Norwich bulletin., 1909-06-12


 (Written Specially for The bulletin)
 The very most amazing thing to me about the United States Is the Iacl nat there is still sucn country. Cvil- ssa-. siderlng the laundering and stupidity o rfI seIfishness and shortsightedness ana bypocrisy which are manifestly inc controlling motives in most of our Ieeislatures and congresses, It IS wonder that things haven't gone to eternal smash long since. I'm not talking about one party or anoLner party: heaven forbid. I'm taking about the average lawmaker who IS elected by the average constitueneS'
 Take the run of men as you meet them. A large majority are fairly in- tellieent fairly reasonable fairly honest. quite patriotic. You'd have difBculty in fooling them, Individuality about matters oncerning their. own interest. You can trust the most o1 them to act fairly with you and to show considerable good judgment. But when won bunch that same lot together and set them 10 acting for the general good they are about as sensible as so many monkeys: about ss reasonable as sheep and about as foresighted as paving stones. Why is 1t? The acting together of the public for the public welfare and benefit is all there IS 10 our system, of government. It IS vastly more important, in itself, that tnls mutual public action be wise and just than that any private action be pru- dent. Moreover, on the lowest ground of saalfshness it is more necessary. And yet, if you will show me one self evident bit of wisdom and justice en- acted by any legislature or by con- gress in the last year I'll agree to snow you fsur self evident acts of selfish ness or wrong or folly. enacted, or as many acts of wisdom defeated TOT un- worthy reasons.
 I'pn not thinking about the tarnation tariff. The more hear and read about it. the less I know--which Is just the case with most other people. All that is clear to me in the matter is that congrets is wasting some weeks Of time and some hundreds of thousands of dollars in pretending to consider 1t, .'Pretending." I say advisedly. For all this debating and speechifying is not consideration but bluff and bunconbe. There is no reason for suspecting that a single vote has been changed by all the speeches made in both houses. So far as the outcome is concerned, the till might just as well have been pass ed by the house the morning it was in- troduced, and by the senate the same afternoon.
 Never mind the tariff, though. Take some more comprehensible needs of the country as a whole-of the people as a whole. The other day l talked a little about the crass blindness and cowafdice of congress in refusing to adopt a parcels post measure which should put this benighted country of ~r say. Tasmania or the Black Forest. This is the only country in the world today pretending to a high civiliza- tion which fails to give it's people the manifestly reasonable, economical and just service 1t could give and is maintained to give along this line. We brag about our progressiveness and eur advancement, and, yet, in this matter which touches the interest and the pocketbook of every American dwelling in the country districts, we are the very tail-end of the pup. h. deed, we can hardly be said to be at- tached to the dog, at all The string has broken, and we're more like the battered tin can lying at the roadside about as useful and no more pro- gressive. All because the lower house of congress Is afraid of offending some political interest and because the up- per house is or has been dominated by the callous greed of gang of ex- press and transportation managers whose private profits depend on their continued ability to exact high prices
 Then there are the postal savings banks. For about thirty-n five years postmaster generals have annually advised or begged for their estab- lishment. Does any one doubt the value of savings banks to the com mon people? There are about fifteen hundred of them in the country, nearly all in fourteen states. In those four teen the savings banks deposits amount to s3,590. .0O0,000 in the other thirty-fwo states and all the territories to about s70,000. New York and New England have twice as many deposits as all the other states combined. By the postal savings scheme each of the 6s,000 postoffices, most of them ir those thirty-two states, would become a depositary where the thrifty man ol woman could put into the hands oi the government his or her small say ings with the feeling that they were as secure as the life of the nation. Il is no part of the plan to run them fol profit, either to the government or tC the depositor. The rate of interest proposed Is only per cent. which would eliminate them from all com. petition with privately managed banlr uftcb pav Q 10 oy 4 S1ar oovt