W

HAT saith the prophet? "Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards; they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them." With such a torch in the bows of consideration, let us take a look at our eminent ones.

There is murmured Washington complaint that occult influences, as malign as hidden, are checking the extension of the postal savings-banks. President Taft-like Barkis-is willin'. Postmaster-General Hitchcock insists that he is eager. And yet the system does not extend.

Folk say that it is the powerful shoulder of the national banks that holds fast the door. Perhaps! Such interference in government would be vastly in line with the known habits and history of the national banks. The banks were politicians in Jackson's time. They have been politicians ever since. Their effort has been and still is, both

by law and

against law, through presidents, cabinets, and congresses, to drive humanity to the selfish shearing-sheds. of their own rapacious interest.

From the beginning, the postal savings scheme encountered the unflagging opposition of the national banks. They looked upon the Government in the banking business as the rival shop, and they objected to competition. Thus objecting, they sent word to their Congressmen -whose names are legionto have the project killed. Failing in efforts to kill the postal banks, they would now hamstring the system in its operation. Which ought to be a good reason why you who read should send word to your Congressmanif he hasn't already been stolen from you and counterbranded into the money herd-to make the fight of his career for its protection.

Postal savings is the best banking scheme yet devised. What is the great element of the postal savingsbank? Safety to depositors. Which is the first great need in a bank. The nation stands sponsor for every dollar brought into the postal savings-banks. And the nation doesn't embezzle, doesn't gamble in Wall Street, doesn't go into the hands of a receiver, doesn't change

its name and skip to Europe when the smash descends.

Deposits being wholly safe, there can come no runs on the banks. Also, there can be no bank-created panics, the ruinous corollaries of "runs" by stampeded depositors. In the postal banking system, there dwells no black chance of your going down to your bank in the morning, and finding in the window a notice that the doors have been locked, a receiver installed over night, and that you can't get a splinter of your money until permitted so to do by Mr. Morgan, or Mr. Rockefeller, or Mr. Stillman, or Mr. Ryan.

When you lose, somebody else wins. In the panic of 1907, when you lost, the Morgans and Rockefellers and Ryans didn't lose. They quit richer by millions-millions collected from a million honest pockets. These excellent gentlemen are the wreckers and beach-combers of finance. When the oceans of commerce are storm-lashed, they put on their financial oilskins and walk the beach. Some ship of trade-this firm or that firm-founders and breaks to pieces. They pick up the pieces. Half of Mr. Morgan's, all of the late Mr. Sage's money was made in that beach-combing way.

There is this notable difference between. the real beach-comber and our great beachcombers of stocks. The Morgans and Rockefellers, for their beach-combing, don't have to wait for a storm. They can produce one whenever they will. Let but the National City Bank "call" its $100,000,000 of call loans. Lo! the tempest descends, and stocks are blown flat. It is then that the Morgans and Ryans and Rockefellers pick up stocks at 50, and sell them at 150 within the month.

It is they, and such as they, who are just now seeking to limit the postal savings-bank system in its attempts to broaden out. Such broadening would mean less money to them, more money to you, which is a financial situation that they are not anxious to bring about.

There should be no difficulty in evolving a perfect bank-a bank that is secure and sure. They make ships safe, and a bank isn't so complicated as a ship. The postal savings-bank is in all respects a money-ship that no reef can sink, no tempest drive ashore. Being storm-safe, once a postal savings-bank is established in a town, the people no longer hide their money in strong

boxes, tea canisters, and old stockings, withdrawing it from circulation. They put it into the postal bank. The doors are always open. The money deposited is ready on demand. There can come no locked-door occasions when the Morgans and the Ryans and the Rockefellers having taken the deposits that they may cut your throat with them you are separated indefinitely from your own money. Or made to pay four per cent. for it. Or, after a painful wait of months, given twenty cents on a dollar to call it square.

By the postal savings-bank system, aside from a rock-ribbed security, you are paid interest on your deposits. Having need of money, you borrow from the postal bank for about one-half what the Morgans and the Rockefellers demand. The Shylocks are defeated, and for once in a way the working, producing, honest man is given a victory.

All these banking advantages of safety, sure loans, low interest, and no panics should right now be everywhere wide open to the people. The law is there. But the politicians, dominated by the Shylocks, owned by the money-changers, are quietly willing, in installing the banks, to go forward as slowly as the popular patience will permit. The big chance you have is to make your senators and representatives think that their political lives are in danger if they betray you by countenancing that slowness.

Every post office should be a government bank. Italy, France, Germany have had them for years. They work, too. It was her postal savings-banks that armed with power the stricken hands of France after the Franco-Prussian War, to pay Bismarck's exorbitant demands almost upon the nail.

When Doctors Disagree

PRESIDENT TAFT, a little ruefully, is

constrained to confess-in privatethat his much-advertised Scientific Tariff Commission doesn't work. For one confusing matter, the doctors disagree, and the Commission too often presents that spectacle of failure, a house divided.

Better disband that scientific commission and say no more about it. Whoever has stood staring at government for, say, a decade will own no faith in commissions. A commission commonly is a slow, dull, fog-bound body of obscurities, which thinks and acts like a cow in a swamp, sinking to the mental

our State Department, among folk official and unofficial, there exists the belief that Cuba will not stand alone upon her own unsupported legs another twelvemonth. There will be a little sputtering flash of revolution, they say. No one will get hurt. There will occur much jabber and no blood. And then-Cuba will fall backward into the arms of her Uncle Sam.

Every Cuban with a dollar has his eyes upon this country. Also, he is eager to "join." Already, they have a saying in Havana: "Stand a Cuban on his head, and if a peseta roll out of his pocket, he's an annexationist." The foreign capital in Cuba is about $400,000,000. The local capital is $700,000,000 more. Every dollar of that $1,100,000,000 wants to come in under the protecting pinion of the Eagle.

Those who own that $1,100,000,000 of capital believe that were annexation an accomplished fact, every Cuban value would be multiplied by three. In short, that that $1,100,000,000 would swell to $3,300,000,000 the moment that Cuba could call herself part and parcel of the United States.

With that the common Cuban belief, how should you expect to head off annexation? Patriotism? It is oftener, even in this country, of the pocketbook than anything else. It grows more so-as the late A. Ward would have said—as you edge toward the equator.

Patriotism, with a last word, is but a selfish virtue. Colonel Cooper, recently on trial in Nashville, told a story in illustration of this. Colonel Cooper belonged to General Forrest's command. On one closeshave occasion, the Yankees had been chasing them for two nights and a day. It was rain and snow and slush; the mud was up to the saddle girths. Hungry, without sleep, Colonel Cooper and his men pressed forward, the inveterate Yankees crowding their retreating hocks.

Finally, a gentleman named Evans drew up alongside of Colonel Cooper. Mr. Evans was a private soldier; his home was in Nashville. Also, he was deeply worked up. Turning an indignant face, he said:

"Look yere, Dunc Cooper; thar's one thing I want everybody to und'stand. This is the last blanked country I'm ever going to love."

And so with the Cubans. Thinking of self, believing that a short cut to riches is to be found in annexation, no consideration of

mere country will serve to stay the movement. Within the coming year, those who should know most of Cuba and Cuban feeling say that the Cuban flag will disappear, and what places have known it be occupied by the Stars and Stripes.

What effect would talk of annexing Cuba have on the White House chances of Mr. Taft? The word is that he slyly encourages it-being advised thereunto by Cabineteers Knox and Wickersham, and also by Senator Penrose. Upon a similar argument of popularity, rumor also has it that Mr. Taft is looking hard for an excuse to invade Mexico. Indeed, the latter charge is made by a unanimous Mexican press.

Neither yarn is worth belief. Mr. Taft is no one to toss an innocent country on the horns of his ambitions. The annexation of Cuba would in no wise advance the popularity of Mr. Taft. The general American feeling would be averse to the coming of Cuba. The Cuban, slight, flighty, saddlecolored, only half wise and half honest, doesn't in the sense racial hail from our side of the mountain. To bring such into the Union would be but to muddy the national

stream.

What Is Jingoism?

HERE were recently 106 warships, fly

THER

ing the Stars and Stripes, assembled in the Hudson. President Taft reviewed them; Secretary Meyer reviewed them. Their hearts swelled, and they talked of a larger navy.

Now that Congress has come together, the fires of naval interest again flare up. The flaring has served to excite those usual cries of "Jingoism" from certain New York papers.

In the interest of a full-breasted Americanism, which isn't on its knees to Europe and feels confident of its position in society, there is a truth or two that should be told concerning that epithet Jingo. The term Jingo is greatly favored in certain timid quarters. It is always confidently resorted to by those who employ it as though merely to utter it were bound to close discussion. They assume that no one, not even the most hardy, would dare for one moment dispute that the word Jingo implied in the citizen so described all that was publicly reckless and insane.

Said Patrick Henry on a great occasion,