The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 19, 1899, Page 6

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1899. The SUNDAY. FEBRUARY 19, 1899 - JOHN D. SPRECKELS, Proprietor. = e #ddress All Communications to W. S. LEAKE, Manager. PUBLICATION OFFICE......Market and Third Sts., S. F. Telephone Main 1863. {EDITORIAL - ROOMS..........2I7 to 22| Stevenson Street E Telephone Main 1874 DELIVERED BY CARRIERS, 18 CENTS PER WEEK. | Single Coples, 5 cents. Terms by Mall, Including Postase: . (including Sunday, C: L {inclading “Sunday ding Sunday Call), 3 m ngle Month LL.One Year. LL, Ong Year.. dsters are authorized to receive subscriptions. Al post Sample .copies will' be Torwarded when requested. DAKLAND OFFICE B e oo ‘Room 188, World Building cptising Representative. 908 Broadway DEW, YORK OFFICE DAVID ALLEN, Adv WASHINGTON (D. C.) OFFICE .............-Riggs House C. C. CARLTON, Correspondent. CHICAGO OFFICE Seens ........Marquctte Building C.GEORGE KROGNESS, Advertising Representative. BRANCH OFFICES—52T Montgomery street, corner Clay, open until 9:30 o'glack. 387 Hayes street, open untll ©:30. o'clock. 621 '‘McAllister street. open until 9:30 c'clock. €15 Larkin street, open until 9:3C o'clock. 1941 Mission streeg, apen untll 10 o'clock. 2291 Market stréet, corner Sixteenth, open until 9 o'clock. 2518 Mission street, spen untll 9 o'clock. 106 Eleventy street, open until 9 o'clock. 1505 Peolk street, open until 9:30 o'clogk. NW. corner Twenty-second @ng ' streecs, opén untll 9 o'clack. =NT> for Scandal.” atti Troubadours.” , or the Magic Kiss. s Opera Co Monday even- ny, Six-Day Cycle Race. Pianka, the “"Lady of Lions.” Masor. and Ellis streets, Specialties. e Steeplechase. Coursing Park—Coursing to-day. 1 Park-—Coursing to-day. Track—Races L0-MOITOW. AUCTION SALES. Monda; n & Co 7, at 13 e, at 14 Montgomei February treet OTHER CRANKS THAN OURS. § HILE we are fretted by -the number and| \ T of freak bills introduced into our Leg- | ¢, we may find some consolation in the the legislative cranks in .t there are other commonwealths tormented than our own. recently directed attention to the efforts of Populist to establish a system of imper- | siation in that State by the enactment of a ing all bills to be strictly anonymous. That a fairly -good freak, and would have been n.an-anti-cartoon bill.for the protection of since if no man’s name were attached meastire of legislation the cartqoners tive solo propose: woitld never know whom to picture, and their occu- P 1d be -gone. eak is that of mblyman Daggett of Wisconsin, who desires to produce a svomanhood in that commonwealth, and has ifion wo Aireth sre introduced a bill for the “protection of missés, ‘old-maids and married. women.” The act proposes to-declare tight-lacing a misdemeanor, and Ity for all who practice it. It seems s & penalty ironr Bear Creek believes that all classes of ing old maids, can get all the squeezing wholesome for them without resorting to corsets: The, difficulty of determining what consti- tutes- tight-lacing and of proving the commission of thie of e-would make the operation oi the act an K complex one and would undoubtedly re- yme of the most interesting cases that have pifc frie-man lad that €vet @risen in our courts. . In Ilhiois a legislator proposes to make it unlawful to women’s pictures either in newspapers or else- shere”for advertising purposes. The pictures with awhicli our magazines are now so profusely adorned showing all forms of feminine underwear displayed -.én’the feminine person are to be barred out. Neither Wwould it be-permissible to use the portrait of a IjGman as an- advertisement of tooth powder, cos- svetics or a. hair preserver. In short, the feminine form divine -would- disappear from the realm of the figh art of commerce, and not one could be used ‘even to: decorate a cigarette package. Oklahoma, however, bears away the palm. In that 1, which is weary of being a Territory aspires to statehood, the whole Legislature $ecnis to have gone on a freak rampage. It is re- ported that the sole measure passed by this extraor- dinary body was a bill appropriating $5000 for extra - cletk The Legislature had employed twenty enrolling and engrossing clerks, at a compensation of $3 a day each, and the only task which devolved upon them was the enrolling and engrossing of this single bill, which-carried .with it appropriations for the pay- ment of their wages. When the stony-hearted Gov- erngrivetoed this bill because of its extravagance the Legislature became suddenly frugal and devoted it- self to cutting down the appropriations for the execu- - tive' -‘department. It was willing to allow only $600 for the.payment of all the expenses of that de- “partment for one year, including the Secretary’s salary,- the payment of clerks, rent, fuel, furniture, books, records, stationery, postage, etc. " “Beyond. that example it is not worth while to go. When_freaks begin to practice on economy instead of morat. reform it is time to call a halt. Let us be -safisfied that we live in California. If we should fly ‘from our Legislature we would be likely to fall into a worse state. 2 on'w hire The men charged with the murder of Alfred Cook at Napa ask a change of venue, and without the slightest desire to prejudice the case it may be said ~that they cannot be blamed. Napa seemed to jump to a conclusion that they were guilty before a word of testimony had been given The late “special commissioner” of the Examiner to the Philippines delivered a lecture recently of which that paper meant to give kindly notice, but it prob- ably did not intend to mention his “illusions.” Con- temporaries had thoughtfully “attended to all the men- tion of these that seemed necessary. e ‘When excited spectators thought Senator Braun- hart about to draw a pistol the gentleman merely drew a handkerchief. In other words, he had not contemplated a fatal blow. *It would appear that Andree was not in the balloon fourid wrecked in the north. Also that there was no Also that there was no balloon. wrec! k’l_’he( San Jose Crabbs must be pretty well boiled, as they Irave been in hot water for a long time. 2 SO n tie Knott case thé hangman’s knot was easily untied.. | service, his offense being that he CONSULAR DIPLOMACY. AST spring the Filipinos were in arms against L Spain, as they had been for a hundred years. They have all that time aspired to independence and have fought, fallen, and fought again for the right to establish a government of their own. They have practically been in possession for a century of most of the area of the islands, from which they have suc- cessfully excluded Spanish jurisdiction.’ War being on between the United States: and Spain, Dewey's fleet appeared at Hongkong, and Aguinaldo arrived at Singapore. The | Consul Pratt of Singapore: “When six weeks ago I learned that General Aguinaldo had arrived, incognito, at Singapore I immediately sought him out. An hour’s interview cenvinced me he was the man for the occasion, and having communicated with Admiral Dewey, I ac- cordingly arranged for him to join the latter, which he did at Cavite. I am thankful to have been the means, though merely the accidental means, of bring- ing about the arrangement between General Aguin- aldo and Admiral Dewey which has resulted so hap- pily. I can only hope that the eventual outcome will be all that can be desired for the happiness and wel- fare of the Filipinos.” There is no doubt that Consul Pratt took our declaration of war to be in good faith, and believed we were embarking in an altruistic struggle to make iree and independent the victims of centuries of Spanish denial of seli-government. So believing, Consul Pratt secured “an arrangement” between Aguinaldo and Dewey. What that arrangement was is not revealed by either. Its terms are unknown to the people of the United States. We are permitted to believe that it was in line with our solemn abjuration of conquest, however, and Pratt’s hope that it would er:d in “the happiness and welfare of the:Filipinos” can only mean that it was made to secure the inde- pendence and freedom for which they had so long fought against Spain. We must resort to the Filipino interpretation of this arrangement at Singapore for further light, and therein we find confirmation of the above view. Ad- dressing Pratt the Filipinos sai “The programme arranged between you and General Aguinaldo we hope will secure to us our independence.” Consul Pratt’s ambitious diplomacy has been con- cluded by his recall, rebuke and dismissal from the took our Con- gressional denial of the intention to make conquests to be true, and in line with that and with our ancient ‘policy negotiated an arrangement to help the Fili- pinos to their independence. Aguinaldo and his countrymen do not seem to have had any suspicion that a consular representative of this Government would seck them out, as Pratt admits he did, to ar- range for their military co-operation in return for their independence without having authority so to do. There was no American Minister handy to make ne- gatiations. We had a Minister in Pekiwg, one in Tokio and one in Seoul, too distant to be consulted. Again, there is evidence that the arrangement made by Consul Pratt at Singapore was ratified by Consul Wildman at Hongkong. The latter went so far as to be trusted with the $47,000 belonging to the Filipino Junta, and the correspondence between him and Aguinaldo reveals their mutua! understanding of Consul Pratt's “arrangement.” Wildman was mediately promoted to the Chinese Consul Generalcy, which must have seemed to the Filipinos recognition and reward by his Government for his part in the negotiation. So it is impossible to extract any other conciusion out of the situation than that the Filipinos believed official guarantees had passed between them and the authorized representatives of this Government. Dewey carried out the arrangement and, Spanish power being terminated and yet no official disavowal of the Singapore negotiation appearing, the Filipinos expected its fulfillment. In the height of this expec- tation Spain sold and we bought them for $20,000,000 and Pratt was recalled! The Filipino is probably a simple savage, but let us respect his confusion now that he finds the Sin- gapore negotiation apparently ratified as long as it served the interests of the United States, and re- pudiated at the point ywhere the Filipino interest ap- peared. T standing army and to the imperial colonization of }he Philippines, but preserves its rejected aspiration for the incorporation of the Philippines as American territory. This aspect of expansion has peculiar interest for the people of the United States, and pre-eminently for American citizens in California, in Oregon, in Washington and in other Western States farther removed from the Pacific. For nearly thirty years a peaceful Asiatic invasion of the United States was in progress. The Golden Gate of our har- bor was the “open door” through which the Chinese poured their cheap laborand their infectious vice. They competed with and underbid white men in the cities im- ASIATIC INVASION. HE Chronicle admits its hostility to a large and in the rural districts. They absorbed our Substance like caterpillars, They lived on Chinese food, and returned their earnings and themselves, including their dead bodies, to their native land. They debauched many of our youth of both sexes. For nearly a generation they were a constant pestilence in our midst and those who are left are of the immutable type of their progeni- tors. The Chinese resident of 1850 and the Chinese resident of 1899 are exactly alike. The effort to check this invasion and to minimize and ultimately to exclude this unassimilating and un- American element from our population caused one of the hardest and most protracted contests recorded in the annals of Congress. For years the Chinese had their advocates in our own midst, who anticipated cvery proposition of the expansionists. Sentimental- ists appealed to manifest destiny, and in some degree were temporarily backed by the religious element. It was argued that the extension of trade and commerce with Asia depended upon the free acceptance of immi- grants from the Chinese empire. It was urged that this continent would absorb Mongolians like a sponge. These pagans, whose head and tail sprouted from the same end, attended our Sunday-schools in order to learn the English tongue, and they were to be Christianized and converted into Ameérican mis- sionaries for the regeneration of Asia. But the evil grew and spread until it became un- bearable, and the steady reduction of wages and the growth of the indescribable forms of Chinese vicious- ness, which, most intense and concentrated in Califor- nia, reached the Atlantic border, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, produced a virulence and a unanimity of public sentiment that Congress could not resist: Exclusion laws were passed and gradu- ally improved until this revolting element in Amer- | process of extirpation. Thus the question of expansion, inverted in form, | but practically on the very lines now projected by ldistinguished from imperial colonization, was argued, o subsequent | proceedings are told in the report of United States | ican civilization is arrested and is undergoing a slow the advocates of Asiatic annexation, as pcrfimctorily‘ T fought and apparently settled. The only dissentients were that class of capitalists, mainly at the East, but embracing some of ur railroad proprietors, to whom an unlimited supply of cheap labor was the highest evidence of American grandeur. These men, who were paupers in every ingredient of American wealth except money, deliberately sought to substi- tute Chinese contract labor for African slavery. In co-operation with speculators, who confound gam- bling with commerce, and with a few visionary enthu- siasts, who have no rational conceptions whatever, | they are now seeking to justify an American invasion of Asia and the replacement of the excluded Chinese by Filipino fellow-citizens, with available muscle, hut thick with the disease, filth and brutishess of the torrid zone. The Chinese forced themselves upon ’ CINCH" us in steadily increasing numbers until they were pinos, once admitted to citizenship, will be beyond Congressional power. which the Chronicle adheres, directly at variance with its former relations to the Asiatic question, and, policy that antagonizes every leading interest of the country and prominently of this coast, Upon further temporary may become fixed and not contingent. SIMPSON’S * BILL. S relating to gas corporations, introduced into the Legislature shortly before - the Senator’s that the apparent concession to the public proposed by the measure is a fraud. “There is no provision of may charge for a meter, and as a matter of fact they | do not and cannot.” does not at present authorize gas corporations to charge for setting up meters, but as a matter of fact furnishing illuminating material to the people do exact a deposit, which is equivalent to such a charge. ored custom, but, in fact, the gas companies take ad- vantage of the ignorance of their patrons to demand the extortion, and they know that when served with notice they are required to set up meters within ten day’s further delay, but still they require the deposits, and get them if possible. stayed by the strong arm of American law. The Fili- This is the necessary outcome of the position to apart from its unconstitutional features, involving a consideration, we hope the conversion of our con- PEAKING of the unspeakable Simpson's bill fall from grace, a morning contemporary declares law now,” says this journal, “by which companies This is partly true and partly a mistake. The law both of the companies in San Francisco éngaged in | The pretext of this exaction is that it is a time-hon- the money. They know the law does not authorize days or suffer a penalty of $50, and $10 a day for each The bill of the unspeakable Simpson is not only not the present illegal deposits.” It is not a “cinch” bill in the ordinary sense, but it is a bill to “cinch” the consumers of gas, and it is peculiarly appropriate that | it should have been introduced by a man who betrays his constituents, violatés his pledges and embarks on a drunken spree preliminary to taking his mud bath. This bill should receive no consideration whatever from the Legislature. Apart from the character of its author, it is an outrageous proposition to compel consumers of gas to deposit security for their bills. No other corporations engaged in supplying the necessaries are granted any such privilege. No mer- chant or dealer is authorized by law to demand pay- ment in advance. Ii the Legislature desires to bring down upon its head the maledictions of three hundred thousand peo- ple they will pass this measure. If they prefer the praises of all consumers of gas everywhere they will consign Simpson’s bill to the oblivion which will overtake its author upon his retirement from office and enact another which has been introduced making contracts for deposits invalid. If there is to be any legislation upon this subject at all it should be of the last named characte: WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. CCORDING to the London Chronicle, recent fl tests made off the coast of England have demonstrated that wireless telegraphy has now reached a point of development where it is of prac- | tical value, and in all probability will soon be applied to use on a large scale. The system tested was that of Signor Marconi, and under his direction several trials were made of send- ing messages without wires between one of the East Goodwin lightships, twelve miles at sea, and a light- house on the neighboring coast. The experiments were supervised by representatives from the Town Councils of Dover, Margate, Broadstairs and Sand- gate. The height of the point of transmission from the lighthouse was 130 feet, and that on the mast of the lightship was eighty feet. The trials were continued for a considerable period, during much of which time there prevailed off the coast some of the severest weather of the season, and, in fact, at one time the wind pressure is said to have passed all previous records. Notwithstanding the storm and the wind, the tests were in every respect successful. Messages were ac- curately transmitted back and forth between the ship and the land, being so clearly recorded they were un- derstood not only by the experts who assisted Signor Marconi, but by men on the lightship who had re- ceived instruction in the work. The cost is virtually nothing when compared with that of wire telegraphy. Thus one of the officials who stipervised the trials stated that the cost of estab- lishing electrical communication between the four Goodwin lightships and the shore by the Marconi system would not exceed £100, while in the last offi- cial Blue Book £10,000 was set down as the estimated cost of cable connection, which, moreover, would not be certain in bad weather. Until further developments are made the system will be valuable chiefly to the life-saving service along the stormy coasts, where a considerable-amount of shipping is always more or less in danger. It is pos- sible, however, it may be used eventually in place of wire telegraphy in all cases where the distance to be covered is short. It is believed the messages can be transmitted as much as twenty miles. Commenting on the outlook the Chronicle says: “The current, we are told, travels at the rate of 1800 miles a second—eighteen times each way to Brighton! If this be so, aerial telegraphy will be a formidable rival to telegraphy by the speediest wires. And as for telephony, it will, of course, become a mere antique toy. Angelina, in Upper Tooting, will be able to speak all day long to Edwin, in Cornhill, should other currents not interfere—as in these tendernesses | they sometimes do. The telephone, considering its cost in London, and continual interruption, will pass away without regret, and every one will converse, aerially, in the modified Morse alphabet. But no; limitations come in. ‘Cross currents,’ as Mr. Morley would say, may play an important—nay, a tragic— part in these communications.” A Los Angeles woman who while trying to commit | suicide shot and killed a man who sought to check her has been acquitted of murder. Nevertheless, when next she makes essay with a pistol she should first seck seclusion. a concession to the public, but it proposes to legalize | J (XXX 24 The other day an old woman, alone, friendless, without money, was told to vacate the miserable apartment which was her only home. “I will go to- morrow,” she said, and she kept her word; for on the morrow she was found dead by her own hand. In all the hard and cruel world, crushing the helpless, blaming the innocent, ever ready to cast a stone, there ought not to be one so pitiless as to censure her. I do not believe that sunicide is always a sin or a sign of insanity. People who are born in misfortune and bred In sor- row, it seems to me, have & right to lay their burdens down, and the blame, if blame there be, must rest on the so- cial conditions which living they could not escape, or upon the indefinable source of all life, the failures as well as the successes. . The bill introduced in the Senate to stop the practice of hunting deer with hounds suits me exactly. The hound- ing of deer is classed as sport, but it ought to be classed as cruelty to ani- mals. The impulse to kill a deer is hard to understand. This beautiful creature has committed no greater of- fense than that of being alive, and yet at sight of it the average citizen | reaches for his gun and turns loose his dogs. The deer live in localities where they in no way interfere with progress. They do not, like the buffalo of blessed memory, exhaust ranges which are needed for domestic animals or for fields and orchards. They do no harm, and yet they are being killed so fast that unless the process be checked the deer will be extinct in a short term of years, slain for the human lust of blood, for the love of inflicting torture, for the savage Instinct there remains in us. I would call off the dogs, and the owners of the dogs, and make the pastime so costly that the hunter could better afford to live on large bottles and small birds than on venison. Of course, the deer supplies meat, but peo- ple who live in the country and kill far more than the fancy sportsmen who | go there once a year do not need this meat, and indeed would rather eat salt pork. I think that if God had intended the deer for the amusement of people whom nothing but the spectacle of suf- fering can satisfy, He would not have given to it expressive eves capable of accusing a man of murder. PR T Justice, a quarterly magazine de- voted to anti-monopoly, reaches my desk. Being heartily in sympathy with it, I regret the impossibility of its being a success. In the first place, no publication appearing but once in three months can retain a following, for it will be forgotten between issues. In the second place, this particular period- fcal is too heavy to be attractive. While it is being issued once, the great dailies, most of them avowedly the creatures of monopoly, will be issuea a hundred times. There are many truths in Justice. There are dire proph- ecies which are destined to be fulfilled, but people do not care. They think in their selfish blindness that life is short, and the coming calamities are to fal upon generations yet unborn. Thus wealth will continue the process of cons centration into the hands of the few, the toiler approach nearer and nearer a condition of slavery. What is to be done about it? Not a thing. Some day there will be a crash and a smash, but that will be a long time in the fu- ture. This country is not going on In- definitely seeing all its wealth gathemq into the hands of the Rockefellers anda the Sages and by them bequeathed In bulk to posterity no better than that of the smith and the plowman. You need mot try to scare me about the perils of imperialism, serious as these may be. For a genuine menace to the welfare of this glorious country they are not in it. = If the rottenness of our political system does not get in its wn}'x first, the rottenness of our commercial and social system will get in ahead or imperialism. Certain farmers ask relief from taxa- tion. Was ever such presumption? Possibly they have observed that insti- tutions of learning, richly endowed and dispensing knowledge for a given sum, have been made exempt. It is possible they have noticed that the churches are wriggling nobly in the effort to avoid bearing a share of the common burden and think they have at least equal claims. The average farmer works like a slave. He does not know what leisure is. All he can wrest from his acres goes to pay the interest on his mortgage. As to paying the mortgage itself he never dreams except in that vague way it is permitted all of us to dream of heaven. The morigage he bequeaths to his son, together with an incumbered plow and a harrow bought on credit. The doliar that is not instantly de- manded by his creditors he has been wont to pay to the tax collector. NQW he follows the fashion and wants to ré- tain that dollar or apply it elsewhere. Evidently the farmer of the land is getting gay. . 1 am not surprised that Assembly- man Kenneally has been marring pro- ceedings by projecting his personality and ruffianism into them. Ever since he knocked over an old man who un- fortunately died immediately sub- sequent to the experience I have been prejudiced against him, and his man- ner at Sacramento while I had the honor of being there in the capacity of observer was uniformly offensive. He would have about as much business in a gathering of gentlemen as a pig in a parlor. P Elizabeth Grannis is agitated. “Will the mothers of the Filipinos accept our gospel now?” she asks with some show of feeling. I do not know. Elizabeth does not seem to grasp the situation. The mothers of the Filipinos might as well be philosophical. Hawaii accepted our missionaries long ago and in token of gratitude the missionaries rose up and accepted the islands with all their dips, spurs and anglés. Probably the residents of the Philippines will do as well. They will have to do as well or be shot, for the missionaries of civiliza- tion, whether they go armed with rifles or cheap editions of the Seriptures, mean business. ol e 1t is not often that I commend poetry, but to say that the tribute Bierce paid to Bierce last Sunday was fine and the nerve inspiring it unexampled is a matter of simple justice. Such an in- stance of a man’s making love to him- self never before came under my no- tice, and I hail it as modest and de- licious. P S The man who records his “Private 00‘00000000600000000 0000000000000000000 WITH ENTIRE FRANKNESS. By HENRY JAMES. 0606000006000 0660600000000 000000000000 e 00 & EX XA Thinks” in the Sacramento Bee has some worth recording. More power to him. - R A friend writing from Berkeley com- mends the remark made In this column concerning a proposed Sunday law, and asks that I say something about the exemption of churches from taxation. 1 thank him for his appreclation and blame him for his neglect. The latter subject was treaied before the one which seems to have pleased him. I do not wholly approve of his allusion to religious bigots. There are others, and possibly he and I are among them. sl People who think Senator Simpson will have a sober second thought are oversanguine, Drinks are coming too easy now. That people will fiock to see so hide- ous an exhibition as that given by a lot of strong limbed and empty headed bicycle riders in this city,’ when for six weary days they ate, drank and slept astride their wheels, shows that the hu- man race has little right to quarrel with the savage who' thrusts a bone through his nose. Fach is a form of torture, one as useful as the other. These fellows, for a pitiful prize, rid- ing their lives away, misusing their en. ergles, shocking the senses of the in~ telligent, afford a disgusting Spectacle, but they are not wholly to blame. The public goes to see, to streteh its curious neck and to wonder which of the suffer- ing fools will first fall utterly exhausted, and if he fall dead the public will re- joice in an assurance of having re. ceived its money’s worth. God made man in his own image, but presuma- bly not for the purpose of having the image broken on the wheel. If people B choose to commit suicide by miles and | laps, I would take no step to prevent them, because there are plenty of fee- ble minded to be cared for anyhow, and self-destruction to the tune of a band and in the glare of electric lights is as good as the less unostentatious methods of gas or poison. But to tempt men to suicide is wrong, and therefore a burden of guilt rests upon the promoters of these ab- horrent affairs. Nevertheless, they are the ones who make the money out of them. They are not going crazy, nor losing their eyesight, nor shortening their years. When the riders are dead or asylumed or crippled the managers will collect a new set of dupes, and the public will pay to get in. ) E Y Senator Simpson has been the chief advocate at Sacramento of a Sunday law. The high moral ground he must necessarily assume in defending this measure is one upon which I do not see how he can feel at home. Possibly I am mistaken, but during the weeks I was in Sacramento, seeing Simpson frequently, he always impressed me as being drunk. Perhaps it is not sur- prising that he should advocate the law, either, for to do so a man would have to be intoxicated on liquor or blinded by a selfish egotism which would turn his mind awry as thorough- 1y as the climax of a jamboree. Of all the measures which have appeared this session I regard the Sunday law as the most vicious and iniquitous. Its enact- ment would do more harm than the election of the veriest scalawag to the Senate, than looting the treasury, for it would be a deliberate setback to Cali- fornia. No Sunday lay is wanted here. Men crave the liberty' to attend divine worship if they wish, to rest if this please them better, and they cannot be legislated Into the meeting-house, which is the sole object of the scheme to introduce the Puritan Sabbath. Min- isters should be ashamed to lobby for it. When they preach sermons worth listening to they will have an audience apiece and the collection plate declare fair dividends. I am not défending wanton violation of the Sunday nor any other day, but simply pleading that a decent man or a decent woman has, in matters entirely personal, the right to be guided by conscience. P “Old Rawhide” of Grub Guich: fear you are too good to be true. U e I Attention of the police is respectfully called to the collection of hoodlums, male and female, who lend riotous clamor to the night in the vicinty of Ellis and Powell streets. Some of these should be cuffed and sent to their mothers, more belong in the reform school and a large proportion will never outside of jail find their proper en- vironment. Respectability in passing that corner is always subject to annoy- ance or shocked and insulted at the ribald shouts and comments of the abundant tough. - News dispatches from Chicago state that 700 soldiers lately discharged from the army have had to be assisted by charity there, having no employment and no resources. It is a pitiful spec- tacle when able-bodied men, ready to work, are obliged to eat the bread of beggary. 1In a social state approach- ing the ideal no such spectacle would be possible. If the prosperity of which Wwe are wont to boast were reallv in ex- istence, it would not be possible. The truth has to be recognized that about our patriotic bragging there is more than a little pretense. One thing which causes indorsement of the scheme for supporting a larger army is that it would afford a living to men who can’t make one now, because the walks of life in which they belong are over- crowded. The remedy, or at least a partial remedy, would be in the crea- tion of new walks. It is certainly bet- ter that men should be drilled ints straight-backed troopers, decently uni~ formed and entitled to the retention 6f self-respect, than that they shodld slouch into a soup kitehen or starve. ¥ ey A murderer named Knott has/just been declared insane and therefoe en- titled- to immunity from the ro; I think the State is too good to Wm for its own welfare. The average murderer is just as sane as fraudulent plea, because it the right to kill some more, keeper, choke to death his /fellow pa- tient. It does not seem to ing it as a defense be harged, the gen- uineness of the plea beie ascertained at the autopsy. The sbject in bur- dening the public with tBe support of a homicidal crank does pjt appear, while to be killed by a manfc is exactly as fatal as to be killed by one whose men- tal processes are in f#l working order. Besides, in ninety- S distinctly | ecuuom.ntu] hundred, the insanity is an tmpudent. ¥ pretense and everybody knows it, no one better than the prisoner. . B Ee e A copy of the Vegetarian, publisheq in Chicago, reaches my desk. It scems to me that in the home of the Luyet- gert sausage and the lair of the beet embalmer such a periodical ought to flourish. I am in sympathy with the vegetable fad anyhow, to the extent of believing that a person Who joys in a graham cracker, delights in miush and revels in a raw apple, has a perfect right to chuck his system full of ‘these and other equally deliciously seductiva foods and take the consequences. AROUND THE CORRIDORS. Frank Dowdy, the large fruit grower, of Gilroy, is at the Russ. J. B. Rodman, a cattle man of Wood- land, is at the Occidental. Morris G. Tyler and wife of New Ha- ven, Conn., are guests at the Palace. Raleigh Barcar, a prominent Vacaville citizen and newspaper man, is at the Lick. S. R. ¥ates, a mining man of Grange- ville, Idaho, is one of the arrivals at the Russ. C. E. Tinkham of C#iico, manager of the Sterra Mill and Lumber Company, is at the Grand. Mollie Adelia Brown, the well known concert singer of Los Angeles, is a guest at the California. W. G. Nevin, a railroad man of Los Angeles, is registered at the Palace with his wife and child. George L. Arnold of Los Angeles, for- mer member of the State Board of Equal- ization, is at the Lick. Lieutenant J. H. Lee Holcombe, U. 8. N., came down from Mare Island and reg- istered at the Occidental. C. B. Shaver, manager of the Fresno Flume and Lumber Company, is at the Grand, accompanied by his wife. H. A. Jastro, chairman of the Bakers- field Board of Supervisors, is making the Grand his headquarters for a few days. F. A. Hartman, a mining man of Guay- | mas, has returned from a pleasure .trip to Los Angeles and is now. at the Cali- fornia. Captain F. M. Ward and wife of Ken- wood, Sonoma County, are at the Lick. J. F. Day, a Seattle attorney, is at the Grand. Bank Commissioner A. W. Barrett of Los Angeles returned yesterday from an official visit to San Jose and is at the California. 5 F. W. Blanch, passenger agent of the New York Central lines, has returned from his vacation in Decoto and is back at his desk. 3 . Charles Dalton, the leading man in the “Sign of the Cross” company, which will | appear here next week, arrived from Lon- don yesterday with his wife, and regis- tered at the Palace. Judson Gibbs, the well known fight pro- moter, who was recently attacked with a paralytic stroke, is now convalescing, and he appears none the worse from his seri- ous illness. C. H. Yatman, the eminent Methodist revivalist, arrived from New York last night and registered at the Occidental. He is on his way to the Orient, where he ex- pects to do missionary work during ‘the next two years. —_— e————— CALIFORNIANS IN NEW YORK. NEW YORK, Feb. 18.—Mrs. Philip San- ford of San Francisco is at the Savoy. THOSE MANILA LETTERS THAT WERE RIFLED MUNRO SAYs THAT SOLDIERS ROBBED THE MAILS. Attempt to Smuggle Merchandise in Newspapers Thwarted by the Postal Offi- cials. Postal Inspector Robert Munro denies responsibility for the losses of mail mat- ter between the United States and the Philippine Islands. He made a sweeping investigation into the complaints several months a&go and found that the thefts of mail matter took place while the mail was in the hands of soldiers for delivery. Some months ago a newspaper pub- lished in Nebraska stated that four let- ters addressed from Manila to Mrs. Alice Sims at Wauneta, Neb., had been tam- pered with and valuables extracted there- from. 3 Inspector Munro’s attention being called to the matter he directed L. H. Bricker, a clerk.in his office, to make a careful examination of the mail pouches on the steamship City of Peking on her arrival in this port December 12 of last year. Mr. Bricker took the pouches before they had been delivered to the Postoffice people in this city and examined 9000 letters ad- dressed to persons residing elsewhere than in San Francisco. He found sixty- eight that presented the appearamce of ‘having been rifled. These letters were forwarded to the persons addressed with the request that they should report as to whether or not anything had been. taken from them. Sixty-three replies and fifty- four of the envelopes were received. The replies stated that no property was miss- mf from the leiters. t apréared that in the hot, moist cli- mate of Manila the gummed edges of en- velopes stuck together and the soldiers were accustomed to force them open and reclose them with mucilage, thus giving the letters the appearance of having been tampered_with. M&%Or Munro did not deny that arti- cles had been stolen from “the Manila mails, but ie insisted that the thefts were committed after the mails had been trans- ferred from the postal to the military de- partment. He cited one_instance whera a soldier lounging in the Red Cross head- quarters_saw another soldier inclose a mon order in a letter to his wife ‘and drop 1t into the letter box. The lounger immediately called for writing material and wrote a letter which he alsa dropped into tie box. He returned about five min- utes later and asked permission to with- draw the letter he had just written. He avg the address on the’ letter written to e soldler’s wife and was handed the letier. This he took away with him, ab- stracted the money order and cashed it on a forged indorsement. The postal authorities found a large number of packages, ostensibly new: | gers, done up with unstamped letters a articles of merchandise inside. These /packages were opened by postal officlals and the unstamped letters returned fo the dead letter office and the unstamped mer- chandise dumped into the waste Paper baskets. Mr. Munro thinks that consider- able of the complaints made as (o the non-receipt of letters and merchan®se sent to soldiers in the Philippines coulf be solved by an examination of the Das- kets aforesald. N The mail designed for soldiers al = nila_is placed in pouches, each resi having a separate pouch. These are opened at all on the trip and are intact to the military \authorities, - whom they are distributed. The postal authorities here say any stealing is done it is done mail leaves the hands of the DO thorities and passes into the hab: military. ———— Sailors Get Their Money. ; The owners of the steam whaler Fear- less paid in to the United smu‘tsiegm;‘:: Court yesterday, $14,000, to satisty Judnsle%t for wages and lay obtained by the crew. i gy e Cal. giace fruit 0c per Ib at Townsends® Special information supplied dally to Dusiness houses and p(\‘lfilliecn';r)legl e atnhta 1ippi ureat y B mn::rs? et Telophone Main'102. ~* ACKER'S DYSPEPSIA TABLETS ARE sold on a positive tee. Cures heartburn, raising of the food, distress after eating or any form of a. One little tablet gives im- mediate ‘At Owl Drug Co. i ays) rellef.