River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1886-04-22

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the Regents was called to the matter.
Instead of inquiring into the affair as
executive officers and promptly expell-
ing the offenders, as they ought to
have done, the Board sat in q judicial
capacity and heard arguments by the
Faculty and by the students and finally
made a compromise decision which
practically gave countenance to the
discontents among the students, and
robbed the Faculty of half their in
tluence by questioning their authority
to enforce existing rules and regula-
tions. The apology for this weak and
vascillating policy was that to enforce
discipline in this case it would have
been necessary to expel or suspend
twenty-five of the seniors, all of them
sons of rich and influential parents,
principally resident in Madison. "To
what base uses" may not great
State Institution be prostituted i'll
twenty-five erich aud influential boys
are to oyer-rule the rules of the
University, because they DO not like
to go through the manual of arms, or
recite to graduate of West Point,
then the next Legislature ought 10
vote an appropriation of three hun
dred thousand dollars to reimburse
the United States for its investment
in the University for a chair of
military instruction, and then create
board of students to manage its
fairs for all future time. Certainly the
boys would not be Influenced in their
decisions by the wealth or political
standing of their own or anyone's |
else parents. They have displayed |
too much back-bon in their lawless-
ness to permit doubt of their
stability. The infusion of a little new
blood into the personnel of the Board
of Regents seems the most practical |
way of enhancing the usefulness of |
the University; and the instant and
complete eradication of the proposition |
that its success is predicated upon the |
good will of any twenty-five students !
seems to an outsider to be the very |
first requisite to its having any credit |
at all as an institution to which boys |
or girls may be sent to be educated in |
obedience, as well as in book lore, if |
its output are to become good citizens |
as well as scholars.
The mania for strikes has not yet |
attacked the working men of Madison, |
and it is to be hoped, for their good |
and in the interests of all, that what
ever differences may arise between |
employer and employed smay be set
tied by conference or arbitration |
without resort to the extreme resort, |
which, whatever may be its result,
carries misery to many homes before /
the status quo ante is resumed. If |
strikes in general were conducted |
upon any principle of equity the |
working men would command the |
sympathy of the great class of consum-
ers and disinterested citizens, from
whom alone the working-men may |
ever hope for sympathy and support.
Conducted as the strike upon the |
railroads centering in st. Louis has |
been the parties engaged can hope for
no sympathy or support from those
who alone can or will give it. They |
have destroyed property which, al
though belonging to a corporation, is |
as inviolable as any private property; |
they have blocked the wheels of com. |
merce by this destruction and by the |
intimidation of those of their own |
class who would work, causing a loss |
in money values which can only be |
computed in millions, and loss to the |
country involved which is beyond |
compute. The loss of property de- |
stroyed by the rioters must be paid |
for by the States in which it occurs, |
and the taxpayers of those states
the hOusehOlders and farmers, the |
middle class between the operative |
and the capitalist, must foot the bills. |
AS they respond to the taX-collector' |
demands, after suffering all the in
conyeniencies and delays incident to |
a disturbed traffic system, it is doubt
full if their feelings find expression in |
enhanced regard for the suffering |
strikers from whose ill-directed endea- |
vors the additional burden of |
taxation results. Property rights is
a question vital to every man who has
a dollar invested in permanent or
personal property; for if the property |
of the capitalist is not sacred neither |
is that of the workingman who owns |
dollars worth more than his |
neighbor. Force may extOrt or destroy |
his dollar as easily and with as much
Justice as it does the millions of the |
railway shareholder, who may be Jay |
Gould or may be the widow who owns |
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