The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1916-08-19
THE INNOCENT ~BYSTANDER

Near Connorsville, Ind, there are $1,000 600 cante-
loupes ripening on the vines. They will be ready for pick
ing within another week, and when cantelOupes are ready
to be picked nothing may interfere if the crop is to be
saved. 1t must be marketed immediately. Now hun
dreds of farmers are looking to those cantelOupes as the
fruits of an entire years labor, for in that district farm
after farm is given over almost exclusively to the raising
of the melons, and if anything interferes with their mar
keting hundreds of men will be facing financial ruin. In
New York City two organizations of men are quarrellng
as to whether those canteloupes shall reach their destined
terminals on breakfast tables of the middle west. These
men never turned a spade nor pulled a weed to make those
canteloupes possible, but they are determining whether the
men that toiled and sweated in the fields, that rose with
the sun and labored with pain-wrecked muscles and pro
testing joints, shall reap the harvest of their efforts or
shall face bankruptcy. The men in New York who are
doing this thing are the railroad employers and employees.
for a strike tying up the railroads for even a week would
spell ruin to these cantelOupe raisers. These Hoosler
melon growers are but one group of thousand throughout
the United States that would suffer untold misery through
the operation of a railroad strike. Nevada has her group,
or groups, and other states have theirs. They are the in
nOcent bystanders. They have no part in the differences,
but they pay the bills.
At the shoe dealers national convention it was stated
that unless some substitute for leather is speedily found
the United States will be forced t o go to wooden shoes
within the next two years. This statement is no doubt
exaggerated, yet there is no gainsaying the seriousness
of the leather situation. The supply is not equal to the
demand and this adverse inequality is constantly growing
greater. Still it is hard1~ probable that we are going upon
a wooden shoe basis within the next two wears or the next
twenty years. There are already several substitutes tor
leather that will be improved upon materially when ne
cessitv mothers invention, and, indeed, it is reported that
already in Germany a substitute that is even better than
leather itself is coming into use. Germany, cut off from
a supply of leather, was forced to find something that
would take its place, and that something was speedily pro
duced. In this age of artful invention there is no danger
of a revival of wooden shoes.
The Mexican mobilization will. serve to keep our pen
sion lists alive. The men who may suffer from diseases
will be eligible to pensions, as much so as if they had been
wounded in battle. In this way the mobilization is go
ing to cost the government a pretty penny for many years
to come. And what are we going to get for it all, or what
are the men going to get out of it?
What incentive is there to economy in governmental
expenditures, when, every time there is a deficit, all that
the politicians have to do is to increase the income or the
Inheritance taxes. always levied on the other fellow?
And the higher the politicians put these taxes the more
they can play the demagogue by claiming they have
taken it out of the rich
The %Decammeron' has been adapted for moving
pictures-that will be some revelation if all the stories are
actually photographed. Packed houses ought to be the
rule, but the censors will have to be put to sleep first.
Wonder if the "writers' who signed that round robin
are pleased with the particulars they are getting? Mr..
Hughes is specific enough,
Unless the Bremen puts in an appearance soon, people
will class it with other unconfirmed rrmors and turn their
attention to something else.
O-I .o..o' .:..oI GOOD hohoy;nr &c 1o,th1v