After a 200 per cent stock dividend declared by one express company shortly ago and a surplus of some $30,000,000 in another, the announcement of a 90 per cent increase in certain express rates will be hailed with much joy. There seems to be a cheerful disposition on the part of these corporations to treat the public to the Roosevelt-Straus remedy for all monopolistic evil—publicity. At least, they are candid and without blush over their unconscionable extortions so, obviously, the admission that they have oppressed the public by unjust rates, and intend still greater encroachments, ought to be sufficient to quell the evil at once. Publicity, forsooth! So long as no actual infraction of any law is involved, why may not a monopoly increase its schedules to “all the traffic will bear?” The only good publicity in this instance may do is to stimulate a dilatory and debilitated Congress to pass the Parcel Post enactment recommended by Roosevelt and urged by Postmaster-General Meyer. Since the express companies can annually “cut a melon” of enormous dividends; and since the postal deficit for the fiscal year has reached the sum of $16,910,000 it becomes probable that the long despised and antagonized parcels post will loom up as perhaps the most practicable means of helping the government out of the ditch. How very curious it is that all the “wild ideas” of the Pops come, one by one, to be recognized as instances of wonderful foresight. If the parcels post is going to be a good thing for the government, and an invaluable thing for the common people in the future, it is pertinent to ponder on how much ahead the department might be at the present date, if the system had been adopted years ago. Instead of a deficit, there might have been a neat balance, or a possible surplus, for Mr. Meyer to offer as a result of the operations of the last fiscal year. Of course, the franking privilege has been grossly misused for the circulation of partisan literature favorable to the administration which got the spoils of office; and the railroads clean up their pile on the job of hauling the mails, but all these things but go to show that the postal department, instead of being an argument against the government taking over public utilities, is the strongest kind of an argument in favor of so doing. If the government owned the railroads, one avenue of dead loss would be closed; and likewise the elimination of railroad rings from control of the administration would remove the incentive to flood the mail with literature in the interests of such corporations and other monopolies. [Illustration] THE BELLS THE OLD YEAR BELLS.