Bounce Him!

The Pittsburg, Pa., Observer, is an organ of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Its columns are devoted to the interests of that body, at least such is the presumption. If the presumption is' right, then the Hierarchy in question had better bounce the Editor in charge. They can do so none too quick. If he is allowed, to continue, their interests will look like the proverbial hen that went through a Kansas cyclone.

When the Roman Catholic Czolgosz assassinated President McKinley, the Editor of the “Observer” did not have common sense enough to handle the question properly, but took it up in a way that brought down like a pile of bricks over its ears a torrent of facts whose rehearsal before the public did its Hierarchy everything but good. He started by jauntily taking Johann Most as his authority that Czolgosz was not and could not be a Catholic, and armed with, so interesting a piece of Mostian information, he proceeded to impute Czolgoss to the Socialists, incidentally also to the American Public School System. All of which raised up in the memory of the public recollections about Agoucillo, Bresci, Santos, Lucchini notoriously Roman Catholics and homicidal Anarchists. — facts not at all to the interest of the “Hierarchy,” and which a discreet Editor would not have stirred up.

Proceeding along such tactful lines, the Editor of the “Observer" now burns his fingers—and, along with them, those of his “Hierarchy—on the Belgium troubles.

The public press has of late been full of articles on those troubles. The sensational headlines over them has secured their being read. In this way the public has become pretty well informed upon the fact that the masses of Belgium are clamoring for the ballot, and that the power that resists the demand is the Clerical or Roman Catholic party. The Editor of the "Observer" thereupon again takes up the cudgels for his "Hierarchy” which, it must be admitted is put in a bad light. But how does he go about it? In his usual clumsy, boomerang-starting style.

He says that nobody should be deceived by the demand for unrestricted suffrage in Belgium, and he proceeds to explain why: "behind that demand are others that will lead to the overthrow of the State, the church and the home.” In other words, because the Belgian workers have secret hankerings for certain “very bad things,” therefore their demands for a other and very good thing, the ballot, should be, and is rightly denied by the Clerical party. The reasoning of the Editor of the "Observer" may also imply that the ballot itself is a very bad thing and should be put on the "Index Expurgatorious," along with the American Public School System.

Bounce him, gentlemen of the Hierarchy! That Editor is an “enfant terrible” in your household. He’ll yet give you dead away!