sugar producers of Porto Rico and the Philippines; all get a bonus from our sugar consumers. The sugar planters in Cuba also get a little; but theirs is a small slice, since their sugar is not admitted free, but is charged with almost the whole duty. On the whole, it is a somewhat expensive luxury, this encouragement of a widespread and diversified sugar industry.

SUGAR DUTY SHOULD BE REDUCED

The sugar industry has important fiscal aspects. It does bring in a lot of revenue to Uncle Sam's treasury, and that revenue can not be easily dispensed with. Yet the duty is so high, and bears with such special weight on the masses, that it ought to be cut down substantially. At the least, it ought to be reduced to one cent a pound. Of course the sugar people, from Porto Rico to Louisiana and from Michigan to Hawaii, will protest that the slightest reduction will ruin them. So will the wool-growers, if the wool duty is touched; so will the woolen manufacturers, if the duty on their product is touched. No one wants to ruin them. In all such changes, regard must be had for the vested interests that have grown up under the shelter of the established national policy. But it is impossible to accomplish anything for the consumers unless some one is hurt; and the extent of the hurt will be obstreperously exaggerated by those who feel it.

The effect of all tariff duties—whether on wool, or woolens, or sugar, or lumber, or hides, or the thousand and one tariff ratesis obscured by the fact that they do not take the form of direct levy on the consumer, but the disguised form of an enhancement of the prices that he must pay. To make vivid the actual situation, let us suppose for a moment that the Government adopted a different method of reaching the consumer. Suppose, for example, that the retail grocers were made agents for collecting the sugar tax. Then every householder who bought fourteen pounds of sugarabout a dollar's worth-would be informed by the grocer that his charge was 80 cents (more or less). This would be at present the strict commercial price (at retail). We all know that sugar has been high during the last six months. The strict commercial price a year ago would have been only 55 or 60 cents for the fourteen pounds. But

neither the grocer nor the United States government can modify the world price of sugar. That must be paid by the consumer in any case. Having paid this, the purchaser would be politely informed that there were some other items that he must attend to. He would be asked to step up to a separate cashier's wicket and settle certain additional charges that the Government imposes. First, he would be asked to pay on his modest purchase, an additional ten cents for Uncle Sam's own use, to help in running the Government, in paying salaries and pensions, in building battleships, in maintaining the army, and so on. And after having settled this, the purchaser would be asked to pay still another item-twelve cents more. This second sum, he would be told, was for the benefit of the sugar producers, to be paid over to these persons in the form of a bounty of 12 cents per pound on the sugar produced by them. (From 1890 to 1893 we actually did pay on domestic sugar a bounty outright; there being, during those three years, no duty on sugar.) The purchaser, if he objected on the ground that this was a new thing, would be told that his objection showed great ignorance. The charge would not be a new one-simply the long-existing tax collected in a new way. And if the purchaser became curious and began to ask questions about details, he would be told that the exact effect of his last twelve cents on the sugar producers is a complicated matter. Some of them could certainly get on very comfortably without it. Some of them perhaps need it, in order to keep in the business. Some are farmers in Colorado or Michigan, some are planters in Hawaii and Porto Rico. Some are getting the bounty by a sort of fluke, the legislature never having deliberately meant that they should have it. But then, our customer would be told, this is all part of the grand system of fostering domestic industry. Never mind just how it works or who gets the benefit. It makes us a rich and prosperous country, and you had better pay cheerfully.

Suppose this were done week in and week out, month after month, year after year; every purchaser being called on again and again to make his separate payment for the support of the protected industries-how long would such taxes last?

cardboard kind, of whom it might be said that you had but to open their front door to be in their back yard. Differing from these, Mr. Blankenburg as a reformer possesses length, breadth, and thickness.

Considered personally, Mr. Blankenburg is big, wise, faithful, obstinate for right. He is not at all in love with himself, and lacks egotism and an intriguing talent for design. Mentally, morally, physically, he wants in every element of the mollycoddle. He has a sense of humor, and can tell a joke, and see a joke, and laugh like a storm. His mind is as clean as a woman's.

Aside from certain iron qualities of decision and practical wit, Mr. Blankenburg has the gift of handling men. He is a brilliant orator, of stump and platform kind, thinking like a bullet, talking like a spear. He is one of those uncommon ones who think best and talk best standing on their feet.

Above, I have given you a free-hand sketch of Mr. Blankenburg as, addressing the eye, he graves himself upon the imagination. Coming a stranger to meet him, it is what you will see, what you will think. But the Blankenburg career? There should be a lesson in that. The upgrowing boys should

read it. He has won victory. His life has had success. Beginning poor-he has made himself rich. Obscure-he has drawn to himself celebrity. A stranger in a strange land-he has surrounded himself with friends. Where others have failed, he has triumphed. Where others fell back, he stepped forward. How did he do this? Plainly, he understood the art of living.

Searching for the sermon that should lie in the life-triumph of Mr. Blankenburg, I put the question to one of his friends.

"This," said the friend, "is the Blankenburg theology. 'Be honest-do right-the rest follows. Wrongdoing may endure for a season; but right must in the long run come to the top. Human nature is not built so that roguery can prevail. Honest men must come to their own, no matter the odds against them. There is nothing surer than that. Calumny and thieving may have their run, but they will pass. Nothing can last but truth. It is the law of the universe. Evil by its nature cannot last. Never mind the odds against you, if you are right. Being in the right is more than odds.' There,' concluded the friend, "you have the Blankenburg theology. It is what he has taught; it is what he believes; it is what has brought him honor, riches, place."

Mr. Blankenburg was born sixty-eight years ago in the town of Hillentrup, near Hanover, in the German principality of Lippe-Detmold. He was baptized "Rudolph," and is said to have howled like a heathen throughout the serious ceremony. His father was the Reverend Louis Blanken

burg. The Blankenburgs were neither poor nor rich, and the childhood of "Rudy"as his family called him-while not lapped in luxury, passed unvexed by the howlings of any wolves of want.

TRAINED FOR THE PULPIT

There were ten in the Blankenburg family as they assembled about the Blankenburg dinner-over which Blankenburg père, be sure, failed not to say a German grace-and "Rudy," with seven brothers and sisters, could not complain of loneliness. The eight young Blankenburgs, "Rudy" with the rest, gained their book-knowledge under private tutors and at the public gymnasium. The Reverend Louis, from the beginning, designed "Rudy" for the pulpit. He was fated to disappointment; for as the young Blankenburg neared the pulpit age, his

instinct pronounced in favor of the commercial instead of the religious.

Mr. Blankenburg came to America in 1865. He had just edged his way into his twenty-second year. He headed for Philadelphia, as had Franklin a century and a third before. Like Franklin, too, he stayed and prospered.

BEGAN AT $5 A WEEK

Young "Rudy" couldn't have been handicapped by any overgrown notions, for he took his first step toward fortune as a clerk at five dollars a week. He who would get more than he gives, must give more than he gets. That sounds like a paradox; but it works. Young "Rudy" acted upon this axiom, and all with the excellent result that within one year, his firm made him a traveling salesman, and in five, sent him to Europe as a buyer.

What saith the scriptures? Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing. Young "Rudy" took unto himself a wife. This last was supremely sagacious. Orange blooms are ever flowers of wisdom, and only married men succeed. The Napoleons and Cromwells and Washingtons and Lincolns and Grants were all married. Boys hungering for highest advancement, socially, commercially, politically, must start at the altar. Davy Crockett was won't to say, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." What he should have said is, "Be sure you're married, then go ahead."

Mr. Blankenburg has often spoken of 1875 as the "proudest year of his life." It was the year in which he became a fullblown American citizen.

In 1876, he left the importing outfit, with which he began his commercial life, and opened a business of his own. It grew and broadened. The company still exists as "R. Blankenburg & Co.," although Mr. Blankenburg retired from active relations therewith about two years ago.

In what time he could spare from his business, Mr. Blankenburg took up politics. Like another great publicist, he felt it to be the duty of every citizen to pull at least his weight upon the public rope, and began feeling about for the rope.

As he went pushing his guileless young way into politics, Mr. Blankenburg in the beginning didn't consider the bosses, but looked only at the platform. It didn't require any too many elections to cure him of that. Platforms, as experience shows, are

not of the first importance. Doubtless, they have their value as candidates go climbing into office. They are, however, so much like the platforms of a street car that no one seems to have any use for them once he's aboard. Indeed, commonly the parties themselves, like the traction companies, object to any one's occupying the platform after the car is in motion. The order then is to go inside and sit down.

THE BARKER AND HIS PROMISES

Over at Coney Island, at the mouths of tent and booth and hurdy-gurdy, stand "barkers" reciting the marvels to be witnessed within. Should you pay your money and attend the show, you will be greatly struck by the yawning difference that subsists between the promises of the "barker" and the performance of what mountebanks

Wherein lieth the application? Marry! In this: the "barker," he of leathern lung and throat of brass, but gave you the program, the platform; to which later, the bold free mountebanks within paid no more of performing heed than to the winds that idly blow. Mountebanks and politicians have much in common. Mr. Blankenburg was early in making this discovery. After that-locally, at least he never looked at the platform, but only at the boss.

Ever since he could vote, Mr. Blankenburg has fought the bosses. More than thirty years ago, he nailed his glove to the gates of the machine. That glove is there. to-day. He fought McManes, and Quay, and Durham, and McNichol, and Penrose each as he appeared. They used to bowl him over, but he wouldn't stay bowled. He was up and at their throats again.

Mr. Blankenburg had an idea. An idea is ever a good thing. The Blankenburg idea was that government should be honest.

The honest activities of Mr. Blankenburg were in their way so unusual that even honest folk could not believe but what they cloaked some design. Some said that he had an axe to grind; but a thorough ransack of his surroundings failed to develop such hardware. Others said that he hungered for office; but since he never asked for office, and refused every offer of office, that theory, like the axe-grinding theory, had in the end to be abandoned. Friend and foe, with a last word, were constrained to concede that Mr. Blankenburg possessed no purpose of poli

tics beyond a purpose of good government. After that they gave him up as a simple harebrain, honest, but hopeless. For his part, Mr. Blankenburg, all undismayed, kept boring ahead for good government.

It has been stated that Mr. Blankenburg made a specialty of refusing offers of office. He has been a candidate for two. He was elected city commissioner and he holds his present post of mayor. That, as an officeseeker, is the whole of the Blankenburg offence.

There occurred that which was unique in connection with that Blankenburg city commissionership. The salary was $5,000 a year, and Mr. Blankenburg wouldn't receive it. At the close of his three-year term, he placed the total $15,000 in the hands of the City Trust, with instructions to apportion the income forever equally between the pension funds of the school. teachers, the firemen, and the police.

"Better serve the people than exploit them," said Mr. Blankenburg; and it must be confessed, as a truth of practical politics, that in so saying and doing he stood as lone as Lot's wife.

But thus was it ever with Mr. Blankenburg. When he stumped Iowa for Mr. Harrison, he paid his own expenses. When he fought Boss Quay in every corner of Keystone control, he paid his own expenses. When, as super-cargo, he went with two relief ships to famine-bitten Russia, he paid his own expenses.. There was never a dollar spent by Mr. Blankenburg for Mr. Blankenburg that wasn't a Blankenburg dollar. The man who has helped thousands never accepted help himself.

WILL HE MAKE GOOD?

Well, we shall see what we shall see. In his canvass for the mayoralty, Mr. Blankenburg had but one plank to his platform, but one promise in his mouth. The plank was Good Government; the promise was Good Government. The world is yet to know how that platform will be lived up to, that promise redeemed.

P. S. Mayor Blankenburg is proud of America and Americans. The one fault that he finds with the latter is that it is so difficult to get them to work at their politics in person. You can he says-no more get the everyday American to take a working interest in politics than you can get a rich man into heaven without a suspension of the rules.