Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1910 — MEMORIAL FOR JOHN FITCH. [ARTICLE]

MEMORIAL FOR JOHN FITCH.

Thinks Honors In Steam Navigation Should Go to Philadelphia. »The cose of John Fitch is a sad one. He was the pioneer and was success ful. He ran his boat on the Delaware river for months, but he was received with derision. There was then «no man in -this city—probably not in the whole country—with the prophetic vision „of Chancellor Livingston at a later day who possessed the wealth and Influence to Impress the fact of Fitch’s success on the public, the Philadelphia Inquirer says. It argues ill for the state of enlightenment at that time that there was no one who dould foresee the possibilities of steam navigation. If some Philadelphian had arisen at that moment to do what Livingston did subsequently in New York, much of our history might have been changed. We should have had steamboats on the western waters nearly twenty years earlier than we did, the events of the War of 1812 might have been more decided, and Napoleon might have had his steamers to cross the channel from Boulogne. It Is idle to speculate on what might have been, but it is certain that thie city owes something to the memory of Fitch, the prophet whom it rejected. The least that can be- done Id" to rear a monument to his memory and to place a headstone over hie grave. In the library of the Historical Society to-day reposes the combined diary and autobiography oL this man. It Is one of the most pathetic of human documents. It shows the mighty soul of a man struggling against the stupidity and conservatism of his age. We think the Historical Society should take the Initiative In the matter, and we believe that a reasonable sum can be secured tor a suitable memorial to a man who/ was born out of due season, who deserved so much and got the worst