in every movement of the square-set frame. The dark brown eyes are not of the kind that are usually described as "piercing, "but they have the look of placid, leisurely penetration that is most often seen in the eyes of children and seafaring men. There is nothing in the manner or appearance of John E. Wilkie in the least degree suggestive of the detective. His mien is that of the quiet, selfcontained business man, practical and prosaic. He discourages theatrical display and fiction of all sorts. The headquarters office is commonplace to the casual eye. Nothing in sight could possibly raise a suspicion of the sensational and dramatic records locked away in the cabinets. Visitors, with an awesome preconception of mystery and melodrama, tiptoe into the rooms expectant of thrilling experience, and depart perplexed and disappointed, for the police station of a petty precinct affords more satisfaction to the chance sensation-seeker than the headquarters of the Secret Service of the United States.

Sanity and balance are the most pronounced characteristics of the chief. The statement may seem banal but is it? How rare are men of perfectly sound mentality and those who are not more or less lopsided. John Wilkie has improved the heritage of a fine intellect by assiduous cultivation, for which his journalistic career afforded a peculiarly plethoric opportunity. His mental processes are extremely direct and methodical. In the reception, or recital, of a story he displays the nicest sense of values and an instinctive grasp of essentials. I once asked him for a detailed statement of the complicated "Philadelphia-Lancaster Case." The affair, with its ramifications, extended over two years and would afford material for a book. The story was an hour and twenty minutes in the unbroken telling. The points were given in chronological, or logical, sequence - whichever might better serve the understanding — and in and in language that, could hardly have been improved upon. So clear and orderly was the statement that at its conclusion I was able, although I had taken no notes, to sit down and reproduce it almost verbatim.

John Wilkie invariably displays the equipoise that comes of habitual self

control. I had evidence of this on a recent occasion and under the circumstance of one of those serious annoyances that betray us, more readily than a tragedy, into an exhibition of emotion. He had been recounting to me the "WigginsThompson Case" and had just remarked, "The photographer of the gang was-" when the telephone bell cut him short. It was a long-distance call from an operative, telling of one of those discouraging incidents which, from time to time, take the gilt off the gingerbread of secret service success. A criminal, whose capture had perhaps been the climax of long months of hard and patient labor, had, within the hour, been released by the court on a technicality. It was a serious setback and a keen disappointment. There was the faintest shade of vexation in the Chief's "Too bad!" and more of sympathy with the operative, whose past work in the case threatened to go for nought. There appeared to be chance of securing a fresh indictment at once and rearresting the culprit before he could get away. The operative received his instructions in brief, concise terms. The Chief hung up the receiver and, as it left his hand, the matter apparently left his mind. Swinging round in his chair he put a fresh match to his pipe and resumed at the precise point where he had left off as though there had been no interruption, "The photographer of the gang was Doctor Wilson," and so on to the end of the narrative, as if it had been the most absorbing matter in his mind, which in truth it was, because the matter of the moment. At its conclusion, he put on his coat and went to consult the solicitor of the treasury with reference to the news which had been telephoned to him, and that in turn took possession of his mind. to the exclusion of everything else.

Chief Wilkie, like most men who have lived a life of constant endeavor with uniform success, is modest but confident. When, after fifteen years of newspaper work, he received the unexpected offer to take charge of the Secret Service Division, he accepted it without doubt of his ability to "make good," and the immediate test put upon him by the Spanish-American War found him equal to the task in a degree that Secretary Gage, despite a very high opinion of his ability, had not looked

for. A special emergency force was speedily organized, and in the contest of courage and wits that ensued, the Spanish secret service was defeated at every point and its most important agents were captured. The sensational "Downing incident, " which terminated in the expulsion of Señor Carranza from British territory, won John Wilkie his spurs and silenced the skeptics who had been loud in their expressions of doubt as to the ability of so young a man to fill so difficult a position, for the secret service is the most difficult division in the government.

During the eight years of his service, Chief Wilkie has mastered some of the most important counterfeiting cases in the history of the bureau, and has gained for himself the reputation of being the most capable head the Secret Service Division has ever had. In the early years of his career he brought to a close the activities of the notorious Johnson family, who had been counterfeiters for three generations. This notable achievement was followed by the capture and conviction of the entire gang twelve men were sent to prison in the celebrated Jacobs-Kendig case, the most gigantic counterfeiting conspiracy in the annals of crime. These men made the most dangerous bogus bill that had ever been seen by the treasury experts and had carefully laid plans for floating $10,000,000 in forged notes. The Jacobs-Kendig affair, in the detection of which the Chief played the principal part himself, was as clever and thorough a piece of work as any in fact or fiction. Another highly important case, but only one in a score, was that of Davis, or Lieberman, the international counterfeiter, whose capture had been sought unremittingly during eight years by Scotland Yard detectives and the agents of our secret service. This astute criminal defied the law with wonderful success until he was bagged by John Wilkie.

But the most valuable service, by reason of its probable permanency, performed by the present Chief, is evidenced in the splendid organization and high state of efficiency of the bureau, which far transcend any previous attainment. Other divisions of the government have their detective force, but all these acknowledge the superiority of the secret

rvice and turn to it for assistance in

difficult cases. Thus Chief Wilkie's bureau is called upon to investigate all manner of violations of the United States statutes, frauds in connection with the postoffice, landoffice, immigration commission, customs, internal revenue and what not. The secret service has offices in all the large centers of the country and employs hundreds of operatives; how many and who they are, only the Chief and the Secretary of the Treasury know.

When his own achievements are referred to Mr. Wilkie never fails to express a warm eulogium of the loyalty and efficiency of the men under his direction. He says he possesses the invaluable faculty of "sizing up" men. When he finds a good one, he favors him by working him hard. He knows, to an ounce, the weightcarrying capacity of each of his principal men and he is no light task-master, but labor-lust is a consuming passion with him and he spares himself less than he spares his subordinates. This they know and respond ungrudgingly to the spur. Under the stimulus of judicious urging and generous approval, the operative expends himself to the utmost, in the assurance that the reward of good work is as inevitable as the penalty of inefficiency. The same loyalty and respect that Wilkie, as editor of the Chicago Tribune, secured from his staff, is given to him by the men at present under his command. I use the word advisedly, for in its working and discipline the secret service is not unlike a military force and the keen esprit de corps that permeates it enhances the resemblance. When one considers the conditions, it is to wonder that a secret service man so seldom breaks troth. Take the Jacobs-Kendig case, for illustration: Here was as shrewd and unscrupulous a gang as ever concocted a crime, with half a million or more at command. There were upwards of one hundred men and women employed over a period of eighteen months in the pursuit of these criminals, who would gladly have bought any one of them, as they bought two ex-United States attorneys, and not one of them but knew it. Yet there was not the smallest leak, not a broken mesh in the net, and the first intimation the press and the public had of the affair came with the arrests that struck the counterfeiters with the suddenness of a thunderclap.

T

HE representatives of Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and the other cities of the great valley who met at St. Louis on October 15 and 16, 1906, gave concrete shape to the popular desire of the people of the Mississippi valley for direct and adequate water connection between the great seas on the country's northern and southern borders. In pursuance of this idea they formed the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterways Association. It is composed of delegates from all the states of the Mississippi Valley and on the lake and the gulf coasts. It selected W. K. Kavanaugh of St. Louis for president; D. R. Forgan of Chicago, M. J. Sanders of New Orleans, S. M. Neely of Memphis, J. L. Hebron of Greenville, Mississippi, and Greenfield Quarles of Helena, Arkansas, as vice-presidents; and W. F. Saunders of St. Louis as secretary.

Resolutions were adopted by the convention urging Congress to provide a fourteen-foot channel from the southern terminus of the Chicago Drainage Canal through the Illinois River to the Mississippi and down the latter to St. Louis. Congress was also urged, as a preliminary, to give stability to the channel of the Mississippi from St. Louis southward, and then to cut the channel to the adequate depth. The engineers' estimates are that the deep waterway from the Drainage Canal to St. Louis will cost $31,000,000. The minimum depth of the main channel in the Drainage Canal is twenty-two feet, so that the proposed fourteen-foot channel from the canal to St. Louis would furnish navigation from Chicago as far as the Missouri metropolis for vessels of fairly heavy draft.

As Chicago has paid out of her own treasury more than $50,000,000 in the aggregate for the construction and maintenance of the Drainage Canal, and as she offers to donate the canal to the United States if the government pledges itself to open and maintain deep water from Chicago to the Gulf, the convention expressed the idea that this proposition ought to strike Congress favorably.

The engineers estimate that a permanent eight-foot channel can be obtained between St. Louis and Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio, for about $18,000,000. Without any extra expenditure the channel between St. Louis and Cairo throughout 1906 was about eight feet at the lowest stage of the water, at the shallowest point in that course. It is figured that a fourteen-foot channel from St. Louis to Cairo could be had for $30,000,000.

This course from Chicago to the sea by way of the Mississippi would be available through practically the entire year, while the route eastward from Chicago by way of the lakes and Canada's canals and rivers is closed by ice five months out of the year, and that by way of the Erie Canal is shut up four months out of the twelve. And yet Canada's 6,000,000 people are spending very much more for the improvement of their water communication with the West than the Mississippi Valley asks the United States government to lay out on the deepening of a course from the lakes to the Gulf, while New York is contributing $101,000,000 to deepen its canals for the transit of one-thousand-ton barges.

At an engineers' meeting in St. Louis just after the close of the Deep Waterways Convention Isham Randolph of Chicago said he had found that there were three thousand two hundred Ameri

A vigorous and intelligent effort is being made by the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterways Association to secure the aid of the societies which are working for the improvement of the upper Mississippi, the lower Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio rivers, and reciprocal assistance is promised for their projects. The activity of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf promoters at the meeting of the Rivers and Harbors Congress in Washington on December 7 and 8, and the earnestness with which their project is pressed on the attention of the national Congress, give promise of good results even in the session of Congress which closes on March 4, 1907.

"An annual river and harbor bill for $50,000,000!" is the campaign cry of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep water boomers, and they expect to get their share of that appropriation. As, from present indications, the treasury surplus for the fiscal year which closes on June 30, 1907, will be nearly if not quite $50,000,000, as compared with one of $25,000,000 for the year ending with June, 1906, and deficits for the two preceding years, the workers for this appropriation feel encouraged.

This outlay would undoubtedly pay good dividends to the people of the entire country, on the Atlantic seaboard as well as in the Mississippi Valley, through the lowered cost of transportation by water, and through the reduction of rates by the railways to meet this competition. The old-time Illinois and Michigan Canal, which does comparatively little business, has the effect of keeping down railway rates in its field. At the time of the opening of the Eads jetties on the southern end of the Mississippi, in 1879, it was estimated that that improvement in navigation added $180,000,000 a year to the value of the crops raised in the Mississippi valley by forcing railway trunk

lines to lower their rates to the Atlantic seaboard in order to meet the menace of the competition which the route by way of the big river to the Gulf of Mexico held out.

Congress passed a law in 1906 giving the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to reduce railway rates when, on complaint, they were found to be excessive. Adequate waterway communication through the big valley would be far more effective in the direction of railway rate regulation than any regulation act passed by Congress could ever be.

Manifestly, at the present value of the crops and factory products, which are double as large as they were at the time when the Eads jetties were completed, the proposed deep waterway from the lakes to the Gulf would pay for itself several times over each year in the reduction of freight rates to the farmer and the manufacturer.

Said Secretary Root while in Chicago a few days after the St. Louis convention: "The proposed Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep water route would be an extension of the Panama Canal, and Chicago and St. Louis would have almost an air line to the isthmus."

The centers of the country's population, of its manufactures, of its food supply, of its aggregate activities and likewise of its wealth are all in the Mississippi Valley. The valley has two-fifths of the area, and produces seventy-five per cent of the merchandise exports of the United States. It has sixteen thousand miles of navigable waters. Lyman E. Cooley, the well-known Chicago engineer, says if the streams of the valley were improved as thoroughly as those of France and Germany, these sixteen thousand miles of navigable waters would be extended to forty-five thousand.

letter, as averred by Professor Burgess, or the living, vital doctrine it was when pronounced by James Monroe. It learned from Secretary Root at Kansas City.

The continental press is still commenting upon the Roosevelt administration's reaffirmation of the doctrine through the Secretary of State, and it is taking note as well of the declaration that the United States must be commercially supreme in the southern part of the hemisphere. It has not overlooked the fact that representatives of the principal LatinAmerican nations were present to ratify the semi-official announcement of the administration's representative.