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10 county and city taxes one-third of all taxes paid in the United States; they pay out every day over one million dollars for running expenses; their indus tries furnish a livelihood for upward of two and one-half millions of people and pay every year for LABOR over fifty-five millions of dollars. Can we afford to allow the prohibition fanatic to destroy the market for grain and labor and load us up with additional taxes which w r e cannot afford to pay ? An attempt is being made throughout the country to build up a powerful political party at the expense of the farmer and workingman. The movement is backed by big political and financial interests trying to gain control of affairs at AN ash ingto n. BE WARE ! Every farmer, every workingman, every manu facturer, every traveling man and every patriotic and fair-minded citizen in the l nited States should now assert his rights and use every effort to sup press this growing evil of prohibition and hypocrit ical humbug, which, if allowed to prevail, will create SHALL SAVANNAH OR THE SAVANNAH ELECTRIC COMPANY RULE THE LOCAL AFFAIRS OF THIS CITY? The people of Savannah are amazingly patient and long suffering. This has been proven time and again. The fact is perpetually in evidence in their tolerance of that relic of government in the days of Feudalism, the Star Chamber, which survives in the form of the Savannah City Council caucus. Screened from the public view, ordinances against the adop tion of which there might be a public outcry, ii all the ins and outs were known, may be exhaustively discussed and their passage or defeat determined upon in caucus, to be followed in open council by what amounts only to a formal ratification of the caucus action. But the question of the caucus is but by the way. The citizen is nearly equally culpable with the Council for unfortunate consequences which some times follow municipal legislation. I bis culpability lies in the generally quiescent attitude on the part of the Savannah people when matters are pending in the city legislative department which are of such importance as to deserve the uttermost degree of alertness in order to conserve the best interests of the city. A case in point was the popular passiveness toward the recent telephone merger, Cause for THE REASON a financial crisis such as the United States has never ; seen. Don’t discourage American manhood, but elevate it by encouraging self-respect among all. Restrict license to those who can be depended upon to tran sact their business on as clean and respectable lines as a bank or public library, and then we can hope to become a happy and contented family, with man hood unimpaired, and happy womanhood “its bright and faithful auxiliary.” The gauntlet is at your feet. Within it is as vital a question as that which produced the men of ’76, and their spirit is still with us. Come forth! ye stalwarts of the nation! Break the apron string fetters. Leave the W. C. T. TJ. to their knitting, eroaning and back-biting. Do not forget that the cardinal sin of earth is to be unproductive, and a parallel sin is destruction, and prohibition is an old granny, hobbling on two broken crutches: One the destruction of manliness and freedom, the other the production of unthinking nonentities and nits. complaint against the monopolistic combine has already arisen. This is no surprise, or ought not to be. Wonder is that it did not appear sooner. The prediction is ventured that telephone users have as vet scarcely entered the kindergarten of the course of oppression through which they are yet to pass. The Bell Telephone Company is not a Georgia institution, and will, therefore, be found difficult, if not impossible, to reach through Georgia courts. A local news item savs the Mayor has asked the City Attorney for an “explanation of the contract” between the city and the telephone company. Rather a late hour, is it not, to have a contract ex plained to the city administration which has already put the contract in, perhaps, irrevocable force, and which action) has already begun to pinch the citi zens? The time to scrutinize the contract was be fore its ratification, and the failure of citizens to insist upon this at the proper time visits upon them selves at least a share of the responsibility for any ills they may suffer at the hands of the telephone company. Swiftly in the wake of this denouement comes the attempt Wednesday night in open Council, on the part of certain Aldermen, to precipitate action