LAST December the people of the

City of Los Angeles voted in favor of establishing a newspaper, to be owned and operated by the city, and on April 17th the first number of the "Municipal News" made its appearance and was distributed to the citizens, free, to the number of 60,000 copies. The $36,000 per annum appropriated by the tax-payers for the purpose of issuing the paper is accepted by the manager as representing paid up subscriptions to that amount, so no direct charge is made for the interesting twelve-page weekly which is designed to tell the citizens just what is being done with their money paid for city taxes, and just what their servants, the city officials, are doing.

The editor presents his paper as a weekly report to the stockholders of that corporation known as the City of Los Angeles, and in order that it shall not be an organ of any party or administration, the columns are thrown open to each party which has received a minimum percentage of the total

vote at the previous election. Thus

there are at present five parties represented in each issue, a column being supplied by each county chairman. Ordinances which are to come before the people or the

council are also

discussed in the
"Municipal News,"
arguments both for
and against being placed
side by side.

The local merchants have responded liberally to the invi

tation to advertise in the new venture, and the amount received from that source will be used to improve the paper and increase the number of copies issued. A standard so high that few newspapers would maintain it, is set by the "News" in receiving advertisements; all business that is in the slightest degree questionable is barred, and the quack, the wildcat promoter, and the liquor dealer cannot buy his way into the advertising

pages.

The editor and general manager of this unique publication is Robert E. Rinehart, a man of wide newspaper and magazine experience.

Mr. Rinehart was born thirty-four years ago in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a graduate of Princeton. He was on the staff of the "Newark News," the "New York Sun," and later edited the "Home Magazine," so that he has seen the publishing business from various angles. The appearance of his

paper indicates that he is making good, and the comments of the taxpayers impress one with the thought that they are well satisfied with the way their newspaper appropriation is put to use. A forward step in honestly catering to the needs of the public in the matter of news evidently has been taken by the city t Los Angeles. Fi seems to be an unbied way of presenting the truth of giving all interests an e chance.

IF

THE YOUNGEST
POSTMASTER

F the average Boston girl were in a home where she could look for a hundred miles and not see a human habitation, nor even a tree, she would think it a rather lonesome place.

Miss Jean Manassa, of the remote little settlement of Manassa, Wyoming, Bostonborn, until recently lived under these conditions, and moreover had the real distinction of being the young

est "postmaster" in the United States. Her first essay at conducting Uncle Sam's business was in a tiny store away out on the plains, with cowpunchers, ranchmen and hunters for patrons. So efficiently did she carry on her work that the Government honored her by giving her a post office of her own and naming it after the fascinating young official.

In a letter she wrote: "From my store and post office you can't see a tree. One can look for one hundred miles into the mountains and see them covered with snow. I often think of the many crowded cities and then look out at the acres and acres one can have for just living on it."

Under such conditions a girl must have courage, pluck, and initiative. The

late postmaster of Manassa possesses all these in a marked degree. She rapidly adapted herself to her Western environment and became almost as much at home in the saddle as is any cowboy of the plains. She found, in the wild. sweep of the winds across the cacti-dotted plains, in the cry of the coyote, in the bark of the prairie dog, a companionship that permits of no loneliness, even in the vast open stretches of Wyoming. The very breath of life that one seems to take in with every gulp of air, the exhilarating gallops, the feeling that one is free, independent of the turmoil, of the keen competition of existence in the city, the plains gave her.

One can pass over the counter a bolt of goods or a pound of sugar several times a day, sort the mail, distributing the various pieces according to names in the two or three dozen pigeon holes allotted for the purpose, without the work's ever proving either fatiguing or monotonous.

Miss Manassa abandoned her store and postmastership recently for another vocation- that of marriage.

T

HIS story has to do with the most important event in the history of the Du Pont family, whose name has been known for generations to every man in this country that ever carried a rifle and to every boy that ever loaded up an old musket to go out and shoot ducks. For over one hundred years the members of that family have been making gunpowder on the banks of the historic Brandywine, in the State of Delaware, and, incidentally, they have been making money-heaps of it. For whenever this country has gone to war, it has first gone

to the Du Ponts and contracted with them for the fulminating force to project its bullets and cannon balls into the camp of the enemy. These contracts have made

the Du Ponts' coffers heavy with ducats. Nobody knows how rich they are, but their wealth is enormous.

The good folk down in Wilmington, Delaware, will tell you that the Du Ponts have made the town and the State. They employ more people than any other powder manufacturers in the world, and Wilmington, being the center of their activities, has reaped goodly benefits from them in an industrial way. The Du Pont skyscraper is the pride of the town and Du Pont money is building a big hotel in the place which, though it has nearly 100,000 inhabitants, has been making shift in its slow way with an old wartime caravansary with a mansard roof and papered bathrooms.

To repeat, the Du Ponts have done a

great deal for Delaware in the industrial line, but they have done nothing very conspicuous for the State in any other way, though their private charities have been considerable.

When, two years ago, he arrived at the age of forty-seven, Thomas Coleman Du Pont, the president of the great powder company, a man of many millions with a good reputation and a bad digestion, perhaps fearing that he might not live many years longer and doubtless because he really is a good fellow and a philanthropist at heart, determined to do something big for the people of his State and for the glory of the Du Pont name while he was yet alive. At first he thought of building an elaborate memorial fountain in Wilmington. But that was not a large enough benefaction to satisfy his philanthropic spirit. Then he thought of a hospital and after that of a manual training school. Having been

in the Boston Institute
of Technology and come
out a very good engineer,
the training school idea

was the one which he most
favored. He was still re-
volving this latter proj-
ect in his mind when
one day while out in his
automobile bumping
over a rutty road in
central Delaware, his
eye took in the dismal
stretch of highway
ahead and an inspira-
tion seized him.

525

his name indelibly across the map of his State.

Coleman du Pont is a man who acts quickly. Having conceived the idea of the state-long boulevard, he immediately began to interest influential people in the project. The assembly was in session. and he went to leading legislators and asked them if they would put through a bill that would enable him to make the gift of the great highway to the public. The members liked the idea and consented to act. And so the Coleman du Pont Road, Incorporated, came into being in accordance with an act authorizing any boulevard company which would comply

with certain conditions, to con

struct a highway from the southern to the northern boundary of the State. Chief among these conditions was that such a company should give to the people of Delaware, free and clear of any encumbrance, a road for vehicular travel from one end of the State to the other on as nearly a straight line as was practicable.

"What this State wants is good roads," he declared, "and I'll put my money into them instead of into those other things which after all would be of no benefit to the people outside of Wilmington. build the straightest, the widest and the best road in the country and it shall reach from one end of the State of Delaware to the other."

I'll

And verily it was a big idea in the benefaction line and an original one, for no multimillionaire, anxious to leave a nonument to himself, had ever written

Immediately the eyes of the leading public men of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia became focused upon this great and unique project.

"If this fine boulevard is to run through Delaware," thought the Pennsylvanians, "why not extend it right through from Wilmington to Philadelphia and then on to the New Jersey border?" This idea spread through Quaker-land and so popular is it today that there is no doubt that before the completion of the Du Pont boulevard the steam rollers will be trundling on a broad, smooth right-of-way through Penn's Woods and down to the Delaware line. And if the Southern people take it up, as they say they will, there will be a new and more peaceful cry of "On to Richmond!"

We of ampler States are always likely

to look upon Delaware as a little vest-pocket affair, only a half-size larger than Rhode Island. And so it is comparatively. A visiting Texan once bragged that he had walked across the State of Delaware before breakfast, which might easily have been done, as there are places where it is not more than twelve miles broad. The State has but three little counties and a population of only 202,000, the smallest save that of Nevada and Wyoming. But it has length if not breadth, so that there is a chance for a fairly straight road over one hundred miles long within its boundaries. This road Coleman du Pont is going to build. In fact, he is already building it, and, judging by the solidity of that portion already graded it is going to last a good

many years, with no very great annual expenditure for necessary repairs.

As soon as the boulevard act had been passed by the Assembly and approved by the Governor, Mr. Du Pont began the preliminary surveys for the road, taking the field himself and acting for a time as his own chief engineer. Now Du Pont is a man of ideas. Not only is he the first man to get into his head the project of building and giving away a hundred miles of solidly constructed highway, but he is also the first man to join the lines of a survey by skyrocket and parachute signals and the first man to use for survey work a particular kind of motor campwagon, so devised as to spread its white wings out over a