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They are the light-houses which now guide our craft over the sea of indus trial progression. While you are striving to make that extra blade of grass, be sure you are thinking about how to get a price for the extra blade. The mind and the heart and body all need to be well fed. We should be careful what goes into our hearts and minds as well as into our stom achs. In order to tear down the old struc ture, the old system of marketing, we must build a new one. We are build ing a new one which is to be a just and equitable one. Whenever a warehouse has been built and patronized, the work is pro gressing nicely. Eleven-cent cotton has killed the Doubting Thomases. Pay no attention to any hue and cry and gabble about supply and de mand. There are no such words in the Farmers’ Union dictionary. That mortgage will remain on the premises a few years longer, where all the work stock is poor and poorly cared for. Some way such stock breed mortgages. Again we wish to say that no one can be the free, independent Ameri can citizen he should be and give a mortgage on his crop from year to year. The mortgage means financial death. It is a terrible, awful thing. This crop of cotton is going to be a very large one, no doubt. Better get ready to handle it. By agitation our temporary success has been wonder ful. Let’s now get down to business. We must now make it a permanent success. That extra blade must be taken care of. Our industrial prosperity will not be brought about and maintained by political parties, but by industrial co operation. We must build a new sys tem, a just and equitable system. This system will come when we have that perfect understanding. Texas is to have a cotton school again this year. It is to be hoped that all the states will have a cotton school, or ■will patronize the Texas school. We do not know just yet who will teach this school or in what city in Texas it will be taught. It will be taught by competent men, however, and should be attended by many hundreds. There are but a very few cotton producers who can prop erly grade the cotton they produce. For all these many years we have been content to take our cotton to market and sell it to the highest bid der and on the other fellow’s grading. No, we have not been content. We knew that something was wrong but, until recently, it never occurred to us that the fault was all our own. Well, the fault is all our own, and has al ways been. If we let the other fellow attend to our business, he will get the profits which should be ours. OUR TIMBER SUPPLY. (The Joliet News.) Secretary Wilson, of the agricultural department, has issued a circular re lating to the timber supply, truly somewhat sensational. The United States is using up the timber supply three or four times as fast as it grows, and the increase in destruc tion is larger than the Increase In population. His advice is to follow Germany, and profit by the 150 years of experience. Thus Roosevelt grabs the timber lands as rapidly as con gress will permit. One-fifth of the forest lands are again in the posses sion of the government. Except for your pooh poohlng Uncle Joe Wilson would now have possession of the smoky mountains and the Blue Ridge. “PAYING THE FREIGHT.” (Philadelphia North American.) The proposed increase by 10 per cent of the cost of transporting cer tain freights over the trunk-line rail roads is a matter that deeply concerns the general public. It must, therefore, be discussed frankly and fairly, not as a mere matter between the rail roads and the stockholders and the shippers, but as a matter of large general concern. The report is that the railroads which have made an agreement to advance tolls upon heavy commodities like coal and ore and stone and iron are the following: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, the Reading, New Jersey Central, New York Cen tral, Erie, Lackawanna, Lehigh Val ley, Chesapeake and Ohio and Norfolk and Western. The officers of these great corpora tions got together, as we understand it, and made a hard-and-fast agreement that there should be united action for the increase of rates on a certain day. and that all the companies would be faithful to the schedules thus ar ranged. May we not venture to inquire if this is not, in truth, such a combina tion in restraint of trade as is par ticularly forbidden by Federal law? These companies, under usual condi tions, are in one degree or another competitors. Is or is not the public entitled to the free and unobstructed play of the competitive forces here provided? If it be an offense, as be yond question it is, for manufacturers of a commodity to combine to destroy competition and to force prices up ward, can it be an inoffensive act upon the part of a group of railroad corporations? Is it not, indeed, peculiarly the obli gation of the railroad not to engage in such conspiracy? An individual manufacturer, operating without a charter, surely owes less to the com munity than a corporation created by law and clothed with tremendous au thority. The right of one railroad company to put up its prices "within reasonable limits can hardly be disputed; but there would appear-to be abundant reason for contesting the right of a bunch of railroads, controlling the transportation business in all the New England and Middle States, to combine for the purpose of imposing heavier taxes upon the people. The Federal authorities will probably have an im pulse to look into this matter. It is self-evident that this taxation will be borne directly by manufactur ers and other persons who conduct large industrial operations. The no tion appears to be that the people at large will consider that these capital ists are well able to bear the new burdens, and that the poor man and the fairly well-to-do man need not feel that the taxation is aimed at them. But, of course, sooner or later the members of the community generally will pay every dollar of this proposed 10 per cent advance. The first impulse of the man at the bottom —the consumer —will be to re sent this proposed imposition. Prices of all kinds have been rising and put ting a heavy strain upon incomes that enlarge slowly, if at all, and now here is another plan for pushing prices still further upward. Can it be defended? The railroad manager has this ex cuse for raising rates, that rising prices, including larger wage-pay ments, seriously affect heavy pur chasers, like his company. If the rail road must pay more for nearly every thing, good business considerations might be invoked to justify its action in demanding more for certain of its services. So far, there may not be WATSON'S WEEKLY" JEFFERSONIAN. much reason for complaint for separ ate, individual rate increase by each railroad company. But, in truth, the real thing that is the matter with the railroads is that they have adopted wrong policies with respect to much of their traffic, and these policies have had the tacit, if not the open and specific, approval of the community. The men who must now pay this new bill of expense must do so because they have long permitted public service corporations to do wrong. For example: a very large portion, if not, indeed, the greater portion, of the coal and iron, and ore and stone, and such coarse and heavy materials as are now to be taxed more heavily in transportation, might have been carried by water if the canals had been retained and extended instead of being exterminated or turned over to the railroads and thrown .out of use. Let the reader try to conceive what the function of the Schuylkill canal might be in this time of stress upon the railroads if it were in good order and free to all comers, as it once was! If we had been wise, that, and all the other canals in the state, could now be pressed into service; and we should have had still other interior canals and free waterways from the Chesapeake to the Delaware, and from the Delaware to New York harbor. But the people permitted their rep resentatives to help the railroads to clutch our own canals and to take pos session of the Delaware and Raritan canal, and now the heavy and less profitable freights are overwhelming the railroads. On the other hand, the men inside the railroad companies have obtained interest in the express companies, which carry the most profitable kinds of freight. This the railroads carry, as the servants of the express com panies, at rates which must be low considering the vast profits made oy the stockholders of the express com panies. Thus the stuff which pays least for transportation has been taken from the waterways and put upon the rail roads, and the stuff which pays most has been turned over to the railroad officers’ private express companies. The railroad stockholder, like the gen eral public, is a loser at both ends. Why should not the railroads, who must do all the business at any rate, not thrust the express companies aside and take the whole of the profits? W T hy should railroad officials, who are stockholders in the express companies, be permitted to skim the cream from the small package transportation and to give to the railroad stockholder the worst and least profitable part of the business? A car from Phildelphia to Pittsburg, loaded with small packages, at pres ent express rates, would earn more money for the railroad company than an entire coal train. There would be small need for advancing rates if the railroad retained all the profits on this kind of traffic. It would retain them were the railroads operated with the sole purpose to serve the public and the stockholders and were graft inside the companies wholly eliminated. The reason why the American peo ple are not permitted to have a par cels post, as every nation in Europe has, is that the express companies re fuse to permit it. Their representa tives (stockholders, probably,) sit in congress to obstruct and to defeat this great public convenience. Were the express companies driven from the field, and a parcels post es tablished, the United States govern ment would pay the railroad hand somely for carrying the smallest pack ages. There would still be an abund ant traffic for the railroads in carry- ing packages too large for the post office. Uncountable tons of such ma terial are now confided to the care of the express companies. Let it be clearly understood that the expansion of railroad business can by no means have reached its limit. Ten years hence there will be more coal to carry and much more small freight. If the railroads are now choked with coarse and heavy material, what will be the conditions then? Are tolls to be still further advanced? If the para site express companies are picking up vast unfair profits now’, w’hat will be the dimensions of their gains then? We can only guess at the future con ditions; but we may be sure, first, that the commerce of the nation will be obstructed and, second, that the plain people will pay all the bills. They are to suffer the penalties for the indifference with which they have permitted important public waterways to be destroyed and railroads to play any fast-and-loose game that pleased them. The squeeze is beginning to be felt in this advance of freight rates. There will be more trouble and more pain after awhile as we go along, un less, indeed, public sentiment shall in sist on canal restoration and on sup pression of the express company graft. CONFUSION ABOUT THE WATSONS Member of Third House From Eden County Thinks Tom Watson is to Blame for Obstructing County Di vision. (The Tallahassee Morning Sun.) Here is a reproduction of a talk on the porch of the Leon recently by members of the Third House from Pinellas, Palm Beach, Eden, Seminole, Atlantic and Dade counties: Seminole —Say, Dade, where was your representative last night? Dade —He was in town, but he is onto his job. All this fuss don’t amount to anything. Wait till he eats ’em up on the floor of the house, where they can’t worry him. Eden —What I can’t figure out is, why as smart a man as he is should leave Congress to'run for the Florida legislature. Seminole —He ain’t never been in Congress—that’s another Watson. Eden —He has, too. This is the same man that said: “Where am I at?” and he has a winter home at Lauderdale and a summer home in Kissimee, and a summer home at Tidewater, Va., and a fall house at Thomson, Ga., and a hardware store at Miami, and a magazine in Atlanta. I guess I know. Dade —You got ’em mixed. There’s two of ’em —Tom and John. Atlantic —Well, it must be Tom that represents Dade, for John is from Hillsboro. Hillsboro has three repre sentatives, you know. Pinellas —Is that so? I thought that fellow was just meddling in our af fairs, and yet I thought it funny that a man would stay up two nights fight ing another man’s fight. Seminole —Say, Palm Beach, who’s your representative? Palm Beach —Representative? H Seminole —You needn’t be so short about it. I wanted to know. Palm Beach —We’s orphans—just a senator —that’s all. But he’s enough. Atlantic —Don’t you fool yourself. You’ll have an ex-senator soon to deal with —the one with the Indian name. Eden—Darned if it don’t look to me like Watson had the cards stacked, and you fellers cut ’em. Seminole —That Indian name brings it all back Let’s hit the bottle? PAGE SEVEN