The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 30, 1904, Page 8

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, THURSDAY, JUNE: 30, 1904 { 05 Clocks. Epecial Cor-eapondence HEADQUARTE THE CALL, :IETTA STREET, COVENT | LONDCN, June 15—Lord | , who celebrate? his eighty- hday the other day, is@vell in this country, on many ac { | oF known | trusted to keep a friendly eye on his schemes. | | In becoming a Britioh subject Mr. | Robinson is merely retvrning to the ) he has been highly successful. | have learned that the reason why Mr. Yerkes' intimate business assoclate, Clifton Robinson, has become a natur- alized British subject is that he may be qualified to contest a seat in Parlla- ment at the next general election. R. W. Perks, another of Mr. Yerkes' partners, has been a member of the House of Commons since 1892, but the Yerkes tube and tramway interests in the metropolis have now assumed such colossal proportions that the erstwhile Chicago magnate wishes to have an- other representative there who can be allegiance which claimed him-at his birth. He was born in England in 1848, but early in the seventies that erratic genius, the late George Francis Train, induced him to emigrate to America. There he became naturalized ard en- gaged extensively in street railway construction on the Pacific slope and elsewhere. Having iearned all that Aunerica could teach him he re¢turned to England in 1891 to wake up John Bull to the advantages of electric trac- tion and incidentally to accumulate a fortune for himself. In both respects It was ED AN THE FAITHFUL CLAC FRNAL ECONOMY OF E~E D ECCENTRIC BRITISH PEER, K_AND WHO THOROUGHL RY FAMOUS TIMEPIE( counts, but is perhars most famous on | account of his enthusiasm over—clocks! | He probably is the best posted man in | England on clocks and other time- | pieces; has written several books about them and made their study a life-long pursuit. At Batch Wood, St. Albans, his coun- try seat, he has an extensive workshop fitted up with eny requisite for the pursuit of his orite hobby, and in former when attending to his leg- i ies at Westminster, he fre- a quer carried home with him the watches of brother Parliamentarians | that stood in need of hospital tre~t- | ment. 2 matter to what political party 2 member belonged Lord Grim- thorpe was always willing to set his | timepiece Fight for him. { If this peer could have his way he probably would make it a misdemeanor to exhibit a clock that is not a good | timekeeper. “A public clock,” he once declared, “should not be allowed to vary more than five seconds in any week.” That this is an ample margin Lord Grimthorpe has demonstrated in the great timeplece at Westminster which he himself designed and which goes with a weekly variation of scarce- ly a second. Church restoration is another ©f his | hobbies, but in this his achievements have hardly been so fortunate. He | spent a pile of money in repairing St. Albans Abbey and bringing it up t date. As a tangible and enduring me- mento of his labors he added to the adornments of the west porch several sculptured representations of his own physiognomy. But instead of the popular applause that he had antici- pated his efforts evoked a storm of derision and it was generally main- tained in artistic circles that the ojd church would have fared much better if his lordship had kept his hands off it altogether. The controversy resulted in the addition by one lexiographer of & new verb to the dictionary, “to grimthrope,” which, according to the definition appended, means to spoil an ancient building by restoring it. Alsc some irreverent critics made free with the strenuous peer’s name and dubbed him Lord “Grimfault.” But that he meant well nobody disputes and in his own person he has strikingly demon- sirated the value of hobbies as an aid to longevity. An American in Parliament. Special Gfl_-flm HEADQUARTERS OF THE CALL, § HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, June 15.—From #a unusually well-informed source I no. generally known here that during | his sojourn on the other side of the Al-i lzntic he had become an American citi- zen, and it was in entire ignorance of | that fact that the representatives of a | Conservative constituency recently ap- | proached him with the suggestion that he should become their Parliamentary | candidate. In England, quite as much | as in America, elective political honors are apt to seek the man with a “bar', and that Mr. Robinson will find the Parliamentary path made smooth for him is a foregone conclusion. The Other Side. The worm will turn. A street car condictor loogens his wrath in the New Y-rk Times in this style: “I would like to ask the correspondent who complains about the insolence of con- ductors, why shoyld they be other- | wise? Why should they have any re- spect for the public? It hae none for itself. “Watch it climb on the cars like a lot of cattle; smoke, or try to, all over the cars. No regard for each other’s rights. How can conductors have any- thing but utter contempt for the pub- | lie? “‘Strangers visiting this city tell me that the New York public is composed of the most ill-mannered persons to be | found anywhere. Even the well-dress- | ed men are a mass of cads. “The New York public, in the mass, is a big, ill-mannered brute, and un- til it respects itself, shows the proper regard for each other’s rights, we rail- road men have nothing but contempt for it.” What Clothes Mean. What seems mostly to have im- pressed the negro Alake, or King of Abeokuta, in the western part of Africa, on the occasion of his recep- tion the other day, by King Edward was the gorgeousness of the gold laced liveries and knee breeches of the royal fcotman, and on taking his departure he explained that while he himself was going to wear in future on state occasions a uniform exactly similar to that of King Edward, he intends to dress his retainers in liveries ‘“just like the King's family at Buckingham Palace.” This dusky King has been one of the successes of the London season, driv- ing about in royal carriages and tre- mendously cheered by the public when- ever they caught a glimpse of his gor- geous apparel. THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL JOHN Q.SPRECKEI.S.P:opflztu..........AMrmAflCommmhfimsto]OflE McNAUGHT, Manager Third and Market Streets, S. F. THi;TRSDAY B N R R 2 S NP S ST B O 3 1y} g T ROOSEVELT AND WILLIAMS. HE President wrote a letter to the function which T celebrated tife second anniversary of Cuban inde- pendence. In this he said: “Any country whose people conduct thems@ves well can count upon our hearty friendliness. If a nation show that it knows how to act with decency in industrial and political matters, if it keep order and pay its obligations, then it need fear no interference from the United States. Brutal wrong- doings, or an impotence which results in a general loos- ening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the West- ern Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty.” This has excited Mr. John Sharp Williams, who ex- hausts his stock of invective in calling ‘it “unsafe, in- sane, reckless and incredible.” But why is it either? Now, and for an indefinite future, the international is- sues of the greatest interest of this country are to be found in Latin-America. In order to clearly compre- hend them and our duty and relation to them, it is necessary to know the conditions in the sixteen inde- ‘perident statés of that part of our hemisphere. - They are nominally republics and as such command the senti- mental sympathy of our people; but, unhappily, in near- ly all of them government is republican in form only, while absolute in substance. - Administration is unstable, subject to revolutionary change, and violent- transfer from one usurping dicgator to another. Their judicial processes partake of the willful character of their executive administration, which is usually defiant of the rights of person and property. Under such circumstances the ownership of property | has fallen to the few who are strong enough to defend it against their predatory government, and the masses are without property or enterprise. Most of those states are rich in natural resources, but their develop- ment by their own citizens gneans the placing of wealth within the lawless reach of irresponsible government, | and so they remain unexploited, except by the energy and capital of the nationals of the United States and | Europe. These conditions are not new. They existed when Edward Everett as Secretary of State made the treaty of 1851 with Peru to secure the rights of our citizens in the development of that country by the navigation of its waters and freedom of its seaports, and when Secre- tary Marcy contended for similar privileges on the Amazon, declaring them to be a necessary means for the development of its watershed. They, like their prede- | cessors and successors, at the head of our Foreign Of- fice, contended for the security of private intercouse be- tween nations as essential to commerce and to the spread and growth of civilization. The conditions of executive instability and judicial wantonness which ‘existed in their day have increased, and the need of foreign enterprise and capita! has in- tensified throughout mated that over one billion of dollars of capital belong- ing to North- Americans and Europeans is invested be- tween the Rio Grande and the Straits of Magellan. The activities and institutions incident to the social state and national life are founded upon that capital. transportation, manufactures, banking, insurance and the factoring of the products of the soil are all dependent upon it. Latin-America until it is esti- Mining, The usurping dictators, who grasp executive power to misuse and finally surrender it to other revolutionary usurpers, having impoverished their own people, look lustfully upon the property of the foreigner. It is a tempting spoil. Though usurpers they are the wards of our Monroe doctrine, which protects the integrity of their soil and sovereignty, and which we will never sur- render, for it is as necessary to our national safety as the constitution itself. Its nature and function are mis- construed by them to shelter their violation of all inter- national obligations. Such violation is an act of war, but the finality of war is the loss of soil and sovereignty, and they are the first group of states in the world to have both made forever inalienable by the hegemony of a power like the United States. Therefore, it is that we must look to Latin-America, to sixteen independent states, a majority of them under irregular government, in chronic revolution, impoverish- ing Yheir own people by robbery, and existing at all by foreign investment of capital, for the source of our seri- ous complications with Europe, and the only part of the world where our own nationals are récklessly robbed, humiliated and oppressed. We have just passed through the first experience in the Venezuelan incident, and in the use recklessly made of it in our domestic politics we may measure the consequences latent in the Latin- American situation. To our people is due a sane and frank discussion of that admonitory event. The ways and means of spolia- tion of the nationals of Europe and the United States in lLatin-America are numerous and ingenious. The issue has been presented to our people as the collection of ordinary debts by war, and an ‘impeachment of our ad- ministration is attempted for permitting the concerted powers to blockade the ports of Venezuela in such an enterprise. An ordinary debt -is one that arises in every day busi- ness, in the exchange of commodities or the use of credit. A defaulting debtor may be judicially pursued for collection, and if judgment and execution follow, ac- cording to the principles of either the common or the civil:-law, the creditor, if domiciled abroad, has no cause ; to apply to the state of which he is a national for re- dress by diplomatic act-intetvention. If his debtor have property to respond to execution the finality is satisfactory. If not, he must stand the loss as he would at home. How then canan ordinary debt, due in Latin-America to the national of a foreign state, become properly the subject of diplomatic intervention? The answer to this is important, for it is in that the critics find the opportu- nity to ground a complaint against their own country, and even to demand that it abandon our own citizens, their persons and their property, to the criminal cupid- ity of the amorphous governments which disfigure much of Latin-America. When the courts palpably deny justice to the foreign creditor, or executive power interferes to prevent the execution of the judgment, a case for diplomatic inter- vention is created. Secretary William L. Marcy, explaining that our citi- zens offending against the laws of another country must submit to their penalty, said: “This principle does not at all interfere with the right of any state to protect its citizens abroad from wrongs and injuries, from arbitrary acts of oppression or de- privation of property as contradistinguished from penal- ties and punishments.” £ If we take any other position than that stated by the President we must abandon the Monroe doctrine. Is that what Mr. Williams wants? Federal inspectors of steamboats stationed at this port have made a thorough inspection of the ferry-boats piying in the harbor and hazard an expert opinion that the steamers are perfectly safe. Some one authorized to act should now see to it that the transportation com- panies do not overtax the boats past the limit where normal safety is as nothing and the stanchest craft are put in danger. JUST CAUSE FOR PRIDE. THE c‘rowning feature of Calif rnia’s participation Tuesday last when the State’s counties exhibiting in the Palace of Agriculture held their formal opening reception. The last sheaf of wheat had been tied into place, the last-pyramid .of golden oranges heaped up, and | portion of the evening's programme, California producers stood ready to show the thousands | at St. Louis just what their State can bring forth from its fertile soil. nia, to every visitor there was' given sufficient gustatory evidence of our wealth of vine and f-ee in the form of fresh fruits distributed with lavish hand and claret punch ladled out by the barrelful. Californians have every reason tu feel pride in the | showing that our State is making at the exposition. Ac- | cording to the dispatches sent by The Call’s special cor- respondent at St. Louis the doors of California’s m sion building are thronged from morning to night with | crowds of people, who come not only to wonder at our display but to seek definite information concerning the resources of which the exhibits are such convincing’ manifestations. Not only about California alone is gen- eral inquiry made, but about our position as gateway | to the West and the relations that we hold with the islands of the sea down under the tropics. in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition came on | | | That the ‘eye might not be the only ;bginxagood Methodist, refused to join testator to the boundless agricultural wealth of Califor- | the With this earnest of what California is doing for herself at the congress of exhibits frot all the world | our executive officers at St. Louis are not allowing | opportunity to slip by unassailed. A promotion work such as has not been inaugurated yet is being steadily | pushed by Commissioners Wiggins and Filcher and ! their score of deputies. On June 28 there was shipped to the California building fifteen tons of promotion | literature for distribution. Before this recent consign- ment there had already been forwarded a full ten tons of pamphlets. reports of trade boards and cnmmcrcialf bodies, county bulletins and private cahiers, all of | which have gone to enlighien the world at large upom | the opportunities that lie in the valleys and on the hill- sides of - California. i The St. Louis Exposition has had its first experience | with fire, and by the kindness of the fates has escaped without serious harm. As might have been expected, the conflagration started on the “Pike.” If reports from the exposition city even measurably reflect the truth, the “Pike” must be about the warmest spot on the Amer- ican continent to-day. T interesting. The total number of persons in the United States . of 10 years and over unable to read or write was 6,180,000, of whom 3,200,000 were whites, the negroes supplying 2,980,000. While the percentage | of negro illiterates to the whole negro population is | large, still, all things usidered, the showing is rather flattering to that race Among the whites it is evident that most of the illit- ILLITERACY. HE ‘findings of the last census as to illiteracy are — - - A _FEW TURNS UP AND DOWN THE ROAD REVIVED MELICK'S PATIENT. | o -~ he saw a woman in a lot who was erates are foreign immigrants, but how can one account for the fact that in the State of New York there are 47,000 native born illiterates? With our public schools in operation it seems impossible that any native born American should be unable to read and write. New York has a population of 7,268,012. The native illiter- ates are a small percentage, but why should there be any? s In 1899 our population of school age was 21,830,774; the enrollment in.the public schools was 15135715, and the average daily attendance was 10,380,407. From | this it appears that only half the school population was in attendance, and about five millions of the enrollment did not attend. Our total expenditure on the public schools | was $197,281,603, of which $128,662,880 was for the sala- i ries of teachers. It would seem that such an expenditure | Should secure better results in the average attendance, | and that there should be no native illiterates. sus dissections are not at hand to enable the location of } the native illiterates. When they are furnished it will | illuminate the subject by tracing the 'items of expendi- ture, population of school age, enrollment and average attendance, to see what relation they bear to the location of illiteracy. : California stands very well in the list of States, having 253,397 enrolled in the public schools, with an average daily attendance of 203,248, and 8157 teachers. That is a | small army of teachers, but the proportion of teachers to pupils in attendance is not large enough. It implies too many pupils per teacher to get the best results. If we are to educate in the public schools, it should not be at this expense of the health and strength and sacrifice of the teachers, but at the expense of the State. If a teacher have twenty more pupils than should be allotted to one instructor, they are being educated at the expense of the teacher, who is caring for twenty more than the State pays for. Over 8000 teachers are contributing more in that way to public education than any similar number of average taxpayers. Let us be thankful for the news in a recent dispatch from Italy that the last of the brigands that made the lives of the traveling public uncomfortable and the pen- insula picturesque is dead and with his unworthy fath- ers. We may find now some relief from the impossible comic operas in which these .old rascals have figured so ingloriously and unmelodiously. Sy RN Another Russian warship has gone to the bottom and another Japanese victory has been added to the credit | of the fighting sailors of the Mikado. If for no cther reason than to relieve the monotony of this sort of thing to a patient reading world our Russian friends should triumph on sea or land. —_— {and a rope,” said the would-be Assem- | mouth, and, putting the rope in to | keep it open, he tied the ends around | her horns. | lieving the The cen- | jgoing on a crowd had collected and | |had had in the mass-meeting and a Louise Michel has ingenuously and with every evi- dence of a desire for the widest publicity given her de- scription of the sensation of dying. A patient world has been waiting a long time for the next step in this woman’s career. The delusion of her mundane useful- ness has long since been dispelled. | such quantities and this one began | % How Melick Won Votes. Walter S. Melick, the secretary of the State Board of Examiners, is one of the men who do things and win out even under difficulties. Some years ago, when he was running for Assemblyman in Los Angeles County, he gave an illustration of practical ability which gained him renown in a country community and won him many votes. There had been a county candidates’ meeting in a small town and the Re- publican nominees for Sheriff, County <Clerk, District Attorney and the rest, as well as Melick, who as before said was the Assembly nominee, had made their little speeches. The meeting be- ing adjourned, there came the second and, in the opinion of the politicians, the more important—this being the usual tour of the saloons. But Melick, | and started back wondering as he procession toward the hotel, went how many votes he was sacrific- ing to a principle. As he walked along the village street having a bad time with a sick cow. The animal had eaten too much green alfalfa and had a severe case of colic. | The woman was afraid the cow would | die, and none of the neighbors who had gathered about knew what to do. “I can fix that all right,” exclaimed Melick, as Joon as he grasped the sit- uation. His air of confidence made an impression on the owner of the cow, who consented that he should try his hand as veterinarian. “Go and get me a bucket of salt blyman, and in a few minutes they were brought to him. He then forced ‘open the cow's Next he took a handful of salt and threw it on the cow's tongue. A cow does not like salt in | gagging and trying to free herself of the unwelcome mouthful. Her strug- ! gles in so doing had the effect of re- animal's pain, and then Melick opened the yard gate and led her up and down the road in order that the activity of movement | might help on the process of cure. A few turns up and down the road and a few more handfuls of salt worked wonders and before long the cow was restored to her owner as well as ever. During the time all this had been Melick had a better audience than he | good deal more enthusiastic one, so that his good deed in curing the! widow's cow did not lack advertise- ment. ‘When the returns of that precinct came in it was found that Melick led the ticket by twenty votes. Mazximite. Maximite differs from dynamite, lyd- dite, nitroglycerine, guncotton and other highly explosive compounds in that it is less easily exploded, and, theérefore, much safer to handle and carry aboard a war vessel. It is also more deadly in its work, for a shell | trouble they will like glue. ¢ SRR e . message sent over this line can be ob- tained for a few dollars is certainly hardly credible to Western ears, ac- customed as we are to regard any- thing confided to the wire as strictly confidential as the secrets of the con- fessional. But it is nevertheless the fact all through China and in all of- dices possessing Chinese clerks and operators. .1 have heen offered copies of state messages by a Chinese oper- ator in Peking. The selling of our mes- sages to the Russians is not the only grudge we bear against the Imperial Telegraph. The wire was again tapped at Tientsin, and, ofttimes, the news that had taken us many days of fer- reting and scheming to obtain was | published in the local Chinese papers before it was received in London and New York. Thus, local correspondents in Shanghal were often able to wire the same news to New York and Lon- don before ours were received.—George Bronson-Howard in Sunset Magazine. New York’s Beggars. New York may be lenient with some nuisances, but the city beggars have certainly been subdued. It took years and years of wrestling with the ques- tion before this shiftless, good-for- nothing class could be brought into any manner of subjugation, but beg- ging in the streets or from house to house is now a misdemeanor with a severe punishment. Of course, there is still a tremendous amount of beg- | ging done, but the beggar has his pro- | fession reduced to such a fine art that he usually manages elude the eyes of the law. Those engaged in the business are almost to an individual people with considerable money. The profession- als are banded together as closely as any labor organization. They have their head leader and their division leaders; they have inventors of new begging schemes, they give each other information, sign codes gulding them to various parts of the city, and in stick to each other Let a beggar get arrested and the whole fraternity turns in to help get him “off the island.” There are beggars in this city who own valu- able farms in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York State, who send their children to college and when they are themselves are very decent looking and acting persons. Their respectable neighbors never know how they oc- cupy their time when they are down in the city as “working in an office” or away as “traveling men.” This is a big place, and it is an easy matter for a man to come here and engage In a questionable occupation without being found out. to Ocean Cables. Less than half a century ago the first under-ocean cable was laid, but since the earliest message passed be- neath the Atlantic the enterprise shown in multiplying the number of wires at the bottom of the seas has been irresistible, and in every succeed- ing year the provisions for electric communication through Neptune’'s do- mains become more generous and ex- tensive. The fulfillment of the most ambitious imaginings of the ploneers in long distance telegraphing in the greatest depths of the oceans has been amazing indeed, and there is frequent talk nowadays of adding several more cables to those already completed or contracted for. Answers to Queries. THE KEY ROUTE—E. J. B, City. The Key route is owned by the Oak- land Realty Syndicate. GOVERNMENT LANDS-J. C. G. Madera. For information in regard to Government lands in Oregon, address a letter of inquiry to the General Land Office at Washington, D. C. LEGAL TENDER—Subsecriber, City. Nickels, two-cent pleces and one-cent pleces are legal tender to the amount of 25 cents. You cahnot force any one to accept more than such sum in minor coins in one payment. CLASS PERIODICALS-M. 8. P. City. The monthly periodical called Good Government and another called Municipal Journal and Engineering, both published In New York, devote much space to municipalities and mu- loaded with it does not explode until after it has penetrated or become im- bedded in the object at which it was aimed. By very thorough tests at Sandy Hook, the United States Govern- ment testing and proving ground, max- imite has excelled everything thus far discovered as a powerful explosive for projectiles. In every detall it met the requirements of the Government—for it had very high explosive power and did nicipal works. Poor’s Rallroad Manual and the Rallroad Gazetteer of New York are authorities on railroads. PUBLIC SPEAKING — Subseriber, City. When a person at a banquet or meeting is called upon to respond to a toast or say something for the good of the cause such person should re- spond and not try to avoid making an not lose this force by being kept a long time; yet it could be safely handled, as it would not explode from any shock except that of the cap made especially for that purpose. Moreover, the shell : loaded with maximite could make a desperate effort to record at least one lonely | tgdeor i fired from big guns at high velocity and would withstand the far greater shock of plercing the heaviest armor plate before exploding.—St. Nicholas. Oriental Telegraphy. A word as to violation of trust on the part of the Chinese Imperial Tele- graph Administration would not come amiss. The fact that a copy of any answer by saying “Excuse me, but I'm no speaker.” While it is not probable that every citizen of the United States can attain the standard of Danie! ‘Webster, Henry Clay or J. C. Calhoun, it is both proper and expedient that all, whatever may be the voecation or position in life, should occasion re- quire, he able to acquit themselves creditably in a public utterance of a formal character. ———— Townsend's California Glace frufts In artistic fire-etched boxes. 715 Market st.* —_— information supplied daily to business houses and public men the Press Clipping Bm"zmn’-). la o ifornia street. Telephone Main 1043. *