The Butler Weekly Times Newspaper, January 4, 1906, Page 9

SHOTION. PARE TWO. The Butler Weekly Times. VOL. XXVIII. BUTLER, MISSOURI, THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 1906, THE STATEHOOD QUESTION. LIKELIHOOD OF THE ADMISSION OF OKLAHOMA AND INDIAN TERRITORY. Disposition to Grant Them Statehood Irrespective of Arizona and New Mexico—New Congressional Align- ment on Question. The assembling of congress will bring new blood in both the House and Senate. There is promise of a long and very important session. New een are to be discussed and material changes in existing economic conditions are to be proposed, Coming upon the eve of a congressional elec- tion, the session will feel the effects, to a a extent, of political consid- era! The admission of new states to the ~ Union will be one of the hold-over uestions to occupy the attention of the new congress, It appears now that there will be a decided shifting of position on the statehood problem, some new lights having dawned since etatehood was discussed at the last session. It is understood that the committees on territories of both House and Sen- ate are inclined to stand by the old rogram of creating two states out of the four territories, but it will not be & surprise if this program fails to meet the approval of a majority of the republican senators and _ representa- tives. Since the question of state- hood for these four southwest terri- tories was brought into congress many senators and_ representatives have personally investigated the exist- ing conditions in the territories, and the result is that public sentiment among public men is crystallizing in favor of the plan of admitting Okla- homa and Indian. Territory to state- hood and, if necessary, letting Arizo- na and New Mexico wait. ~ There seems to be few dissenting of Oklahoma and Indian Territory. Difference of opinion does exist as to whether the two territories should be admitted as one state or whether they should be admitted as separate states, but on the main proposition— the preparedness of these two terri- tories for statehood—there is little dissenting opinion. In fact, the pre- vailing view is that statehood has already been too long delayed in the case of Oklahoma and Indian Terri- tory. It is almost disgraceful, well- informed public men are saying, that these two progressive _ territories should be held back simply because of disagreement as to whether those unprepared territories, Arizona and New Mexico, should be admitted. It is high time, many men declare, for congress to cut loose from the Ari- zona and New Mexico proposition, no matter what form it may take, and admit Oklahoma and Indian Territory. —————— The Royal Crown of England. “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.” The crown of England is a costly toy and is better to look upon than to wear, Around the circle there are twenty diamonds, worth $7,500 each, two large center diamonds, $10,- 000 each; fifty-four smaller ones at the angle of the former, $500 each; four crosses, ef¢h composed of twenty-five diamonds, $vv,000; four large dia- monds at the top of the crosses, $20- 000; twelve diamonds contained in the fleur-de-lis, $50,000; eighteen smaller ones in same, $10,000; pearls, dia- monds, ete, upon the arches and crosses, $50,000; also one hundred and forty-one small diamonds, $25,000; twenty-six diamonds in the upper cross, $15,000 and two circles of pearls about the rim, $15,000. The cost of the precious stgnes alone is nearly half a million dollars. — Here lies my wife’s nearest relative, All my tears cannot bring her back. Therefore I weep. voices against the proposed admission THE CHINESE MINI Visitors to the Chinese Legation at to a tiny little figure perched at the head of the grand stairway. It is al- there when a dinner party is go- ig on or when Sir Chengtung Liang Gheng, the Chinese Minister, is giving @ reception. It never fails to appear, and the uninitiated have been heard to im undertone that it is a queer re which guards the head of|her carriage is Washington have often been attracted | da: g i a ISTER’S DAUGHTER. perience. At home they would not re, Society is eagerly awaiting the ex- pected announcement that Miss Liang will be formally presented this season, She has learned to speak English ex- ceadingly well and is a familiar figure in a box at the theatres on Monday nights. When she wishes to go shop- ping she does so unhesitatingly, and frequently seen stand- ing in front of some of the fashionable shops, Fewer girls, especially among those who have not been presented to 60- ciety, are more popular than this charming daughter of the Chinese Min- ister She has made friends with every girl in Washington society, and her chief delight is to jump in her car- ms and drive her, and no matter wh: e it must wait if. little Miss Liang happens to call. She MARK TWAIN AT SEVENTY, THE HUMORIST ENTERTAINS GROUPS OF AUTHORS AT BANQUET, At Three Score and Ten He Is Hale and Hearty—Gives Views on How to Live—Never Smokes or Drinks While Asleep. Mark Twain, that prince of humor- ists has reached the limitation of life as laid down by the Scriptures—three score years and ten, And yet he is still able to give us gems of humor and wit—such gems as attained fame for him years ago when Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and Innocents MARK TWAIN, TO-DAY. Abroad were first given to us. On De- cember 5th he was the guest of honor at a dinner in New York, to celebrate his seventieth birthday. The guests were confined closely to writers of imaginative literature, and about 170 authors were present, nearly hait of them women, Every guest received as a souvenir a bust of Mark Twain, half-life size. Naturally Mr. Clemens was the principal speaker; he took as his text, “How to get to be seventy and not mind it.” He said:— “The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which | have oppressed you for a generation, and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach—unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do, You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities' you climbed up to that great place. You will ex- plain the process and dwell on the par- ticulars with senile rapture. I ave been anxious to explain my own sys- tem for a long time, and now at last I have the right. | Regularly Irregulars intend to take any. Exercise is loath- some, And it cannot be any benetit when you are tired; I was always tired. “I have lived a severely moral life. But it would be a mistake for other people to try that, or for me to ree- ommend it. Very few would succeed. You have to have a perfectly colossal stock of morals, and you cannot get them on a margin; you have to have the whole thing and put them in your box. Morals are an acquirement—like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis—no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I start- ed poor. ———————— WHAT A STRIKE COST. Chicago Obliged to Divert Money Needed For Improvements Into Payments For Police Service. It will never be known definitely just what the recent strike of the teamsters cost the people of Chicago. That the total would run well into the millions, however, is a conserva- tive estimate, judging from the single item of the expense to the municipal- ity for extra police protection. Some time ago it was discovered that the city could add $5,000,000 to its bonded d&bt, and the people au- thorized an issue of bonds to this amount for specific public improve ments. The end of the teamsters’ strike found $2,000,000 of these bonds still unsold and an emergency strike debt of some $365,000. To pay this bill the council has retired the $2,000,000 of bonds and ordered their reissue in such form that they may be used for general, corporate purposes. Thus $365,000—or the estimated cost of lowering the two river tun- nels—goes to pay extra policemen for defending the lives of citizens and pro. tecting their property while a supine elty administration practically gave license to the striking teamsters to make the ordinary business of peace re citizens full of turmoil and haz- ard. Money that the people intended to go into sorely needed permanent im- provements has been diverted to meet the cost of lawlessness that never should have gone to the extent it did. The cost of this one strike is the $365,000 the city pays for extra police service, plus what the county has to pey for special deputy sheriffs, plus the loss to merchants, railways, man- ufacturers, etc., in business; plus lost wages to the strikers, plus a dozen other items that it would be difficult to enumerate, And this only em- braces money cost. It takes no ac- count of inconvenience to citizens, of assaults on citizens, of the killing of citizens, It is a tremendously expensive thing to fight a labor war in a great city. —_———— A Ring for a Throne. Miss Josephine Strong, who was private secretary at Washington for Congressman Hawley, has a diamond ring that was once owned and worn by’ Louis, BMillipe. king of France. The ring ‘has a peculiar history, It will be remembered that Phillipe lived AMERICAN LAND MONOPLY. NO. 10 IS BEING FOSTERED BY OUR PRES ENT'SYSTEM OF LOOSE LAND LAWS. Homestead Commutation and Desert Land Act, Supposed to Encourage Settlement—Largely Utilized for Land Grabbing. Land monopoly is a black cloud of dread from which Ireland is just emerging, and we applaud England's act, while we may yet possibly be a little skeptical, in providing a plan whereby free Ireland may become a fact. Yet we ourselves are as rapidly ap- proaching land monopoly in America as it is possible to do, considering our vast extent of territory, Land monop- oly brings with it more state evils than can be recounted in any single article. It retards every internal de- velopment, it smothers individual ef- fort and enterprise and _ finally it transforms the stem and fiber of the individual citizen from that of a sub- stantial, self-reliant supporter of free government to a supine, indifferent and passionless individual, lacking in mental and moral poise and in those sturdy and heroic qualities which have made America the greatest name in history, “Land monopoly, did you say?” says the American land grabber. “Why, there is enough land for the if not centuries to come. The gov- ernment owns in the West alone near- ly half a billion acres and how can there be any land monopoly when this vast area is always open to free entry under our various land laws?” Half Billion Acres Remaining. It is true that there are valuable lands in the West yet remaining open to entry, or at least land which will be valuable when it shall have been furnished water for irrigation, but what is the general description of this half billion acres yet remaining under Uncle Sam's control? Is it reasonable to suppose that the shrewd land oper- ators, living on the ground, have not skimmed the cream of this land, and are not doing so to-day—the fertile valleys and the rich plains, where water can be applied—and leaving the great bulk of the land to their pos- terity, land composed of mountain tops and impassable canyon sides which will probably forever remain in the hands of the government and at least can never support life. Glance at a physical map of Colorado, just for an instance, and note the vast preponderance of mountains. There are many fertile valleys in Colorado, for the map is on a much reduced scale, but from its appearance you would think the entire State was com- posed of nothing but chain upon chain and range upon range of untillable mountains. Denounced by Commission. This question of land monopoly in {the West, as it is fostered through the use of the commutation clause of the homestead act and the desert land act “I have achieved my seventy years | in this country when he was an exile,|has been studied by the President's in the usual way—by sticking strictly to a scheme of my life which would kill anybody else. It sounds like an ex: | aggeration, but that is really the com- mon rule for attaining to old age. We have no permanent habits until we are forty. Then they begin to har- den, presently they petrify, then busi- ness begins, Since forty I have been { regular about going to bed and getting | up, and that is one of the main things, I have made it a rule to go to bed when there wasn’t anybody left to sit up with, and I have made it a rule to get up when I had to. This has result- ed in an unswerving regularity of ir- regularity. “In the matter of diet—which is | another main thing—I have been per- sistently strict in sticking to the things | which didn’t agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince pie after midnight; up to? then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at 8 in the morning and no*bite nor sup until 7.30 in the evening. “I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I havé no, other restriction as regards smoking. I do not know just when I began to smoke; I only know fhat it was in my father’s lifetime, and that I was indiscreet. He passed from this life early in 1847, when I was a shade past eleven; ever since then I have smoked publicly. As an example to others, and not that I care for moder- ation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when astleep, and never to refrain when awake. about that. by habit and preference. easily hurt you, different. You let it alone, First Standard Oil Trust. “As for drinking, I have no rule| word irom France that there was a When the others drins 1| chance to regain the Bourbon throne like to help; otherwise I remain dry, |if he could but get to Paris, but he This dry-| had not money enough for the trip. ness does not hurt me, but it could | Gen. Neville lent the prince the money, because you are| something like $800, and the prince He lived one winter in Zanesville, Ohio, and spent another winter with NVA SSS Public Lands Commission, and their report, the third installment of which SLL. Sy) = ENS (EX Yar (Cl A COUPLE OF “HOMES” IN THE WEST. Gen. Morgan Neville, a rich pioneer, and taught the district school. He had gave in pledge the ring that Miss Strong now wears. Going to New Or- leans by boat, Phillipe got to France — NAN ISS Y) WF \\ AT AMMUN cS MUD) UU DXE is published in these columns, com- ments upon these two land laws. The commutation clause originally provided that after eight months of residence on a homestead claim a man could “commute” by paying to the government $1.25 an acre and get immediate title to his land. After a number of years of operation it was conceded that this clause had opened the door for much land acquirement children of the nation for generations | There is a class of people who have apparently lost sight of the fact that the federal land laws, from the home- | stead law down, and even before the homestead law, were enacted for the purpose of fostering the making of homes for the nation; they seem to think, and it must be confessed that they have successfully put into prac- tice their belief, that the laws are to be construed into passing on the title from the government into private hands with absolutely no regard to homemaking. They argue that when the public domain goes into private ownership it becomes taxable property and this helps the country and the State, and the question is ignored as to whether men and women go upon that land and make homes and rear familles, The following part of the report of the Public Lands Commission shows that the commutation clause at pres- ent is a farce and that land can be entered under it and almost immedi- ately added to already large individual holdings. The Commission recom- mends that the period of residence be extended from fourteen months to three years and that the residence be actual and not constructive, as it is at present. With such a law strictly enforced the evils of the commuta- tion clause would be largely obviated. It is, however, highly improbable that if a man actually resided and im- proved his homestead for three years FREDERICK H. NEWELL Chief Engineer of the U.S. Reclamation Ser- vice and Member of the Public Lands Commission. he would be unwilling to pay $1.25 an acre for immediate title, when by an additional two years’ residence, he could save this amount. The provisions of the desert land act, and the recommendation for the amendment of which is included in the following report will be discussed in next week's article. Commutation Clause of the Home- stead Act. In the preceding report a state- nent was made that our investiga- tions respecting the operations of the commutation cluuse of the homestead law were still in progress. We were not at that time prepared to recom- mend its repeal. Inves' tious ear- ried on during the past year have convinced us that prompt action should be taken in this direction and that, in the interest of settlement, the commutation clause should be great- ly modified, A careful examination of the dis- triets where the commutation clause is put to the most use shows that there has been a rapid increase of the use of this expedient for passing publie lands into the hands of cor- porations or large landowners. The object of the homestead Jaw was pri- marily to give to each citizen, the head of a family, an amount of land up to 160 acres, agricultural in char- acter so that homes would be created in the wilderness. The commutation clause, added at a later date, was undoubteiy intended to assist the honest settler, but like many other well-intended acts its orfginal intent has been gradually perverted until it is apparent that a great part of all commuted homesteads remains unin- habited. In other words, under the commutation clause the number of patents furnishes no index to the number of new homes. To prove this statement it is only necessary to drive through a country where the commutation clause has been largely applied. Field after field is passed without a sign of per- manent habitation or improvement other than fences, The homestead shanties of the commuters may be (Continued on next page Do You Use Acetylene? if so, “Since I was seven years old I have | and the rest is history. He regained seldom taken a dose of medicine and | his throne and the money lent by Gen. have still more seldom needed one. | Neville made it possible. The king sent But up to seven I lived exclusively 00 | hack the amount of the loan, told thd allopathic medicines, Not that I need- | general to keep the ring and asked him and it made cod | black enamel and is naturally / ; Paes | — Into the Earth’s Bowels. ed them, for I don’t think I did; but it) to visit him at the royal palace. The y father took @/ ring is'a pear shaped diamond, set in At Bendigo, Australia, there is a st gold bulk of the conimuted homesteads are homes, without settlement, and amid a great blare of trumpets, Congress, in a spasm of virtue, extended the time to fourteen months. What has been the result of this amendment? The -op- ponents of the repeal of the commuta- tion clause have presented specific reasons why this law should not be touched; that the entryman needs to “prove up” and get title to his land ao that he can mortgage his property We Want to Send You mple Burner and with the money buy groceries, tools, etc., with which to work his farm, which may sound well, but the}. W. M. CRANE COMPANY that th fact seems to remain e@ great 130-38 way not to-day Room 16 New York, N, ¥. DAPPER ROOT SL al MM Ba 5