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we were at Carmel. I do not think that any sea is bluer than what one sees from the Seventeen Mile Drive. Those quaint wind-swept cypress trees along the coast are ever a fascination and a joy. They are so wonderfully picturesque. Two trees grew together at the edge of the world, the inter-twining of branches and the position of the trunks, making them appear like a great ostrich hurrying up the hill. One of the trees has been burned and it is a great pity, for now he will never reach the top of the hill, and he did try so hard.

The world knows that at Carmel is an art colony. It is a place of brown houses, hiding inconspicuously beneath the tall cypress pine trees peering out between gnarled branches at the opalescent sea. Some one dared to build a short sidewalk along the main street, but the sand rushed up in a fury and hid it from sight. "The Heights," five miles from Carmel, boasts a new hotel and a view which is not excelled in the world. Carmel Mission, is on the road to "The Heights." Lovely gray plants grow on the dunes at Carmel and the woods are full of light blue wild lilac. Artists roam happily about, always ready to offer the welcoming hand to strangers. It is a place in which one can rest or work and be happy.

We left Carmel soon after breakfast on a glorious morning and arrived in San Francisco that evening, tired but happy. The big city did not look a bit tempting after the open road, and we resolved to take it again as soon as we could.

THE AUTOMOBILE IN POLITICS ONSIDERING the few years that the automobile has been in use, it has figured to a large extent in politics, but Texas has been the first State to see a candidate opposed because of his expressed opposition to motor cars. The candidate is no less a personage than former United States Senator Joseph W. B. Bailey, who cut quite a figure as a national legislator, and was considered a Presidential possibility. Since he left the Senate he has not been heard of outside Texas, and it was generally supposed in other States that he had given up politics.

He is back to his old love and would

like to fill the Governor's chair.

He is said to be opposed to motor vehicles, except for commercial and industrial purposes, and his political opponents are laying stress on the fact that for many years the former Senator has been operating a large horse-breeding farm in Kentucky. His record as an opponent of the automobile has been revived, and proves him to have been at least a consistent reactionary, if not a very wise one.

When all the rest of the world, pretty nearly, was hailing the advent of the automobile, the Texas Senator was condemning it in terms that live in the pages of the Congressional Record at Washington. These expressions are being circulated in Texas to make votes against Mr. Bailey, for Texas is as much interested in road building for motor cars as many other places.

It was in the last days of the Taft administration, that Senator Bailey used the arguments against the automobile, that now make political capital against him and show how short was his foresight.

"If I had my way," said the Texas Senator, "I would make it a crime to use these automobiles on the public highways, because no man has a right to use a vehicle on a public highway that is dangerous to the safety and lives of other people, and an automobile is dangerous.

"The horse has an ancient and a prescriptive right to the highway, and I do not think he ought to be driven from it by these machines. I know more than one man who has been compelled to sell his horses and carriages because their wives were afraid to use them on the highways where these machines are used.

"I have read one of the articles in one of the magazines which seems to be devoted to advertising automobiles that they are going to emancipate the horse from the drudgery of the great cities. It may be that they will, but when they do it will increase the drudgery of the farmer in the country. When the farmer has no market for the horse which he has raised, and has no market for his corn and his oats and his hay to feed him, the horse may be emancipated from drudgery, but what is to become of the American farmer?"

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S this is a tale of woe I may as

A well begin at the beginning, which

was several months ago, when I gave up our two-room apartment, on Washington Heights, New York, because I would not stand for profiteering. I was about to quit anyhow. When the real estate agent told me they intended to jack up my rent from $55 a month to $85 per, I registered patriotic indignation and determination to walk the streets the rest of my life in defense of American liberty. I begin to hope I won't have to live up to my threat.

When I gave the real estate agent the bluff over the phone, I wasn't so sure I'd got away with it, for I heard him hawhaw and remark to the stenographer:

"That guy's goin' to get the surprise of his life-findin' an apartment, eh? He'll need a new pair o' shoes before he gets through."

"I'll sure say he will," assented the stenographer.

As I hung up the phone I told my wife that if everybody would give those profiteers a battle, like I was going to, they would soon be hunting rat holes to hide themselves.

"Perhaps!" was the most encouragement I could get out of friend wife. She said she would hate to give up the apartment we had, and maybe have to sleep in a drygoods box, with our little Fauntleroy. He might get his death of cold.

"What's $30 or $50 extra," she added, woman-like.

"Gee-you talk of thirty or fifty bucks,

like you was a silent partner in the Standard Oil," I answered. But what's the use. What can you do with a woman?

They

Well!-say!-we couldn't find a place to rent before we had to give up our apartment. We had to move to a hotel-me and the wife and young Fauntleroy-an' you know what hotels are. charge you for breathing- and as for eating!- oh, mommer. I began to lose weight at the rate of five pounds a dayand I never had none to spare nohow.

"This thing has got to stop!" I says to the wife, when we get our first halfweek's hotel bill. "Tomorrow I'll hunt around some of them real estate offices, and get an apartment-three or four or five rooms with a kitchenette and a bath -I won't stand for no dark rooms neither."

"I wouldn't be too particular, Leonidas," says my wifeYou know my name is Leonidas Mugg. "I'm paying for it-and I'll get what I want," I said.

Well, I'll own up, I didn't get it the first day-nor the second neither-an' in fact, I ain't got it yet-after three months on the search, myself and wife, with little Fauntleroy a close third in the hunt.

Some of the real estate agents around "Washington Heights" thought I was trying to spoof them, when I asked for three, or four or five rooms with a kitchenette for about $75 a month.

"I couldn't get it for you for $7500 a month," said one agent who was seated at a rosewood desk, toying with a bronze

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With that the agent turned to his rosewood desk and resumed his task of placing thousand dollar checks under his bronze paper-weight to keep them from being blown away by the fresh afternoon breezes from the Hudson.

I thought 'twas the Prince of Wales in the realty game, when I approached Mr. Marcel Wave at the renting desk. Such class I ain't seen outside the movies. If he hasn't been in them, believe me his face will be on the fences soon. I looked like a lot less than thirty cents, when I told him I could only stand for $75 a month.

"Oh, you better inquire over at some of the small places on the East Side," he said, and called out after me, "Please don't slam the door!"

Something would a been slammed hard, I'm thinking, if the four-flusher had come outside.

The second week of the search, when I was beginning to get kind of discouraged, a friend suggested that I might find a place in Brooklyn, but both my sisters live in Brooklyn and 'twould be asking too much of my wife to live in the same town with her people-in-law. The murder record in the United States is already 10,000 a year.

When I'd searched through all the New York real estate offices without finding any place to put our bunch of imitation Circassian Walnut furniture, and double-imitation Khiva rug, and packages of canned kitchen stuff, I began to realize my only hope was to find housekeeping rooms in a private family. The delivery boy at the delicatessen put the idea in my wife's head, and she told me.

We had to migrate to New Jersey to find what we were looking for. Mrs. Flivver took us in. She had a balance to pay on her used-but-not-abused tin Lizzie, and was willing to let us have the use of her hall bedroom and the run of the kitchen, provided Fauntleroy could be kept, from doing his writing lessons on the walls, and striking matches on the white-enameled doors. Naturally he

couldn't, so we had to move again—this time without furniture. We weren't able to get it into Mrs. Flivver's hall-room and sold it for 20 cents on the dollar. Mrs. Flivver wanted us to pay for Fauntleroy's crayon and lead pencil frescoes on the walls, but when we argued that the decorations were an artistic embellishment, and we could set up a counter claim, she said she'd think it over before she ordered her lawyer to go ahead and sue for damages.

The girl at the soda counter across the street-that used to be a saloon-told me that we might get a couple of housekeeping rooms at Mrs. Dippy's one of the neighbors, so we didn't have to sleep in the park.

It was the psychological moment to do business with Mrs. Dippy, as she had two rooms close under the shingles for $30 a week. They had been occupied by the President and Treasurer of the Home Comfort Association, who had just been arrested for using wood alcohol instead of sheep-dip for the right kick in his

nerve tonics.

Unfortunately he left the landlady well stocked up, for she got so bad that Mrs. Doubledippy would be the right name for her. When she got to going around the house, looking for snakes with a cleaver in her hand, we thought 'twas time to take to the road again.

The girl at the soda fountain told my wife about an apartment house being put up on Simoleon Avenue, by two Russians, named Czhxizskzoxrzixtzofsky and Kzixlzbxnazrlofotzisky. One of their prospective tenants signed a lease for a year, but on thinking it over had died suddenly of weak heart. We might grab off the vacant apartment before the news got to the reporters at the coroner's office.

My wife ankled over to Simoleon Avenue and found C. and K. on the sidewalk discussing whether they hadn't better ring up for extra police reserves to check the expected riot over the empty apartment. It was a three-room place. If we took it on the jump 'twould only be $125 a month, and easy terms.

"What you call easy?" asked my wife. It only meant to take a lease for ninety(Continued on Page 443.)

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MONTH has elapsed since I wrote

A about "Rent Profiteers" in the

about "Rent Profiteers" in the

April Overland Monthly. I then thought that the rent question was very serious. I have no reason to change my views of a month ago. On the contrary the complaint of insufficient housing is louder than ever. The cries of tenants against profiteers are more bitter. This is calculated to engender additional class strife. Unfortunately few newspapers have the courage, to state the matter honestly to the public.

As there are more tenants than landlords, it seems to many newspapers and politicians, more popular and profitable to inflame the persons injured by high rents that point out the causes of the evil and the remedy. These are so plain that it seems a waste of time to enumerate them. They can be epitomized, in the one word, misgovernment.

If taxes were lower, real estate investments would be more popular. Plenty of houses would be erected.

The burden of municipal taxation has been thrown on real estate. There has been an orgy of official extravagance. When the taxes became insufficient to meet the wastefulness of the municipalities, bond issues were floated. So many issues have been authorized that most of the American municipalities have passed their bonded limit.

The manner in which bond elections have been conducted, has demonstrated a woeful lack of public spirit. In few cases have 50 per cent of the registered voters taken the trouble to go to the polls. At 18 important elections in San Francisco, not over 40 per cent of the voters cast their ballots.

In that 40 per cent were represented a considerable percentage of who were not on the tax-rolls of the city. Transients, sojourning in the community just long enough to obtain registration could vote. A voter may be a tramp or jailbird but he has a legal right to impose_enormous debts upon the municipality. The ballots of such undesirables count for just as much in the bond election returns as those of the reputable and industrious citizens. No one will argue that such election methods are calculated to promote the prosperity of a city, yet they rule in the United States. The dominant doctrine is that all men being born free and equal—which they are not-the man of integrity and thrift and the veriest loafer are on equal footing on questions of incurring public debt and increasing the taxes.

Excessive taxation destroys the initiative and strength of the middle classes, and thus saps the vitality of a commonwealth. It must be remembered, that in the United States, taxpayers labor under

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