But above all questions of grace or ornamentation, the prime factor necessary to good job work lies in the proper balance, disposition and spacing of lines. I group these three items because, while distinct features in themselves, they form in the ensemble the unit of effect. They are interdependent, and one implies the other. You can take a job, well balanced as to faces, and by poor spacing ruin the whole effect. You can take a job, poorly balanced as to selection of sizes of type, and by a judicious, insertion of an underscore or two make it do nicely, provided you space it perfectly. You can give a striking effect to an otherwise commonplace opportunity by subordinating the inconsequential in a group in small type while the idea of the text is brought out emphatically, and without recourse to the rule-curver. This latter style is peculiarly adapted to the use of grotesqueries, and when such work is pressed in a color or colors in harmony with the paper, the result is always satisfactory.

Speaking of paper leads me to add one. more suggestion before I close this paper. It is on the importance of taking a good stone proof. "A good proof is half the

job" used to be a widely-honored maxim when I was a boy. Now, also, pounding has become a literal fact, and one could very frequently put into practice the ancient joke of casting a stereotype from most proofs. Good work should be turned out in a proof equal to the work, and should, of course, be taken on good paper, and when a job is to go in colors nothing is easier than to give a colored proof, especially if but a word or two is to go in a bright color. A good method to do this is to take a bit of color on a card board and with the tip of the finger to dab on the board until the ink is evenly distributed. Roll your entire job in the main color and carefully rub off with a piece of benzined rag the portion for the other color; then use the tip of your finger as a dab. You will find it possible, with care, to roll even nonpareil lines surrounded closely by others, and unless your job is complicated, no recourse to untying will be found necessary.

the proof wet to avoid slipping. The advantage thus gained by a few minutes' additional work will be speedily apparent in an increased number of approved jobs.

Many who admit the great advantages -nay, the necessity of the telegraph and telephone being operated as a part of the postal system, are deterred by the inquiry, "Is it constitutional?" In truth it is unconstitutional for this essential branch of the postal system to be operated by a private monopoly or in any other manner than by the government.

When the constitution placed the postoffice in the hands of the government, it conferred its exclusive operation upon the government, and with it all means of operating it to the best advantage. The bestowal of the exclusive right and duty to operate the postoffice carried with it the exclusive right and duty to use all the agencies that would make the postoffice most highly efficient, as such agencies from time to time should be improved or invented. On this principle the first telegraph line was built by a congressional appropriation under an administration which by that period in its history had become a strict constructive administration (Tyler's), and the telegraph belonged to, and was operated by, the government from 1844 to 1847, in Polk's administration. Indeed, the supreme court of the United States, in a unanimous opinion (Pensacola v. Telegraph Co., 96 U. S. 1), has held that the telegraph came within the grant of power to establish the postoffice. The opinion, The opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Waite, says:

"The powers thus granted are not confined to the instrumentalities of the postal service known or in use when the constitution was adopted; but they keep pace with the progress of the country and adapt themselves to the new developments of time and circumstances. They ex

tend from the horse with its rider to the stage-coach, from the sailing vessel to the steamboat, from the coach and steamboat to the railroad, and from the railroad to the telegraph, as these new agencies are successively brought into use to meet the demands of increasing population and wealth."

And Justice Henry B. Brown, who is recognized as one of the ablest members of the United States supreme court, in the leading article in the August Forum,

says:

"If the government may be safely intrusted with the transmission of our letters and papers, I see no reason why it may not also be intrusted with the transmission of our telegrams and parcels, as is almost universally the case in Europe."

The act of congress of 1866, chapter 230, recognizes the telegraph as a governmental function, and expressly provides that all telegraph lines thereafter built shall be turned over to the government on demand at any time after the lapse of five years upon payment of the actual value of poles, wires, etc.

It will be noted just here that so far as railroads are used for the transmission of mail, they were promptly, and from the beginning, adopted and used exclusively by the postoffice. Whether, in so far as railroads are used for the entirely different purpose of carrying passengers and freight, they shall be taken over by the government, is an entirely different question, standing on its own basis, which has never affected the undeniable right and duty of the government to use them exclusively so far as they are used for the carriage of mails. But the telegraph and telephone (so far as used by the public

for hire) are and can be only used for the transmission of mail, and unquestionably come within the exclusive grant to the government of operating the postoffice.

The telegraph and telephone are simply the electric mail, or mail sent by electricity, just as the railway mail is sent by steam agency in preference to the horsepower formerly used in the days of stagecoaches and horseback riders and canal boats.

When the government shall assume its duty of sending the mail by electricity, railroad companies can still operate their own telegraph lines on their own business and private telephone exchanges will still exist, just as railroads and others may now send their own letters by their own agents, but not carry them for others for hire. Then, as now, the government would only have the exclusive privilege of carrying mail for hire. This privilege of carrying mail for hire, whether sent by electricity or steam or stage-coach, or on horseback, is an exclusive governmental function, and no corporation or monopoly can legally exercise any part of it. It is the duty of the government to do it, and to do it in the quickest and most efficient manner and at the lowest possible rate consistent with the cost.

The army and navy and the department of justice are departments of exclusive governmental functions in the same manner and to exactly the same extent as the postoffice. But suppose that some branch

of the department of justice (as by turning in the fines, penalties and tax fees) or of the war or navy could be made a source of revenue, would it not be singular to turn over that revenue-paying part of those departments to a private monopoly, leaving the people to support the non-profitable part? Yet that is exactly what is done with the postoffice. Though the postoffice is as exclusively a governmental function as the army or navy or the department of justice, the government operates only the slow, antiquated, non-paying part of the postoffice, leaving

the taxpayers to make up an annual deficit of six or eight million dollars, while the rapid, improved, up-to-date part of the postoffice-the rapid or electric mail

is operated by a private monopoly and pays a heavy dividend on its watered stock of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, ten times the actual value of its plant.

Besides, this system is unjust, for the private monopoly naturally, selects the best-paying districts, and a large part of the people are denied the advantages of a modern postoffice. In every country, save ours alone, the power of the monopoly has failed to maintain a system so unconstitutional and so opposed to the best interests of the public. Hence in every country except ours the telegraph and telephone are constituent parts of the postoffice, with the double result that the postoffice facilities of the telegraph and telephone are extended to the country postoffices, and the postal revenues show a profit instead of a loss. Notably Great Britain, which has most widely extended the use of the telegraph and telephone as a part of its postoffice, shows a large annual profit from its postoffice instead of the deficit which was usual before the telegraph and telephone were added to the postoffice by Mr. Gladstone in 1870.

But there are those who say that the telegraph and telephone would centralize the government. Yet it would be hard to see why an efficient postal service is more centralizing than an inefficient one, or why mail sent by electricity or pneumatic tubes (which should be adopted in the large cities) is more centralizing than mail sent by horseback or by steam.

It is a puzzle to understand why ownership of telegraph or telephone wires costing less than ten dollars per mile should imperil the government more than the ownership of gunboats or postoffice buildings or postal cars. If it were a question of adding new functions to the government-as the ownership of railroads and the carrying of freight and

passengers-this argument would be a legitimate one for debate. But when the constitution has already turned over the exclusive duty of transmission of mail to the government, there can be no argument of this kind properly used against the introduction of the most improved methods for the transmission of the mail, whether by electricity or pneumatic tubes.

Telegraphic dispatches would be as sacred in the hands of government employes as other mail is now, or as the telegrams are in the hands of the employes of a private corporation. Besides, government employes, especially under civil service rules and subject to the supervision of public opinion, would be less capable of using the telegraph for partisan purposes, as has been done under corporation ownership, and as was attempted to be done in the first Cleveland election, as every one remembers.

With telephones at all country postoffices and all villages and the smaller towns, few additional employes would be required, and those few would be added at centers requiring the telegraph and where civil service rules obtain. The telephone and telegraph would be put in the postoffice buildings already owned or rented by the government, thus saving the rent of all the buildings now used by the private companies. This and the saving of the salaries of the officials of the present corporations and the dividends on their largely watered stock would enable the government to reduce its tolls to the uniform rate of ten cents per message in dependently of the large increase in busi

ness.

In Italy, the government is now proposing to reduce its telegraph rates to five cents per message, and in Sweden the government rate for telephones is six dollars per annum.

In Great Britain (by the official report made to this government in the United States consular reports for April, 1895) the increase since the government has taken over the telegraph and telephone

has been tenfold in private messages and thirtyfold in press messages, and the improvement in promptness of delivery has been from an average of two to three hours under private ownership to an average of nine minutes under government. This wonderful increase in business has been due to the threefold cause of cheap rates, extension of the lines to all postoffices, and greater promptness in delivery.

With wire costing less than ten dollars per mile, there is no reason why the government should not own a line to every postoffice in the Union. There should be no dicker with private companies about leasing or purchasing. In 1866 they only asked for five years to close up; but when the five years were up they had formed the present great trust and defied the public. They have had thirty years' notice to abandon their use of a branch of the governmental functions. In that time they have received hundreds of millions of profits, illegally extorted from the toiling masses. They have no claim to extract another dollar by lease or sale of their antiquated and worn-out instruments. Let the government give the actual value of such wire as it may wish to use and take complete and exclusive possession of the duties of a postoffice. This is provided for by the act of congress of 1866, chapter 230, which clearly gave notice that the telegraph companies had no franchise for the loss of which they could claim compensation, but that they simply had temporary permission to operate, subject to the government's right to take the property on payment of assessed value of wires and poles, etc.

Every postmaster who can talk can use the telephone, and where a telegraph office is required the government can employ an assistant as operator as easily as any other clerk. Other countries, without exception, are doing this good work of furnishing electric mail facilities at cheap rates to all its people, in the country as well as in the town. Why should this