Your work is a noble one, and its power for good is measured only by the number of people whom you can reach. I admonish you to give the land question thorough and painstaking investigation. I trust you will bear with me for what may seem excessive frankness. But you are not looking for bouquets, but simple, unembossed truth. When I say to you that in my opinion you have not familiarized yourself with the philosophy you are attempting to refute, you will accept this criticism in the broad view of public interest. I have gone into greater detail in my comments upon your editorial than I expected to go in the outset, but it has seemed advisable, in order to get a clear view of all the points raised by you. However, I trust I have not gone beyond the limit of the space that may be available. * * * * * A VETERAN REFORMER HITS THE TARIFF HARD E. S. Gilbert is close to ninety years old but uncommonly well preserved, having been interested in every Presidential campaign since he was a boy of sixteen, and has acquired a vast fund of political knowledge, of which he still has a firm grasp. He has seen and remembers nearly every President from Andy Jackson down—nineteen of them—and talks interestingly. He says as he sees things now the political situation is just as it was in the early fifties. Then two minor parties were dying, and the leading party—the Democratic—was undergoing disintegration. Today, as he sees it, Democracy and Populism are dying, and the Republican party is undergoing disintegration. The Republican Party sprang up in the fifties, and he looks for a new, strong party to come out of the present chaos in a few years. Following is a thoughtful article, from Mr. Gilbert’s pen, which recently appeared in the _Lincoln Independent_: Editor Independent: Here are a few figures for men who think. In the year 1901 there was manufactured in the United States thirteen billions of dollars’ worth of goods. Authority, Secretary Shaw. The average rate of duties upon imported merchandise is 52 per cent. Authority, Walter Wellman. Now, fifty-two per cent of thirteen billions of dollars is $6,770,000,000, which the present tariff of duties authorizes the manufacturers to collect of the American people each year, if they can. It actually enables them to collect a large portion of it—but not all. The probabilities are they collect about two-thirds. They collect nothing for goods exported. There is honest competition on some classes of goods, such as flour and the cheaper cotton fabrics, and perhaps some others, that prevents them from collecting it of the people. So, in order to be fair, we will cut this sum in halves.