The news-stand buyer pays thirty cents a year more for WATSON’S than does his rural brother—but he invests a much smaller amount each time, so the two sacrifices (but it isn’t exactly correct to call buying WATSON’S a “sacrifice”) are about equal. This calls to mind a suggestion, that has been made several times, to allow taxes to be paid in instalments. Cold-blooded figures say that it is exactly the same whether one pays a $24 tax in one payment, or in four of $6 each, or in 12 of $2 each; but actual experience says, No; there is a difference. * * * * * Funny, isn’t it, how the Republican Party denounces some proposition as a Populistic vagary—and then turns ’round and does the very thing it has denounced! In 1896 we were told that the people would have none of silver—those “fifty-cent dollars”; yet between 1897 and 1903 the Republican Party coined more silver than in any other seven years of the country’s history. Not “free coinage,” of course, but that Sherman silver which was stacked up in vaults, and which no one wanted. * * * * * Public ownership was denounced as “confiscation,” anarchy, socialism, paternalism, and so on. But Teddy and Uncle Sam went into the railroad business down in Panama, and only recently that fat boy, Taft, bought 300 acres of coal lands at Batan, Philippine Islands, for $50,000, money voted by Congress for the purpose, and it is given out flatly that “it is the intention of the Government not to relinquish title to the mines.” They will be leased to competitive bidders. The Secretary of War is drawing a bill to provide for this leasing, and says, oh, ye gods, listen: That the Government will regulate the price of coal in the Philippines! * * * * * Didn’t we hear something about the impossibility of doing such a stunt as “regulating prices” away back in 1896 and later? Couldn’t regulate the price of silver by letting it into the mints at $1.39 plus an ounce. Oh, no! Seems to me we ought to have an “International agreement” on the price of coal. Otherwise, what’s to prevent those disreputable “furriners” from dumping their pauper-mined coal into the Philippines, and carrying away every ounce of our gold? * * * * * Who said the People’s Party is dead? Out in Coal City, Ill., the Populists recently nominated the following village ticket: The People’s Party met in Borella’s Hall and made the following nominations: For trustees, two years, John McNamara, Peter Bono, and Axtel Anderson. For village clerk, Edward Fulton. For police magistrate, Frank Francis. For library directors, James Leish and Walter Palmer.