Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume], August 08, 1914, Image 1

About Goodwin's weekly : a thinking paper for thinking people. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1902-1919

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J Vol. 23 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, AUGUST 8, 1914 No. 7 I
An Independent Paper Published Under
:: the Management of J. T. Goodwin ::
t EDITORIALS B Y JUDGE C. C. GOOD WIN
.?,
The Human Cataclysm
JUST when the harvests were ripening in
Europe and the peasants were planning for
their autumn festivals; when the young were
i planning for happy culminations when the toll
1 of the season should be over; a little cloud ap
peared on the southern sky and before the people
could realize what was coming that cloud ex
panded until the whole sky was enshrouded, and
the grim reaper appeared, not to save the harvest
but to tread the fields underfoot; to blast a mil-
lion hearts; to change the songs of the hopeful
i poor into wailings for the dead.
; And for what? That long-cherished ambitions
on the part of three or four rulers might be grat
ified or that some hundreds of thousands of men
might die in the attempt. The original blame is
upon Austria, for all the claim she has upon
! Servia is really the claim that Servia is in her
way. The 'Becond and greatest criminal is Rus
sia. Behind the race hates there is the smart
that when her "far flung battle line" was ex-
j tended too far and the further wings of it were
being scoched by little Japan, she had no sym
pathy in Europe. Beyond all that is the long
cherished dream of securing an open way for
her ships between the Black and the Mediterran
ean seas, and evidently she believes that as
Turkey has just been devastated by a wasting
war, now is the time for her to strike.
i We can well believe the dispatches that said
Germany had done her utmost to stop the con-
! flict, for Germany is in a place so dangerous that
nothing but the wisdom of her rulers and the
valor of her soldiers can save her.
France is thinking of Alsace-Loraine and the
humiliation of 1871-72 and is eager for vengance.
She does not stop to recall the fact that so many
i of her young men died in the Napoleonic wars of
a century ago that her people have not yet re
4 gained their full stature.
And Great Britain will not be able to keep
out of the line of fire. One of the first questions
that will have to be solved will be what will come
when the English and German navies meet in
I war.
The prestige is with Great Britain. In the old
'' days France and Spain had quite as fine ships as
England, but they were always beaten.
I If the fleets of Great Britain and Germany
r meet in combat on the one side will be the mem-
I ories of Blake and Howard and Drake and Col-
1 lingwood and Nelson and the rest to remember,
$ on the other there will be no such memories to
hold men up to the guns.
A great maiy of what are now beautiful ships
will be but scrap iron when this thing is over.
We do not believe that the powers combining
can crush Germany but there will be less arro-
1
gance on the part of German officers for a good
many years to come.
But the war is a most shameful one. Every one
of the chief movers has apparently been a warm
advocate of arbitration by the Hague tribunal
of any differences that might arise between them.
In the light of present events how much are
their professions worth?
The great shame is the suffering of the in
nocents. What of the poor peasants? What of
the prayers of the mothers that if possible this
cup might be put aside?
Surely before it is over the world will have
grown most weary of kingly rule.
It may be the cataclysm! was necessary that
with clearer vision the people, whose eyes will
have received the bath of blood, may have the
strength to dictate the course of future govern
ments. Men like the earth, have sometimes their
earthquakes, sometimes like the air their cyclones
to work their reforms.
As To An American Merchant Marine
WHEN our great civil war came the tonnage
of the ships of the United States exceeded
that of any other power including Great Britain.
Four years later it had been swept away,
either through the privateers fitted out in Eng
land or by transfers to foreign flags.
In those four years, too, the material for
building ships had been changed from wood to
steel and the compound marine engine had so
reduced the bulk and cost of fuel forships, that
even cheap products were carried in steamships
and the wooden sail ship had' become almost
obsolete.
Great Britain took her old place as the com
manding power on the ocean and has maintained it
though in the meantime Germany had become n
strong rival.
In the meantime, too, the congress of the
United States has refused to take one step toward
restoring our ocean prestiget though it has looked
on and seen our country pay to foreign ships
in fares and freights a steadily increasing sum
until it now reaches $300,000,000 per annum. In
the past fifteen years it has amounted to more
than the whole wealth of any one power of
Europe with perhaps four exceptions.
It would seem as though the present would be
an opportune time to begin the rehabilitation of
our merchant marine, but we have no hope that
any sensible steps to that end will be taken. At
least up to date the examples of nations that
have grown rich through their ships has counted
for naughc with our statesmen; neither has the
fact that what is paid by our country to foreign
ships is lost to our country forever, had any
effect on our statesmen; neither has the further
fact that had we a merchant marine commensurate
with our place in the world, it would be giving
a million of men fair wages that would at once
be going into the active money circulation of the
country.
Neither can our "statesmen" comprehend that
an ample merchant marine would place our peo
ple in direct accord with the nations, and all
HHiaiiiiii
their opportunities would be open to our people. M
But all that does not count with our statoB- H
men. It is like the merchant that has a big store B
but refuses to own a delivery wagon lest the Ifl
grain and hay merchant down the street might M
get rich selling him hay and grain for his horses. M
The Poor Tourist ;H
WILL it not be terrible if our tourists have M
to confine their sight seeing to their own M
country for a season? j
However there will be compensations. If lM
they come out next year they can wear their old M
clothes. Again they can go through the Pan- 11
ama canal and if they can get the ships to sail down
to Valparaiso, cross the Andes and come home by M
Buenos Ayres and Rio, and that is some trip. 'M
Even at home they can see old Shasta and Hood M
and St. Helens and Ranier and Alaska and maybe IJ
old Lassen will get up some special fireworks j
for their entertainment. M
Then there are Yosemite and Yellowstone and ! M
the Grand Canyon. M
They will not be entirely bereft. H
i H
The Cure For Wars H
OUR government has proclaimed its neutrality H
in the present upheaval beyond the Atlantic.
Of course that is altogether right, but if we can H
reconcile all our troubles and advance as much H
in the coming fifty years as we have In the past ' H
fifty years, by that time the counsel of our coun- H
try to belligerents will be potential, even in H
Europe. Before that time comes our hope is H
that a contract to submit difficulties to arbitration ; H
will become international law with such penalties H
attached for breaking it, as will cause the most H
rapacious power of the old world to hesitate when H
the lust of conquest urges on a war. That should H
have been pressed with more diligence and en- H
ergy during the past ten years. JH
The Locomotive's Work jfl
ON the 25th of August, 1914, just one H
hundred years ago, George Stephenson, IH
driver of a ginhorse at a colliery, brakesman, and H
clock cleaner, constructed the traveling engine H
"My Lord," which successfully drew a train of '9
eight loaded cars for the proprietors of the Kill- H
ingworth colliery. His locomotive had made steam H
traction possible. Others had made partial sue- 'B
cesses with cogged wheeled machines but not H
until the grasshopperliko engine of Stephenson, H
with its walking beam like that of a modern H
sidewheel steamer, puffed up-grade at six miles H
an hour was the traveling engine deemed com- H
mercially feasible. The Stockton & Darlington H
railway rejected animal power, following Stephen- H
son's advice to adopt steam engines. Fifteen
years later his engine "Stourbridge Lion" was
sent to the United States, and Horatio Allen ran H
it over a track of hemlock rails, silencing the H
jeers of the experts. On July 24, 1914, the last H
day of the century of steam locomotion, the new H
410-ton centipede locomotive of the Erie railroad H
pulled 250 loaded cars, weighing 21,000 tons.