Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1907-11-23
AUSTRIAN DUKES
ARE DEADHEADS
THEY ENJOY MANY SPECIAL pp1v
ILEGES AT THE EXPENSE OF
THE PUBLIC.
THEY TIE UP The WIRES,
Telegraph and Telephone Lines and Rail.
road and Postal Service Are
Monopolized.

1t is a good thing to be an
Austrian archduke, and perhaps next
best to that is to be an archduchess
For, besides exalted rank and all rho
outward pomp and show attendant upon
it, there are privileges of more concrete
nature. Free use of the telegraph. tele-
phone and postal service generally; sne
cial railway favors; freedom from ems.
toms duties and no taxes to pay; and be-
sides all sorts of free service or rather
perhaps forced service. from the mill
tary recruits doing their three years
duty.
Ties Up the Telegraph.
But these privileges-those connected
with the public service utilities, such as
postoffice, railways and the like, are Off.
en- abused in such a way as to cause
much unnecessary Inconvenience and
sometimes even real hardships to The
community. For example, when the heir
to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdi-
nand, goes to spend a few days at his
beautiful Bohemian country seat at
Conopischt, the residents in the neigh
borhood soon know it. Let one of them
go to the village postoffice to send a tele-
gram, and the chances are that the Of
fetal refuses to take it in. Or if he does
it is quite uncertain when it will be dis
patched, for the office has been already
flooded with messages stamped with a
big IS" signifying "Staats'' or state SER
vice, which take precedence over all the
rest. These are the daily messages com
ing and going between the archduke's
castle and his people in Vienna and else
where.
He pays nothing for sending them, but
nevertheless some private person, pre-
pared to put down his good money, can
not get wire off because of the mass of
the archduke's free stuff. To the pub
lie this is the more annoying because the
imperial kilograms are not on state bust
ness or of state or indeed any other i'm
portance. But the imperial iackeys find
it less trouble to wire than to write let
tiers, especially when they know it costs
nothing.
+ 1t is not only the residents in the
neighborhood of Konopischt who suffer;
for the Archduchess Marie Valerie, the
Emperor's favorite daughter, is nearly
as great an offender as her cousin, Fran
els Ferdinand. When she is at her
Danube castle, Wallsee, the local tele-
graph wires are to all practical pur-
poses out of service SO far as the pub
lie are concerned. This lady has nine
little archdukes and archduchesses
whose wants are more numerous than
can possibly be imagined. What applies
to the abuse of the telegraph wire APP
plies even more to the telephone service
for the single telephone line in the vicin-
ity of an imperial country seat affords
little convenience to the general public
When it comes to the postotfice serv-
ice these imperial abuses take another
form. Not long ago dealers in picture
postcards received circulars from the
chamberlain of Francis Ferdinand Of
fering to supply picture postcards of the
archduke and his family taken at K0n-
opiscbt, at very low rate, including
free delivery by registered post. The
picture card manufacturers were highly
indignant over such competition They
made complaints through the public
press and numerous sarcastic references
to the heir to the throne going into the
postcard business.
Frugal Duke Uses Army.
If the postal officials don't love the
archduke the soldiers like him less
Like the famous John Gilpin the heir to
the throne has a frugal mind, and sees
great chances to exercise this virtue at
the expense of the poor recruits. Scores
of these who come from the country and
are found to know anything about game
keeping and forestry are drafted to the
archducaI estates and do their military
service there, much of il consisting in
looking after hares and pheasants.
Sometimes squads are marched about
and made to do duty as dummy trees
being stuck here and there whilst Fran
els Ferdinand stands off in the distance
and wonders just where a clump of trees
would look best. The soldiers wouldn't
mind it sc much if they were decently
fed but they have mostly to shift for
themselves and their miserable pay only
buys them far poorer food than they
would be getting in barracks, although
that is poor enough.
An express train is stopped daily,
near the Hungarian frontier, to pick
up the milk consignments from the dairy
farms of the Archduke Frederick to
bring them into Vienna as quickly as
possible. Dairy farmers who are not
archdukes and for whom no fast trains
are stopped feel much aggrieved at this
preference.