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pense of distribution. Compare that with the 2,000 per cent extortion on the basket of grapes. And the co-operative leagues of England yearly feed 8,000,000 people. That is a cutting out of middlemen, isn't it? Feeding twice as many people as live in New York! England's England's co-operative leagues began sixty-five years ago among some twenty-eight poor weavers who succeeded in saving $5 each in one year, pooled their capital and did a total business of $3,550 the first year. The second year they made profits equal to their original capital. Today, those leagues employ 18,000 people, have 150 telegraphic addresses on their books, sell to members close on to six-hundred-million dollars' worth of produce, and pay back to their shareholders not the extortionate 2,000 per cent. but something over three million dollars, less than half of one per cent. on business done. This, of course, does not show the saving in price to the purchaser.

Mr. Wilson says there will be no bridging of the chasm between grower and eater, producer and consumer, till starva

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tion drives men back to the land. Mr. Hill's prophetic vision foresees only one door of hope-also starvation, pelling higher yields on the land. Many thinkers agree with both big men. Are they right? Will America wait for starvation? She never has yet. She has taken time by the forelock always, and averted the evil. Will she do it in this case? Will some great co-operative organization bridge the chasm between producer and consumer? Reciprocity may bring an era of lower prices; but so long as farmers are flocking from the farm, the relief can be only temporary. Seven million people-Canada's populationcannot make material difference in the cost of feeding 100,000,000 people. Is the giant to be left standing with one foot on the city man's stomach and one foot on the farmer's back, filching from both sides; his warehouses literally bursting with food stored and held back to force prices yet higher; stored and held back till it rots and has to be dumped into the sea? It is for the pecple to give the answer.

CHAMPION MARBLE PLAYERS

BLUE SPRINGS, Mo., boasts of pos

sessing the world's champion marble players. For nearly three years it has been the fad there for the men to play marbles in spare time instead of croquet or horseshoe quoits. The result is an accuracy in shooting that is as marvelous as the shots of an expert billiard player. Withal, Blue Springs doesn't take the game too seriously. The joke is told that the town has men so good that they can't defeat one another; and a favorite story relates that Uncle Dan Stanley, who is seventy-four years old, and Uncle Tom Halloway, who is seventy-five, "lagged from taw for two days" without either contestant winning the advantage of a sixteenth of an inch in the struggle to gain the privilege of claiming the first shot, so the contest had to be declared a draw even before it began.

In this photograph four champions appear: Uncle Dan Stanley, with the gray

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and burned over one-half million acres of land nearly half of which was timber land-and destroyed two hundred and forty million feet of timber.

This represents a loss to the owners of the timber, assuming an average stumpage value of two and one-half dollars per thousand, of about six hundred

stroyed, had been manufactured it would put nearly two and one-half million dollars into circulation. The direct loss, therefore, to the citizens of California was something over three million dollars, to say nothing of the loss due to destruction to watershed cover. The average fire covered 703 acres and took sixty men ten hours to extinguish it.

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As a rule, forest fires are caused by gross carelessness; a Mexican will throw away his half-burned cigarette into the tinder-like grass; a camper will neglect to extinguish the fire over which he broils his bacon, or will foolishly build it against a fallen trunk, rotten to the core, which may smoulder for weeks, like punk, and then start a blaze. Sometimes the fires are caused by sparks from engines used in logging camps or from a passing locomotive, and cases. have been recorded where a fragment of a whiskey flask thrown along the trail has acted as a burning lens, starting destructive grass fires.

It is comparatively seldom that these forest and brush fires are wilfully ignited, yet there are people who are so shortsighted and selfish or so criminally inclined that they will turn a fire demon loose upon the country, which may destroy much property and many human lives before it can be checked.

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THE BEGINNINGS OF A CONFLAGRATION IN THE BRUSH.

This is a true story of one such "fire bug," a man who displayed remarkable cleverness in violating the law, but was finally met by the superior cleverness of the men who protect society from his

sort.

The forest rangers in San Diego County, California, had long been perplexed by a series of fires of mysterious origin. The country thereabouts is well settled and the Forest Reserves consist mainly of hills covered with brush, of no value for timber but very valuable for conserving the rainfall.

Now some of the ranchers in that vicinity did not understand how the brushy growth could be of any use to anyone at all; it sheltered the rabbits and quail that preyed upon their crops, a nuisance and source of loss, and inasmuch as fresh feed would spring up on the burned-over fields to the advantage of their flocks and

herds, they showed no great enthusiasm in co-operating with the fire wardens. Of course, when summoned to help fight a fire they would pitch in and work hard. with shovels and axes-at the rate of twenty-five cents an hour-but when it came to helping the forest rangers by taking out the necessary permits whenever they burned off their own land, or being willing to testify against those who were careless with fire, they showed themselves indifferent if not hostile to the Forest Service.

Among the most persistent of these offenders was a young rancher who appears to have been the victim of what Kipling calls "an exaggerated ego," or as they express it in the Southwest, he was one of those fellows that you can't tell anything. The fact that a regulation existed irritated him so that he would go out of his way to defy it. Several times he had been reprimanded for failure to observe the simple precautions

LENS, OR "BURNING GLASS." FOCUSED OVER MATCHES.

required by law when burning the brush on his place, and his answers had always been defiant.

Webster his name was not Daniel Webster, but it will serve excellently to identify him-was finally threatened with prosecution by the forest supervisor, but he did not cease violating the regulations. These were so simple and easily followed that there seemed no excuse for his ignoring them. He was required to get a permit from the fire warden to burn off his land at a certain time and a few men must be on hand to see that the fire was kept under control. Instead of having four men to look after one fire, it was reported that Webster had sometimes had as many as four fires burning on his place with only one man, himself, to keep them from spreading. He was cornered once and asked why he ran the risk of getting into trouble with the authorities in such a foolish manner.

"Oh, I'll take the chances," he said, "they won't fine me more than $50 if they do catch me, and the feed is worth more than that. Besides I am not going to pay a lot of men to stand around like fence posts and watch a fire!" Which trend of thought showed that Webster considered this Western country the land of the free in its broadest and most unrestricted sense.

However, when the threats of prosecution reached him from headquarters, he apparently ceased his depredations. True, the fires continued in the neighborhood of Jamul Post Office and the fire wardens were kept busy. One con

flagration injured a neighbor's olive orchard and another got loose on the forest reserve and burned over one thousand acres of land before checked by the rangers. But by the time the authorities began to watch him, Daniel Webster was invariably ready to prove an alibi that covered each fire. He would be seen riding across the country on his grey stallion or at work some miles from the origin of the blaze at the time it started, and could bring witnesses to prove it. Sometimes he would be among his friends at the store when attention would be called to a little puff of smoke that meant the beginning of more trouble for the rangers. His alibi was perfect, yet from his previous reputation the fire wardens believed that Webster had something to do with these conflagrations.

One trifling misdemeanor he did admit, not to the authorities but to his neighbor, an old man by the name of Dale, who woke up one morning to find his fence posts blazing from a grass fire. Webster was trying to beat the flames out and when the two of them finally succeeded, the young man said he was sorry the fire had got out of his control and offered to replace the burnt posts.

A few days after that, Forest Ranger John B. Simmons was riding in the neighborhood of Jamul Post Office, and

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looking across the country a mile or so saw a small fire on the Curtiss ranch leased by Webster, and rode over to investigate and help put it out. Nobody seemed to know how it had started and after the ranchers had gone Ranger Simmons carefully went over the burned area but found nothing more suspicious than the prints of a horse's hoofs in an out-of-the-way place. These were not old prints but had evidently been made before the fire, as burned grass filled the depressions. The keen eye of the ranger noted slight malformation, a nick, in one of the hoof prints, and he made a mental note of it.

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CAMPERS ARE NOT ALWAYS CAREFUL ABOUT PUTTING OUT THEIR FIRES.

The next day, the nineteenth of October, 1909, Ranger Simmons once more saw smoke in the same neighborhood just about noon and again rode over in that direction, but was met by Fire Warden Steinmeyer who said there was no hurry as the fire was already under control, being handled by Daniel Webster, Ranger Sears and a couple of ranchers.

It seems that Ranger Sears had seen the fire first and immediately rode out with Fire Warden Steinmeyer to get a

THIS IS WHAT WARDEN STEINMEYER, WHO TRAPPED THE FIREBUG, FIRST SAW.

force of men to fight it. They went first to Webster's ranch house and found him busily digging and apparently unaware of the cloud of smoke just over the ridge behind him. He expressed great surprise but said he was ready to help and mounted his grey stallion to ride over, first taking a pair of pliers out of his hip pocket and throwing them on the ground. Steinmeyer and Webster then hurried toward the fire while Sears rode over to get help from the Strong brothers who lived near by. After summoning them he took a short cut across the ridge and presently saw Steinmeyer and Webster ahead of him, the latter lagging behind and afoot, as he had tied the stallion in a safe place. Evidently Webster was not expecting any observation from the rear, for while he kept his eye on Warden Steinmeyer he would occasionally stop, strike a match and start a small blaze in the dry grass as he walked along.

Sears put his horse to the gallop and took the "fire bug" by surprise, but the young man had a ready excuse; he said he was starting back fires. As the fire had passed on a full half mile to the east, however, and there was a westerly wind blowing, this seemed a rather flimsy pretext to the ranger and he decided to keep a strict watch on the incendiary.

Presently the fire was under control and Steinmeyer rode back and met Ranger Simmons near the point where

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