N these days we spell Efficiency with a capital. And as we believe that business men, all, should be public servants, the express companies are receiving a little attention from the Inter-state Commerce Commission.

The intent is to have the Commission fix rates for the express companies, the same as it does for the railroads.

There is a very great difficulty to be met here, and it seems doubtful whether the Inter-state Commerce Commission will be able to deal with the proposition.

The thing is so intricate, and so many alleys are open for the concealment of costs, that our friends on the Inter-state Commerce Commission will undoubtedly simply throw up their hands and drop the whole matter, gently pigeonholing it.

The express companies got their foothold before post-office free delivery came, and thus had an excuse for being.

But now the fact is that the express companies are parasites on the railroads and on the people. They are doing the business that the post-office, coöperating with the railroads, could do without them, and do better and at less expense.

A good deal of the capital stock of the express companies is owned by railroad men, which doubles the complexity of the situation for the Inter-state Commerce Commission.

There are seven of these principal express companies, and in eight thousand cities of America, from two to seven of these express companies have offices.

They pay the railroads a commission out of the amounts that they receive, and often three or four express companies will come in for their share of carrying a forty-cent package.

The express companies meet the competition of the Post-office Department on fourpound packages. They also meet the secondclass rate in certain zones. Above four pounds, their rates are simply arbitrary.

According to the official reports given out by the express companies, their total capital is $27,000,000. Actual inventory would show, however, only $10,000,000 worth of property.

The amount of yearly business is $132,

000,000.

Of this, $56,000,000 goes for operating

expenses.

Sixty-four million is paid to the railroads for transportation. The net yearly profit, divided among the stockholders of the express companies, is $12,000,000.

The yearly profits of the express companies more than equal the total value of their property.

Their chief asset is their grip on the community.

It is admitted by the managers of the express companies that a large percentage of the $56,000,000 required for operating expenses goes for bookkeeping and the adjustment of payments to the railroads, with the added cost, of course, of duplicate offices in a great many cities, which offices could be eliminated if the business were combined under one management.

About five years ago, a scheme was on foot for an express trust. The whole matter was very simple, and could have been carried out, and one express company have done the business. The principal objection was that the excessive profits would then be more apparent to the people at large, and a universal protest would undoubtedly follow. And so, after considerable agitation and preliminary work, the matter was dropped.

There is only one solution that seems prac

tical, and that is for the United States government to take up the subject of reorganization of the express companies under one management and combine the business with that of the Post-office Department. In degree, now, the Post-office Department has the plant for operating express business.

In order not to wipe out property rights,

the Government would have to buy out the stockholders. Although the inventory shows $10,000,000, yet an investment of $40,000,000 would be required to shut off all talk of confiscation. This amount would be market value. It would appease the stockholders, satisfy the demands of justice, and could easily be financed in Washington.

We could issue bonds to the extent of $40,000,000 at three per cent, and the bonds would be quickly taken by the people, and undoubtedly, in a great many instances, the holders of express stock would be willing to sell their holdings to the Government, taking United States bonds in payment.

The express companies see the handwriting on the wall, but they are not going to relinquish the juicy graft unless they have to. There is no use in blaming individuals in this matter. Men are men, and when they see a chance for profit, they avail themselves of it, and justify their action.

This immense graft can not continue forever. It has gone on thus far only because the attention of the people has not been called to it, so busy have we been with our private affairs.

Recently, the whole express contingent have been wearing gum shoes, and it has taken a vast amount of "blind pool" money in order to keep the thing quiet in Con

gress.

The people have never before been educated in the matter of economics, to the point where they took a personal interest in the matter and were intelligent enough to comprehend ways and means. The matter was simply left to agitators and reformers, but agitation and accusation without action are nil. Now the agitation has sobered itself to a matter of figures, and we plainly see that the people are being exploited.

No other post-office department in the world divides its paying business with competitors thus.

Huge animals are able to nourish huge parasites, but the subject of parasitism, theological, educational, financial, legal, and commercial, is up before the people of this

country now, as never before, and it will not down.

He who would succeed must be a public servant, not a barnacle.

A Vacation for Royalty

IT is a great thing for every one to take

a vacation once in a while. One of the best results of taking a vacation is that the folks will find that they can get along without you; and another is that when you get back you will discover how little you were missed.

By the time this writing appears in print King George the Fifth will be in India.

This is the first time, since India became vassal to the British Crown, that a reigning Emperor of India has journeyed thither.

The business of the King of England is ninety-nine per cent. social. The more commonplace the man, the better he is as king. A king that interfered and really ruled would not be tolerated. Practically, England is no more a monarchy than is the United States of America.

When George Washington invited Lord Cornwallis to be his guest of honor, having first taken Milford prisoner, Washington drank to the health of his guest. Then the guest arose and proposed a toast. He asked all present to join him in drinking to the King of England. All arose and George Washington said, "Here is to the King of England! May he stay there!" Even Cornwallis laughed.

There are people in England to-day who, if called upon to drink to the Emperor of India, would comply, and then add, "May he stay there!" The fact is, however, that the man is not dangerous. His business is to liberate the conventional bromide, and to pass out the neutral daffydill.

England is a great and magnificent country, too splendid, too powerful, too glorious to tolerate hypocrisy, but precedents tether her hand and foot, and so we have the paradox of a king without power.

An Honorary Ad-Man

DR. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, of

Nebraska, is an honorary member of the Chicago Ad-Club, having recently addressed that honorable body on the subject of political publicity, and been elected to membership.

Dr. Bryan stated that he knew nothing

William Morgan Shuster, the American Treasurer-General of Persia (center), and the four young Americans who have been helping him reorganize the finances of a bankrupt nation. At the left, Frank S.Cairns, Persian Director of Taxation,

about the subject, but thisbarring his modesty was probably because he is so thoroughly immersed in the theme that he is unable to get a per

spective on it. The Certainly, Dr. $13,000,000 Bryan is surpassed of Persia, and its as an advertiser by present only two individ

uals in America. There is no use in naming these two persons, for those who do not know who they are would not believe it, anyway.

Dr. Bryan's latest advertising ex

ploit is to get shipwrecked in the Bahama Islands, and the wireless has sent the news all over the world that our candidate is safe.

We remember the story of the man at the late presidential election who said that he was going to vote for Taft because he

could vote for Bryan any time.

The remark sounds like a superfluity when we consider the fact that Dr. Bryan has been in four railroad wrecks, and five times has

been cast upon the rocks, besides the political ditching that has been his on several occasions. Yet out of it all he emerges, smiling expansively, unconcerned.

The Republic of China

IT looks now as if Wu Ting-Fang, our old college chum, would be the first president of the Republic of China.

Dr. Wu is the canniest Chink that ever came over the cosmic pike.

He has certain qualities that make him akin to Benjamin Disraeli. He is clever, witty, rapid, satirical, patient, ambitious, and possesses purpose, plus.

He is a man who mystifies everybody and is deceived by none.

Wu Ting-Fang is a walking certificate as to the effectiveness of American journalism.

Twice has he been minister from China to the United States. When he first arrived, he wore English-made clothes, a chimney-top hat, and a top coat. He carried a cane, and his manner was that of the educated cosmopolitan.

And why not? The father of Dr. Wu was a convert to Methodism. He became a member of one of the mission colonies and was spoken of as a "rice Christian." In this colony, Wu Ting-Fang was born, and little Wu spoke English before he did Chinese.

When a youth, Wu was sent to England and, for a time, was at Oxford.

Dr. Wu is now. sixty years of age. When he first came to America he was forty-five. Very soon after landing here, he discarded Christian clothes for those of the heathen Chinee. We are also told that he evolved a pigtail in a single night.

About this time Li Hung-Chang appeared on the American horizon. Li was a genuine Celestial-Wu an imitation. Li could not speak the English language and did not want to. He had, however, a very able interpreter.

Li it was who set the example of asking. those delightful, esoteric questions. For instance, Li Hung-Chang asked Mr. George H. Daniels what his salary was, and then followed this up with, "How much do you steal and yet not be caught?"

He asked ladies as to how many children they had, why they didn't have more, whether they were on good terms with their husbands, and did they love their lovers more than their husbands. If so, why?

Then it was that our old friend Wu TingFang got the cue, literally and poetically, and evolved into the guileless heathen who looks at everything with wide-open, curious eyes, to compare inwardly the things he sees with the things at home across the sea.

All of the questions asked by Li HungChang were repeated by Wu Ting-Fang.

When Dr. Wu asked Dr. Chauncey M. Depew how many wives he had, the reporters got busy and the wires flashed the embarrassing interrogation. Wu Ting-Fang was great copy!

Of course, no white man, or any other man wearing English clothes, could have had the brass-plated effrontery to ask these questions, but a man in Oriental costume, protected by a seemingly imperfect knowledge of the language, could ask questions that would put us all to the bad. Dr. Wu delighted in getting some one to talk to him in pigtail, thus, "No checkee, no washee," and then answering them in faultless English.

It is a well-known fact that a foreigner with an innocent outside is received by many ladies in good society with a fearlessness that they never manifest in dealing with an equal of the genus gent.

The East Indian pundits have innocence to incinerate and are usually regarded as incapable of guile. And this was the pose of Wu Ting-Fang, the man educated in England, and versed from babyhood in Christian ways.

Wu Ting-Fang, in his youth, professed the Christian faith, but he sloughed his religion with his Christian clothes. Now he is a Confucian, and it was delightful to see the naïve way in which he discovered spots on our religious sun, and found that Emerson only echoed the high ethics of Confucius.

Americans are a pioneer people. There is much here, no doubt, that is very rude and crude and absurd. Wu Ting-Fang pricked our bubbles without our discovering what had been done until after he had gone.

The man must have gone home every night, and after he had locked himself in his room, waked the echoes in laughter at the way he had taken in American society. Although we might have known that he was not so unsophisticated as he seemed, for he was constantly springing our American slang, and voicing our idioms.

I once was seated near him at a banquet. He had the whole table in an uproar by interrogating the toastmaster as to how many

wives he had. He questioned the guests as to their methods of life and their hopes and ambitions, making little side remarks all the time, which, of course, were for the press, and which the reporters were not slow in picking up. He shook hands with the waiters, seemingly thinking they were guests.

The dishes brought on the table came in for criticism, and he compared them with the dishes he was used to at home. Most of

COPYRIGHTED BY

BARRIS & EWING

The Stanley Steel Investigation Committee. From left to right, Representa

tives Young, Bartlett, Stanley, Beall, -Littleton, and McGilli

cuddy. Above are shown the Merritt brothers, Leonidas and Alfred, who recently preferred sensational charges before the Committee against John D. Rockefeller and his agent, Reverend F. T.

the things he refused to eat, simply pecking at them

and making remarks about them, for our great amusement. All of this was straight play-acting. The man, nevertheless, is a strong and able individual. He is filled with the idea of republicanism. At heart he is a demo

ing to transfer to China.

There is no doubt that we have a deal to learn from

these people across the sea. If missionaries had been sent to the Chinese in order to learn from them instead of trying to