Life — August 26, 1897 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XXX. AUGU No. 766. ag West THIRT Published every Thursday. $5.00 year in advance, Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year extra, Single copies, 10 cents, Rejected contributions will be destroved un- less accompanied bya stamped and directed envelope. The illustrations in Live. are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without spectat arrangement with the publishers. ANXIETY AS TO MR. SHERMAN. HERE has been some anxiety of late, especially among the newspapers, for fear that the lapse of time or some other ailment has impaired the capacity of Secretary Sherman's mind to retain unuttered thought. The Shermans have great facility of expression. They write easily and speak easily. As a family they have long been known as men who never lacked opinions, or language in which to clothe them. General Sherman, the Secretary's brother, was an excep- tionally free-spoken person, and was apt to be more fluent than judicious in his deliverances. So it seems to be with the Secretary. So long as he continued in the Senate it made no vital difference whether he was always prudent in his talk or not, but while he holds his present office it will make a difference, and if he should continue to discourse in pub- lic with the sort of candor which characterized his recent comments on the death of Senor Canovas, con- sequences might result which may embarrass him—and our Uncle Sam- uel, too. Readers of Lire will remember that Mr. Sherman's appointment as the head of the State Department was understood to be due, not so much to his peculiar fitness for the management of diplomatic concerns, as to the wish of Mr. Mark Hanna to be Senator from Ohio. That makes the Major and Colonel Hanna > LIFE: peculiarly responsible for the Secre- tary’s good behavior, and the chances are that they realize their responsi- bility as acutely as could be desired. All the same, the trouble with the Secretary—what there is of it—seems to be not altogether that he is an old man, but largely that he is John Sherman. Wy KLONDIKING. T looks as if the Klondike gold region would produce more news than nuggets during the next six months. According to all accounts, very many more men have started for the new diggings than can pos- sibly get there before winter, and more are likely to get there than can be comfortably maintained on the available supplies. A good many ad- venturers are likely to return between now and November, much impover- ished and disgusted ; a good many more will spend a disagreeable winter at St. Michaels or somewhere else on the Alaskan coast, and a good many others who actually penetrate tothe gold region will wish before spring that they hadn't come. There will be a great deal to talk about besides gold up there, and in due time we shall hear all about it. By another season Alaskan mining will be a business, but this year it is an adventure, aye 2 fp RR HOPE FOR PENSION-PAYERS. T is stated (by the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune) that the top notch in expen- ditures for pensions seems to have been reached. In the year ending July 1, 1897, some forty-four thousand pensioners were added to the rolls, but a number almost exactly equal were dropped. While there were on June 30th one hundred and fifty-four more names on the rolls than a year before, the expenditures were estima- ted to have decreased by $1,500,000, Uncle Sam's disbursements for pen- sions are so enormous ($138,000 coo last year) that even the soundest patriot must be reconciled to the abatement of them in due course of nature. Citizens who are still under thirty may hope to see the end of this huge drain on the national finances, though the chances are that they will see new expenses grow up in its place. @au Ove 82s THE HOLLYHOCKS OF PROSPERITY. TH long-standing lugubriosity of the stock brokers of Wall Street has been pretty effectually dissipated, When you ask a broker nowadays if he feels better he admits that he does. He looks better, too; more spruce, more bland and live- lier, and as yet he believes no worse than usual. It is a comfort to have at least one class in the community on which prosperity can hardly have any deleterious effect. We have tried the brokers in dull times, and failed to discover that they brought forth fruits meet for repentance or worth the cost of it. On the whole, it seems more to the public interest that they should prosper. SS NOT SO BAD, AFTER ALL. HE complaint of ex-King Debs, that Judge Jackson had en- joined him off the face of the earth, seems not to have been well-founded. Much less fault is found with the in- junction since its text has been pub- lished and generally read, and the best opinion is that it only gives the mine owners such reasonable pro- tection as should be secured to them by the State authorities. The real cause of complaint is that the author- ities in West Virginia, and in other States, too, are prone to neglect their duty in the matter of keeping order and protecting property in strike times. There is much sympathy for the striking miners, who appear to be suffering from the bad condition of the coal business, due to excessive competition among the coal com- panies and resulting over-production of coal. comicbooks.com