Omnivendors

Drug stores do many things. Besides selling medicines, many of them will sell you refreshments, fountain pens, cigars, phonographs, toys, watches, books. They are, in fact, almost omnivendorous.

As the drug store has grown, so grows the press. First employed to propagate information, its functions have been successively enlarged. It becomes a gatherer of information, a purveyor of amusement, a persuader of public opinion. Is this only a beginning? Ever and anon a paper branches into some new activity, startling in its ambition. Last week Collier's, a weekly of this and that, decided to attempt an experiment in Government. It had a plan for municipal government. It not only explained and advocated its plan, it also offered to lend the active assistance of a number of its staff members to any small city which would volunteer to submit to experimentation.

The object of the plan is to destroy party lines and political rings. It was invented some years ago by one Dr. Charles C. P. Clark of Oswego, N. Y. By it the qualified voters of a city would be divided into regional groups of 700. From each of these groups, 70 voters would be chosen by lot to meet and, in a sort of town meeting, to select an alderman. The elected aldermen choose a mayor and city officials. Everybody serves until he is recalled, which happens when petitions are presented for calling new meetings of the "70's."

Collier's promised that from all cities which applied for treatment it would select one, and "put all we've got into it." Except for advertising purposes, the founding of city government hardly has the appearance of being "publishing" in the ordinary sense. But Collier's may be leading the way to "the New Press." Perhaps the press, like the drug store, will become an omnivendor.