfoot
Lake district have been sentenced to
the gallows by Judge Jones, and two
to the penitentiary for life, for the
murder of Captain Quentin Rankin.
The murder was a cowardy and
brutal one and cannot be too severely
condemned, but the sentencing of men
by wholesale to hanging is not less
ghastly. It is doubtful that legalized
murder ever does any good, and so
far as the rather primitive folk of
the District are concerned, they fear
confinement more than the noose.
However, it required courage on the
part of judge and jury to take the
course they did, in a time of such
feverish excitement and their honesty
and fearlessness are not in question.
So far as the loose statements of the
press are concerned, though, the at
tempt to connect the night-riders who
killed Captain Rankin with the night
riders of Col. Joel Fort’s tobacco
war, is entirely erroneous. The two
have not even an incidental connec
tion, and the organizations were to
tally dissimilar in kind purpose and
personnel.
Perhaps the day may dawn when
human life will be altogether sacred,
as it should be held, but charity
should control our view-point in es-
Atlanta, Ga., Thursday, January 14, 1909
*
timating the criminality of the ac
cused. Certainly, when the infamous
Jameson raid is recalled —the de
signed effort of educated men to
overthrow one government in the in
terests of their own, and for their
selfish ends; when the United States
can pull off a revolution in a South
American country any time it will
help some favored aggregation of cap
ital, when we pounced on Spain be
cause of an accident to one of our
battleships, when Europe is everlast
ingly at the game—when night-riding
and day riding and riding rough-shod
over all right and justice has such il
lustrious precedents, the howl to pun
ish a handful of misguided poor dev
ils should be accompanied by some
pitying sigh that real civilization has
not yet dawned, anywhere.
The Supreme Court of the United
States has refused to grant a new
trial of the Standard Oil case in which
Judge Grosscup reversed the findings
of Judge K. M. Landis, who found
the company guilty of misdemeanors
and fined it $29,000,000. The action
of Judge Peter Grosscup was in itself
sufficient to send the stock of the
Standard Oil up to nearly 700. This
final escape from the imposition of
the fine, through mere technicalities,
should be a bitter disappointment to
President Roosevelt and Attorney
General Bonaparte, who have made
the Standard Oil monopoly a conspic
uous point of attack. “My policies”
have failed to put either John D. Rock
efeller or any other “malefactor of
large wealth” behind the bars as
yet.
North Carolina, Mississippi and
Alabama came into the sisterhood of
the “dry” states on the first of the
year. Louisiana has likewise adopted
some stringent regulations. It is very
probable that Tennessee will come
next, and before a great while.
A pan-American Scientific Congress
is now convening in faraway Chile.
Reports of its accomplishments will
be of great interest, in view of the
awakening countries to the south of
us.
Chicago will celebrate a “Lincoln
Centennial Week” from February 7th
to 14th inclusive.
Radicals and Radical-Socialists
made great gains in the French elec
tions the first week in January.
Four or five different parties are in
the field, so that the population is
divided on all questions to a marked
extent.
It is pleasing to note, however, that
the City of New York has won its
fight for 80-cent gas, over the de
fense of the local monopoly that the
rate would be “confiscatory.” The
Company must now return something
like $9,000,000 to the patrons, as the
difference due to them between the
price at winch the Company held the
gas, and that prescribed by the city.
It will be a job of no small difficulty
to manage the return, as it will read
ily be imagined the small sums into
which the $9,000,000 must be divided.
The decision is a very wholesome
one and will encourage all states and
cities in their effort to obtain equit
able rates.
Eight hundred new newspapers
have been the crop since Turkey
freed the press from governmental
censorship. They retail at about one
cent per copy. Good luck to them
all, and may they sound the hopeful
note throughout the East. Turkey
has before her as perplexing prob
lems as ever confronted any country,
perhaps, just launching out upon a
constitutional government, but having
put her hand to the plow, should not
turn back.
Chas. P. Taft has been compelled
to relinquish his clutch upon the sen
atorial toga in Ohio. Looks like that
big campaign contribution was going
to be a gold-brick to brother Charles.
Governor Hughes, in his inaugural
address, pledged himself to render
“loyal service to the people.” If
these are sincere words, machine-boss
ed New York will have reason to be
thankful. Too often the man elected
to office becomes an autocrat in utter
forgetfulness that the American ideal
requires its public men to be the ser
vants of the people, not their rulers,
and not slovenly in matters pertain
ing to the common weal.
The next tilt with the trusts will
concern the beef barons. It is stated
that one of them, in particular, will
be singled out as the most desirable
jail ornament to prove that the Federal
authorities are in r-e-a-1 earnest about
going after the monopolies. We will
see what we will see.
Price Five Cents