Ought To Be No Surprise

AND

YPSILANTI WEEKLY TiMES.

PUBLISHED BY

The Democrat Publishing Company.

D. A. HAMMOND, President.

S. W. BEAKES, Secy, and Treas.

PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY

for $1.00 per year strictly in advance.

Enteredat the Postoffice in Ann Arbor Mich as second-class mail matter.

FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1903.

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PRIMARY ELECTION TO DETERMINE CHOICE OF PEOPLE.

Mississippi proposes to invoke her primary election law to determine the wishes of the people as to who shall represent them in the United States senate for the coming six years in place of Senator Money, whose term will next expire.

Senator Money and Governor Langino are the candidates at the present time, but there may be more later. These two candidates are making an active canvass of the state and the people will be pretty well acquainted with them and their views on the issues before the canvass closes. At a primary election the people will say whether they desire one of these men to represent them in the senate or whether some other. The legislature will no doubt elect the man the people declare for at the primaries, it would scarcely dare do otherwise. This is as near an approach to electing U. S. senators by the people as can be secured without an amendment to the constitution. Is this not a much better method than through purchasing the legislature, as is too frequently done under the ordinary method of electing these officials? The Colby bill which was turned down by our legislature proposed such a plan of determining the wishes of the people on United States senator.

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OUGHT TO BE NO SURPRISE.

Detroit is reaping just what might have been and what was expected from the beginning of the ripper regime. The ripper legislation was enacted for the benefit of a mighty bad gang of politicians. Commissioner Moreland was the protege of this gang and it looks as though he has been true to his trust. The people of the city quietly submitted to the control of the gang which placed Moreland in office and they accepted Moreland, resting easily in the thought apparently that something good might come out of Navin-planned and executed legislation and appointments to office. They sowed the wind. If they now reap the whirlwind, whom have they to blame but themselves? It is said that Commissioner Moreland has gone to join the absent, but not forgotten Eli Sutton. If this be true, it is a plain indication as to what has caused this hasty journey to more congenial climes. Undoubtedly the later revelations will be bad enough. But no matter what or how bad they may be, they are the legitimate results of the Moreland kind of appointments. The people have no reason to expect anything different. Let them take their medicine.

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Let Attorney-General Blair go to the attorneys of the allied railroads, which are trying to break down the decision of the supreme court of the state as to the proper method of obtaining the amount of taxes these railroads shall pay, and ask them to give sworn statements on all important points in the fight these roads are going to make against the tax laws of the state and see what answer he will receive form them. The cases may not be entirely parallel yet nearly enough to illustrate the point whether Commissioners Freeman and Sayre have done what they should not have down. Does any one think these attorneys would continue to hold their jobs if they gave such affidavits as to very material points of the railroads' case as these commissioners of the state gave? We think not.

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The petition of Jewish American citizens relative to the recent murder of Jews in Russia, which it is said the president has decided to forward to the Czar, is likely to be treated, together with those sending it about as the kindly disposed person is who interferes to settle a scrap between husband and wife. The right to send such a document without its being taken as an offense undoubtedly exists and the right of the Czar's government to decline to receive it is probably equally well defined. But will there be any good resulting from the move? Is the sending of it duty this nation owes to humanity?

to investigate various matters of public concern. Leads have been struck there recently which it will be well for a grand jury to investigate and follow up to the end. Probably it will not be found as easy to tamper with the grand jury as it seemingly has been with other furies in that neck of woods. It is possible too to get before a grand jury evidence extremely difficult or impossible to get at in any other way. It is to be hoped that the grand jury will unearth some of the public plunder and the persons who have been enjoying the grafts.

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Official bulletins indicate that Canada will have the largest yield of wheat this season in her history. It is expected that Manitoba and Territories will produce a billion bushels. The Canadian statesmen are expecting to make the most of this enormous wheat yield to swell the population of the Canadian West. It is said that there are thousand in Great Britain ready to go to Canada if they receive favorable reports from numbers of their countrymen who are now here spying out the land. The Canadian north-west is unquestionably a great wheat corntry––only second to the U. S. northwest.

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Democrats and republicans alike have always denounced the English poliry of the opium monopoly in India and the opening of the Chinese Empire to the opium trade, but our present administration appears to now approve it for even a worse opium system is to be forced on the Philippines. The exclusive right to run opium joints in those islands is to be sold at auction, a law for that purpose having been prepared, and is now before the Philippine Commission. This bill is coated so that the American people will be able to swallow it. In ordered to prepare the American public for the proposal, the War Department lately has been giving out vague information to the correspondents about new opium laws designed to "restrict the use of opium," and that the money derived therefrom was to be used for educating young Filipinos in American schools, as prospective teachers for the islands.

A strong protest has been made to President Roosevelt to stop the iniquitous traffic or at least not make this government a party to it by participating in the proceeds. The nefarious plan seems to be a pet measure of the Secretary of War, and it is feared that the influence he exerts over the President will more than offset the protests that have been made.

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OWNERSHIP OF WATERWORKS

Municipal ownership of waterworks in practically all the larger cities of the United States bids fair to be a rule a few years hence. Memphis, Tenn., has just acquired the plant owned for some years past by the Artesian Water Company. This reduces to nine the cities of the United States of over 100,000 population whose waterworks are still under private ownership. The nine cities, in order of their size in 1900, are: San Francisco, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Denver, New Haven, Paterson, St. Joseph, Omaha and Scranton.

Two of these, New Orleans and Omaha, are already committed to municipal ownership, and for years there has been a strong movement in that direction at San Francisco. Agitation to the same end was also very much in evidence at Indianapolis and Denver a few years ago. The cities of 100,000 population or over numbered thirty-eight in 1900, of which twenty-nine now own their waterworks. In the same year there were ninety-seven cities with populations ranging from 100,00 to 30,000, and of those nearly seventy own works, while a number of others are making more or less rapid progress toward municipal ownership. Unless the tide turns and there certainly is no indication of it, twenty to twenty-five years hence will show but few cities of 30,000 population supplied with water by private companies.

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Why are changes to public ownership so common, and why are they so much more numerous in the case of waterworks than in other classes of public utilities? The answer to both these questions is that a water supply is so essential to the general prosperity of a community, and so closely related to the comfort and health of every citizen, as to give rise to an even stronger feeling that its supply should not be interested to those whose primary object is profit.––Engineering News.