San Francisco Call, Volume 74, Number 120, 28 September 1893 — BETWEEN TWO FIRES. [ARTICLE]

BETWEEN TWO FIRES.

The Sacramento Record-Union expresses sympathy for President Cleveland as the target of the East and of the Pacific Coast in respect to the • Chinese question. The East wants the registration period extended and the Pacific (-'oast wants the law enforced. If the President is being made a target the fault is entirely his own. It is his duty to enforce laws, and the duty of Congress lo enact them. Beyond a recommendation the President has no voice in the matter until Congress has acted. Mr. Cleveland has put himself behind too many bills. The executive influence is being used in an unprecedented manner. One may feel sorry to see the President make a spectacle of himself, but as the position is one of his own choosing there is not much call for sympathy.

Recently Mr. Gladstone met with as scurvy a rebuff as it is possible for the meanest man to devise. The aeed Premier was recruiting bis health in the heathen region around Blairgowrie, Scotland, anil on Sunday went to church. Meeting the Incumbent, he held out his hand to him, and this surpliced representative of humility and peace refused to shake, and passed on in a surly humor. This did not drive Mr. Gladstone away from prayers. He sat out the service and listened to a sermon in the vilest taste leveled at the unworthy, and abounding in construable personal innuendoes grossly insulting. The result of this foolishness was to call attention to the clergyman's idiocy, and the country has rung with denunciations of bis destitution of manners, and his narrow-minded spleen in using the pulpit- as ■ vehicle for venom. The Incumbent has made himself many enemies and may preach to an empty church hereafter.

There are a few trusts In England, but none, of the magnitude implied in consolidating all the coal fields. This may be set down as an impossibility. There are too many interests among land owners and lessees. Sir George Elliot, who is said to dream of getting a trust capital of $600,---000.000, is about 80 years of age. lie was formerly member of Parliament for a division of Durham, and, a* in early lite be was a working collier, he is familiarly spoken of as "the Pit Laddie." A few years ago he figured as defendant in a breach of promise action and got laughed at by everybody. lie bad a principal part in fishing up the second Atlantic cable from the bed of the ocean, thereby making a considerable fortune, and as a contractor he made large sums out of tho harbor works in Alexandria, Egypt. No speculation so daring as this has been entertained by him heretofore. The principal object perhaps is to put an end to strikes. If it had any effect on keeping the price of coal up the railways and manufacturers would seek their supplies abroad. There is no duly on coal Imported, and it could easily be shipped from Pennsylvauia, Belgium or Germany

The responsibility for firing on the mob at Roanoke, Va., by which deed the militia killed eight persons and wounded a number of others, has been fixed where it belongs, on the Mayor. It was the Mayor who gave tiie order to shoot, and he acted without giving any preliminary indication

nf his intention or appeals to the excited throng to disperse. The mob was engaged in an unlawful proceeding— the effort to lynch a negro under confinement in jail— and the Mayor was in the performance of a lawful duty, the protection of the negro. Under the circumstance the law does not afford much prospect of relief. The Mayor acted impulsively and firmly

in a case where many other magistrates would have yielded.

The Montreal Star denounces the acquisition of Hawaii by the United States on the ground that th" group may be made the Malta of the Pacific. Yes, but what title has England or Canada to this Malta? England is 10,000 miles away and California only 2000. The British make no claim to the group, but the Canadians think there may be profit for them in it and would like to force the mother country into annexation. That is out of the question.

Bears and bulls are not averse to making game of one another, ofttimes to the detriment of the public, but their speculative frolics are innocence itself compared with the attack made by a maniac in Chicago yesterday, lie coolly entered the Board of Trade building and opened fire from a revolver on the assemblage of traders and brokers. His five shots found at least two victims, who are very badly ana . perhaps fatally wounded. Life is more precious than margins or futures, and the board showed it by the nimbleness of its wild stampede for the doors. It is lucky that no life was lost in the suffocating scramble. In times of crisis brokers are peculiarly liable to these outbreaks for vengeance among the demented.

The city of Rio has been shelled pretty freely by De Mello's ships during a number of days. There are now signs that the foreign war vessels in the harbor will put an end tothe insensate destruction on the ground of affording protection to foreign interests. The rebels are in no position to resist joint remonstrance. Interference is delicate work, but it could be carried to the extent of preventing wanton damage. Fortunately for the United States, the Charleston is at last in the harbor.

Another ghastly discovery of human remains has been made on the Oakland shire. If not portions of the body of Addle Gilmour they are indications that another tragedy awaits investigation. They do not add to the horror of what is already known of the Gil m our case, and cannot supplement the evidence materially. As gruesome relics of mortality, packed like off.il into a common nil can, they have a morb d interest for those who gloat over the unraveled details of crime. As the head has been traced and identified it is a much more important link in the evidence to bnd out what has become of the clothestrung of the deceased, and even that is not essential.

The Valkyrie is now the special study of American yachtsmen. Her performances in English waters are the best thing to go by. It appears certain that in light weather she is a somewhat better craft than the Brittania, which beat her and the Navahoe in several races, but what she cud do against the Vigilant over a long course, with varying weather, tide and sea, is guesswork. The Vigilant has a better competitor than ever before came to American waters. Thus far the betting strongly favors the Vigilant.

One fashion never goes out, but the man who wears it does. A coat of tar and feathers is highly ornamental to the deceivers of various degrees of helnousness, who flourish awhile and then are sartorially suited by an aroused community. A professor in a Mormon academy in Arizona Territory has been inculcating his principles among the lady pupils, anil has earned the honor of deportation on a rail. His own church elders seem to have deserted him, and therefore his offense must be scarlet. The professor does not object to say adieu to the Territory, but protests against a souvenir of tar and feathers.

Methods of handling prisoners are somewhat lax around the old City Hall. A prisoner called Murphy, who was before one Judge on a charge of burglary and bad his case continued, cam . before another Judge on a charge of petty larceny. On the smaller charge he was allowed freedom on his own recognizance.-., and as be availed himself of the privilege promptly, be also bas freedom with regard to the graver charge. Somebody should have known better.