Once I shipped a crate of picture frames to a town, the shipping agent telling me the rate was fifty-three cents. When I came to pay at the other end the rate was one dollar and six cents. The freight clerk told me that when shipped at owner’s risk the rate was fifty-three; otherwise it was one dollar and six cents. Was not that trickery—and robbery besides? Did you ever see a more unprincipled trickster than the average politician? Here is an illustration. In a certain county of a great state there were two candidates for the nomination for the office of county superintendent of schools; one, a man without a family; the other, a widow lady with two children. They were about equal in strength and it was uncertain which would win. The man, wanting to get his opponent out of the way, made her the proposition that if she would withdraw and support him, and he was elected, he would make her his deputy and divide the proceeds of the office equally between them. She accepted and gave her whole time to the campaign. After the election he tried to ignore her entirely, swore that he had never entered into such an agreement, and on top of that circulated all sorts of scandalous reports concerning her. The poor woman took all this so to heart that she committed suicide, throwing two orphan children upon the world—and they were girls at that. Was not that the worst kind of trickery, treachery, knavery and hypocrisy? I call it murder in the first degree. Once, when I was in the west, I stopped at the only hotel there was in the town, the proprietor being also a banker. The hotel made me a rate of ten dollars a week, and at the end of the seven days I tendered a draft for twenty-five dollars, which I had received from my firm that morning. The banker claimed I could not be sufficiently identified and refused to cash my paper, but agreed to send it in for collection. He kept me there three days, waiting for money, and at the end of that time charged, in addition to the ten dollars for the week, two dollars per day for the extra three days, and seventy-five cents for collection. Now, wasn’t that robbery as well as trickery? I knew he had “worked” me, for he could not send the draft to New York and get returns in three days. In North Dakota there were two undertakers. One was poor, the other rich and owner of the only hearse in town. A poor man’s wife died. He found that he could buy a coffin at the smaller establishment for a great deal less than from the other. He ordered it, but when he called to make arrangements for the hearse the proprietor would not let him have it, because the coffin was not bought at his place. The poor man was forced to go to the next town and procure a hearse. That seems even worse than trickery.