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marking his "usual interest in politics," and with the Pennsylvania Railroad behind him, Mr. Pierpont Morgan is also just now endeavoring to cast his net over $1,000,000,000 worth of New York City traction. What is to be done with Mr. Morgan? Where is he to end? The Morgan appetite for gold is not unlike the drunkard's appetite for rum. Mr. Morgan is a money drunkard,and as such should be publicly met and dealt with.

would be flung helplessly along upon its curbless currents when it broadened and deepened to be a mate for the Mississippi. Indubitably, in these latter days at least, Mr. Morgan is measurably swept forward and downward on the tides of his own unruly wealth.

To be sure, being a money drunkard, Mr. Morgan lacks the decent will to check his

May, in the Detroit Journal

A FINE CHANCE TO GET UP

It may be that Mr. Morgan is not morally to blame, and but answers the helm of his destiny, as the Fates put it starboard or port. One can understand how there may be such unfortunates as money drunkards. Doubtless, an appetite for riches grows upon a man, as does an appetite for rum, until he comes to be a dipsomaniac of gold. He is swept down by a desire for gain. His better instincts are killed. He must allay his gold thirst, at whatever cost to others in pain and tears and blood. In spite of heartaches, which one cannot but suppose that he himself is bound to suffer, he is irresistibly carried forth to his debauches of gold. Such thoughts teach one toleration, in the gold-bloated case of Mr. Morgan.

That Mr. Morgan does communal injury is obvious to all who have wit to know existence in its lessons. And yet that of itself is not enough to fix a blame. Consider how a man, finding a spring on a hillside, might control it while it flowed a stream no deeper than two feet nor wider than three, but who

runaway riches in their course. On the other and exculpatory hand, were he as sober as a fish, and of soul most honestly disposed, he would be handless and helpless to accomplish such a check. Not that

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these are reasons why Mr. Morgan should go about communally unrestrained. Are not lunatics strait-jacketed? Is not the window-smashing drunkard locked up? There is a peril in mere strength. The single difference-as you've been toldbetween a tabby and a tiger is a difference in size. There is, by word of our statisticians, about $120,000,000,000 worth of property in this country. Also, there are supposed to be ninety-two millions of people. Yet, of the whole wealth of the country, Mr. Morgan, being one of the ninety-two millions, dominates and sends the curling lash of his command along the back of more than $10,000,000,000.

The picture, concreted, would look like this:

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A Remarkable Confession

IN a interview, &

N a recent interview, given with his back. toward Princeton and his eyes upon the White House, Mr. Wilson said: "For twenty years I preached to the students of Princeton that the Referendum and Recall were bosh. I have since investigated, and I want to apologize to those students. They are safeguards of politics. They take the power from the bosses, and place it in the hands of the people. I want to say, with all my power, that I favor them."

In more ways than one, this is a remarkable confession. Mr. Wilson, a professional Political Economist, the author of six books on government, entitled to write himself Doctor of Law and Doctor of Philosophy, would have you understand that for twenty years he expounded to his classes the Recall and the Referendum without having "investigated" either.

How to Get a Parcels Post

AGAIN

GAIN there is congressional agitation favoring a parcels post. There exist but four arguments against a parcels post, and these are the four big express companies. As a nation, we call ourselves a leader in political thought. There is reason to fear that in some respects we've caught the tail of the procession. Here we are, asking our Congresses for a parcels post-and being refused-when every country in Europe, to say nothing of several in Asia and

you a ten-pound package cheaper than could a man in the next county to your own, and not perhaps ten miles away.

The parcels post, in its detailed and practical expression, was set forth in a measure offered-and carefully neglected to death-in a recent Congress. By the terms of that bill, any package or parcel weighing not over eleven pounds might be sent through the post-office. The charge for postage was to be one cent to three ounces, two cents to six ounces, three cents to nine ounces, four cents to twelve ounces, five cents to one pound, and two cents for each added pound until the eleven-pound limit was reached.

The good that such a law would invoke cannot be imagined too broadly. It would put producer and consumer within reach and touch of each other. It would eliminate superfluous express companies, which now act as middlemen and squeeze producers with the right hand, while squeezing consumers with the left. Given the parcels post, the producer would get more for what he sells, the consumer pay less for what he buys. The express companies would do the losing the express companies, which

Africa, have had a

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lap the cream from every man's pan of milk.

As measuring that cream-lapping, consider a not too ancient leaf from the records of an express company. The Adams is neither the largest nor the hungriest of these corporations.. And yet, in excess of the regular dividend, it declared an extraordinary dividend of 200 per cent. The money aggregate of this extraordinary dividend was $24,

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000,000.

If one express company, and that one moderate in its appetite compared with others that might be named, can cut up $24,000,000 over and above

its usual dividends, what should be the extortionate rotund figure for them all? From whom were these tremendous riches drained? From you from the country's producers and consumers. Every pocket was bled to make up those express millions. They represent a wide-mouthed leak; and a leaky pocket is as bad as a leaky ship. Either will take you to the bottom.

The public is too much and too tamely the sheep, thus to leave its pinch of wool upon every express company briar. About the halls of Congress, the express company influence sets its rapacious face like flint against a parcels post. Do not underestimate that influence. It has thus far been easily equal to controlling congressional action. Write a letter to your House and Senate people. Explain that, if they desire their congressional days to be long in the land which their gods of politics have given them, they might better bestir themselves in bestowing upon you a parcels post.

One should avoid speaking bitterly of folk in high places, but any half-student of government and the watchmen on the walls thereof will tell you that you must deal with politicians as you deal with pigs. Go confidently among them, with a club in one hand, a pailful of draff in the other, and have it understood that they may take their choice. Thus and thus only will you— through the politicians, videlicet Congressmen and similar whatnot of office-come into your kingdom.

Taft and the Chameleon

PEAKING of his efforts to please all

SPEAK

parties, and the disastrous results of those efforts, the sour ones tell the following as applicable to Mr. Taft. A small boy, fond of pets, had been given a chameleon.

"How about your new pet?" asked the father, a few days later.

"He's gone," said the boy sadly. "But you bet, dad, he was a game chameleon while he lasted. I put him on the yellow sofa pillow, and he turned yellow; I tried him. on sister's red opera-cloak, and he turned red; I wrapped him up in mother's green veil, and he turned green. Lastly, just to see him hump himself, I planted him on a Scotch plaid golf-cape. and, dad, the poor thing blew up trying to make good."

The States Should Pay Up

IT

T is well to remind American mankind, in these days, when a deficit is growing, that away back in Jackson's time a rotund $38,000,000 was split up among the states. There were only twenty-one states, and each got its slice of that $38,000,000. New York's share measured up comfortably to an even $4,000,000. These moneys weren't given, but only loaned to the states, which left their I. O. U.'s in the Treasury. where, amid dust and cobwebs, they rest to-day uncollected.

Why should not the Government notify those twenty-one states to come in with what they owe? That $38,000,000-to say nothing of the interest-would build seven battleships and a flotilla of torpedo boats. And there is the broad Pacific, with Japan on the far side, all ready to sail them on.

Representative Murdock of Kansas, a congress or so ago, introduced a resolution to the above effect. What became of it? Kansas was foaled since that $38,000,000 was cut up, and having had no receiving finger in the pie would have nothing to pay. There exists, then, no local-political reason for any Murdock hesitation.

While we are upon the subject of loans to states, a resolution requesting Arkansas to pay back that original Smithsonian bequest of $550,000, which she borrowed at 6 per cent. somewhere back in the middle '40's, should be in excellent order. The Arkansas bonds, covering the Smithsonian money, still abide in the Government's strong boxes, with never a coupon clipped. Principal and interest, that Smithsonian money would make a bundle as big as a roll of carpet. Likewise, Uncle Sam could use it to advantage.

Our Sacred Bankers

S usual, the bankers, in connection

A with the Aldrich banking scheme, are

telling Congress what it should do. Also, it is to be hoped that Congress will not too subserviently listen to these high-Dutch doctors of finance. It would indeed be publicly better, and much more American, to give our bankers a battle every time they claim anything broader than a bricklayer's chance. Why publicly specialize in favor of bankers? This is no more a banker's gov

ernment than it is a carpenter's government chance, distinguished those money-changers or a farmer's government.

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The banker is never better than the next man, and sometimes he's worse. That he often dresses better, eats better, drinks better than the next man, proves only what was meant by the proverb-makers when they said, "The flea lives better than the dog. Arrogant, forward, self-assertive, there are times when the common everyday public grows a bit weary of our bankers. They too often seem to claim for themselves that place in the general economy which, in India among the Hindoos, is held by the sacred gray apes. Dollar-sapped of everything that resembles the patriotism that fought at Bunker Hill, they must no less have their unchecked sacred way in whatever of government enlists the eye of their interest. Let the currency, for example, in any fashion engage the congressional mind, and at once those haloed simians of money come swinging down from out the top of the national banyan, paw under foot, to say to House and Senate, "You must not!" or to the White House, "You must!"

It gets to be a trifle tiresome. Doing nothing for the Government, while the Government does everything for them, with that smug self-sufficiency which, in all

whom the Saviour lashed out of the Temple, they never hesitate to take charge of government, whenever such charge-taking coincides with either their vanity or their pocket. And just as the Hindoo stands back before those fetterless gray sacred apes, so are our public officials expected to stand back before our fetterless gray sacred bankers.

Mr. Taft as a Feeder

THE papers are chronicling the recent knife-and-fork performance of President Taft. It was at a Peace Dinner. Other presidents have had each his boast. Washington no doubt felicitated himself upon being the father of the country; Jefferson asked that it be written upon his tombstone that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence; Monroe could point to his celebrated Doctrine, by which we threw up a rail-fence of policy between the western hemisphere and all Europe, and then patrolled that fence of policy with a gun; Jackson framed his famous toast, "The Union! It must be preserved!" wherewith he palsied treason and staved off civil war for thirty years; Lincoln had his Emancipa

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tion Proclamation, Grant his Appomattox, while Roosevelt could congratulate himself as the country's spoiled child. Mr. Taft will go trundling down the aisles of coming time. as that White House one who ate more public dinners than did all of his predecessors.

And yet there should be no wrong impression. Those many banquets, treading one upon the gustatory heels of another in a very Lucullian lockstep of good cheer, might lead the uninformed to think that Mr. Taft is a great feeder-a giant Blunderbore at the festal board, emptying hogsheads, devouring joints, crunching marrow bones. Nothing of the sort! And this is said in the face of stories touching Georgia barbecues, and in the teeth of tales concerning forty wild tumultuous possums, carved and eaten at one feast.

Mr. Taft is in truth no mighty feeder. He dines lightly, and with the jealous nicety of any bird. He breakfasts upon coffee and a roll. His lunch consists of one apple. Those yarns of deep, exhaustless feasts, so far as Mr. Taft is personally concerned, are figments and merest fallacies.

Speaking of lunch, that single-apple bill of fare has worked a change in midday matters at the White House. Mr. Roosevelt's long suit socially was his lunches. It was a chill and meager day when he sat down with fewer than a lunching dozen. This has been all wiped out, made to disappear. Mr. Taft battens upon his single noonday apple in loneliness and solitary meditation.

Trying to Bribe Providence

THE

HE Merritt-Rockefeller story of how, through a specious loan of $420,000, a loan of that cut-throat variety known as "call," Mr. Rockefeller gobbled up full $40,000,000 worth of Minnesota iron and railway properties, makes a tale of a spider and a fly, with Mr. Rockefeller as the spider and the Merritts in the rôle of fly. Not the least interesting element was Mr. Rockefeller's employment of the Reverend Gates to lead the Merritts to destruction. Not that the thought is new. Out in a Chicago slaughter-house, a malignant milk-white steer is used to beguile his ignorant wild brethren within reach of the pole-ax.

The employment of the Reverend Gates, as shedding a sanctimonious sidelight on the business, was a familiar touch. It suggested piety, and piety is a characteristic of

that not numerous, yet dangerous animal, the criminal multimillionaire. Most of our big money men, whose works are evil, make a specialty of religion. This strategy owns a double excellence. It invests them with an odor of respectability, whichaside from the flattering unction of it—is useful in the money-getting. Most of all, however, it serves largely in saving them from imprisonment. They thereby make of the altar a first line of defence. And who wouldn't sooner go to church than to jail?

These same multimillionaires are prone to give heavily to the church. This, aside from feeding the fires of their smug vanities, brings them a kind of soul-ease, a sense of eternal safety, which robs death of half its threat. The multimillionaire is not commonly a man of width or depth of feeling. He has no mighty imagination, no rainbow vividness of fancy. His preacher is to him in a first effect but the hired evidence of his own "respectability." Also, the preacher,-vide the Reverend Gates,-in heart and soul is often not much better than the multimillionaire.

The latter, while no analyst of the psychic, is keen enough to note this latter truth, even though he may not understand it. And yet, as he's been taught, this same pulpiteer is the agent of Omnipotence! Stepping from one impression to another, he argues the principal from the agent; and thus arguing, his feeling rather than his judgment suggests that a huge donation to the "cause" will tell in eternal favor of himself.

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Men in every age have believed this. In that barbarous behalf, the twentieth century hasn't advanced a foot beyond the tenth. It's superstition, not reason; and great criminals, uneasy over the black sources of their money, are readily seized by the notion that Providence will accept a bribe. It's as though Omnipotence, to their dull but perturbed minds, took on something of the aspect of a great chief of police, who could be brought to condone their malefactions, forego their punishment, if they but shared with him the proceeds of their crimes. And so our criminal multimillionaires are in the liberal habit of tearing off huge fragments of their fortunes, and tossing them into the lap of their particular church. Which sanctuary, being commonly a "rich man's church," catering—if that be the word-for the rich, never fails to have its eager apron spread wide for the sure reception of that largesse.

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