drive to St. Croix and see the doctor. This would give him an opportunity to pass Julie's house. He might catch a glimpse of her; he might even stop and ask how she was. His brain was just giddy enough to make him act impulsively.

His mother protested and his father called him a blamed fool, when they saw his condition, but he didn't hear much of what they said. He held his mind to the one idea. He must see Julie

again. again. The more he dwelt upon this, the more urgent the necessity seemed. He harnessed the colt with feverish haste. His father offered to go with him, but he refused to allow it.

"I'm all right," he said over and over again.

His mother made him drink some hot tea and helped him into a heavy overcoat with her eyes brimming tears. Then he headed the horse towards St. Croix.

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HE Boston Elevated Railway spells safety, comfort, and rapid transit for Greater Boston. A congeries of independent roads in 1898, the consolidation into the "L" system brought order and coherence out of jarring interests, and began improvements and extensions for the benefit of Boston and its suburbs that by 1915 will have aggregated some $115,000,000. These improvements include the subway system, the East Boston, Cambridge, and Washington Street tunnels, the Forest Hill and East Cambridge extension, and the splendid Charles River viaduct.

These and other improvements have been accompanied by the latest and most commodious types of cars and numberless minor things that add to public comfort. In fact, the keynote of the company's policy is courtesy in treatment, comfort in accommodation, safety and rapidity in transit, and honorable effort always to earn the good will of the public and com

mand the appreciation of its patrons. The important fact as the reports of the Boston Transit Commission illustrate that the increase in patronage has far outrun the increase in population is proof that the policy has been sound and the public responsive.

The success of any great transportation enterprise is dependent on the character, skill, and physical fitness of its employees. The "L" road workers are selected with peculiar care; their health and habits are keenly scrutinized, since these are are the bases of efficiency and safety; and to-day the road is proud of its army of welldressed, well-trained, polite, efficient workers, loyal to its interests and attentive to its patrons; and the road has promoted this esprit de corps by organizing and financing beneficial agencies which provide for the days of sickness and stress.

Safety is a sine qua non to success in transportation. The "L" road utilizes the best engineering skill; the

latest and best safety devices are used; the strictest discipline is maintained, and the defects of the human equation are minimized by constant supervision and good work, stimulated by training and rewards of merit.

The future of rapid transit in Greater Boston is assured if the Boston Elevated Railway can count on the intelligent co-operation of the public with it, and a sympathetic understanding of their mutual responsibilities and in

terests is cultivated. The prosperity of both will be helped by mutual gcod will, and while the company is naturally concerned in protecting its chartered rights from unwarranted invasion, it cordially welcomes helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms from its friends and patrons. Its sole aim is to deal openly with the public and serve it efficiently, effectively, and in a manner to earn its appreciation.

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HIS is an age of emotionalism, hysteria, discontent, and grouch. When the American is hard up he is cheerful and hard-working; when he is prosperous he has a grievance,- shadowy, perhaps, but still a grievance; and when grievance; and when he is well off he believes he isn't well off. To-day when harvests are good and business is booming, the American is full of grouch and pessimism; every man without an auto and a country residence wants one; everybody who has one or both is called a malefactor and a public enemy; and every noisy demagogue in the land yells through a megaphone that the people are oppressed and plundered; and yet for an oppressed and plundered people we seem to be pretty well off.

The fact of the matter is we are growing to be envious of our neighbor, jealous of his good fortune and discontented with our own share of the good things of life. We quote the Declaration of Independence solemnly, which says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," etc., etc.; but we seldom stop to analyze that beautiful sentiment, which is a fine, glittering generality and the purest of poppycock. No two things in nature, men, beasts, plants,

or aught else, are created equal in talent, ability, or opportunity; and the measure of success which we achieve in later life will never be equal. The best we can expect, and this we have a right to demand, is that all men and all combinations of men will give every other man and combination a Square Deal. Those who regulate their conduct, frame their policy, and manage their business upon a basis of the Square Deal are entitled to the respect and honor of their fellows; and to misrepresent and vilify such is to write ourselves down as unfair and un-American.

The fact is the American liver is out of order; we need a blue pill and a restricted diet; we need to be normalized and brought down to brass tacks; and when the American does recover his old-time healthy condition he will look back upon this year of 1912 with considerable sheepishness.

To-day all wealth is denounced that is not in our name; all success is suspected except our own; manufacturers are called malefactors; bankers are termed boodlers; brokers are bandits; merchants are mean and malicious miscreants; commissionnaires are criminals; a bank account creates suspicion; clean linen is an offence; and only

orators and office-seekers are honest. We are certainly in a bad way; but we will probably get over it.

However, let us turn to a more cheerful subject; let us discuss a concern whose motto is "The Square Deal," which lives up to its motto year in and year out, and which has been denounced, vilified, and misrepresented because it refuses to budge from the Square Deal.

Let us talk about the United Shoe Machinery Company, which an impulsive public - the people and press the people and press egged on and misled by interested and none too scrupulous outsiders · has booted and belted for years.

The United Shoe Machinery Company of Beverly, Mass., is, as its name implies, a company engaged in the manufacture, lease, and sale of machinery used in the shoe industry, a peculiarly New England industry, prosperous, enterprising, and individualistic, which employs the best paid and most intelligent class of operatives in the country, and which, owing to the inflexible attitude and Square Deal policy of the United Shoe Machinery Company, continues to be carried on by a large number of independent manufacturers instead of a great Shoe Trust. Nearly every other industry in the country has by stress of fortune, power of circumstance, and ability to control supplies and markets, been driven into great combinations called Trusts; the little fellows have. been gobbled up and driven to the wall; but the shoe industry still continues to be in the hands of a numerous class of active and independent manufacturers

some twelve hundred and odd concerns employing about two hundred thousand hands. There are rich and powerful shoe concerns that are eager and willing to drive out, or swallow up, the little chaps; but the United Shoe Machinery Company stands like a lion in the path and says firmly and decisively, "Not while I am in business. All manufacturers, big and little, look alike to me; no one's gain shall mean another one's loss, as far as I go. The United Shoe Machinery Company

stands for the Square Deal, the old American doctrine- fair play for all, special privileges for none.

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Originally and before consolidation in 1899, the United Shoe Machinery Company consisted of the Goodyear Shoe Machinery Company, The Consolidated & McKay Lasting Machine Company, and the McKay Shoe Machinery Company, each was making its special and patented machines and other necessary and supplementary machines for manufacturing its particular type of shoe; each had its mechanics to keep its leased machinery in condition and each was duplicating much of the service of the others. This lack of unity was expensive and wasteful and gave no relief to the shoe manufacturer; he was dealing with three concerns and wasting time; he was purchasing machines outright, employing machinists to keep them in order and tying up capital needed in his legitimate business; and he was worried by new inventions, expensive to experiment with and dangerous to be without.

The consolidation put the shoe machinery business into one central concern; the manufacture of inefficient machinery ceased; the employment of unnecessary mechanics was stopped; the maker of shoes found he did not have to do business with more than one company unless he wished to; he no longer had to concern himself with inventors and experimenters in new and untried machines; he was no longer compelled to sink his capital in machinery of doubtful value; he found he could rent on royalty and lease at reasonable terms all the equipment necessary for his business; he was spared the expensive breakdowns, cessation of work and hiring of mechanics which the old system imposed on him; and he knew that the new company, the United Shoe Machinery Company, was constantly at hand to keep his equipment in good running order and to save him a thousand annoying and expensive interruptions of his business. He found that every manufacturer, rich and poor, was on the same basis in the

consideration of the United Shoe Machinery Company; he found the poorest man paid no more for royalties and rentals and the materials that entered into the making of a shoe than the richest; he learned that the money hitherto sunk in machinery could be put into the shoe business; and that he had come to do business with an enterprise that was not a trust, but a concern which, respecting all men's rights, favored the special interests of none.

The organization of the United Shoe Machinery Comapny was a Declaration of Independence for the shoe industry; it meant that a man with skill, brains, and limited capital could enter the shoe business with an assurance of success; and that the brutal power or united millions and the strength of great combinations could not defeat him, if he had energy, honesty, resolution, and knowledge of his special work. The day of the Square Deal had come; and the shoe industry of America had been placed on a safe and sane foundation. It was a demonstration of the American idea, a free field and no favor, equal opportunity for the strong and the weak, a concrete application of the doctrines of the Declaration hitherto believed to be merely altruistic philosophy; not that all men are created equal, but that opportnuity in the shoe business had for all men been made equal. In spite of opposition, persecution, misrepresentation, and the treachery of trusted ones, the idea has remained

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and triumphed; the United Shoe Machinery Company has succeeded; the shoe industry is free; competition is unhampered; and the great majority of the shoe manufacturers of America are its most loyal friends. To-day its machines in the United States alone represent a sales value of $40,000,000; it has a force of five hundred mechanics in this country whose entire time is spent in the factories of its lessees keeping their machinery in order; it turns out of its shops in Beverly some twenty-five thousand finished machines annually and some nineteen million parts of machines; it employs some five thousand workers and pays out $75,000 every week; and it can say proudly it has the best paid, best cared for, best housed, best treated, most intelligent and highest skilled workers on the American continent. This is the fruit of the Square Deal. There are people who define a trust as something to distrust and who stigmatize every great corporation as a trust. Here is a corporation which has proved its right to live and flourish, a corporation which is trusted and has proved its right to be trusted, which is a monument to fair treatment, honest policy, and the Square Deal.

When the American people recover their normal poise, when they forget their imaginary troubles, and psychological pessimism, they will lose no time in recognizing that the United Shoe Machinery Company and the Square Deal are synonymous terms.

HIS is the confession of a kicker who has been converted, who feels that his open confession is good for his soul and may be a poultice for the soul of some other kicker who has not yet been brought to the stool of repentance.

The privilege of kicking is dear to the American heart; to kick vigorously,

variously, valorously, early and often is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and endorsed by the common law; and as a rule the kicker kicks the wrong person and the wrong thing. Kicking-with the tongue, not the toe has become an American institution; we kick corporations, politicians, umpires, weather depart