If you think it worth while in the Educational Department of the next number of your Magazine, tell us what effect bucket shops and trade exchanges have on the price of such produce as are dealt in.
Wishing you and your Magazine all the good that can come to a mortal and a great publication, I remain your devoted friend and admirer.
S. T. Z. Champion, Sterrett, Pa.
I am a constant worker and reader of this great reform movement and have been for the past twelve years, and have voted the ticket straight till they got me to straddle W. J. B. one time and I got such a fall I fear I will never live to get over it. I am getting old. I am one of Robert E. Lee’s old web-foot boys and stacked my old Enfield rifle at Appomattox Court House on the 9th of April, 1865. It looks like a miracle to see the fingers pushing a pen that pulled the trigger 40 years ago, and yet when I think of the blood that was shed for this great nation’s freedom and to see it being stolen away from us by those money knaves it makes me feel like I am just 16 years old. I have nine boys, all Populists. Oh, how I want us to live to get at least one more vote for that grand and noble boy, Thomas E. Watson, for our next President. Don’t you all feel me rejoicing over New York’s election, but I fear they will not let Hearst have his seat as mayor of New York. I have just read Watson’s answer to Hoke Smith’s letter. It is a grand reply.
You can count on me when the last roll is called. I’ll be there. Yours for reform.
W. H Thomas, Fairhaven, Mo.
After spending 25 years in the thickest of the fray I could hardly go back to the “wallowing in the mire.” No, my brother, I never say die, but am still pegging away. Yes, I am a Populist. I am a rampant Socialist and I think that most of my old comrades have followed my example and I can see no reason why all Populists should not do the same. You know, my brother, that the Socialists are growing as no other party ever grew and they are bound to become a dominant factor in politics in the near future. It is evolution. Reforms do not go backward. The Populists have done a grand work, but Socialism is inevitable and I would rejoice to see all old Populists get aboard the band wagon. You are doing a noble work and to show you that I appreciate it I am going to send you a dollar for the magazine and 50 cents for that fountain pen, although I can illy afford it, as I am 65 years old and dependent on my labor for the support of my family.
Don’t Teddy, the Trust-buster, make you tired? I think he is the biggest fraud that ever sat in the Presidential chair.