The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-08-02
FRON OTHER PENS
THE DIGNITY OF JUsrICE.

There is a good deal more thinking
going on than appears on the surface
concerning the proposed letting-down
of the dignity and power of the board
of pardons. The agitation for the
change owes its start to an old repro
bate in state prison, who ought to have
been hanged half a century ago and
who has made record for surviving
since he received his life sentence. The
soft-hearted say that after serving 50
unprecedentedly lon~ beyond the aver
age length of a life sentence he should
now be let go Their appeal to tl1ts
board failed, and then began the move
ment for reducing the power of the
board.
Regarding the board of pardons. il
should be remembered that the MEM
bers do not consider any case that has
not had a unanimous verdict of a jury.
If an entire jury of twelve agree that
man is guilty, it is not asking too much
to require that it shall take the unani-
nous verdict of the six members of this
reviewing board to undo their work. If
the original plan is broken and the
unanimous decision is no longer re-
quired. it will not be lor~ before fur
Their changes are made and a majority
will suffce.-Hartford Courant.
THE HARMLESS TSE-TSE FLY.
That telegram from New York,
touching the experimentation of tbs
Rockefeller institute with a serum for
the cure of the sleeping Sickness and
which speaks of the tse-tse fly as jump
ing from obscurity to public notice on
the eve of RooseveIt's departure for
Africa is misleading.>
Fifty years ago Gordon Cumming,
the most noted hunter of large game
who ever invaded Africa, and when
that country was almost wholly unex-
plored told of the ravages of the Isl
tse among both men and animals.
Every explorer and hunter has had
much to say of it Months before
Roosevelt announced his hunting tour
Winston Churchill described the havoc
of this fly among the natives.
In view of these volumes of testimony
extending over long years it is surpris-
ing to hear from a specialist of the
Rockefeller institute who has never
is not due tO-the tse-tse at all, but to
microscopic organism which he calls
tripanosum, the "on1y germ that
walks" and that the tse-tse is really as
harmless as the innocent and inevitable
househy.-P Dispatch.
o.
CURRENCY LEGISLATION.
Senator AIdrich, chairman of the Sen
ate Committee on Finance and also or
the joint currency commission, states in
a public interview that he is confident
the commission will be ready to report
at the opening of the regular session
of congress in December and that cur
rency legislation Will be taken up at
once The senator gives no clue as to
what the commission will favor, except
that it Will seek a general remodeling
OF the currency system, which at present
is the outgrowtn of piecemeal legisla-
ton.
That our currency is weak in many
places and inelastic is generally con-
coded, and foreign financiers, particu-
larly, are of the opinion that nothing
but the tremendous resources of the
nation have prevented disaster. The
following the 1907 panic was
only a makeshift and In
tended to continue in force only until
the commission of which Mr.. Aldrich
is chairman could investigate and re-
port and congress act with the light
o. that report. The senator centem-
plates a European trip when congress
and this is taken to indi-
cate that the commission has PRACTICAL
" completed its work.-Omaha Bee.