SIXTEEN PAGES
'OVERS THE MORNING FIELD ONTHE LOWER COLUMBIA
n PUBLISHES FULL AfSOCIATID PRESS REPORT
33rd YEAR. NO. 128
ASTORIA, OREGON, SUDAY, JUNE 7, 1908
PRICE FIVE CENTS
SECOND SECTION
THE GRAND OPERA
Few Operatic Compositions
Written by Americans
LOWER PRICES FOR OPERAS
Hew York and Boiton Opera Com
panics Will Emphaaixa Native Tal
ent Opera Will Become in Im.
personal Institution.
BOSTON, June 6. The dawning
of a new era in American operatic
music it at hand. The coming years,
it ' safe to My, will wee a remarkable
improvement in the quality and num
ber of production by our musicians
and composers. Ileretafore the field
has been a difficult one to enter, since
the success of an opera hat depended
largely upon its having been produced
successfully abroad. Not only com
posers but aspirants for career as
opera singers have thought it neces
sary to have a foreign training and
introduction before endeavoring to
achieve success in America,
But now conies the establishment
of permanent grand opera of an
Americanized character, furthered by
an agreement made between the two
great opera companies of Boston and
New York to do all in their power to
raise the standard of opera to the
hliest possible point and still to
ep it on a reasonable basis in order
at the general public may have the
encfit of the best works in existence
and to be produced at a price within
the reach of all our pocketbooks.
The new opera house in Boston will
shortly be started and, through the
generosity of Ebcn D. Jordan and the
! hearty co-operation ot many promin
ent business men of Boston and the
viennty, the success of its future is
assured.
This will afford to music lovers
throughout the country unlimited oc
casions in which to enjoy both the
good old operas that have heretofore
flattened their purses and made more
than two or three performances a
season out of the question and such
new ones by American composers as
shall seem to the managements to be
worthy of production. Henry Rus
sell, the present manager of the San
Carlo Opera Company, who will di-
iwt tlir nprforniiinecs of the Boston
C)cra Company, is very enthusiastic
on the subject of opera for the bene
fit of the public at large, and not of
tthc well-to-do alone. Mr. Dippcl of
the Metropolitan Opera Company in
New York fully agrees with his views
and it is expected they will do every
thing possible to help the cause of
good music in this country. Mr.
Russell says:
"A great step forward has been
taken in the operatic history of
America. Mr. Dippel and his co
workers have demonstrated that they
will not use opera as a means of com
mercial gain or personal notoriety.
Their policy is to open their doors
to every influence which can develop
and widen the operatic - field in
America.
"Our executive committee not only
share in this policy, but they actually
came together with this end in view.
One excellent outcome of our com-
tiination will be to impress on the i
minds of the American public that
operatic enterprise is not dependent
on the notoriety of one man, who
seeks to thrust his own personality
into more prominence than the enter
prise he represents. Opera will now.
because the same serious impersonal
insitution here that it is in Italy,
France and Germany, where the nam
ing of an opera company after any
one man is unheard of,"
This national errand ooera. as it
may be called, bids fair to make our
system of training as good in every
particular as that to be found abroad,
and undoubtedly better in many es
sential reBpects. The Boston opera
house is to be located near the centre
of musical activities in this country,
Jin close proximity to the home of the
fBoston Symphony Orchestra and the
New England Conservatory of Music,
from wh'ch it will draw for many of
the minor roles. The Conservatory
is completing arrangements for a
school of grand opera to be conduct
ed in connection with its present in
stitution, and the members will be
given every opportunity for a trying
out on the stages of the Boston and
New York houses. Ralph L. Fland
ers, at present manager of the Con
servatory, who has also been chosen
to serve as general manager of the
new opera company, has expressed
himself as follows:
"When the plans are carried out
and a permanent opera is established
under the conditions outlined in the
plan of organisation of the company,
it will be one of tthe greatest steps,
if not the greatest, for the artistic
advancement of music yet taken in
America.
"With the building of an opera
house and the establishing of a per
manent season of grand opera, and a
school of grand opera in connection
with the opera house, young Ameri
cans will have an equal, if not better
opportunity for the beginning of
operatic careers than they now get
by going abroad.
"It is part of the plan to encour
age native talent, both creative and
executive, and through the co-operation
'of the opera organization with
the opera school those who pssess
sufficient talent will have an oppor
tunity to make a debut, and, best of
all, in their own country."
Thus, many opportunities will be
presented to young singers who, lack
ing the necessary means for study
abroad, might otherwise be obliged
to content themselves with teaching
or with comparatively, limited local
fame. Foreign study has always had,
disagreeable elements for American
students. The cost of living and ex
pense of training is high, and the
prevailing idea that most American
music students have millionaire
fathers back of them is conducive
many times to impositions and an
noyances. There is not the atmos
phere of homelike comfort and con
venience in the crowded quarters of
Berlin, Lcipzic, Milan, Paris and the
other musical centers of Europe,
which is to be found in the dormitor
ies and private residences offering
pleasant homes and desirable as
sociations to the students of our
American institutions. Of much im
portance is the fact that the youthful
singer or player is not thrown in
contact here with the Bahcmian cle
ment that inevitably accompanies life
in the foreign student quarters, and
which has as harmful an effect upon
general health as upon morals. The
food which the foreign student has to
put up with, unless she is unusually
well provided for financially, and the
general custom in tthe European
cities of drinking light, cheap wines
with the meals, does much to impair
the constitution, if not the voice itself.
All these facts are tending more and
more each year to induce the young
people of our country to obtain their
education at home.
Of good musicians we have many,
and some of them have written note
worthy operas, although heretofore
there has been little inducement to an
American musician to try his hand at
writing for the operatic stage.
Among the operas thus far produced
perhaps the best known are "The
Pipe of Desire," written by Frederick
S. Converse, performed for the first
time in Jordan Hall of the New Eng
land Conservatory of Music in 1905;
"Leonora" by W. H. Fry; "Rip van
Winkle" by George F. Bristow, and
"The Scarlet Letter" by Walter Dam
rosch. Other noted writers, some of
whom would undoubtedly have pro
duced grand operas if there were
more inducement to do so, have been
Edward MacDowell, whose sad af
fliction and untimely death in the
very prime of his musical productivity
have caused widespread sorrow;
George W. Chadwick, head of the
New England Conservatory of Music
and director of the Conservatory
orchestra author of "Sinfonietta"
which has been a brilliant feature of
the Boston Symphony Orchestra's
concerts recently, and of many other
varied compositions; Horatio Parker
of Yale University; Arthur Foote;
Edgar Stillman Kelley; Mrs H. H. A.
(Continued on page 10)
THE YANKEES' PUSH
Nearly Three Centuries of Trade
in West Indies
DEVELOPMENT OF CARRIERS
New England States Commanded
Traffic at First But Gradually Re
linquished it to New York and New
Orleans.
SALEM, June 6.-In 1638, less
than two decades after the Pilgrims
landed on Plymouth Rock and less
than one after the settlement of Bos
ton, Yankee enterprise began to seek
intercourse, for purposes of profit, in
the West Indies. The voyage of the
little ship "Desire" which went to
New Providence and Tortuga and re
turned to Salem laden with cotton,
tobacco, salt and negroes, was the be
ginning of a long list of trade vent
ures to and in the tropical islands
undertakings continued today in such
projects as Henry M. Flagler's sea-
going railroad, annexing Cuba by way
WIS
m vrViU&k'ynTrtY'fj.zwii s. r?.
OLD TRADING WAYS AND THE NEW.
Yankee Enterprise Once Sent Little Craft to the West Indies Now
Steamships and Trolley Cars Have Transformed Porto Rico and Other
Islands. ...
of Key West, the immense business
in raising and marketing tropical
fruits which the United States Comp
any, a characteristic constructive in
dustry built up in Jamaica and else
where by Cape Cod Yahkees, and the
various electrical properties lately in
stalled, such as the trolley systems of
Porto Rico, the electric light and
power company of Key West and the
telephone plants which are beginning
to save the time of slow-moving
Spanish Americans.
Romance and profit-seeking reality
have been constantly interwoven in
these 270 years of trade relation be
twen New England and the West
Indies. The story has never been
fully told. Numerous facts, for in
stance, never heretofore published,
regarding the earlier featuers of these
activities of pioneering New England
have just been brought out in a mon
ograph which the Essex Institute of
Salem is about to publish on the
"Derbys of Salem" by Robert E. Pea
body. This investigator, a young
man in pursuance of a Harvard degree
has had access to an immensely valu
able collection of old papers and let
ters, and reproduces some of them.
In all the New England adventur
ing in West and East Indies no fam-
ily had a more important part than
that played by the Salem Derbys
whose fortunes began to be establish-
ed when in 1739 young Richard Derby
went out as mester of the "Skoner
Ranger" to the French West India ,
Island of St, Martins where he sold
his cargo for 2178 4s. od. This !
representative of the spirit of old
time trading, like most of those who
set sail in those days from the North
Atlantic ports, went in violation of
the navigation act of 1695. But in
fractions of the law only added spice
to the adventure. The hardy New
Englanders gladely accepted the
chance of being overhauled cither by
an English man of war or by Captain
Kidd, Blackboard or another of the
bloodthirsty pirates. Neither did
they mind the necessity of being
ready to appear in any harbor flying
the flag of almost any nation as when
this same Captain Derby at a later
date recommended to one of his ship
masters that he go among the French
by "making your Vessel a Dutch bot
torn." Graft, too, evidently was ramp
ant and must have been connived at
in spite of Puritancial notions, for the
Salem trader added "Also Secure
I permit so as for you to trade there
the next Voyage which you may Un
doubtedly do by your Factor & a lit
tie greasing some others."
These Derby papers, in brief, throw
a strong light upon the pioneering
character which has made New Eng
land people leaders in so many great
industrial movements, developing the
maritime interests and retaining them
while they were distinctly profitable,
steam railroads until diminishing divi
dends counselled reinvestment, and
to-day the big electrical propositions
such as are involved in the telephone,
the trolley car and electric lighting
4
MWltir
and power facilities in every part of
the world. The New Englanders got
into the trade because they found it
lucrative. What the profits must have
been can be canjectured from the fact
that the insurance on a single vayage
was often from 10 to 15 per cent, of
the value of the cargo and sometimes
ran as high as 23 per cent. The risks
were large, but those who persistently
followed the traffic laid the founda
tions of great fortunes. Elias Has-
ket Derby, son of Captain Richard"
Derby, died in 1799 leaving a fortune
of more than one million dollars, one
of the largest amassed in North
America up to that time.
Not all of it, however, was gained in
strict trade. There came a time dur
ing the Revolution when it proved
more profitable to fit out privateers
and "letters of marque" to prey on
British traders than to pursue the ord
inary course of shipping down to Bar
badoes or Jamaica carrying fish, lum
ber, cereals and rum.- Even before
the war straight commerce had be
come too perilous to be satisfactory
to the merchants as was shown by a
letter of Richard Derby's under date
of May 9, 1775, in which he said:
lhere hath not been as yet any
stopping of ye trade, so I would have
you get a ioa(j 0f molasses as good
ai1d cf,eap and as quick as you can
anc proceed home. If ye have not
soat an(j yi markets are bad where
-s-------s------
(Continued on page 10)
TUNNEL FOR SHIPS
New York's Novel Plan
Ocean Liners
for
DOOM OF THE BUCKET-SHOP
Women Organizing to Fight Against
Receiving Suffrage 'Protest Against
Uncle Sam's Custom Inspection-
Champion Medicine Taker Dead.
NEW YORW, June 6.-While New
York already has, either built or pro
jected, about all the ordinary variet
ies of tunnels, a decidedly novel pro
ject in this line has just been plan
ned and is being pushed vigorously.
This is a scheme for a ship tunnel to
be carried under the Palisades of the
Hudson to connect the river with the
city of Passaic on the river of the name
name in New Jersey. Passaic, al
though twelve miles from Manhattan
at present, would thus become a sea
port and the plans for the proposed
tunnel call for an underground water
way that would accommodate all but
the largest ocean steamships. The
proposal is put forward primarily to
afford better shipping facilities for
manufacturing plants which are being
driven out of the present city limits
by the growing cost of real estate
and the fact that sites with direct
water or rail connection are no longer
to be had here. It is a striking indi
cation of the growth of New York's
commerce that although the harbor
frontage is more than four hundred
miles in extent the pinch of conges
tion in dock facilities is beginning to
be seriously felt. Vast plans for the
enlargement of the available water
area, such as the deepening of Ja
maica Bay and the construction of the
New Jersey ship tunnel must be car
ried out, say the experts, or else New
York must lose her present com
mercial and manufacturing suprem
acy. The possibility of adding to the
other experiences of an ocean voyage
a trip in a brilliantly lighted submar
ine tunnel at the New York end of
the journey is one that may be reali
zed within the next years.
While the right over race-track
gambling in this state has attracted
attention all over the country another
anti-gambling measure favored by
Governor Hughes and regarded by
many persons as of even greater im
portance, although the struggle for
its enactment has been less spectacu
lar, has just been placed on the stat
ute books. This is the law against
bucketshops which the Governor
signed a few days ago and which will
make it impossible for this swindle,
operating under the guise of legiti
mate trade, to continue in this state.
All over the country in fact a relent
less fight is being waged against the
bucketshops. Vigorous action by
police authorities has put many of
them out of business. The post of
fice department is depriving them of
the privileges of the mails as fast as
evidence of the nature of their busi
ness can be obtained and the Chicago
Board of Trade has been carrying on
a vigorous campaign against them in
the middle west which was perhaps
their most profitable field. The legiti
mate exchanges have an added rea
son, for fighting the bucketshops for
the latter have made it a habit to steal
the quotations of the former by wire
tapping or other illegal means and
much of the prejudice against all
dealing in stocks and grain has come
from tthe confusion on the part of
the public between the operations of
the legitimate exchanges and those
of the bucketshop. The method of
the latter is simplicity itself. It
charges a commission, usually.
double that of the legitimate broker,
and except in rare cases executes
none of its customers' orders. It is
a gambling enterprise out and out
with the heavy commission always
working for the bucketshop. In the
palmy days of a few years ago men
became millionaires in a few months
by operating these sure-thing games
and investigation shows that most
of the defaulters and bankers whose
downfall has been attributed to "spec
ulation" were victims of these swind
lers. It is estimated here that the
wiping out of bucketshops through
out the country will mean the saving
of millions of dollars besides remov
in gone of the greatest sources of
prejudice against legitimate opera-tions.
The suffragettes, some of them im
ported from England, who have been
providing more or less entertain
ments for New Yorkers recently with
their meetings, outdoor rallies and
parades, all part of the rebellion
against man's alleged oppression of
woman, are no longer to go unchal
lenged. A great many American wo
men apparently have no sympathy
with the demand for votes and the
outcry against their present state.
At any rate an organization has been
formed here which includes a large
number of prominent women and
which is planning a vigorous opposi
tion to the suffragette movement The
leaders of the latter declare that the
new campaign is being secretly aided
and encouraged by the men and point
out that most of those engaged in it
are handicapped by the possession of
husbands. The anti-suffragists In
sist that they represent the real senti
ments of the great majority of women
who do not want the ballot and in
tend to let the fact be known. They
are planning a series of lectures and
meetings to begin in the fall at which
they hope to show that this is the
case. Now that he has found a
champion to defend him from the at
tacks of the suffragettes, mere man is
left free to devote his attention to
business, politics, golf fcnd; similar
minor affairs. ' ,
Now that the tide of European
travel is approaching its flood the
usual number of complaints from
travelers as to the needless ill treat
ment they suffer from the inquisi
torial methods of American customs
inspectors are beginning to be heard.
Stories of enforced payment of duties
on articles of value purchased in the
United States which the owners have
neglected to register before leaving
the country are common and are
matched by other stories of damage
to costly fabrics by rough handling
and to the owners' feelings by the
piers. The greatest source of com
plaint is not against the manner in
which it is conducted and the attitude
of the inspectors who treat every per
son as a probable smuggler until he
or she can prove the contrary. In no
other country in the world it is point
ed out, not even in Russia, are per
sons against whom there is no ground
for suspicion treated as they are by
Uncle Sam's representatives. How
much better they perform this dis
agreeable task abroad is told in a
striking way by Dr. Henry C. Row
land in his description of a trip across
Europe by motor boat in the cur
rent Appleton's. On arriving at
Paris the writer and his companions
were approached by two extremely
polite customs representatives who
asked if the travelers carried any con
traband. On being assured that the
only articles were a few cigarettes
for personal use the inspectors polite
ly raised their hats and departed. In
New York the procedure would have
been first to make the travelers swear
to a statement of their possessions
and then to search their trunks, or
possibly to go through their pockets
and make them strip, just to show
that the sworn declaration was not
believed.
A record-of a sort-in reporting
election returns was made last week
when William R. Hearst, on board an
ocean liner, received by wireless re
ports of the recount of votes in his
long drawn out fight to prove that he
was elected Mayor of New York in
1905. Two years and a half in report
ing voting results puts the Metropolis
a long way behind the most back
ward of back country districts in this
respect. At the rate at which the re
count is progressing it is estimated
that something like two years will be
required for its completion in case
all the ballot boxes are opened. This
will carry it well beyond the expira
tion of the present mayoralty term so
that Mr. Hearst is likely to receive
establishes his claim.