Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1919-01-23
CITING.

"A check for 81 900 from Governor and Mrs. Peter Nor
beck was received Friday night at the state headquarters III
Mitchell for the Armcnian-Syrian relief fund campaign, CON
shutting the largest single contribution that has been received
thcus far in this campaign. This is to be considered as a state
and not as a part of the quota Of Hughes county, as Byron
IS. Payne, chairman Of the committee for that county, says that
the quota Of Hughes county will be raised in addition to the
governors Gift. Gifts of $500 each have been made by Otto
AIbertus Of Doland and Mrs. Anna G. Knappen of B~rookings.
A number Of individual gifts ranging in size from 800 to $3.50
have also been received
The f~oregoingis taken from the Pierre CapitalJ Journal and
is reproduced to show the interest which South Dakotans are
eyiucing in the Armenian and Syrian relief work.
The Daily News wishes to commend Governor and Mrs.
Norbeck and the others mentioned and the many whose names
have not been mentioned but who have given literally Of their
means that suffering humanity may be suceored. 1t is not due
to their intercession that publicity has resulted from their
contributions, but to the fact that newspapers considered the
incidents worthy of special mention.
But we are reminded that. some nineteen hundred years
ago, it was said OF a certain widow who gave a mere pittance
that She gave more than the combined gifts Of her wealthy
~ncighbors.
Again. when the committee was waiting upon the people
of Watertown for Red Cross pledges a year or so ago, perhaps
it will be recalled that Mr.. NJ R. Baskerville, a member of the
committee, was quoted by The Saturday News at the time as
saying that when he observed that certain Of the girl clerks
who were drawing comparatively small salaries We're pledging
one dollar a month he felt that his own pledge of fifteen dollars
a month was insignificant indeed.
There is a party in Watertown whom the Daily News ha
known for many years, and who ,out Of the small income of
.fatherless home, managed to scrape up fifty cents for the Ar
and Syrian relief fund. It is no disparagement of
Governor and Mrs. Norbeck, nor does it In the least detract
from their offering, to say that this mite, so to speak, repre-
SCENTS greater sacrifice than is involved in the larger sums men
toned by our Pierre contemporary.
Henry Ford bought ten million dollars worth Of Liberty
Loan bonds, and the daily newspapers (the Watertown Daily
News, or its predecessor, among them) heraded the fact abroad
as evidence of Henry's intense Americanism.
At the same time a certain school teacher in Codngton
county, whom we might name, and who had paid her own way
through college and had helped to support a widowed mother
and had assisted In educating a ~fatherless brother and sister,
bought fifty dollars worth of the same issue of bonds-which
a far greater sum in proportion to her means and
the demand for her earnings than Mr.. Ford's ten millions.
Henry got his name in print on the front pages Of the
daily newspapers, While the name Of the school teacher in
question never got by the committee and those who happened to
see the list of purchasers.
The reason for all this is that Henry's transaction was a
aessItefa, the school teachers was not. Governor Norbeck's
is a news item; the ~fifty-cent offering by the Wa
tertnWI Mi1nM Is not.