THE COLVILLE EXAMINER
Issued Every Saturday by the Stevens County Publishing
Company, Inc. Subscription Price $1.50 a Year; 5c a Copy
J. C. Harrigan, Editor and Manager
Congress is in session.
Christmas is coming.
Who plucks the fattest turkey?
If your turkey is missing, see if your congress
man knows where it went.
Republican county officials are again getting a
taste of the beneficent results of republican rule.
County warrants are a drug on the market. The
warrants are good —unquestionably. So are repub
lican financial ideas! Good for some purposes to
some people, but they can't be eaten or worn or
exchanged for house rent. Present county war
rants are like present financial laws—they may im
prove with age, but are utterly of no use in present
times. How will these officials explain themselves
and their party when they take the stump next
fall?
Eastern, central and western bankers unite in
saying they will resume cash payment just as soon
as public confidence is sufficiently restored to al
low it. Now, why is it that all this confidence is
demanded from the public and none at all from
banking institutions? Why should a financial
system exist which allows banks to successfully
run a sure-thing game, and the people be required
to do all the guessing? The small banks scattered
over the country, instituted by local capital, are
not to be blamed for doing as best they can in an
exigency. But the congressional electors are re
sponsible for the condition which makes their own
banks restrict payment. And did Stevens county
favor an escape from Wall Street rule at its last
congressional election? Confidence games are pro
hibited at county fairs, but are welcomed at
county elections with as much fervor as in New
York City.
As the inevitable results of a panic, prices on
commodities are beginning to tumble. In this pro
cess of clearing the atmosphere the merchants are
first to suffer, for they have their stores stocked
with goods bought when times were good and
prices high. Out of the necessities of the case
they should have their money back, and in a large
measure they will be recompensed in the due
course of trade, but gradually prices will come
down as the merchant can reinvest in new products
at reduced prices. The people who are holding
anything in the line of farm produce for a better
price will make a mistake, because a bounteous
harvest has blessed the land, and there is an abun
dant supply of everything. The demand is created
by the necessities of the case, and the luxuries will
be tabooed for a while yet, so that as there is a
general tendency to keep money out of circulation,
there will continue to be a tendency to economize
among the masses who have been depended upon
as consumers.
The Port Townsend Leader has fired a campaign
gun from the ranks of republican yeomanry that
has dazed Gov. Mead, and has even caused the
redoubtable Cosgrove to retrace his steps from
the tall timber for a position in the open where he
can ascertain with greater certainty from whence
came the wondrous sound. Certainly all the great
aspirants for gubernatorial honors have stopped to
listen. The Leader says that ex-United States
Senator John L. Wilson, formerly of Spokane, but
now owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and
resident of Seattle, will enter the race for the re
publican nomination for governor.
Some there are who will stop to speculate about
the probability of such a thing, but the fellow who
has followed the planetary swing of political events
for the past few months can quite correctly cast
the horoscope of some important future individ
ualities in politics. For an instance: The Post-
Intelligencer and the Seattle Times have been
fighting since Wilson went into the newspaper
business in that city. They have ceased hostilities
in the past three months and the Times has with
drawn its morning edition which was instituted
for the purpose of injuring the Post-Intelligencer.
William Hickman Moore, who was elected reform
mayor of the biggest town on Puget Sound, is a
democrat and if he should be nominated for
governor on the democratic ticket it would require
the best the republican party has to offer to prevent
a stampede to his banner, and since the Times
quit fighting the Post-Intelligencer, it has been
clawing mud at and bellowing its disapproval of
everything that Moore has done as mayor, with
the full silent assent of the Wilson organ.
Another thing: When Governor Mead was in
augurated, he took unto himself as private secre
tary Col. A. N. Brown, who up to that time had
been city editor of the Post-Intelligencer. There
was nothing that happened in and about the
governor's office that did not find its escape to the
public attention first through the columns of the
Post-Intelligencer. About three months ago these
relations of amity between the office of the governor
and the Post-Intelligencer were cut short by the
resignation of Col. Brown, who immediately re
turned, full of honors, to the bosom of his first
love where he is now assistant editor of the Post-
Intelligencer.
Greatest of all things that must not be lost sight
of is that the Post-Intelligencer and the Times are
both backed by J. J. Hill, of the Great Northern