Omaha daily bee., 1902-03-18
FIKIRs.

FARlRS.
1t is 70 the shame Of Omaha that the
never-ending wrangling Of its daily news
papers should stand in the way Of the
more rapid advancement OF our city, but
such Ia the situation and has been the
situation, to which only the editors of these
papers are blind. How much harm they
have done and how much that is inlmical
they are now doing and how much Ill for
tune they may bring us In the future would
be difficult to estimate, but the fact remains
that there is a constant menace to pros
perity as long as they give so much atten-
ton to politics and to each other and so
little to the civic good.
These observations are called out by the
receipt in this city of a letter from an
eastern capitalist who had boen appealed
to by certain heavy merchants to take a
financial interest in the location here Of a
large factory, which 1t had been announced
had been landed by the Commercial club.
We hesitate to drag the Commercial club
into this, because the name is to Editor
Rosewater like a red rag to a Nance county
bovine, but we cannot otherwise make our
selves plain.
The scheme was an attractive one and
promised well, provided extra capital could
be obtained. The COMMITTEES thought they
knew where they could obtain 1t and sent
forward a full presentation Of the facts.
But the answer they got was very brief.
something to this effect: "T have your
favor of such a date and, although the
proposition certainly promises we'll, I some
time ago made up my mind to attempt no
further investments in a locality where the
newspapers keep up such a disgraceful
wrangle. Nor do I want to put my money
q - . Aa-ra -ANaA A. ~.A11 a6,,aA. n NatAAN,N
public servant as does your press, for they
might turn around and abuse me. I refer,
gentlemen, to the recent vicious attacks
upon Congressman Mercer. Your CONNER
cial club should take steps to stop this"
But what can the Commercial club ac-
complish with the editor of The Bee, where
all others have failed after thirty-one years
Of strife7 Nothing but sit down and wal:
until these wonderful life insurance policies
we read about come due.
And SO goes glimmering the glove factory
Of Topp and Company.
This screed, which appears In a local
society weekly that dips into politics
as a diversion. is a sample of the malig-
nant work of fakirs who seek to foment
dissension in the community in order to
avenge personal grievances.
The Omaha dailies have their periodic
quarrels and contentious, but in this re-
spect they do not begin to be as ~virulent
and vituperative as those Of other cities.
Chicago, San Francisco, st. Louis, Kan
sas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Den
yer and Des Moines have been torn up
by newspaper warfare as acrimonious
as any ever witnessed in Omaha. But
nobody contends that these quarrels
have seriously impaired the confidence
Of investors or blocked Industrial growth
in those cities. In Omaha, too. the
newspaper quarrels were decidedly more
intense and more personal twenty-five
years ago., when the old Herald and Re-
publican were the chief competitors for
public favor, than they have been in re-
cent years.
In this particular instance the story
about the loss of the prospective glove
factory is the concoction Of a malignant
fakir who had been employed on the
reportorial stats of The Bee and World
| Herald and dropped from the payrolls
of both papers for good and sufficient
reasons. Not only is the story relating
to the negotiations of the Commercial
club mallciously distorted, but the pre-
tended letter Of the nameless eastern
capitalist is a downright fabrication.
No such letter has been received by any
member of the Commercial club and
the injection OF the names of Mercer
and Rosewater is a clumsy attempt to
make political capital for the one and
to prejudice the other. Nobody in or
out of the Commercial club who has a
thimbleful of brains could be made to
believe that eastern capitalists would
forego any profitable investment because
some man or paper opposes or favors a
change Of congressman to represent its
locality.
Omaha's prosperity is not menaced by
the quarrels Of the dailies, but by the
mischievous work of the fakirs who
make a living by sending out damaging
sensational reports broadcast and the
covert attempts to undermine the men
and papers who have helped to build up
the city and who are vitality concerned
in its future growth and prosperity.