Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1898-11-07
.LEVEE FIRST OF ALL.
That is the Duty of Those Who
Guard the City's In
tereSts.
AND NO sUBTERFUeE WILL GO

Morning Papers Attempt to MisIead
to the Actual Rights Now De-
manded by the Terminal Company
by Assaning the Motives of The
Argus.
| In another contribution, handed
out hot from the Blair typewriter, the
Union of Sunday morning seeks to
divert public attention from the act
ual additional privileges the terminal
company seeks in its latest move
upon the city by attacking the mo-
tives of The ARGUS in opposing fur
Their grants upon the river front. In
the first place, not all that Mr.. Blair
seeks in Rock Island does he set forth
in the open application. The same
mystery that has characterized his
every step involves all that he asks
now. One would reasonably imagine
that he already had enough. Yet
those who have followed his course
have been convinced that he is not
yet satisfied, that he still has designs
and those designs are, the levee.
His hostility at every step of the pro-
gress of the Improvement there
has shown that The Union at
tempts to show that all he now
seeks is to cross Seventeenth street
with coal stub. That the council
realized the true import of such a
concession was fully shown when, by
a unanimous vote, it accepted the
committees adverse report upon it
at its special Thursday afternoon
meeting. For the granting of the
stub not only meant, as the council
saw, the practical abandonment of
Seventeenth street as an approach to
the river, but as the terminal com
Pany's accompanying blue print
indicates, the admission of this right
was but TO lead the council up to the
point of granting additional tracks.
which would involve the practical
putting of the entire river front east
of Seventeenth street into the hands
of the terminal company. In short,
it would place a rope about the neck
of the levee.
The Argus Record.
The assumption that The ARGUS is
actuated by other than pure purposes
in its protest against further conces-
sions to the terminal or any other
on the levee-that THE
ARGUS is serving the interest of the |
Peoria or any other corporation or in |
deliberate perversion of |
the truth and known by the Union, and |
whoever prompts it to be such. THE
ARGUS championed public progress
in Rock Island before Mr.. Blair came |
here, and will be doing so after he is |
gone. The people of Rock Island have
never found it upholding any corpora
ton in seeking unjust requirements, |
and they never have found it lacking
in enthusiastic support of any cor
POration asking such advantages as
would promote the public welfare.
The circumstance is still quite within
the recollection of the public where THE
ARGUS, Singlehanded and in the face of
the opposition of nearly the entire tri-
city press, fought for the tri-city rail-
way improvement. 1t did so boldly
and without fear of misinterpretation
IF its motives, and it won. too. OF the
newspapers which opposed The ARGUS
It that time with all the vicious de-
they possessed three were
Inder the absolute control of the
erry company, and the Rock Island
Union was everywhere conceded to be
he most subsidized of the lot. Yet it
low presumes to attempt to smirch
he character of public spirited jour
Ial. Subsequent events have demon
trated the righteousness of The AR
u.s. course in championingt the cause of
he new system of street railways here,
it so forcibly that the
apers which opposed the privileges I
hen accorded are-with the pos
ible exception of the Union
Im bling over each other now ,
D say a good word for the
These facts are merely 2
iy en- in evidence that The ARGUS
as never denied its good will for cor :