A few of the Old Guard were frightened. They thought we’d suspended! I can’t blame them for that. It has always been a rocky road for any radical publication, and especially so if it advocates Populism. But Watson’s Magazine will be an exception. Nothing but the accomplishment of the reforms for which it stands could kill it. That might, by removing the necessity for such a magazine, but not necessarily. The discontent of the masses is too great now not to furnish a most fertile field for Mr. Watson’s teachings—and his influence is growing at a tremendous pace. Even his enemies admit that. And that means a pronounced success for Watson’s Magazine.

Thanks to the Old Guard, Watson’s Magazine gets subscribers at less cost than any other publication. Everywhere these old veterans are plugging away for subscribers and scarcely one of them will take a cent of commission for his work. Some of the other magazines are spending a fortune in newspaper advertising, and, of course, building up big lists; but we are well satisfied with a slower growth of subscriptions that will stay with us year after year. February is forging to the front in fine style and we shall more than double our list by the end of March.

“Figures won’t lie,” asserts the oracle. “Thet’s so,” retorts the plain, old, common-sense man, “but liars kin figger.” And the old fellow is right. Witness some of the stunts done by Carroll D. Wright as to the increased cost of living, and young Garfield’s showing of a net profit to the Beef Trust of a dollar, “marked down to 99 cents,” on each steer slaughtered.

My old colleague, T. H. Tibbles, Mr. Watson’s running mate in 1904, and now editor of a 25-cent-a-year Populist weekly at Omaha, Neb., The Investigator, was editor of the Nebraska Independent when young Garfield made that justly famous report. As I recollect, Tibbles figured that the Beef Trust must have a secret railroad (not a rebate) to Mars and had smuggled in countless thousands of beef cattle from that little, old red planet, contrary to the Dingley Bill “in such case made and provided,” because—

There weren’t enough beef steers on this old earth of ours—and haven’t been since the days when Christ drove the “System” out of the Temple—to account for the Beef Trust’s fortune at 99 cents per.

I have never examined Tibbles as to his proficiency in arithmetic, but I’m willing to bet a hat—a wide-brim “Cady” (Eugene Wood, please analyze)—that Tibbles either made a Sherlock Holmes “deduction” regarding that Martian railroad, or—

Perish the thought, that the martyred President’s son—well, had been doing some “figgerin’” and other things.