Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Several Tenants to Occupy Rooms of Standard Block



The Cortland News, Friday, December 1, 1882.
CORTLAND AND VICINITY.
   Excellent sleighing since last Saturday, and the village streets full of life and business. Snug winter weather.
   Mr. and Mrs. John D. Benton have arrived from Fargo, Dakota, with the intention of making Cortland their future home.
   M. S. Bierce, Esq., on the first of January, ensuing, commences business as a justice of the peace. He has not yet decided upon the location of his office.
   Mr. Charles P. Snider, one of the finest fellows we happen to know, has entered the employ of Warren & Tanner. Which is a good thing for everybody —firm, clerk and customers.
   The fall term of the Marathon Union school and Academy began last Monday, with Miss Ella May Knapp, of Cortland. Normal graduate, class of 1877, as preceptress in place of Miss Nellie Bevier, resigned.
   The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday morning visited the Normal school, in response to the invitation of Dr. Hoose and were welcomed by Dr. Hyde. They evidently enjoyed the visit, as they remained all the forenoon [probably had a free lunch—CC editor.]
   Newkirk & Hulbert will occupy the north store in the new [Standard] block, comer of Main and Tompkins streets, and J. C. Carmichael & Co. the third one, as soon as the rooms are ready. The Singer Sewing Machine Co. have already taken possession of the corner room on the second floor.
   Our readers should not fail to peruse the interesting Colorado letter in this issue of THE NEWS. The name of the writer will be recognized by many as that of a young lawyer, formerly a resident of this county. We have the promise of more communications from the same source.
   The next meeting of the Social Circle of the Universalist Society will be held at the residence of H. J. Messenger, corner of Union street and Reynolds avenue, next Thursday evening. On this occasion the assemblage will be entertained by Mrs. Phillips with some choice Scotch ballads and by other rare musical exhibitions.
   The certificate of John Jay Knot, Comptroller of the Currency, authorizing the "Second National Bank of Cortland” to transact business, appears in our paper this week in accordance with law. The Bank has taken possession of its rooms, and as some of the wealthiest and best business men of this section are officers and stockholders, it would seem as though its success is a foregone conclusion.
  
COLORADO LETTER.
The Rocky Mountains—Vegetation--Pike’s Peak--Crops--Gold and Silver Mining--Colorado Politics.
LEADVIILE, Col., Nov. 20, 1882.
My Dear Editor:
   Since the discovery of the carbonate silver deposits at Leadville so much has been written about the city, the mines and the country lying near, that one can hardly hope to give much information that will be entirely new. Still I doubt if many of the readers of your paper have any accurate idea of either the city which has grown so marvelously up among the clouds, the mines which have become world famous, or of that immense region known as the "Rocky Mountains."
   As one approaches the mountains from the east either by way of the Kansas Pacific or Atchison & Santa Fe Railway, he will, if not already familiar with the route, eagerly watch for a first glimpse of Pike's Peak whose snowy cap can be seen in clear weather fully eighty miles away. As he approaches, what has appeared to be an isolated peak is found to be one of a huge mass of mountains extending north and south as far as the eye can reach, with many peaks rising above the timber line and crowned with perpetual snow.
   The beauty of the scenery is lightened by the fact that the plains extend to the very base of the mountains, without any intervening foot-hills—on one side an apparently boundless expanse of undulating plain, on the other the towering mountains pushing their peaks among the clouds.
   But these are only the outlying sentinels of the mighty range, and one who has only skirted their base has no adequate conception of the "Rockies." Leadville is 115 miles west of Denver, and 100 miles of this space is all mountains. Yet Leadville is 20 miles east of the divide or backbone of the range from which the water flows eastward to the Atlantic and westward to the Pacific ocean. West of this the Elk mountains extend about 75 miles, and beyond the mountains still continue though not generally so high nor rugged as near the crest of the range. A curious feature is that all the higher peaks reach about the same altitude. In plain view from Leadville are eight peaks each more than 14,000 feet high, and none exceeding 14,250 feet.
   Taken as a whole no more forbidding and desolate region can be found in the temperate zone than this. In some of the lower valleys a few hardy vegetables and oats can be raised, but beyond these grass is the only crop that will mature. Near the streams which flow through every valley and gulch is a narrow strip of grass land, with scattering bunches of willows and alders. Back of this, as the ground rises, a vigorous growth of sage brush generally covers the ground and only disappears at the foot-hills and the scrub pines with which they are covered. Scattered among the sage is a scant growth of buffalo grass, and in the lower valleys blue grass also, but there is not enough of both to cover the ground or make a turf, and 20 acres of such range would hardly furnish subsistence for one animal. Considerable hay is cut, but it is taken from the bottoms immediately adjoining the streams or from the higher lands made productive by irrigation. Most of the sage lands will produce a fair amount of grass after some years of irrigation and the removal of the sage brush.
   Portions of the parks, of which the South, Middle and North parks are the principal, are fair grazing lands and in some of the lower valleys of the Grand and Gunnison rivers are ranches where cattle do well both summer and winter.
   But for the deposits of gold and silver in the mountains and gulches, this entire region would have been left to the occupancy of the Indian, the hunters and their game, and I am by no means sure that the world has been the gainer from the discovery of those minerals here. In an economic view there has been a loss, as gold and silver mining in Colorado has never in the aggregate paid expenses. While some large and many smaller fortunes have been made here, yet the money and labor spent in prospecting for, developing and working mines in each year, exceed the value of the ore taken out.    Not one mining location in a hundred ever becomes a paying mine, and in many instances thousands of dollars are spent in the vain effort to find "pay ore." Money and labor expended on worthless "locations” are a dead loss, as no increase in value is made thereby.
   In this (Lake) county more than 5,000 mining locations have been made of which less than 100 have paid expenses, and still the Leadville district is undoubtedly the most productive in proportion to expenditure of any in the State. On each of these locations there is each year expended from one hundred to many thousands of dollars and this will be continued until each location either becomes a mine, is proven to be worthless or, which is most probable, the owner becomes too poor to work the property and is compelled to abandon it.
   The business of prospecting for and mining gold and silver has a strong fascination for those who have once engaged in it. The possibilities of sudden wealth are always in sight and appeal so strongly to the imagination that the prospector may be poor, ragged and hungry, but he is never discouraged. He will incur dangers and endure hardships and privations for which mere "wages" would be no compensation. He may ruefully contrast his meager fare and scant comfort with the comparative luxury of some other mode of life, but he has no inclination to return to the workshop or the farm. Not till he has "struck it" and made his "stake" does he even hope to go back to the dull, plodding, comfortable life of civilization. And even these who have become rich through mining seem to find it impossible to break away from its fascinations.
   The only local questions which are exciting interest here are whether through unjust discrimination in railroad freights our smelters shall be compelled to remove to Pueblo or Denver, and the ever present matter "politics." We, like the Republicans of New York, are suffering the shame and mortification of a defeat, brought about by a combination of open enemies and treacherous friends. Not a word was or could be said, with truth, against the character and fitness of Mr. Campbell, the Republican candidate for Governor, but, as ex-Senator Chaffee favored his nomination and worked hard to secure his election, Senator Hill, merely on account of personal hostility to Chaffee, determined that Campbell should be defeated. With the aid of and by fostering a local prejudice at Denver he was able to accomplish his purpose, although the Republicans have elected the balance of the State ticket and a majority of the Legislature. The feeling against Hill is very bitter and at the first opportunity he will be retired to private life.
A. B. CAPRON.


WASHINGTON LETTER.
Correspondence of THE NEWS
Washington, D. C. Nov. 27, 1882.
   But a few days, full of bustle and preparation, will intervene before Congress will again put in an appearance at the Capital of the nation. Shall it be judicious and popular work that will commend a Republican body, and shame, by contrast, the Democratic House that is to come after; or will it be fate that the Democracy by a pursuit of their favorite tactics of obstruction and filibustering will cause the short session to be spent to little profit to the country, or glory to the Republican party? The country knows too well the nature and mean instinct of the Democracy for all works of obstruction to hope that they will refrain from it the coming winter, when to practice it will throw obloquy on the Republican party, allowing little or nothing to be done, and so leaving the country, as they fondly hope, clamorous for "reform." And it is altogether likely that whatever is done in the way of progress and of good to the country must be done by the Republicans, as it has been done for the last quarter of a century in the face of the opposition of the Democratic party.
   "Blessings brighten as they take their flight." When the country once sees a Republican House about to go, and a Democratic one about to come in, with a strong hint likewise of a probable Democratic Administration to follow it, with all that the word implies, the people will begin to open their eyes to the blessings they have received from the two bright decades of Republican rule and progress and national improvement.
   When the Democrats had the House recently, although they didn't dare to cripple the tariff or disturb the revenue much, they gave the government a little foretaste of the "staring" process, in refusing to make appropriations necessary to run the departments. Reflect how little we have felt the hand of government under the rule of the Republican party from Lincoln down to Arthur. Think of our free domain only one-fifth smaller than all Europe, with her struggling republics—her standing armies and her oppressions of taxation and hardship, and answer whether the mission of Republicanism is ended—and Democracy ought to have a "restoration."
   The sensation of the hour is the Garfield Memorial Fair, which is now attracting thousands to its beautiful and novel sights in its novel temple, the Capitol of the nation. It was certainty a graceful act on the part of the direction to invite specially, along with the "Oldest Inhabitants," the Mexican war veterans, etc,, those old soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland, who composed the " Garfield Guard of Honor," while the dead President lay in state for two days and nights in the rotunda, and mutely and tenderly piloted the streams of humanity in and out through the Capitol, in order and decorum, as they came from near and far to see the last of Garfield in the city of his triumph and his fall. This great fair of the artistic and the curious will no doubt prove a source of great satisfaction to thousands, and add to the Monumental Fund of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland many thousand dollars, enabling them at no very distant day to unveil another statute here to another distinguished comrade, alongside of that of the sturdy General George H. Thomas.
REX.


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