The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From every standpoint it is right.—_Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat._ * * * * * Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds the _Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald_ of the story of the old darkey, never regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting, “Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—_Leeton (Mo.) Times._ * * * * * Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should heed the warning.—_Ozark (Mo.) Democrat._ * * * * * Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the skillet for a short time.—_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._ * * * * * It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week. But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr. Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—_Darlington (Mo.) Record._ * * * * * The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from the Tobacco Trust.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner._ * * * * *