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PAGE TWO
Public Opinion Throughout the Union |
GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE.
This undaunted man will surely
emerge triumphant from the predica
ment in which the financial disturb
ances culminating this week have
placed him and several of the great
industrial companies of which he : jb
the illustrious and honored head.
George Westinghouse is a man who
knows no fear, and always conquers.
He is not a speculator, not a “Na
poleon of Finance,” not a dreamer of
dreams, but a great inventor and a
lions of capital. No successful man
over, and carrying American courage
and foresight and enterprise into
every country on the globe. He has,
by sheer grit, and the genius of en
lightened persistence, built up some
of the most important industries of
our time. He is one of the most com
manding figures in the engineering
world, honored everywhere for his
integrity no less than for his achieve
ments. In his employ, both in Amer
ica and Europe, are many thousands
of men; in his industries many mil
work, not ease, is his delight. To
of this era cares less for the personal
acquisition of money than he, few
cars so little for it. He has never
sought to gather wealth for its own
sake. Money is to him but an instru
ment which, used with brains, makes
industry grow. Years ago he might
have retired with vast wealth. But
work, not ease, is his delight . To
him, perhaps more than to any other
individual, is due much of the won
drous progress in transportation, and
in the commercial application of elec
tricity. Any serious reverse to a
man of this character and force would
partake of the nature of a public ca
lamity. But he will not permit the
present difficulty to seriously retard
him. He will go on. It may truly
be said of him that he has long been
a creator of wealth, a discoverer of
opportunity, a powerful influence in
the advance of the age. In all lands
men will rejoice, fer his sake as well
aa for their own, that his industrial
organizations are solvent, and every
where there is hope that he will bo
spared for many more years of su
perb achievement by which armies
of labor benefit and the whole body
of civilization is aided in its onward
march.—Bcston Herald.
ONE OLD MAN FAYS THE
PRICE.
A pathetic echo of the insurance
scandals was the bitter sigh of aged
Dr. Walter R. Gillette, former vice
president of the Mutual Life Insur
ance Company, convicted of perjury
in trying to hide the misuse of in
surance funds by his superiors. It is
sad to see a man sixty-seven years old
go to prison, and in this case there is
the added irony of a minor offender
paying the price big culprits avoided.
However, Dr. Gillette knew the na
ture and penalty of perjury.
In its last analysis the very plea
he made in court of his long career
hitherto unblemished by a breath of
falsehood and dishonor, points to the
sinister foot that exactly such men
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN
may be bulwarks of public mischief.
Dr. Gillette gave his personal repute
—his sworn word —to hide crime.
After all, the sentiment that hides a
crime for the sake of a salary is a
sordid sort of loyalty.—New York
American.
LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE.
Elections are won by hard work,
not by luck. The only way to make
victory certain tomorrow is to leave
nothing to chance. Get out and get
busy, just as if the result depended
on you and on you alone.
Do not 4rust anybody else to do
what you can do yourself. It will be
poor satisfaction to say later, “I
would have done it myself if I had
thought he was going to fall down.”
Keep on the job from the opening
of the polls until the last ballot is in
and counted. If you are given a par
ticular poll to watch, go without your
meals sooner than leave it until rr
lieved by some one authorized to
take your place.
Enlist for the day as a soldier, and
be ready, if necessary, to endure
hardship for the sake of the triumph
that is certain to be ours.—Louis
ville Herald.
PRESIDENT DISLIKES FUSION.
It must be perfectly clear by this
time to the friends of Herbert Par
sons and President Roosevelt in Ne*w
York City that the President does
not approve of the preposterous
Hearst-Parsons alliance and fusion
on the county ticket, says the Wash
ington correspondent of the Ne’w
York Evening Post. On the day he
returned to Washington from the
Louisiana canebrakes President
Roosevelt hastily made it known
through one of his accredited spokes
men that Mr. Parsons had not con
sulted with the White House before
he began bis trading with Hearst
The President’s eagerness to set
himself right with his New York
friends was but another way of say
ing that had Mr. Parsons come to him
for advice he would have been
warned against Hearst. Hearst is to
day as much the pet abomination of
Mr. Roosevelt as he was when the
President asked Mr. Root to go to
Utica and excoriate the editor in a
speech. Mr. Roosevelt will not pub
licly denounce the Parsons-Hearst al
liance, but he has a good many ways
of letting his views be known. If
the President could “stand for it”
Mr. Parsons by this time would have
found means of making the fact
known that his great mistake had the
sanction of the national administra
tion.
Republicans from various parts of
the country have been in Washington
since the Hearst-Republican fusion
ticket was put in the field. Not one
of them has had a good word to say
for it. President Roosevelt seemed
both amazed and indignant on his re
turn here that it should have been
supposed in New Yoik that he had
been consulted and given his approval
before the deal was made.
Some of the reasons which Republi
cans in ether states have expressed
to justify their fears that the Hearst
deal will have a bad effect upon Re
publican chances of success in other
contests, have been set forth in these
dispatches. These Republicans are
now hopeful that the Republican
voters in New York will absolutely
repudiate the fusion ticket at the
polls, that the party may be cleared
of the suspicion that it is in the
slightest way in sympathy with Mr.
Heai*st, his political methods, bis po
litical principles, and his political
aims.
As one Republican politician here
today expressed it: “New York Re
publican voters must repudiate the
deal Parsons has made, to clear the
good name of the party in the State,
and to relieve us all of the imputa
tion that we have anything in com
mon with Hearst and Hearstism.”—
Washington Globe.
TIME FOR ACTION.
Just why the country should suffer
financially on account of the misdo
ings cf a lot of blackleg gamblers who
haunt the stock exchanges of New
York City is beyond the comprehen
sion of the average citizen. And why
the government should come to the
relief of these same gamblers with
millions of the people’s money is still
more beyond human reason. If the
crops were a failure and the people
themselves who have contributed this
money into the coffers of the govern
mental treasury should ask for as
sistance the chances are it would be
denied them. Only last week a south
ern congressman made application to
the treasury department for a luan of
several millions of dollars to the cot
ton producers of the South, offer
ing to give as collateral warehouse re
ceipts showing that the cotton had
been stored. The department re
fused to advance a penny. Yet when
the gamblers of Wall street, who try
to control the price of cotton and
other commodities without handling
a dollar’s worth of the real product,
get in trouble the secretary of the
treasury hurries to their relief with
millions of the people’s money and
gives it to them without interest.
Just how this juggling of the peo
ple’s interests and means appeals to
some men, blinded by partisanship,
may be entirely different from the
idea entertained by this bumble
scribe, but all the same we believe
there is absolutely no sense of jus
tice in it.
The Mirror’s position on this ques
tion is one of broad humanity. The
people compose this country, they sup
port the government, they comprise
its army and navy, and whatever
favors the government has to dispense
should go to them. Stock gamblers
thrive on the sweat and blood of
thousands of men, women and child
ren who work in the cotton patches
of the South while the boiling sun
tans their tkin and sows the seeds of
an early death.
One honest farmer who makes his
living by the sweat of his brow is
worth mere to the country than all
the gamblers and speculators Wall
street has ever housed. Ono is a pro-
ducer, the other is a consumer. No
man has a right to live who does not
produce at least as much as he con
sumes. When this ratio is reversed
he becomes a burden on humanity.
And our government certainly has no
right to encourage this detestable
horde of leeches on the body politic.
This is not republicanism nor de
mocracy, but pure Americanism.
Americanism stands for Americans.
The man who robs his fellow man of
his just dues is a criminal. The stock
exchange and those who manipulate
it rob. It is purely a game of chance.
When they lose, they alone should
be hurt. But our present system
seems to make angels out of devils,
citizens out of pirates.
A protest should go up from every
community so strong that the next
congress will pass a law forever wip
ing cut the bucket shops, exchanges
and ether institutions (hat prey on
the public.
There is no reason for any local
uneasiness on account of the strin
gency in the eastern money market.
The banks of the South are merely
adopting precautionary methods to
keep the funds in the South, instead
of turning them loose to go to New
York where the demand at present
is so great for ready cash that they
are offering as high as 75 per cent
interest. This flurry will blow over
within a short time and everything
will settle down to a normal condi
tion. It is absurd to become excited
over lhe fact that the banks won’t
pay you all that is coming to you. If
they did this, you w’ould take the
money, hide it away, keep it out of
circulation and paralyze business. Re
ferring paiticiilarly to the situation
in Clifton, no depositor or stockhold
er should be alarmed. The bank here
is doing just what all southern banks
aro doing—paying Duly a limited
amount each week to customers. By
this means every one having an ac
count can get enough money to live
on and no one is made to suffer The
J bank here has enough assets to pay
every depositor one hundred cents on
the dollar, even if the situation
should go to the bad. However,
there is no reason to believe it wiU
get any worse. By keeping cool the
business interests of this seerion will
suffer very little.—Clifton Mirror.
*
COOL HEADS.
This is the time for cool heads.
The country was never so rich, never
so prosperous, as now. Its health is
sound. Its health, in fact, has b.-en
excessive, and therefore somewhat
abused. Some surgical operations are
necessary to remove a few surface
troubles, and these operations arte
being skilfully conducted. The coun
try will be all the btjtter for them in
a little while. Confidence is the most
powerful influence in a time like this.
For confidence is the basis of credit,
and credit is the foundation of en
terprise. There is no need for peo
ple to run about and draw their mon
ey from the banks. Money in the
banks is the restorative power by
which the banks can eo-operate in
(Continued on Pago Fourteen.)