Peninsula Enterprise, February 2, 1882

The New Steamboat Company.

Transportation -- Water - Steamboats

Editor of The Enterprise:

We are well informed that there is a project on foot to antagonize the interest of the Eastern Shore Steamboat Company. We do not know the ulterior object of those soliciting subscriptions for this supposed new line of boats, and we do not write this to give any prominence to the undertaking, nor to warn our people against such etherial schemes; (past efforts are too fresh in our minds) -- but to make some plain statements in regard to our present steam transit line.

It is well known that the now company, seeing the undeveloped resources of our county, early in 1866 began the opening up of them by giving us a quick line to the markets that our product naturally tended; and while it is probable that they made money, it is also well known that the earnings have been spent to increase the facilities to accommodate the trade, until by degrees it reaches out its long arms of encouragement to our people, until every section of our Bay Shore has been embraced.

Now, for what good should we join any seeming filibustering party? Is there any guarantee that this new line will be permanently established for our good? It is well understood that the freights of the present line are handled at satisfactory rates; at least we understand that the company has acceded to rates asked for by the farmers. There can be no complaint that the increasing traffic made by this farseeing corporation cannot be accommodated. There can be no hue and cry that it is a monopoly, if we understand the true meaning of the word. Its freight charges and passenger facilities compare favorably with the swiftest and best equipped line.

The argument that because it is a single line, and therefore a monopoly, is that of a school boy or a sore-head -- that it can be bettered is equally trifling. We have no stock in the E. S. Steamboat Company other than that of every shipper of farm products, and we have yet to hear of a well grounded complaint of exhorbitant charges or lack of duty upon the part of their officers and agents, that have not been promptly corrected.

For these reasons and others, we unsuspecting men should be well advised before we put money in this new switch-off; that it is not the out-growth of some envious people, for imaginary personal gain at our expense.

CITIZEN.

About Small-pox.

Infrastructure -- Public - Government : Public healthInfrastructure -- Public : SchoolsDisease

Editor of The Enterprise:

Twice through your columns has the attention of your readers been called to the non-action of the School Board in reference to vaccination of pupils attending the public schools. At the adoption of the present system, the law was mandatory, requiring all children to be vaccinated before entering the schools. A subsequent Legislature more wisely allowed a discretion in this matter to the School Board of any city or county. I do not think you will find an instance where any district board, in this county, has ever failed or refused to enforce the law against contagious disease being introduced into the schools; certainly in no neighborhood where small-pox has at any time existed, have the school authorities been behind other citizens in using every effort to circumscribe the disease and prevent even the danger of its spreading. The schools have in every instance been promptly closed, when situated near any infected section, and pupils from that section strictly prohibited from attending other schools. Nor have such closed schools been reopened until the sanitary committee of the neighborhood has pronounced all possible danger at an end. Nor has there ever been a single case of small-pox propagated through the schools. So much for the past -- now for the present. There is no authenticated case of small-pox in this county at this time. We were never freer from contagious diseases during winter, except for measles, and that is now in a very mild form. Whence, then, this scare? When men take counsel from their fears, their judgments are not unusually in the very best condition for wise and judicious action. Think before you act is not to be despised. And now, before the School Board is longer arraigned at the bar of public opinion for assumed misfeasance in office, would it not be well to inquire if small-pox exists in the county? If so, in what locality, and to what extent? And if it is necessary to subject the patrons of the public schools to the expense and inconvenience of vaccination, and no one else? Now, when it is remembered that for less than a moity of legal infants in the county are in the public schools, may it not occur, even to M.D., in his terrible fright, that some little danger may possibly exist elsewhere? Then, again, by what process of reasoning does M.D. arrive at the conclusion that small-pox is more apt to originate in public schools than elsewhere? Can M.D. point to a single instance in the past, in this county, where this disease has ever originated in these schools? It may perhaps be a wise precaution for all persons to be vaccinated in any neighborhood where small-pox may make its appearance; but in the entire absence of the disease it seems worse than folly, that all children attending the public schools in the county, should be arbitrarily compelled to be inoculated with the, too often, impure vaccine virus obtained from the cities, or perhaps, the not less impure scab taken from the human body. Some quite eminent physiologists have regretted that the discovery of Dr. Jenner had not stopped at the virus taken immediately from the she kine. We repeat, for the sake of calming the nerves of M.D., that should the necessity exist, the School Board will not be slow in taking all sanitary precautions that the time or the occasion may seem to demand.

ONE OF THE SCHOOL BOARD.