As I have reason to know that Mr. Stevens is an exceedingly fair-minded gentleman, I am glad of the opportunity to print his statement here. I must add, however, that I think a street car system on which a stranger, taking five different cars, finds them all heated by stoves, leaves something to be desired. Let me say further that I might not have been so critical of the St. Louis street railways and its cars, had I not become acquainted, a short time before, with the Twin City Rapid Transit Company, which operates the street railways of Minneapolis and St. Paul: a system which, as a casual observer, I should call the most perfect of its kind I have seen in the United States. * * * * * "What is the matter with St. Louis?" I inquired of a wide-awake citizen I met. "Oh, the Drew Question," he suggested with a smile. "The Drew Question?" I repeated blankly. "You don't know about that? Well, the question you asked was put to the city, some years ago, by Alderman Drew, so instead of asking it outright any more, we refer to it as 'the Drew Question,' Every one knows what it means." The man who asks that question in St. Louis will receive a wide variety of answers. One exceedingly well-informed gentleman told me that St. Louis had the "most aggressive minority" he had ever seen. "Start any movement here," he declared, "and, whatever it may be, you immediately encounter strong objection." In other quarters I learned of something called "The Big Cinch"--an intangible, reactionary sort of dragon, said to be built of big business men. It is charged that this legendary monster has put the quietus upon various enterprises, including the construction of a new and first-class hotel--something which St. Louis needs. In still other quarters I was informed that the city's long-established wealth had placed it in somewhat the position of Detroit before the days of the automobile, and that much of the money and many of the big business enterprises were controlled by elderly men; in short, that what is needed is young blood, or, as one man put it, "a few important funerals." "It is conservatism," explained another. "The trouble with St. Louis is that nobody here ever goes crazy." And said still another: "About one-third of the population of St. Louis is German. It is German lethargy that holds the city back."