DEMOCRACY AND THE CAT.

The British House of Commons has been likened to the trunk of an elephant: It can uproot a tree or pick up a pin. The same might be said of our democratic form of government. In New York City Mayor Hylan has become terribly excited about the City Hall cat, which lapped up six dollars and fifty cents' worth of milk last year. The city administration is aghast at this peculation of the public funds. Why cannot Robert, the cat, eat the scraps from the janitor's table and save the common people all this vast expenditure? cry the city fathers. The Mayor has ordered a "sweeping investigation," a "drastic inquiry" into this barefaced attempt to pick the public's pocket. Altogether the affair is pictured as the most scandalous thing since the Tweed Ring.

This is merely an index of how this nation is penny-wise and pound-foolish. New York city is having an epidemic of robberies such as it has not had for years. More than once recently a longshoremens strike has tied up ocean travel. New York has been spending money like the proverbial drunken sailor. Nor is New York alone in its extravagance. Our Congress is appropriating millions of the public's money with scarcely an inquiry to find out how those millions are to be spent. The interest on the war-debt is going to amount to a billion dollars a year. This does not bother Congress. Like New York, it cares not how the millions are spent on pork, as long as they can watch a penny here and there to prove to the public how economical they are. Until an adequate budget system is evolved to take care of the millions as well as the pennies, the public funds will be in a large measure wasted. The periodic investigations of Robert, the cat, will go on. The elephant will disregard the trees that need to be uprooted and keep on picking up the pins.