Seven Years Ago

We opened the smallest Clothing store in Topeka with less than four thousand dollars' worth of merchandise on six tables - with one clerk at $3.50 per week, in our employ - with seventeen competitors in the same line of business all claiming to carry stocks ranging from $10,000 to $75,000 - all claiming to sell goods at cost, and usually less than cost. In the face of all this we passed them all in volume of business before we were four years old.

Our Remarkable Growth

Has become the subject of comment in Commercial circles from New York to the Pacific Coast and we are given credit for having built, in a short period of time, the most prenomenal clothing business in America, and this, too, by operating along strictly legitimate lines, with never a "sale," never a cut price, no slaughters, no sacrifices, no fakes, no grafts, no bunco methods, - simply standing pledged to give "a dollar's worth for a dollar," and we enjoy a patronage that has flocked to us faster than we have been able to take care of it.

COLLEGE OF THE SISTERS OF BETHANY, Topeka, Kansas.

Forty-eighth Year. Under auspices of Episcopal Church. Home school for young girls. Separate school for girls from 7 to 12 years of age. Two-year collegiate course. Four year college preparatory. Complete elementary school. Special advantages in Music and Art. College educated faculty. Stone buildings and twenty-acre campus in the heart of the city. Attractive home life of refinement and culture. For catalog apply to principal.
Rt. Rev. F. R. Millspaugh, D. D., President.     Miss Hambleton, Principal.

This is the new telephone company which has lately bought out the Wabaunsee Telephone Company. The telephone system in Wabaunsee County began operations June 25th, 1898, with twelve subscribers under the management of the McMahan Telephone Exchange. The lines soon extended to the neighboring towns and by 1900 Topeka was reached. In 1902 there were 110 'phones in Alma, 70 in Eskridge, and 41 on the rural lines. In 1903 the McMahan Telephone Company was succeeded by the Wabaunsee County Telephone Company. Since that time the system has been greatly extended. At present there are five central offices - Alma, Altavista, Eskridge, McFarland, and Maple Hill, employing ten operators. Toll lines from Topeka to Dwight; also St. Marys, Rossville, Harveyville, and Allen have connections with the Paxico, Keene, and Harveyville Mutual and all Mutual exchanges in Morris County, Manhattan and Burlingame; also with all Independent Companies' lines running into three adjoining counties, Shawnee, Pottawatomie and Morris.

There are about eighty-four miles of pole lines, seventy miles of city wire, and two hundred and fifty-five miles of rural toll lines. The total number of telephones in use exceed 525, of which 275 are in and about Alma. Four men are regularly employed keeping the lines in order.

The improvements being made at present are the installment of new switch-boards at Alma and McFarland and the building of new rural lines.

The stockholders of the present company are: C. B. Henderson, Alma; J. R. Henderson, Alma; J. Y. Waugh, Eskridge; M. F. Trivett, Eskridge; B. R. Henderson, Eskridge; J. N. Dolley, Maple Hill.

The officers are: C. B. Henderson, President; J. N. Dolley, Vice-President; J. R. Henderson, Secretary and Treasurer.

The company is capitalized on $50,000.