Thursday, October 25, 1901
While so much is being said about restricting immigration and the impression seeming to become prevalent that immigration is one of the chief perils of the times, it is a relief to learn that over 50,000 of the more recent immigrants are Stundists from Russia, and are mostly located in the Dakotas. As citizens, they are industrious and peaceable, willing to begin life in a new region in mud houses, with stoves of clay, heated with hay or straw for fuel. They are a pious people, Lutherans, Presbyterians or Baptists and are exercising a very happy influence on the citizenship around them.
SHOW DAY
A crowd of 3,000 see Marlinton’s First Big Show.
Last Wednesday was show day in Marlinton. The show came to town in the night, and the first thing we heard in the morning was the rattle of harness, men driving tent pegs, and the roar of the lion. Not a chimney fell, not a window rattled, and the way things acted, you would have thought the roar of a lion was an everyday occurrence.
We went over to watch them unload, and the way they took things out of the car surprised you about as much as did the man who took a coin from your nose in the side show. The cars were at the wrong crossing and there was no engine around to shift them. The elephant was then unloaded, and the keeper did not do a thing but get him behind the train and make him push the eight cars along, thereby becoming useful as well as ornamental.
About 10 o’clock, the people began to come to town by foot, in wagons or on horseback until the town was full of men, women and children, waiting for the parade. We all followed the parade to the show ground, fully intending to see the “free exhibition” and then wait for the main show, but the seductive strains of the “Hoochee Coochee” called us away to the side show to see the wild man, the boneless wonder and other members of that most obliging family, who turn themselves wrong side out, eat nails, etc., for the edification of an admiring public – and for a consideration…
We soon forget our troubles, and fell in love with the leading lady, as usual, but we can’t love them like we used to when we were younger.
WAR PREPARATIONS
It may be true to a certain extent that greater facilities for killing men in battle may deter nations from going to war, but nevertheless the cost of warships, fortifications, “Long Toms,” and supporting immense armies sooner or later becomes very oppressive to the taxpayers.
The property owners who pay the taxes directly or indirectly will sooner or later notice some kinds of citizens becoming wealthy through these millions of taxes expended by their government and themselves, the taxpayers, growing poorer, and the spirit of making a change in affairs trouble their minds.
Hence, it is that while it may seem that great military preparations avert foreign wars, such costly preparations for foreign wars actually create serious dissatis- faction at home among the citizenship.
History teaches that in the past, nations that have been extravagant in military preparations have been obliged to seek trouble abroad in order to find excuse for their high taxes at home and thus, in foreign wars, take refuge behind the patriotism of the people who might be hard to manage otherwise…
FIVE DEAD IN TUNNEL
New York – Five men were killed and two injured when a great mass of rock fell from the side and roof of the rapid transit tunnel in course of construction on Broadway about the line of One Hundred and Sixty-Fourth street in this city.
The section of the tunnel where the cave-in occurred is 105 feet below the surface. A shaft leads to the tunnel and from the shaft, headings extend north and south, each being about 700 feet long. The accident occurred in the south heading of the tunnel, about 640 feet from the shaft.
A gang of 20 rock drillers was working in the extreme south end of the heading and about 50 feet from the end, a gang made up of 20 shovelers and a foreman was removing the debris produced by the blasting.
Without warning, the mass of rock, 63 feet long, 11 feet wide and 10 feet high and weighing about 150 tons, fell with a tremendous crash directly where the shovelers were at work, almost closing the tunnel and creating a panic among the 200 to 300 men at work in other sections. Great clouds of dust filled the whole excavation. The frightened men, most of them Italians, in great excitement and finding themselves cut off, as they thought, made wild efforts to escape, their cries adding to the confusion. In a short time, however, all made their way to the street and the work of rescuing the shovelers was commenced.
Owen Bly, the section boss, who was in charge of that portion of the tunnel, was placed under arrest.
