been kept fully as good as when it left its distinguisht author's hands, but it has been improved and is now thoroly up to date. Among new subject matter we note an article on the development of the skeleton as shown by x-ray studies, of use in identification. Synthetic organic poisons are rapidly coming into use, and are fully considered here. Among new material on toxicology we note chronic potassium chlorate poisoning; poisoning by acetanilid and carbon monoxid; and acute poisoning by resorcinol, wormwood, and formaldehyde. No one need be deterred from striving to gain a knowledge of legal medicin by reason of the size or cost of ponderous works on the subject, for in this little and inexpensiv work are found all the essentials, and from it alone any practician can ground himself in this science so that he need fear no court or attorney.-A. L. R. [The following is the review of our Railroad book which appeared in the Phila. North American for Oct. 6. Did you ever read a stronger indorsement of a book? The reviewer came around to see us, and talked enthusiastically about the book, saying that a million copies ought to be circulated. Yet, doctors do not buy and read such books as they should. Why don't they? They should be leading citizens and leaders of thought in their community; and they can't be leaders of thought unless they read and think.] Parsons' Great Study of Public Highways. A large octavo of over 500 pages, elaborately indext and annotated, and entitled The Railways, the Trusts, and the People," presents for popular consideration the researches, opinions, suggestions, and conclusions of Professor Frank Parsons in relation to the weightiest economic problem now confronting the American people. This book is unquestionably the most important contribution made on this side the Atlantic to the general store of public information concerning railroad systems. It is issued by the Equity Series Company, of Philadelphia, Dr. C. F. Taylor, publisher, at $1.50-a price which practically precludes possibility of profit. Every citizen interested-as all good citizens should be in the relations of public service to the popular welfare; every earnest student of industrial, economic, and political problems, and all who are excited and thrilled while contemplating titanic achievements in speculativ sensationalism, should "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" Professor Parsons' work. It is a vast storehouse of information, so highly concentrated and condenst that each chapter might be easily and profitably expanded into a large volume. The author has done this, in fact, with the brief chapter on railway discrimination - which is the essence of his earlier monograph, "The Heart of the Railroad Problem," a work of nearly 400 pages, publisht by Little, Brown & Co. Many books relating to the railway question have been written during the last twenty or twenty-five years-notably by Frederic Hudson, Professor Larrabee, Dr. Cowles, and Professor Hadley, of Yale-the latter still an authority from the railway standpoint. It is unquestionably the best defense of the existing American system of private railways that has been put forward up to this time. Later attempts at stemming the rising tide of public criticism, like Professor Hugo Meyer's Railway Rates and Regulations," from the Chicago University press, have been feeble as straws in the grip of the north wind. Statistics, engineering, and practical economics are amply and ably represented in railway literature. Poor, Moody, Wellington, and the Interstate Commerce Commission's corps of trained specialists cover this section of the ground with all due precision. What is needed for public information and instruction on this subject is a work divested of technicalities, written in popular style, with the broad contrasts between public and private railways exemplified by an ample array of facts, and with historical evidence of the effects of opposed systems and methods of management upon the political, industrial, and social conditions of civilized life. Such a volume is here presented. Professor Parsons spent years of study in the making of this book. He consulted libraries, railway managers, and leading authorities in nearly all civilized countries, and traveled many thousand of miles thru twenty different countries. His researches were assisted and directed by statesmen, transportation magnates, and famous economists the world over. Nor were these the only authorities sought. "I sometimes," says Professor Parsons, got more from a few questions put to a brakeman or station hand than I did from a member of Parlia ment." Naturally enuf-since absolute railway facts can be obtained only at first hand. Professor Parsons' work is frankly polemical-he holds a brief for the people as against privately owned railways. His book is as to its first part-a record of facts, dangers, and abuses from American railway history-scarcely more than a rescript of the distinguisht author's testimony before the various Congressional commissioners which have utilized his knowledge during a decade past. In Part II, however, there are presented matters of profound and absorbing interest, bearing upon the remedy suggested at the conclusion of the work. Here the discussion is advanced and uplifted from the plane of commonplace economics to a loftier sociological level. " 'There are elements in the case," observes Professor Parsons, as much more important than money, as justice, political purity, manhood, mind, character, soul, diffusion of benefit, and true relations among men are more important than the number of trainmiles run, the amount of goods manufactured, the tons of copper and iron mined, or the bushels of wheat and potatoes raised." The worship of gold and its representatives in the world of merchandise has supplanted economic discussion. Professor Parsons seeks to establish in the minds of men the true proportions and relations of vital public questions, undistorted by commercial astigmatism. This task he has achieved, practically, in Chapter XXIII "Lessons from Other Lands." The average American citizen usually has a hazy notion that somewhere in this world railroads are managed differently from those with which he is fa miliar. He may even know that the United States stands solitary among civilized nations in asserting private authority and ownership over public highways. What he does not know is that the system of public ownership, as contradistinguisht from the American plan of private monopoly, works best and most beneficently-even in countries like Germany, where popular rights and sovereignty are smothered and paralyzed under a rigid bureaucratic rule. This revelation of the experience of other nations is a weighty factor for the author's case. It is not argument nor denunciation, but a record of positiv achievement. And it makes our boasted railway system look like mighty small beer in the international accounting. Professor Parsons' masterly and eloquent analysis and exposition of the American railway problem comes opportunely. It strikes the iron while it is hot. No economic work so timely and of such supreme value and moment has been heretofore issued during the lifetime of the present generation of men. Here is the author's summation of the case of " People vs. Railways": So long as railways are owned by a few and are operated for the private property of a few, there will be unjust discrimination; men who own coal mines, steel mills, packing houses, oil refineries, etc., and also control railroads, will not give their competitors in business equal rights with themselves over the railway lines whose policy they determine. So long as railway managers are employed by and are the servants of a small body of stockholders, especially men who own the great trusts, favoritism is bound to continue. "The only way to secure management of the railways in the public interest is to make railways public property, and railway managers servants of the public." OUR MONTHLY TALK. The executiv branch of our Government is both efficient and prudent. This is shown by the handling of the Cuban matter. Interference there was timely, efficient, and judicious. Secretary Taft was an ideal man to send on such a mission. His spirit and methods are always conciliatory, and at the same time always efficient. Noting from day to day the masterly and judicious handling of this matter gave me great satisfaction. Our President is always on the alert, and he and we are fortunate in having so able and prudent a man as Secretary Taft to send on such delicate and important missions. Secretary Root is another member of the Cabinet that we can all be proud of, regardless of party. His recent mission to the South American republics will doubtless result in much good. When such men leave profitable private pursuits and devote their talents to the public service at a very modest salary compared to what they could make in private pursuits, it is a sign that patriotism is still alive; that we haven't become entirely degraded to the dollar level. I am glad to be able to say such earnest words of praise for our Government. While I believe in wholesome criticism when it is deserved, yet we ought to look for the good in our Government rather than the opposit. And as to partisanism, that should exist only before elections-not after. After an election we should all accept the result and become patriots instead of partisans, and be true to the Government. If the South American republics would do that they wouldn't have so many revolutions. If Cuba had done that, its experiment in self-government would not have failed. The present time is "before an election" (this issue will reach the majority of our readers before the November congressional elections), and many speakers are stumping for or against the two leading parties. The republicans want to retain control of the House, and the President asks for an endorsement in the shape of a republican Congress; but I don't see how he can mean it, for he knows that the democrats gave his measures more hearty support than the republicans did during last session. I suppose he has to do it to keep in with his party. I wish to say again before election that you will support the President better by voting for a free, liberal democrat than for a corporation republican for Congress. Some republicans are all right and some democrats all wrong; but in the past a large majority of the republicans in Congress have been corporation men or men susceptible to corporation influences, and those members who were there in the interests of the people have been, as a rule, populists or democrats. There was a great revolution last winter among the republican congressmen, brought about by the demands of the President; but the leopard cannot change his spots so quickly. For a generation the republican party has been a corporation party, made so not by its voters, but by its managers, and by the interests financing its campaigns. The same was just as true of the democratic party until 1896, and the same game was attempted again in the Parker campaign of 1904, which fortunately came to such a disastrous close. Now we have a moderately anticorporation President at the head of the corporation party. If the House to be elected in November should be strongly democratic, it would support the President's progressiv program, as it has been hinted at, much more faithfully than the republican Senate, if the President would learn how to treat the democrats squarely. Heretofore they have supported his measures, notably the rate bill, without acknowledgment or gratitude from him; and in the Senate, this was in the face of strong opposition from his own party. The President's Future Policies. Mr. Roosevelt has proven that our President can do much to shape our policies, when he is a strong and determined man. Our present chief executiv being that kind of a man, it becomes a matter of some interest as to what his attitude is toward certain questions, and as to what he may have "up his sleeve." In his "muck rake" speech, I was glad to note a hint for a National inheritance tax, applying to very large estates. I will quote a paragraph from his Harrisburg speech, delivered the 4th of this month (Oct.), and italicize the part to which I wish to call attention in this connection: All honest men must abhor and reprobate any effort to excite hostility to men of wealth as such. We should do all we can to encourage thrift and business energy, to put a premium upon the conduct of the man who honestly earns his livelihood and more than his livelihood, and who honestly uses the money he has earned. But it is our clear duty to see, in the interest of the people, that there is adequate supervision and control over the business use of the swollen fortunes of today, and also wisely to deter min the conditions upon which these fortunes are to be transmitted and the percentage that they shall pay to the Government, whose protecting arm alone enables them to exist. Only the Nation can do this work. To relegate it to the states is a farce, and is simply another way of saying that it shall not be done at all. I was told several days ago that, privately, the President favors an income tax, as well as an inheritance tax, and that it was in his program to urge these measures during his administration. That this is no secret, I see by the following, from the Philadelphia Ledger for October 15: PRESIDENT'S PLAN FOR TAX ON BIG WANTS TO BE SURE THAT SUCCESSOR TO JUSTICE BROWN WASHINGTON, October 14.-President Roosevelt, in The President's attitude is due to his desire to have Congress pass laws placing a limitation upon private fortunes by making the possessors pay heavy duty to the Federal Government in income taxes and death duties. The matter probably will not be presented to the coming session of Congress, as it will last only three months, but at the following session he hopes to persuade Congress to pass a graduated income tax law and probably another inheritance tax law that will be a step toward placing a limitation upon colossal fortunes, in accordance with the suggestion made by him in his muck rake speech. The President recognizes the fact that it is useless to present an income tax law to a Supreme Court which contains a majority of states' rights men. That question, by reason of the reversal made by the Court ten years ago, has become political rather than judicial. Assuming that Justices Peckham and Holmes were influenced by beliefs that would also control them in the event of another income tax law coming before the Court, the result is an equal division of the august tribunal on such an important question. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to the President that he make sure that the laws he proposes to persuade Congress to place on the statute books shall go before a Court, a majority of the members of which are not bound by beliefs that would make it impossible for the proposed statutes to survive the scrutiny of the Court. Personally, the above gives me great satisfaction. Such doctrins, enunciated in the early 90's by the populists, caused capitalists to apply such terms as "dreamers,' ""hairbrained fanatics," 99 66 calamity howlers," "enemies to wealth," ," "anarchists," etc.; and later in the 90's (1896), when a majority of the democratic party became "populistic," the capitalists tore their hair in rage and alarm, and elected McKinley by means of the boldest and most gigantic corruption ever known in this or any other country. Now the most dangerous" of these doctrins are being and will continue to be pusht down their throats by a strong hand which has gotten control of the republican party, the party so long a tool of the capitalists. I have often said in these Talks, that I believe in spelling Nation with a capital N-that is, I believe that the National Government should become a more positiv agent for regulation and control, uniformly wherever the flag waves, than it has been in the past. That President Roosevelt thinks so too, is shown from the following notable paragraphs from his Harrisburg speech: If we fail thus to increase the power of the Federal at the mercy of those ingenious legal advisers of the The doctrine they preach would make the Constitution merely the shield of incompetence and the excuse for governmental paralysis; they treat it as a justification for refusing to attempt the remedy of evil, instead of as the source of vital power necessary for the existence of a mighty and ever-growing nation. It is the narrow construction of the powers of the National Government which in our democracy has proved the chief means of limiting the national power to cut out abuses, and which is now the chief bulwark of those great moneyed interests which oppose and dread any attempt to place them under efficient governmental control. Many legislativ actions and many judicial decisions which I am confident time will show to have been erroneous and a damage to the country, would have been avoided if our legislators and jurists had approacht the matter of enacting and construing the laws of the land in the spirit of your great Pennsylvanian, Justice Wilsonin the spirit of Marshall and of Washington. Such decisions put us at a great disadvantage in the battle for industrial order as against the present industrial chaos. If we interpret the Constitution in narrow instead of broad fashion, if we forsake the principles of Washington, Marshall, Wilson, and Hamilton, we as a people will render ourselves impotent to deal with any abuses which may be committed by the men who have accumulated the enormous fortunes of today, and who use these fortunes in still vaster corporate form in business. The legislativ or judicial actions and decisions of which I complain, be it remembered, do not really leave to the states power to deal with corporate wealth in business. Actual experience has shown that the states are wholly powerless to deal with this subject; and any action or decision that deprives the Nation of the power to deal with it, simply results in leaving the corporation absolutely free to work without any effectiv supervision whatever; and such a course is fraught with untold danger to the future of our whole system of government, and, indeed, to our whole civilization. Such doctrins from a republican president are both surprising and gratifying to a populist. The populists first captured the democratic party, thru the masses of that party and in spite of its corporation-sympathizing leaders; now it is capturing the republican party thru a republican president. The populist principles were, in the main, right; and right will prevail. Populism means peopleism; and the people are coming gradually to their own. In proportion as they think, and learn their rights and power, and have the courage to use them, will they come to their own. it worth while? We may not always have as strong a champion as Roosevelt in the position of vantage which he now holds. Then we should learn to do for ourselves. And this brings me to the following instance which I wish to use as an illustration: Isn't Now, here is the point; do you see it? He would favor the referendum when the people demand it. Do you see? The people must do the thinking first; they must first "want the referendum"; then, Mr. Stuart would magnanimously give it to them. I have often told you that politicians are cowards, and not thinkers nor leaders. They are simply tools. Tools of the corporations if they want to use them and the people don't object too strongly; but they will also be tools of the people if the people insist on it. My point is that it depends on the people after all. If you don't think, and command the politicians and office holders in your interests, the corporations will do the same thing against your interests, and they have been doing it for a long time. So shake off your lethargy, and make the study of public questions a part of your business. Get the referendum, and then you will have an implement with which you can have an effectiv control in public matters, as your right. Follow the example of Mr. Beecher, of Warren, and ask questions of candidates when they come around to canvass for votes. There are some exceptions to my charge above, among office holders and other public men. Roosevelt is working for the general good; Senator La Fol. lette is a friend of the people; so is Bryan; many other exceptions could be made, but my statement will hold, as a general rule, against politicians and office holders. The good ones are in both parties, and so are the bad ones. The contest in New York state is interesting and perplexing. We all admire Hughes for his fearless investigaton of the insurance companies; but Hearst has said one thing (along national lines) that I want to quote. It is very simple, but it strikes the nail right on the head: "The republicans say that the tariff should be revised by its friends. I say that the tariff should be revised by the people's friends." And this brings Cannon to mind, for he has much to say about revision of the tariff only by friends of the tariff. A letter from ex-Senator Pettigrew about Mr. Cannon ought to have wide publicity. Here are parts of it: SOME REMINISCENCES FROM THE PAST PUBLIC COURSE OF THE SPEAKER. SIOUX FALLS, S. D., Sept. 1o.-Speaker Cannon, of the House of Representativs, has defined his position in a speech made in Littlefield's district in the state of Maine. Cannon is in favor of not disturbing the tariff, but maintaining the present conditions. In other words, he stands pat. He has always been in favor of existing conditions. He belongs to the same school as Judge Parker, of New York, who, representing the corporations and corporate interests having secured all the legislation they want, now think it is a very bad thing to legislate too much. They would be more opposed to the repeal of existing laws than they would to the enactment of new legislation. And yet Cannon has always opposed new legislation that was for the relief of the people as against the corporations. He is one of the richest men in public life today, the owner of two national banks, and has gained a great fortune while he was a representativ of the people of his district and chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House of Representativs and as Speaker of the House. He is the ideal representativ of the system that has captured the control of the Government of the United States in the interests of greed and corporate wealth. Cannon was opposed to any action on the meat inspection bill, but public sentiment was too strong, and the exposures made of the rottenness of the Chicago packing houses so vigorous that he finally had to consent, but he insisted that the Government should pay all the expenses of inspection, and pay for the condemned animals. He has always been opposed to the pure food bill, and, as every one knows, he was opposed to the railroad bill, and it was thru his efforts that a bill almost worthless in every respect, for the purpose of controlling the railroads, was enacted. In other words, he would have no bill at all, but when he found that public sentiment and the President were so determined, he succeeded in securing a bill quite satisfactory to the railroads and entirely inadequate for the purpose of furnishing relief. He prevented the passage of a bill prohibiting corporations from contributing campaign funds. For years it has been customary for the House of Representativs to pass bills that labor demands, having ascertained in advance that the Senate would refer them to a committee and they would never be heard of again. It has also been customary for the Senate to pass bills that labor demanded, having a previous understanding with the House that they would be referred to the House Committee and never heard of again. In this way they have handled every bill labor has tried to secure in Congress for the last eighteen years. The land frauds of which we have heard so much were the product of legislation especially secured by Cannon in order that those frauds might be perpetrated. I am the author of the law for the regulation and control of the forest reservations of the United States. I prepared this law and offered it as an amendment to the sundry civil appropriation bill in the Senate. It was adopted by the Senate, and as adopted contained a clause which permitted any homesteader whose homestead was embraced within the forest reservation, to release his homestead to the Government and be accredited with the time he had lived upon it, and allowed to take land from the Government in some other locality. Mr. Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House, and chairman of the Conference Committee, and he inserted the words, or any other claimant," so if the lands of a land grant railroad were embraced within a forest reservation, the railroad company could exchange them for any other lands the Government might possess. The Senate did not observe this interlineation in the conference report, which was read rapidly and approved without first being printed. I did not observe it. But two years afterward I found that the Northern Pacific Railroad, for instance, was receiving scrip for the sections of land of its grant which were on the top of Mount Tacoma in Washington. Here were entries of thousands of acres of the snow-capt peaks and rocks of Mt. Tacoma, ten to fourteen thousand feet above the sea, absolutely worthless, and they were receiving scrip for this land, acre for acre, and selling it, or locating the best pine lands in Idaho or Washington, locating this scrip in any state where the United States Government had public domain. Lands that were absolutely worthless were exchanged in this way for lands of the greatest value. A reservation was establisht in the Rocky Mountains along the Union Pacific road where there was no timber, and scrip was issued and the exchange made according to the provisions of this law. I stated these facts in the Senate and askt for a repeal, and suggested an appraisal of those lands that were embraced in forest reservations on top of snow-capt mountains, and proposed that the exchange be made according to value. If they exchanged a section on top of one of those mountains that wasn't worth over a cent an acre for land worth ten or twenty dollars per acre, they should not get acre for acre, but exact value after appraisal, and I also moved that all operations under the law be suspended pending an investigation by the Interior Department. The Senate passed my amendments, with a full knowledge of all the facts, showing just what frauds had been practised, and how they were practised. The House refused to agree to the Senate amendment, and as is customary it was thrown into conference. Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Conference, and chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House, and he insisted upon standing by the railroads and continuing the frauds, and so refused to agree to the Senate amendment, but inserted a provision that hereafter railroads could only exchange for surveyed lands. But as the law provided that when three settlers in a township petitioned for the survey of the township the Government is bound to survey it if they deposit money enuf to pay for the survey, and issue to the settlers scrip which can be used to prove up on public lands anywhere, or be transferred. So these railroad thieves would send three men into a township who would perhaps file three homestead entries, and then make affidavit that they were residing there and wanted the township surveyed, and they would deposit the money necessary, four or five hundred dollars, to get the survey made, and then the railroads could locate their scrip upon these lands all over the township, and when this was done these three men would move on and locate in another township, and so continue the fraud, and the prosecutions by the Interior Department have grown out of this legislation. The real culprit was Cannon, and he is the man that should have been prosecuted for this infamous fraud, because he insisted upon this legislation in the face of full knowledge of all the facts. When the conference report came in, presented by Allison, of Iowa, who has always been the subtle tool of every rascally job passed by Congress, I objected to the conference report, and I said that they surrendered as usual to the railroads, that the action of the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House, Mr. Cannon, and the action of Mr. Allison, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the Senate, was an unjustifiable enlargement of the grant to the railroads which was worth many millions of dollars, and I said that as usual the rights of the people had been surrendered to those corporations. I tried to get Congress to stay in session and insisted upon proper legislation in this connection, but Congress had decided, and we were then but a few hours from adjournment, and so they passed the bill, and it continued upon the statute books until one year ago last winter, when the railroads having located all their scrip and swindled and defrauded the public as much as it was possible, Congress under Joe Cannon's direction, repealed the law. For several years the Senate of the United States limited the price to be paid for armor plate. The armor-plate manufacturers were in a trust, everybody admitted that. Carnegie Steel Works and Bethlehem Steel Works were in combination, and they always bid for just half of what the Government wanted, and always bid the same price. Everybody admitted there was no competition. The Senate limited the price to $300 per ton, and under that provision no armor plate was purchast. Two years afterward the Senate passed an amendment to the navy appropriation bill limiting the price of armor plate to $425 per ton. These companies were asking $550 per ton and were selling the same plate to the Austrian government for $250 per ton, and the Senate amendment provided that if the Secretary could not buy armor plate for $425 per ton, that the Government should immediaetly commence to construct an armor-plate plant and make its own armor plate. Joe Cannon was chairman of the Committee on Conference in the House, and he absolutely refused under any circumstances whatever to submit to the Senate amendment, but insisted that the armor-plate makers should have their price, altho they were in a trust and in collusion. These facts were well known to him and to every member of both Houses. The armorplate manufacturers always contribute to the republican campaign fund. I could go into the details of the Congressional Record with regard to the duty on white pine. The Senate reduced the duty from $2, the price fixt by the House, to $1 per thousand. Cannon refused to agree to the Senate amendment, and insisted upon $2, which was finally allowed. Under it the lumber dealers of the whole country have formed a combination and have plundered the consumers, according to their own statement, of thirty-five millions per year. These facts were known to Cannon and to both Houses when this duty was put on. It was well known it would not furnish any revenue to the Government or any protection to build up an infant industry, but it simply put $2 a thousand in the pockets of the owners of timber who were already too rich. The statement of Mr. Winchester and other lumbermen that if they could get $2 on lumber it would be worth thirty-five million dollars each year, was read in the Senate, and yet Mr. Cannon will stand pat on the tariff, or have it revised by its friends. Who are the friends of the tariff? Why, of course, the friends of the tariff on lumber are the corporations and the enormously rich people who own the timber. The friends of the tariff on steel are the steel trust. The friends of the tariff on agricultural implements are the manufacturers of agricultural implements who sell plows and other machinery in South America and in Europe for one-half what they sell it to the farmers of America. Who are the friends of the tariff on tobacco? The tobacco trust. Who are the friends of the tariff on woolen goods and on cotton goods? The manufacturers of these articles who are in collusion to maintain the price to the limit of the tariff, and thus rob and plunder the American people. And, according to Cannon's program, they are the people who are to revise the tariff if it is to be revised It seems to me the tariff ought to be revised in the interest of the people of the United States rather than of the special interests Mr. Cannon specially serves. His promotion to the presidency would be in the interest of the scheming jobbery that has curst and controlled the republican party for the last twenty years. As the candidate of the corporations and the greedy trusts and the plundering rich, he is the ideal, and no other interests will be considered by him if he succeeds. He will have the support of Rockefeller, of Aldrich, and the great gambling railroad managers of New York, and he can raise a vaster sum of money to secure his election than any man who is the champion of the interests of the people of this country. R. F. PETTIGREW. Should Be True to His Clients. Please notice the following newspaper clipping: WASHINGTON, Oct. 15.-The United States Supreme Court denied the petition of Joseph Ralph Burton, former Senator from Kansas, today, for a rehearing of the case in which he is under sentence of imprisonment for accepting a fee while a Senator as attorney in a case in which the Government was interested. Burton must begin his term in prison immediately, unless his attorneys devise some other means of postponing the execution of the sentence. There was no formal announcement of the decision in open court, the Chief Justice merely handing a brief memorandum to the clerk just before convening, The case was before the court since 1903, when he was indicted in St. Louis on a charge of accepting a fee for representing the Rialto Grain Company, against which a suit to debar it from the use of the United States mails had been brought. This is right. When a man accepts an office to serve the interests of the people, he should be true to his clients, the people. If he is shown to be untrue to his trust, he should be punisht. But it has seemed to me that Burton has been singled out, when in fact many more members of both houses of Congress should be punisht. For example, "Tom" Platt, of N. Y., has been for years serving the interests of the American Express Co. of which he is president, and other corporations, in the Senate, much more than he has been serving the interests of the people. W. R. Hearst, now candidate for governor of New York, has been in Congress for four years, and he says that he has found chiefly corporation attorneys there. If all the truth were known, and exact justice done, Burton would have much company. The popular and able southern Senator, "Joe" Bailey, of Texas, has gotten himself into trouble by trying to "carry water on both shoulders." The Texas people very reasonably thought that they were his clients. They now find that Bailey has accepted fees from the Standard Oil Co. to the amount of about $200,000, and his salary as Senator is only $5000 per year. Would it not be more honorable for a member of either house of Congress to resign before entering into the service of any corporation whose interests are opposed to the interests of the people (and they all are), than to take a fee from both sides and hold on to the office? The time is rapidly coming when all such cases will be clast with the Burton case and treated accordingly. When a man accepts an office, he should regard the people as his exclusiv clients, and be satisfied with the pay-he knows what the pay is to be when he accepts the office. Tendencies of the Time. The following, appearing editorially in the Philadelphia Ledger this morning (Oct. 17), is interesting and significant: According to the news from Washington, the President is searching for Judges to be appointed to impending vacancies in the Supreme Court who shall be liberal constructionists with no states' rights tendencies. The President has in mind a program of legislation which includes a graduated income tax law or a progressiv inheritance tax for the purpose of curbing swollen wealth, or, more properly, for the regulation of the transmission of vast estates and for the collection of a large income for the Government from those who are able to bear its burdens. In other words, the President, not content with urging the passage of his legislation, wishes to make sure that the court of last resort will take such a view of the Federal Constitution as coincides with his own. This sort of activity in times past has been called by the offensiv term, "Packing the court.' " There is a possibility that some time in the future there will be an income tax, and perhaps a Federal inheritance tax. The tendencies of the time are in that direction, and in the end the American people have a way of getting just what they want. But it is to be hoped that the President will let the Supreme Court alone; keep pernicious partisan and doctrinaire hands off, and graciously permit public opinion to bring its influence to bear in a legitimate way upon the evolution of our courts and Constitution. For a paper like the Ledger to admit that "the tendencies of the time are in the direction" of inheritance and income taxation is a great satisfaction to one who has been working for such taxation for many years, particularly the inheritance tax, applied only to the fortunes of millionaires. The President is perfectly justifiable in choosing Supreme Court Justices who will make a liberal and 20th century construction of the constitution and of the rights of the people of the present generation. The time has come when an instrument which was written more than a century ago should not be permitted to stand in the way of If Congress should pass what the people want now. laws providing for above-mentioned taxation, the Supreme Court should not be so antiquated as to stand in the way. The following letter, tho crude in many ways, may interest many readers; and the position of the writer may be puzzling to many. Consistency is a thing that has a different meaning to different people. Editor MEDICAL WORLD:-A question was put to the writer in a jocular manner by a political opponent who was familiar with the views of the writer upon political matters. The writer was askt why he did not sever his allegiance to the republican party. In answering this question, permit me, as an introduction to the subject, to say that I am now, and always have been, a republican. That, while it is true that the republican party is rotten and has among its leaders some of the greatest rascals in the country, it is no more so, nor does it harbor any more rascals, than any other party in existence at the present time. From the time of the crudest form of government to the present, the dominant party or faction has invariably been classed as a pack of thieves; and nothing they could do, even to passing the legislation advo cated by their opponents, would be right, if we were to take the opponents' word for it. A new political organization may have a platform that is satisfactory to a great majority of the people, but when we look into the manner of its organization and into the history of the organizers we most always find that it is built upon a very frail foundation. We find in most cases that the organizers are persons who failed to obtain an office thru some other party; that they are chronic office seekers; and that the new organization is built, not to benefit the people, but to spite some other party or political opponent. When I make a study of these new political organizations, as well as the older ones, I find nothing to cause me to waver in my allegiance to the principles as laid down in the republican platform, the only party that has ever done anything for the workingmen of our country. I believe there is some good in all parties; that there are good, honest, honorable and conscientious men in all of them; that they all do some good, not so much by what they do as by keeping the dominant party in the straight and narrow way. Since the time of Lincoln, no law of importance has ever been passed that does not owe its life to the republican party; and in my humble opinion none will be passed of any importance to us in the near future that are not fathered by the republican party. When I look back over the governments of our states and the legislation produced by the opponents of the republican party, I find nothing to afford me the least inducement to leave that party. Because I differ with a few, or even a majority of the republicans, is no reason why I should leave the party. I can be an independent in the republican party just as well as out of it, and accomplish more by doing so. I believe it is my duty to attempt some method of punishment that will make the party honest and purge itself of the leeches that are hanging on and sapping its very life. I believe it is my duty to advocate the enactment of a primary election law that will compel every American citizen to go to the polls and vote for delegates to the county conventions of their respectiv parties. I believe in excluding from the list of delegates to the county, state, or national conventions, all persons who are office holders or candidates for office. I believe the people who do not hold office should be the ones to decide who should hold office, but in no case excluding any one from the right of suffrage at the primary election. My views upon political matters will be found to differ very much from those of any existing party, still I believe they are a panacea for nearly all of the political ills of the present day. I do not believe that any one man should have a life lease upon any office. I believe most of the corruption attributed to our party is not the result, of party corruption, but because we have kept one man in the same office too long. We have often been told to hold fast to a good thing when we get it, and this is given as a reason for keeping a good man in office. I have known (and everybody has) many a good man that ruined himself and brought disgrace upon his party, because he could not resist the temptations incident to his office. Had these men been removed from office, the party to which they belonged would not have been scandalized by their conduct, and it would have done them a great favor. Í believe in the civil service regulations in so far as they apply to the qualifications of government employees, but I do not believe in a civil service that keeps a set of dudes in office for life, nor in a civil service that says to the head of a department that you must take this person or none. I believe the unions could be made of great benefit to their members and also to the country if they were properly managed; but as they are at present, they are a detriment to advancement in almost any line. There are some exceptions to this statement, but not many. We sympathize with any organization that works for its own betterment; but when they go beyond reason we have no use for them. I believe that all laws of the states intended for the benefit of the states at large should be submitted to a vote of the people for ratification before becoming laws. I believe every electiv office holder should be elected by the people direct, instead of thru some other electiv body. I believe that alcoholic beverages have been the ruin of more people, the cause of more sorrow, of more deaths, and of more sickness, than any one other thing, and that its manufacture and sale for other than medical and mechanical use should be prohibited. I believe in the establishment of Postal Savings Banks, and in an income and inheritance tax; in the governmental control of all insurance companies doing an interstate business and in the state control of those limited to one state. I would bring the fraternals in under the same head. I believe in the municipal ownership or control of all the public utilities of the cities and in the state control of all of those upon which the state at large is dependent. I believe in the government control of every corporation doing an interstate business, no matter for what purpose it might be incorporated. I would not favor the government ownership of any of the interstate monopolies, as they are called, but I would favor the government control of them, and especially of railroads, mines, and the like. I would have the government take control of all the railroads in the country, and issue common stock to the actual value of all the railroads in the United States, and sell this stock to whoever might wish to buy it, just as are government bonds, only with this difference: instead of the government guaranteeing a certain percent or dividend upon the stock, the stockholder would receive in the way of dividends whatever the consolidated company would earn after paying all expenses, etc.; in other respects the owner of the railroad stock would have no more to say about the management of the railroad than has the owner of an interest-bearing U. S. bond to say about the management of |