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FAVORS POSTAL BANK
Postmaster General Meyer Receives Unique Letter.
AN IOWAN'S BREEZY VIEWS
Likens Proposed Scheme to "Sweet Song" From Beyond.
HAS "KANNED" HIS MONEY
Tells the Story of One "Bills" Carler at College and Points Out Moral.
Cabinet officers are accustomed to have words of all sorts hurled at them in let- ters, though the honeyed voice is about all they usually hear. Occasionally a bouquet comes in an epistle, and Post- master General Meyer has recently re- ceived one of that sort, which was se- cured by a reporter of The Star as a literary curiosity, for it might have been written by Old, Gorgon Graham when he penned "The Letters of a Self-made Mer- chant to His Son."
Dr. J. A. Wailes of Mystic, Iowa, who sent the letter, had his upbringing in Kansas, near the soil, and his experience of early western banks was not of the happiest. It apparently affected his vo- cabulary, for he does not lack the power of expressing what he feels.
But he can speak for himself, for here is his letter to Mr. Meyer, just as he wrote it:
Has a Sweet Sound. "Dear Sir: Herewith I send you a clipping from the Kansas City Weekly Star that sounds to me like a sweet song from life's other side-with your picture, which you must return. I am going to frame it and hang it in my office (unless you send me a better one).
"I have been a strong advocate of a postal bank for many years. Thirty- five years ago, when I was a boy, I worked on the Atkinson, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad in Kansas, and de- posited the first money I ever had in the First National Bank of Lawrence, Kan. The bank busted and I lost-More than fifty other boys who worked with me done the same. What the effect was on the others I can't say, but it put a damper on me and caused me to squander and waste my wages for ten years.
"When Gov. Hoch lived at Florence, Kan., and edited a little paper there, the grasshoppers ate my crop, my brother in Iowa sent me $50, I put $25 in the Florence Bank. Old Pete Aller run away with all the money. Three years after he was caught in Connecticut and brought to Kansas and was sent up for twenty years. About eighteen months ago my brother, a carpenter at Plano, Ia., hid $60 in the old round oak stove. His wife filled it full of waste paper and burned it up. A smart Alec (a neighbor) said it served him right. Hains (the same Smart Alec) put $1,100 in the nearest bank, the Farmers' & Drovers' Bank of Seymour, and lost in less than a year.
"When me and my wife started in life we run a boarding house in a labor camp. I tried to get the boys to save their money and get ahead by depositing it in bank. The answer was always the same. 'No dam bank can blow himself on my money.' You see they lack confi- dence, and their lack of confidence is well founded, and in view of my own experi- ence and observation I had to go way back and set down.
Conspicuous by Absence. "Well, I have just heard of a good old friend who has dropped his little wad of $800 in the Chariton, Iowa, bank, that went busted a few weeks ago. My sister in Kansas has money in a bank that in- vested in warehouse and cold storage stock in Kansas City. They are looking for the money, the promoters, the 100,000 cases of eggs and other things galore that said to be stored there, all of which are very conspicuous by their ab- sence. I have my money kanned up. Can you blame me for it? Does the bankers and others who scold us think we are all a peck of fools? Give us postal banks that is absolutely safe and every dollar will come to the surface, as it should- when a safe place is provided, and there will be no more hoarding. Even if you restrict deposits to $5 it will save more men, women and children, and make them independent, self-respecting law- aviding citizens. I am a democrat, but I have got so interested in Roosevelt that I went to Keokuk to see and hear him speak. If he strikes out from the shoul- der for a postal bank in his message I will vote for him if I have a chance.
"Whoop It Up, My Good. Dear Friend- You are engaged in the most humanitarian work of any man on earth today, as well as the most economic business move. We don't kneed more money-too much now -You see with cheap silver coined in dol- lars at private mints that no one on earth can tell from the ones made by Uncle Sam, the country has become in- flated, and that is hurting no worse than the panic.
Iowa Prices. "Horses are selling here at $150 to $200. Not worth over $75 to $100. Overcoats and gowns in our shop windows $20 to $30, not worth over $5 to $10. Land in Iowa at $100 to $125, dear at $40. In Kansas, $75 to $100, dear at $25. Our people are crazy. When Bill went to College Pap gave him money enough to take him through. He blowed it. Pap pumped in more. Bill blowed it again, and Pap kep right on pumping in till he was tired, then he went down to see what was all the trouble. He kicked Bill through the glass front of a saloon and wiped up the sidewalk with him. If Uncle Sam, in- stead of pumping in more money every time the Wall St. Wind Bag bursts will do as Pap did, and give us a P. O. Bank with equal distribution and less cach-peny advertising. fake lies through the U. S. mails, fewer slot machines, we will be all