The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1903-08-21

seemed to indicate that he was
powerful man in the affairs of the
nation. The service called for the
appointment ofcarriers and this gave
additional patronage. Machen
helped the members and the members
helped Machen by getting additional
appropriations to broaden the Rural
Free Delivery service. Even Presi-
dent Roosevelt joined in the praise
of this branch of our postal affairs
and urged in his message that an ad-
ditional appropriation should be
made.
The way things are going to berun
under the order is thus outlined by
the Philadelphia Record.
eff a hundred farmers on twenty
miles of road shall ask for free de-
livery their application will go to
Mr.. Bristow, who will assign one of
his inquisitive and incorruptible in
spectors to find out if there be really
a hundred residents on that twenty
miles of road, and if there be, the
service will be established at once; if
there be but ninety and nine, they will
get no free delivery service and their
member of Congress will be helpless.
He is at liberty to recommend, so
much is conceded to the dethroned
potentate of patronage. But the ser
vice is to be established where it
ought to be and is not to be estab-
iished where there is no sufficient ex-
cuse for it.
"Does this not sound like the mil
lennium? Has not the rural free de.
livery service been delivered from the
power of politics? Most assuredly,
so long as Mr. Bristow shall remain
in control and be properly backed
up. But if Mr.. Bristow shall fall by
the wavside and shall be succeeded
by statesman of the Perry Heath
style he will carefully observe whether
the application for the establishment
OF Il route be recommended by Cor
gresham whom it is worth while to
accommodate, and then he will in
struct his inspectors to find the one
hundred farmers on the twenty miles,
or to find some excuse for regarding
the case as special, and the route will
be established.
1t was hardly necessary for the
Washington correspondents to ex-
plain that this revolutionary change
was ordered by the President and not
by the Postmaster General. 1t sounds
a good deal like the former Civil Ser
vice Commissioner, and no one has
ever suspected Mr.. Payne of trying
to get politics out of any corner of
the postal service"
WHERE PROSPERITY COMES FROM.
1t is no new thing for Republican
organs TO claim that good crops are
due to the sunshine and the rain pro-
vided by Republican administra-
ton, and to take liberties with sta
tistics that justify the epigram that
while figures will not lie, liars will
figure. But the attempt of the New
York Press to attribute the business
depression which began in May, 1898,
to the Wilson tariff, which was en-
acted in July, 1894, and to find the
origin of the present prosperity in
the Dingley tariff, is a little holder
than usual, and invites summary ex-
posure.
The Press will not attribute the
present prosperity to the recent great
crops and the European demand fer
food because, it says, "the farmer
knows perfectly we'll that he had
bumper crops and poverty in the
Wilson law days, not for lack of
foreign demand for his products, but
for lack of a good price fixed in the
home market" Wheat and cotton
being largely exported, their prices
are fixed in England, and their
domestic price is the foreign price less
the cost of transportation. A good
foreign demand is of the utmost i'm
portance to the American farmer,
and without it he has low prices.
The farmer does not know that he
had bumper crops in the Wilson law
days. The crops were singularly
small. The main causes of the de-
preston that lasted from 1898 to
1897 and of the present prosperity
are to be found in the yield Of the
soil, supplemented by the fact that
the European crops were exceeding
" poor in 1897, and some Of them,
notably i'll Russia, Hungary, and
once in Germany, have been very poor
since.
The wheat crops for four calendar
years, 1S99-1902, were about 49,
100000 bushels or 40 per cent.
greater than in the four years 1896.
The oats crops were close to $780,
100000 bushels for more than II
per cent. greater in the later than
in the earlier period. The corn crops
were not much less than a billion
bushels Tor more than 13 per cent.
greater in the later than in the earlier
four years. The cotton crops were
more than a million bales Tor a full
one.third) greater in the later than
IL e.