INK SLINGS. —Congress is in session again. : —Is that new resolution still making | good alone or are you feeding it a tonic | —Russia and Japan are each planning to supply themselves with a new lot of cid China. ——Anyway a fellow who has to be caught in the leap year toils is hardly | ®considering. tistics show that there is a decline in tea drinking. There always is the first few days in January. —No matter how good it may have been, here's hoping that your 1912 may be far better than your 1911. —1912 came in with bluster enough to make even the most pessimistic conclude that it will amount to something. —Those Ohio Democrats don’t seem to be any more given to boosting favor- ite sons than the Ohio Republicans. —A cannon's report has been heard as far as 146 miles. No test of the one at Danville, Illinois, has ever been made. —That recent New York peace dinner | was a failure because there weren't enough big guns there to start a good scrap. —Qurs would be a Happy New Year, indeed, if every subscriber whose label is dated earlier than 1912 were to send in one nice long dollar at once. —St. Nick and Old Father Time have each had their inning. Next will come ANDY JACKSON, GEORGE WASHINGTON, Lincoln and St. PATRICK'S days. —Since they are going to put rats, puffs, switches and wigs on the free list— we might derive some personal benefit from this Democratic Congress after all. -~The progressives of Ohio regard LA- FOLLETTE as too fast or too slow for them. Whichever it is it is all the same to the pyro-technical Senator's presidential ambitions. —One hundred and forty thousand au- tomobiles were manufactured in this country last year and some were reman- ufactured one hundred and forty thous. and times. —From the way rents are being marked up one would almost imagine that Warden FRANCIES has been looking for separate cages for each one of his birds right here in Bellefonte. —J. PIERPOINT MORGAN having sailed “for Egypt there will probably have to be a little panic ere long to afford an excuse for calling him back to look after his own dear little America. i ad —One or two of the retiring officials let | go the reins of office with a spirit differ- ent, indeed, from that displayed by their predecessors when they were being ush- ered into the office. —Many a youngster who can’t carry up a bucket of coal or shovel the snow off the pavement can spend half the night trying to learn the turkey trot or the grizzly bear dance. —Gossip has made a number of very important real estate deals in Bellefonte within the past few days, but gossip neither pays down hand money nor writes deeds to property. Already the matter of the spring primaries is beginning to worry some. The real politician just can’t let the pot simmer at all any more. He must be stirring it up to the boiling point always. ~President TAFT is a very portly gen- tleman but the ROOSEVELT shadow is growing so large that it looks as though he might be completely enveloped by the time of the Republican National conven- tion. | —It is said that when Sheriff HURLEY spied those eleven farm wagons, carrying Sheriff-elect LEE's ‘flittin’, climbing jail hill on Monday morning he just naturally began to whistie "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of its Own.” i —And to think of it! Those meetings of JACK JOHNSON and FLYNN to arrange for a prize fight for the championship of the world are drawing only a few inches in the Metropolitan papers. Surely this is water on the mill of those who think theavorld is getting better. : —~Those Pleasant Gap Mummers were all to the mustard again this year. More | of them, more grotesque and bringing along their usual cold weather. It's al- ways cold for the Pleasant Gap Mum- mers, but they 're such “hot stuff” that they don’t mind how low the weather man marks the mercury, —Feminine fashion notes are proclaim- ing that turkish towels aze to form the greater part of the stylish costume that milady is to wear in the spring. Ah me, to what extremes milady goes with her fads. She has been wearing turkish towels in her bath tub so long that now she essays to wear them in the spring. Not our spring, if we catch her at it. —"Scientific Marriages” are being ex- ploited by assistant secretary of Agricul- ture HAYS. He wants all peoples classi- fied so that those efficient marry in their class with the idea of pro- ducing the largest families possible. It seems to us that Mr. assistant Secretary HAvs should confine his propaganda to the realms of agriculture. The “gene- tically efficient” idea among the humans | and in the United States, in which the is ja Sausing entirely toomuch baby farm- STATE RIGHTS AN D FEDERAL UNION. VOL. 57. An Absurd Statement. In an interview published the other | day Mr. James I. BLAKESLIE, principal | clown and press agent of the Guthrie rump State Committee, states that he has | no doubt Colonel GUFFEY will attend and | participate in the deliberations of the | Democratic National Committee, in| Washington, next week, and adds that | Mr. A. MITCHELL PALMER will be present | to urge his claims to the seat. We can | hardly believe, however, that Mr. BLAKES- | LIE is speaking by the authority of Mr. | PALMER in the matter. The Strouds- | burg Congressman has a wonderfully enlarged head since he succeeded in | wiggling himself into the House Com- | mittee on Ways and Means. But he is | hardly foolish enough to demand a seat | in the National Committee. The last Democratic National Conven- tion, which is not only the parliament but the Court of Last Resort of the party, adopted, by a practically unani. mous vote, a rule to regulate the filling of vacancies in the National Committee, The rule thus made the law of the party provides that "when a vacancy occurs on the National Committee, the State Com. mittee of the State entitled to the place shall fill the vacancy.” Soon after the election of 1908 a vacancy in the National Committee was occasioned by the death of Hon. JAMES KERR who had been de- clared a member of the Committee, for this State, at the Denver convention. At a meeting of the Democratic State Central Committee, held in Harrisburg on the 26th day of January, 1909, Colonel J. M. Gurrey was unanimously elected to fill the vacancy. At the ensuing Democratic State Convention, held in Harrisburg on August 4, 1909, and of which A. MITCHELL PALMER was tempor- ary president, the action of the State Committee in selecting Colonel GUFFEY for the office was unanimously ratified and endorsed. In the face of such a record how absurd it is for those near Republi- cans, GBo. W. GUTHRIE, VANCE C. Mc- Cormick and A. MITCHELL PALMER, to take a claim for a seat in the committee. There have®oeen famous claim cases threshed out in court, both in England claimant had little more to stand upon- But he generally got into jail at the end of the litigation and though there may be no legal process to punish Mr. PALMER if he attempts the fraud, public opinion will be quite ss effective in disposing of his preposterous pretentions as the laws of Great Britian were in dealing with the notorious claimantin the famous TICH- BURNE case thirty years ago. Taft's Pet Enterprise Fails. i ——— i President TAPT'S widely advertised | “Peace Dinner,” which was "pulled off” at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, New York, last Saturday evening, failed to score a | success. The purpose of the feast, ac- cording to common understanding, was to create public sentiment in favor of the ratification of peace treaties with Great Britain and France, now in the United States Senate for that action. All the big diplomats in the country were to be present and able and eloquent speeches upon the advantages as well as the beau- ties of arbitration and fraternity were to be delivered. But the big diplomats all refused to attend and the affair degener- ated into an absurd farce. Of course the President was greatly disappointed with this issue of his pet enterprise. It was really the opening gun of his 1912 campaigh: and he imagined it | would accomplish great results. The recognized Apostle of Peace would natur- ally cut a big figure in the estimation of men all over the world in this era of burdensome war taxes, and TAFT expect- ed to be “it” in capital letters. The dis. appointing diplomats had ample excuses for their absence. Some of them were admonished from the thrones they repre- sented and others simply got “cold feet.” But the result was disastrous and the more mortifying because it was especial-: ly gratifying to the President's late friend: THEODORE ROOSEVELT. As a matter of tact, however, the din- | ner would have been a flat failure if all the diplomats had attended and spoken enthusiastically of the event and its sub- lime purpose. Everybody is getting on to TAFT. As ROOSEVELT intimates, he is a hypocrite and his insincerity no longer fools the people. It would be hard to imagine anything more absurd than a President constantly platitudinizing on peace and with equal assiduity advocat- ing forty more battleshipsand a consider- able increase of the military force of the country. Foreign governments see the inconsistency of it and simply refuse to longer be a party to the fraud. If Tarr BELLE wants peace let him quit carrving a gun. ~—=Subscribe for the WATCHMAN, FONTE, Cut Out the Graft Fund. It is to be hoped that the House Com- mittee on Appropriations will adhere to its announced purpose of cutting out of the sundry civil bill the “traveling fund” of the President. There never was a more flagrant example of graft than this. The constitution forbids it and it is ab- horrent to every principle of morality. The first President to ask or receive it was THEODORE ROOSEVELT, but as he had his barber on the pay roll of the War Department and had his cook and coach- man paid out of the public treasury, nothing better was to be expected of him. As Tarr has shown a disposition to follow the bad example, however, Con- gress should intervene to protect the treasury. Previous to 1860 the salary of the President was $25,000 a year and out of that sum President LINCOLN paid all his personal expenses and those of his family and household. After the election of GRANT in 1868 the salary was increased to $50,000 a year without emoluments or perquisites of any kind. GRANT, HAYES GARFIELD, ARTHUR, CLEVELAND, HAR- RISON and MCKINLEY received that rec- ompense and no other emoluments ROOSEVELT, however, lobbied through Con- gress a traveling expense fund appropria- tion of $25,000 making his total compen- sation $75,000 a year. This subversion of the constitution was so repugnant to the moral sense of the country, however, that after TAFT’S election the salary was increased to $75,000, and it was special- ly declared that no other emoluments should be voted. During the second year of TAFT’S ad- ministration, however, another traveling expense fund of $25,000 was lobbied through and in the face of the protest of the minority, the last Congress made a similar appropriation. Now that the mi- nority of that time has been changed to a majority, there is nothing for it to do but maintain its consistency. Each Senator and Representative has taken an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the consti- tution,” and as that instrument declares in Article 2, section 1, paragraph 7, that “the President shall, at stated times, re- ceive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected and he shall not receive within that period any other émolument from the United States or any of them,” itis a moral as well as a legal obligation to cut out the traveling fund. ~——ATWOOD is planning to cross the ably preparing a feast for the fishes. The Corporation Tax System. Auditor General SISSON continues to merit popular approval, though it is not certain that he is liked the better in ma- chine circles for his labor. His latest achievement is in the matter of reform. ing the methods of assessing corporation taxes. The revenues will be largely in- creased by the system he is inaugurating, it is said, but the corporation treasuries will be correspondingly depleted, and that is not according to the machine pro- gramme. The corporations of the State, or those which do business within the State, have been liberal contributors to | jt wouldn't be worth while to hold an | foads the Republican corruption fund and naturally expect some sort of return for their money. If N carries out hiS plan they will be ppointed. It-seems that the expert accountants who investigated the expenditures of the | Republic took the oath of office on New capitol building fund reported that “the ' Year's day but he'll probably break his system of assessing corporation taxes in Pennsylvania is susceptible of more graft, in the hands of dishonest officials, than the capital job yielded.” The system was very simple. The Auditor Gen- eral would raise the assessment an- nually. The corporations affected would as regularly protest and the Attorney General would sue. Thereupon the law- yer of the corporation would appear in court, select a jury, write out the verdict and restore the old rate. The corpora- tion would pay the jurors two dollars each for the perfunctory service and the incident would be closed. Nothing could be easier. It is said that as the sesultobibio sug: gling the State has been swindled out of something like $4,000,000 annually, a fair percentage of which was regularly cov- ered into the Republican corruption fund: Of course we have no personal knowledge | of this perversion of the taxing power of the State, though several years ago we called attention to the method of settling corporation tax accounts. But we have every reason to believe that the estimate of the loss to the State is in no respect exaggerated and welcome the announce- ment of the Auditor General's purpose to improve the system. "When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be,” and the result of last fall's election was very salivating. PA., JANUARY 5, 1912. The President and the Colonel. President TArFT's friends are uneasy concerning the attitude of his predeces- sor in office, the Colonel. They regard his recent actions and utterances as ominous, and are inclined to force an is- sue. They advise an open break and 'chal- Thus far, however, TAFT hasn't been able to work his courage up to that point. He has gone so iar as to state, positively, that nothing but death will take him out of the fight. But he has sent no mes- sengers to Oyster Bay and will not send any. If the Colonel wants to get into sonal solicitation. Probably he thinks that is a sufficient declaration of war. Whether it is or not, remains (o be seen, of course. The Colonel is used to being coddled and may resent this inde- pendent attitude of the President. In that event we would be in for a very pretty fight. ROOSEVELT is a grafter, a falsifier, a vilifier of men and a usurper of authority. But notwithstanding these facts he has a numerous and devoted | following. Like RODERICK DHU, one blast from his bugle horn is worth 10,000 votes. He has said that he is not a can- didate but nobody believes him. He admonishes his friends to keep his name out of the reckoning, but the admonition is taken with a grain of allowance. Everybody believes that he wants the office but nobody will venture to say that he is reaching out for it. The only thing that is certain at pres- ent is that ROOSEVELT can’t defeat TAFT by espousing the cause of another than himself. His support of LAFOLLETTE would scarcely make an impression upon the convention. The Southern delegates will not be enticed into the support of such a candidate. They are in politics for what’s in it for them and the nomi- nation of a mugwump holds out no prom- ises of reward. They might be switched away from TAPT to some “practical man,” like ROOSEVELT, but never for an idealist or dreamer. If ROOSEVELT wants to defeat TAFT he must be his own candi- This is plain as the nose on his as obvious as his teeth. | ——Governor OsBORN, of Michigan, has his nerve. He asks TAFT and LaA- FOLLETTE to withdraw in order that former Senator BEVERIDGE may be nomi- nated for President by the Republican convention. Yet if both of them were to die probably nobody other than OSBORN _ would think of BEVERIDGE for the place. | ——The evidence against the Beef trust is startlingly clear and criminating, | Atlantic in a flying machine. He is prob- = but if ROOSEVELT had continued in office i the perpetrators of the crimes would i have escaped through the medium of | immunity baths. It is not certain that | they will be punished even now, but Rosy | wouldn't have allowed the exposure. . ——Now that Congress has resumed ; business the work of tariff revision down- ' ward should be pressed forward with | burdens of needless tariff taxation and | the more certain they are to achieve a | | victory at the polls next fall. ——Unless the other fellows watch out + Jim BLAKESLIE may nominate MITCHELL | PALMER for President and in that event | election. Jim would simply issue a proc- | lamation or settle the matter in an | interview. —The President of the new Chinese | resolution before the | finished. ——The holiday business in Bellefonte, according to various merchants inter- viewed on the subjuct, was about equal to that of last year. Up to the Saturday first month is | —On Saturday morning the barn on : the farm of Joseph H. Long, near Jack- sonville, tenanted by Frank Wetzel, was entirely destroyed by fire together with all its contents. Mr. Wetzel also lost one , horse, 2 colt, six cows, two young cattle and two hogs. He had an insurance of The barn was also insured. ——(3eneral orders issued from Nation- al Guard headquarters on Monday are in The date for the first inspection of com. pany L, of this place, has been set for Febuary 12th, Lincoln's birthday. lenge a declaration one way or the other. | 0 line he will have to move without per- i evergy. The country is weary under the $750, which will not nearly cover his loss. | From the Johnstown Democrat. For the first time in his career, Mr. J. t Moga stands in nttpediate danger of being ired to go upon dager ol Sy vired to go SHOR the Eomises tn be acomiogable ques. trust good as assured that the House te announcement that the triple in is to be started be the most important i : : seEk Ha 1 | : i 7 I: in i = & | ; i i § g E | E : i ; i it : i | : | : g 5% uk g g { i 3 i beyond successful con- First—That schedule K is “indefensi- ble;” it proves this conclusively and for all time. Second—It confirms practically every charge made against the woolen schedule by ts and progressive Republi- cans. Third—It proves that the American people are victims of extortion from wool manufacturers. Fourth—And that President Taft's veto of the Underwood-LaFollette bill was against the interest of 90,000,000 con- sumers of woolens; that it was absolute- | ly unjustified, unnecessary and therefore ! unforgivable. ; Railroads and Business. | Fromthe Boston Post. | The railroad barometer of business | conditions, which is apt to be pretty ac- i curate, indicate a revival of trade and commerce. The New York Central, for instance, has just placed with the Ameri- | can Car and Foundry company an order for 15 new steel passenger coaches, this | being the third extensive order given by | the system in the past 60 days or new | equipment that altogether involves an | S3penditure of over $23,000,000. : latest rail order of the Baltimore | & Ohio totals 40,000 tons, and other rail- are expected to announce awards | for over 600,000 tons of rail for the 1912 , delivery, making a total tonnage for the | new year of 1,500,000 tons. . In view of such significant facts as | these.) is not improper to be an optimist for . The Single Tax in Alberta. | From the Buffalo Enquirer. ‘The soul of H George must be fo yndon in the Sonadiann ast. : for proposes to | adopt the single tax principle. Premier : Sifton and the Liberal government there | are committed to the single tax principle. | The lawis to become tive imme- ! diately in new munici ; SPAWLS FROM THE KEYSTONE. Various mills and other industries in western | Pennsylvania will resume operations early this | year, giving employment to large numbers of | men. have docided that neither the coroner nor his deputy can draw théir salaries until they have earned them by holding views or inquests. —Twenty-seven petitions for divorce were filed in’Huntingdon county in 1911, a little more than one-ninth of the number of marriage licenses issued. Fifteen of the divorces have been granted. ~It is said that over 80.000 of the negroes liv. ing in Pennsylvania are engaged in business or actually earning their own living in some useful way. The negroes of the State are worth $20, 000,000. i —John Owens, an aged resident of Homestead, | felldown stairs at his residence and broke his neck. Two nephews who called to wish him a happy New Year found him lying dead at the foot | of the stairs. | —Burgess Hetler, of Berwick, proposes to walk | from his home town to Wilkes-Barre next Sun- day. The burgess weighs 230 and his ire has been excited by the declaration of certain of his friends that he cannot carry out his deter. | mination. —J. E. Gearhart, the well known Clearfield inventor, whose popular knitting machine has for * | years been sold throughout this and many other countries, has invented a vacuum cleaner which - | is said to be far superior to many other similar inventions on the market. —Adoiph Herlanns, a manufacturer of noodles and living in South Scranton, put himself to death in a Scranton hotel, alleging that nervousness forced him to the rash act. He willed the fatal revolver to the hotel keeper as part recompense for the trouble he caused. ~Reports from the Connellsville coke country indicate a general revival of industry: The Frick company expects to fire 1,500 additional ovens within the next few days while the Rainey com- panysays it will have 3,000 ovens in operation within the next two weeks. =In the village of Stoyestown, with a popula. tion of 500, only three deaths were reported in 1911. One of the decedents was 89 years old, another 87 and a third 82. There are still seventy. three people in the town over 60 years of age and eleven of these have passed the four-stone mark: —A New York city syndicate is negotiating for the Clearfield and Centre street railway, the Philipsburg electric light and heating plants and the lighting plants of Osceola, Houtzdale, Clear field, Curwensville and Grampian, witha view to the extension of the Clearfield and Centre trolley line to all of these points. —Frank Beatty, a well known liniment sales. man, was found a few days ago near Huntingdon $0 badly frozen that he died at the Blair Memorial hospital a little later. He was 39 years old. Itis thought that his strength gave out after he had waded Crooked creek and he stopped for the rest which resulted in his death. —Mr. and Mrs. John J. Stains, of Worleytown, Franklin county, have just celebrated the sixty- first anniversary of their wedding. The groom is 84 and the bride 83. They are healthy and happy and do their own work although they have a large company of loving descendants who woald be glad to shoulder their burdens. —Jay G, Pennell, a Philadelphia and Reading railway fireman, was killed in & singular manner on the line between Harrisburg and Shippensburg on Monday. He was shoveling coal into the fire- box when the engine parted from the tender and he fell between. being ground to pieces by the wheels. Pennell was a prominent member of the Governor's troop. ~Secretary Critchfield, of the Department of Agriculture, and Dairy and Food Commissioner Foust have united in a letter to the officers and members of the State grange and subordinate granges of the Patrons of Husbandry asking them to get busy in opposition to the proposal to abol- “ish the national tax of ten cents a pound on color- ed oleomargarine. ~Harry B. Clark, proprietor of the Beech Creek poultry farm, had a total egg yield for the month of December from his 176 White Leghorn hens of 2,814 eggs. His record for November was 2,393 so that the last month was a gratifying increase, Mr. Clark says that had he not experimented, with a new food he is satisfied his hens would *have laid fully 3,000 eggs in December. I —If he lives until January 9th, Levi Shoemaker, of Perlin, Somerset county, will celebrate his centenary, the celebration to take place in the Reformed church in that place, of which he has been a member since its organization. It has been arranged that the school teachers, the min- isters and many others of the town will take part in paying tribute to this venershle citizen. —~lsrael Corp, of Howe Camp. near DuBois, died recently, after thirty-two years of helpless- nessavith a broken back. He was aged 64 years and was but a young man when, thirty-two years ago. he was working in the woods and was caught under the swing of a falling tree. Since that time he had been paralyzed below the waist and the fact that he lived at all had been the marvel of all the medical men who knew of his case. ~The estate of the late Mrs, Julia Courtright, of Weatherly, was recently divided at the Mauch Chunk court house. An aggregate of $40,000 was divided between 21 heirs. Mrs. Courtright was the daughter of John Reinsmith, a Mahoning Valley pioneer, of Carbon county, with one of the most remarkable war records in the State. He and his two sons and five sons-in-law served as soldiers in the Civil war, while his father, Samuel Reinsmith, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. —Little Margaret Emiline Beck, six year old daughter of Clyde and Elizabeth Beck, of War® rior's Mark valley, was burned to death on Mon- day, January Ist. The parents were busy in an out kitchen when the little girl who had been playing at another stove, ran to them enveloped in a flame of fire. The father hurriedly extinguish. ed the flames but not before they had gotten in their deadly work, as the little one passed away about 5:30 o'clock on Monday evening, after pass- ing through excruciating pain. She is survived by her parents and two sisters, Frances and Hazel Beck. ~The great drainage tunnel which was begun nearly three years ago by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation company, at a point a short distance 1 shaft above Nesquehoning, four miles from the beginning. Two sets of men are working toward each other, one from the entrance and the other from No. 1 shaft, and they are only about 800 feet apart. Thedrainage tunnel when finished will have reached Dutch Hill on.the outside of Ta- mauqua and will have cost over $3,000,000, It will drain nearly or quite every colliery operated by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation company. ~The Potter county commissioners are in receipt of n check for $610 from George C. Bay- less, of Binghampton, N.Y., president of the Bayless Pulp and Paper company, to pay for the burial of the bodies taken from the wreck result- ing from the Austin dam disaster, September 30th, 1911, when the Bayless company dam burst. The undertaker, who buried 30 bodies, presented his bill to the county commissioners, as there was no one else for him to look to to take care of the ex- pense. The surviving relatives of the dead had lost everything in the catastrophe. The
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers