People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1897 — The Pilot's Peanut Roaster. [ARTICLE]

The Pilot's Peanut Roaster.

That the Pilot is issued in half sheet again this week is due to the fact that such true friends of the oppressed people as William Washburn have been patriotically preventing people from coming to this office and paying us what they justly owed us. So long as such able aspirants for newspaper experience in Rensselaer as J. A. McFarland, David W. Shields, W. R. Nowels and William Tecumseh Sherman Ireland remain with ambitions unsatisfied, there will be a yawning chasm unfilled. The unsatisfied army of regular democracy will heave a sigh at the acquisition of this grist of appetites yet to be endured and provided for in due and regular form. But what cannot be prevented has to be provided for. It will take years of adversity to make us forget the unselfish, patriotic work of the Honorable Picyunus Skinflintum, more commonly known as William Washburn, who for months has assiduously spent his time on the streets, when not sponging the reading of our daily papers in thi<* office, in black-guarding the editor of the Pilot, begging our friends not to pay their subscriptions, or bring us their job f work and advertising. Anybody who is short on entertaining company, and good readers for the dailies they pay for, should see to it that Brother Washburt! is taken in and provided for. Our good friend McFarland will now have time to develop that long cherished ambition to start up a “16 to 1 barber shop.” Interests of the Pilot office have so constantly occupied his gratuitous attention all winter and spring, he has been unable to devote himself to that laudable enterprise, which, in time, may make him a lucrative rallying center for his democratic push. The big investment our good democratic committeeman, Dave Shields, was “about” to make in a newspaper venture has, from some inexplainable reason, been diverted to the base and unexpected channel of the laundry business, surprising an indulgent com munity by appearing in a clean shirt and collar. Further than this, it is not known that big David contemplates reform along the lines of his extenuated anatomy.

N. B.—Expert investigation explodes the clean shirt and collar business. He has simply moistened and rubbed up a celluloid collar. The background remains undisturbed. J. A. McFarland criticises the directors of the Pilot Publishing Company for selling their property for SSOO when he could get SBOO of Republican money and secure the position of editor. You were rainbow chasing, Me. Some good republican was “playing hoss” with you. When politicians make an investment the fellow they trade with must have something of value to sell.