six o'clock
Our Loathed but Esteemed Contemporary No one remembers a time when there were not two newspapers in our town -- generally quarrelling with each other . Though musicians and doctors and barbers are always jealous of their business rivals , and though they show their envy more or less to their discredit , editors are so jealous of one another , and so shameless about it , that the profession has been made a joke . Certainly in our town there is a deep-seated belief that if one paper takes one side of any question , even so fair a proposition as street-paving , the other will take the opposing side . Of course , our paper has not been contrary ; but we have noticed a good many times -- every one in the office has noticed it , the boys and girls in the back-office , and the boys and girls in the front-office -- that whenever we take a stand for anything , say for closing the stores at six o'clock , the General swings the _ Statesman _ into line against it . If he has done it once he has done it fifty times in the last ten years ; and , though we have often felt impelled to oppose some of the schemes which he has brought forward , it has been because they were bad for the town , and perhaps because , even though they did seem plausible , we knew that the unscrupulous gang that was behind these schemes would in some way turn them into a money-making plot to rob the people . We never could see that justification in the _ Statesman _ 's position . To us it seemed merely pigheadedness .