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\ütu Wiefel# UtaM B. Et FISK,. .Editor. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1878. THE HERALD. Reduction In Subscription Rates. Commencing with January 1st the sub scription price of the Daily Herald, de livered by carrier, will be reduced to $2 per month. In like ratio a reduction is announced for the Daily sent by mail. The publishers are satisfied that in this reduction they will be liberally met by the business and general public and compensating encouragement given by largely increased lists of readers. Every business house and family in Helena should take a copy of the Daily Herald. At the reduced price it is less than fifty cents a week. The Weekly Herald, as already stated, will be reduced to $5 a year, also to take ef fect, January 1st, 1879. THE HOLIDAY HERALD. The Holiday Herald, to be printed Janu ary 1st, will be the largest and most valuable newspaper number ever issued from the Mon tana press. It will contain sixteen pages— eighty columns—of reading matter, embrac ing in its scope every important interest of Montana. We have promised already some twenty contributions to this number, and others are invited. A more complete an nouncement will be made in a future issue. TREATY WITH JAPAN. It was our own country that in modern times secured the opening of the ports of Japan to the commerce of the world. Within the few years that have elapsed there has been such an awakening and development of the Japanese as the world has never before seen. In the last number of the North Amer ican Review is an article written by a Japanese who was educated in this country. It shows as much ability and as keen a comprehension and understanding of national law as the best writers of any country can produce. The article is designed evidently to prepare the way for the negotiation of new treaties with all nations. The two things most prominently objected to in the present treaties are the rates of duty on exports and imports, which has been prescribed at 5 per cent, ad valorem and forced upon them, and the right claimed and exercised by foreign nations to try and punish their own subjects for all offenses committed in Japan. The writer states the case forci bly, and lays the blame almost entirely at the door of the English representatives. The empire is being completely exhausted under the tariff that has been imposed upon them. Imports have all the time exceeded the exports, and the country will soon be drained of its wealth. While the English have nominally sought the co-operation of other nations, they have virtually monopolized the trade, and have sought to force opium on the market against positive law and openly protected those who have defied the laws and regula tions to which the English have assented. Matsuyama proposes that Japan shall assume its equal, independent position among the nations, establish their own rates of tariff, execute their own laws upon all who come to live in Japan and violate them. With such nations as are willing to concede their inde pendent sovereignty they propose to enter into full treaties of commerce, and throw open every port and town of the empire, but to no others. As the United States have been always most honorable in their dealings, the appeal is made to them first to acknowledge and treat with the Japanese like a civilized people. There is no doubt that such is the treaty that has been negotiated, which the President mentions in his message, and which is to be submitted to the Senate for ratifica tion. It ought to be a matter of pride to us as a nation to be the first to welcome this people, in whom we have done most to create a new and wonderful life, to the rank of in dependent nations. We know how England has pushed its way by violence among the people of the East and is hated and cursed for it. Let us show the world how more substantial victories can be won by justice aud generosity. If our ■nation leads off with such a treaty England will notdare to resist or refuse, and all other nations will gladly follow. The Japanese have never shown any disposition to emigrate like the Chinese, and we need have no fear of being overflowed by them. If desired, let a restriction be placed upon immigration, confining it to the rights of residence, travel and trade. The time may come when we will better understand and appreciate the differ ence between the Japanese and the Chinese, and will not object if'they choose to become citizens. They pitted Thurman, unquestionably the ablest man the Democrats have in the Senate, •to answer Blaine's peerless speech, but Thur man pitiably failed, sadly disappointing his Southern frieDds and the Democrats who have him in training for the Presidency. There is no match in debate in the Democratic party, or out of it either, for the Maine statesman. A paragraphes, who knows whereof he speaks, says a four-quart jug and a side-sad dle are very much alike—when they hold a gal-on. SUPERFICIAL EDUCATION. At a recent distribution of prizes at a school examination in England the Bishop of Oxford took occasion to contrast the English with American schools, much to the dispar agement of the latter. The Rev. speaker characterized the education in the United States as superficial. We could easily retort by saying that the Bishop had no sufficient knowledge of the subject to give any impor tance to his opinions, but we prefer without any vexation to learn, even from our malig ners, and inquire what appearance of fact there is to bear out such a charge against our schools. In the first place we undertake to teach all children sufficiently to give them a creditable start in life, and if they have any special aptitude for any department of study to give a start. This is all that our public schools pretend to do. They educate pupils not for lives of study so much as for lives of action. England has only just begun this part of her duty, and when she has advanced far enough to be able to show as large a pro portion of her children in attendance at school, it will be fair to institute a compari son between our public schools and her own. But England has some justly celebrated schools where the choice of the realm are gathered under teachers who spend their lives in teaching one thing, and of course become very expert at it. We are quite willing to allow that there are schools of some kinds in England that are superior to anything we have. There is an inspiration in the associa tions that cluster about such places as Eaton and Rugby that we cannot purchase with any endowments or create by any superior skill and wisdom. But it is very unfair to com pare results of systems that have been cen turies in maturing with those of to-day that look to the future rather than the past for in spiration. It was a lesson of one of the Sages of Greece that children should be taught in youth what they will need when they have become of mature years. This is the funda mental principle in the American system of education. We seek to prepare children to battle more successfully in the contests of life as it now is. The best coat of mail ever produced in the Middle Ages, with the best Damascus blade ever drawn would be a poor defense for a modern soldier storming a bat tery. So an education whose principal fea tures were fixed in the middle ages is not the one that we desire should be the general pat tern for education of to-day. Classical edu cation has its charms and advantages that are not half enough prized and appreciated in this country, but it would be madness in this age and country to devote ourselves mainly to teaching classics in the juvenile schools. The children in our public schools are not being educated mostly for the learned pro fessions, but to be farmers, miners and mer chants as well. We should aim to give such an education as will be equally well fitted to make a successful miner as a creditable law yer, doctor, or minister. We may not yet have discovered what is the best course of study tc ascribe for our public schools. It would be strange to be lieve we had. But we believe our people generally have a correct idea of what our public schools should be. They are not de signed or expected to give an education, only the rudiments of one, just far enough to de velope the child's taste and talent, then sup ply special facilities for every department of study. The first should be compulsory, the latter voluntary, and all should be open and free to every one. So far from being sensi tive at our English friends calling our educa tional system superficial, we take it as a just criticism. We are in a transition state. We only err perhaps in giving wrong names to things. The training given in our public schools does not, perhaps, deserve the name of education. Some claim too much for those schools and try to crowd too much into them. It is an error and our people see it. But we are lay in this country the basis for education, as we believe, in such a way that when the super structure is added and completed it will sur pass any that the world has .ever seen. We are beginning at the bottom to build upward, and laying the foundation so broad and deep that it will include all the material of the Ra tion, old and young, of every color and na tionality. EDISON AS A REVOLUTIONIST. Some people manifest impatience and begin to express doubts about the truth of the al leged discoveries of Prof. Edison. Notwith standing all that we see in the papers about the failure of the electric light to supplant the use of gas, it is a fact that gas stock all ov«r the world has been declining ever since the announcement, and there is no longer any offered for sale in the markets. The New York Herald of a late date publishes an inter view of one of its reporters with the great discoverer at his laboratory at Menlo Park. He found him ready to answer all questions and ascertained that there was no doubt or difficulty in the case ; that the delay was only to secure patents in foreign countries and to perfect the machinery necessary to measure the amount of electricity used. This, too, has been done. A few weeks more will pro bably see the new light in use. The gas com panies try to keep up courage by asserting that they can use all the gas they can make for stoves, which are said to be cheaper than fuel of any other sort. But we do not see why electricity may not prove as much cheaper for fuel as for lights. It is wonderful what rev olutions the genius of one man is working right before the eyes of those who have the good fortune to live in this age and genera tion. A SHORT ANSWER. Mr. J. H. Mills, who in his sorry role of Secretary of Montana, has dexterously man aged to evade the duties which the Govern ment has been deluded to believe he per formed—who to all intents and purposes has abandoned his office to understrappers whom his niggardly parsimony will not compensate with more than a moiety of his larcenied salary—speaks in his paper of the Herald editor as "a political mountebank, who traitorously surrendered the Republican party of Montana the first opportunity he had." This in degree if not in kind is the equivalent of a former kindly and equally truthful ex pression from Mr. Mills, wherein we were made to appear "a drunkard wallowing in the gutter." Of course, we suffered nothing from so imputent a lie ; but not so the au thor upon whom it recoiled, whose bloated physiognomy and swelled belly are a perpet ual advertisement of the frailty of his habits. We do not heed Mr. Mills' epithets, but we cheerfully accept the guage to any contro versy in comparison of merits, personal, political, or otherwise. To the charge of surrendering at the recent convention the Re publican party of Montana, Mr. Mills states that which is false and what he knows to be false. We opposed a nomination for Dele gate when every Republican named in that convention for the office positively declined to be a candidate. We had to back us in that action the majority of the Convention, not the least of which was the solid delegation from Mr. Mills' own county. When the O'Bannon-Mills resolution of censure was introduced to discomfit Mr. Fisk, the Convention by a nearly unanimous ballot voted that resolution down and sus tained Mr. Fisk, as the Republicans of Mon tana have done before and stand ready to do again. For two terms Mr. Fisk has been the choice of the Republicans of Montana as Chairman of their Central Committee, and it is something to be remembered that he has each time been sustained for that position by the vote of Deer Lodge county. He had in the late Convention a pledged majority of the delegates for continuance at the head of the Committee, and undoubtedly would have been chosen for a "third term" had he desired the honor, but he preferred to retire, and in doing so named his successor, who is as good a man as the Republicans of Montana or elsewhere can boast. Political occurrences are too fresh, of too recent a date here for any man, how ever willing to attempt the task, to success fully pervert and make them appear what they are not. Some one besides Mr. Mills or of his many hued political and wretched offi cial cloth must assail the integrity of Repub licans to meet with an echoing voice in any quarter of Montana. GRANT HARSH. HIm Recollection* of "Mark Twain.'* [Correspondence of the Pioneer-Press. "Oh, yes ! I knew Sam Clemens. I was on the boat E. A. Chambers with him the winter I was married, in '59 and '60. Sam was pilot and I was mate. He was not a great pilot, but he was a brave fellow. He didn't know what fear was. He never smiled, but was joking whenever he got a good chance. I believe he once saved my life, his own and six others. Our steamer was lying above Cairo on a sand-bar. We were out of wood, and the Captain ordered Sam, me and six roustabouts to get in a yawl and row up the river and bring down a flatboat loaded with wood. The river was full of floating ice. We rowed up on the opposite bank from the flat boat. The ice was running almost solid, with an occasional opening by the ice block ing up. We took advantage of these openings to shoot across the river. When we got into the channel a short distance I saw the danger we were encountering. The ice was liable to close in on us and drown the whole outfit. I appealed to Sam to row back. There was an opening in the rear. Sam resolutely said, *No.' In another minute the ice broke in the path behind the boat and crushed by with ter rific force. Had we turned back when I sug gested it, we would have been 'goners,' every mother's son of us. Sam's judgment was not questioned again on the trip." Capt. Grant Marsh, the father of Yellow stone navigation and the man who brought the Custer wounded on the steamer Far West from the mouth of the Little Big Horn to Bismarck, remembers Mark Twain after the foregoing fashion. Marsh is a good pilot. He is said to be the best on the Upper Mis souri, and to be the best there is compliment enough. He is captain and part owner of the steamer Batchelor, running from Bis marck. He is also proprietor of the Yankton steam ferry, and will enjoy that exclusive privilege for some thirteen years to come. While he says 8am has grown rich, I can say that Grant is not poor. He has a nice brick house and an income from his two steamboats that few merchants in Dakota can cover. While Sam is happy, Grant is not miserable. He has earned his $1,500 a month as a pilot. He has won the warmest enconiums from Gen. Terry, Gen. Miles and other army offi cers for the masterly manner he has handled his steamer on the Yellowstone in perilous times. He is surrounded at home by a bevy of sweet girls, and is not at all behind Sam in that essential. He can't write funny sketches, but he can run a steamboat down the rapid Yellowstone faster than any other man living, and never hit a rock. Marsh was asked the last summer if he would cap tain a steamer on the Saskatchewan river for the Canadians. His reply was that he would if they would pay him enough. At noon yesterday, December 17th, gold sold at par in the open market at New York for the first time since January, 1862, when the quotation of its premium first began. In two years and a half from .the beginning of the quotation, gold reached the highest point, July 11th 1864. On that day sales were made at 285, while many were so foolish and faith less as to refuse to part with their hoard of coin at any price offered. It has taken four teen years and a half of steady taxation and payment of interest and principal, through inflation and depression, to strengthen and confirm our credit so that its notes should be as good as gold. But for the danger at times of the Democratic party returning to power this point should have been reached ten years ago and our entire debt funded at four per cent. Democracy has been a costly play thing for our people. It ought to do the country some valuable service to pay the cost of its support. It has seemed doubtful at times whether the Republicans would be able to hold power till they could make good their promise that the notes of government should be paid in gold. We are now within less than two weeks of that event, and there is no human probability that anything can prevent its realization on the day set. It is in fact accomplished when gold is freely ex changed for greenbacks. We shall not be surprised to notice that greenbacks are at a premium within a single month. The mo ment this gold premium disappeared there was added to the currency of the nation sev eral hundred millions of circulating medium, and there is now a greater volume of cur rency than ever existed before since we were anation. The final readjustment of prices will now be completed and men of business will now have something like fixed and per manent prices to deal with and reckon from. Our invoices and assessments may look smaller, but we have lost no wealth. We can transact our internal and external commerce on the same basis. The silver that we are coining, we fear, will never leave the mints. The force of law will not call it forth. By force of law higher than Congress or constitution, gold is the accepted standard of values in the world. By fiction of speech we speak of gold as fluctuating, but this is not so ; gold has remained uniforn. It is national credit that has been below par. A SLIGHT DIFFICULT X . There have been many of our citizens who have expressed a doubt about the success of the Upper Missouri navigation scheme be cause it involved the necessity of transship ment of goods around the falls. To show how little there is of this objection, either of additional cost or time, we present a fact derived from late observations of Judge Hil ger, who spent the last season on the Pacific coast and returned by way of the Columbia river. Between Portland and Walla Walla the distance is 230 miles. Goods are delivered at the latter point in 36 hours from Portland, yet they make that distance and are handled no less than five times in the course of the passage. At the Dalles they are transferred from boats to cars ; then, after a run of six miles, are loaded on another boat at the Cas cades, where the same double transfer is made, and there is a little longer car ride ; and then at Wallula another transfer takes place. An hour's time is sufficient to trans fer an entire cargo. We have a much easier problem to solve. From thfe foot of the falls to Helena there will be only three transfers and a distance of 140 miles to make. Until cars run from the river to Helena it will of course take more time for goods to reach our city over this part of the route than the other, but every one can see that it is an easy matter for us to reduce the time of transit from the falls to Helena to 24 hours, and we predict that within three years at most this will be ac complished, unless our people are more -blind and stupid to their interests than they have shown themselves on all former occasions. AFRAID OF GRANT. The mention of Grant's name for the Presi dency seems to throw the Red Shirts of South Carolina into a flutter. The usual style of bluster and bragadocio is indulged in about deluging the country in blood and wars of extermination. This talk has not merely lost its power to scare the people of the North, but to tell the truth they rather enjoy it, and if the nomination and election of Grant would bring the chance to punish South Carolina as it deserves, even to annihilation, it would be a strong inducement to many at the North to support Grant. We rather think that portion of the country would be quite as valuable without population as with it 3 present law less hordes. Ohio Governorship. Chicago, December 17.— The refusal of Thurman to become a candidate for Governor of Ohio is not pleasantly received by his party friends here. They claim that it is practically an admission of the inability of the Democrats to carry the State, and that for this reason his refusal is injurious to the Democratic prospects. Northern Pacific Railroad. New York, December 16.—The Directors of the Northern Pacific Railroad meet to morrow to open the bids for the construction of two hundred miles of road from the Mis souri to the Yellowstone. The road has done a good business the past season from Duluth to Red River. By arrangement with the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the Northern Pa cific have a right of way over their road from Sauk Rapids to St. Paul. Supposed to Have Been Drowned In the Bitter Root River. Serious apprehensions are felt for the safety of Lieut. Wallace, 3d Infantry, the hero of Clear Water. On Sunday of last week, in company with Lieut. Avery, of the same regiment, Lieut. Wallace left Fort Missoula to bring in a deer from the mountains. It appears, says the Missoulian of the 13th, writing under advices of Wedrfesday last, that just before dusk of Sunday night, after hunting from 10 o'clock that morning, he and Lieut. Avery parted company in O'Brien's canyon, Wallace saying that he would take a shorter cut across the foot-hills, and Avery concluding to return by the trail. Lieutenant Wallace not appearing Monday morning, Lieutenant Avery immediately started back with a force to the point where they had separateu the night before, and found that Lieut. Wallace had proceeded some distance across the foot-hills in the direction of the Fort until he reached a tree under which there was no snow, where he appers to have rested a while, and in moving from there he appears to have moved in an entirely opposite direc tion—toward Frenchtown. He was tracked over ridges and gulleys until his horse's tracks led down to the river nearly opposite the place of Mr. Bedard, nine miles below Mis soula. There were no tracks at that point showing that he had gone back from the river. On Tuesday morning Lieutenant Wallace's dog came to the Fort, and on Wednesday morning his horse made its appearance. Lieut. Cook immediately took a party and followed back on the horse's tracks, which took them down by Mr. Booth's place and down through the bottom on the east side of the Bitter Root to nearly opposite the old Hank's place, below Mr. Duke's. The horse had evidently come up on the north side of Missoula river from Mr. Bedard's place, and made a crossing in the usual place that would be taken in going to the Fort. There was no snow on the north side of Missoula river by which the tracks of a horse could be followed. Lieut. Cook proceeded down the river on the north side, examining the bank all the way down to Bedard's place, but saw no evidence anywhere of a horse having come out from the river. At Bedard's place, opposite to where the tracks were followed to the river on the other side, it was not possible to dis cover horse tracks, for the reason that cattle were in the habit of grazing and going to water along the river at that point. The presumptions, from all the circumstances which have so far come to light, are that Lieut. Wallace mistook his bearing in starting from the tree spoken of shorly after parting company with Lieut. Avery ; that he wander ed about in the foot-hills the greater part of Sunday night ; that on reaching the river in the night he attempted to ford ; and that, on account of deep water and a swift current, with whirlpools and cross-currents, he per ished in the attempt. He was brave, even to rashness, and would likely make such an attempt. Although a good swimmer, he was encumbered with an overcoat and had a car bine slung to his back. When the horse came to the Fort the right stirrup was across the saddle, as would naturally be the case from swimming the river with the current to his right side. There is yet hope, although the present indications seem to shut out hope, that Lieutenant Wallace may yet be found living, but disabled from returning. All that loving comrades can do for his relief and succor is being done. He was a man that stood high in the esteem of his fellow officers and men, and enjoyed the respect of citizens for his soldierly and estimable qualities ; and if misfortune has overtaken him in this man ner it will bring general sorrow and sadness for one who has not realized a soldier's cov eted death —dulce et decorum est propatria mori. ^ _ The Bitter Root and Ban back Road. The Bitter Root and Bannack wagon road was a gigantic undertaking for the number of people from whom the means to build it could be drawn at the time of its commence ment. All its projectors could hope was, Dot to build a perfect road, but such a one as loaded teams could pass over. That has been accomplished, and over one hundred loaded teams have passed over the road this season. It is now in order to go ahead and improve the road, here a little and there a lit tle, as the people interested may feel able. It is alleged that some, whose faith in the pro jected enterprise was not great, did not stand in with their neighbors in making the road a success. An opportunity should now be given to such to show their public spirit by aiding to perfect an enterprise that has proved to be of general advantage. Something can and ought to be done this winter, however small it may be. A grade is needed from Sleeping Child to Yanderhoöf's ; a bridge is needed at Yanderhoof's ford, and also at Rock creek, and a grade on the west side of the Doolittle ranch, and a bridge across the west fork o Bitter Root. Five hundred dollars will do much good, and $1,000 a good deal more. The success of the road so far has shown to immense advantage to Bitter Root valley Much good cash has reached the valley the productions that have gone over this road and the possibility of making Glendale tribu tary to the valley has been demonstrated o be easily feasible. The agricultural P 0 ** 10 ® of Missoula county is at a lower altitu e a the mining regions of the Territory, it is uu portant that we make smooth the the precious metals from the bighei a i to roll in upon us.— Missoulian .