Chapter 8 A STARTLING PROPOSAL.

The special committee has been directed to hold meetings at intervals of

a month and to have a report ready by the first of the following

January. Thirty-seven of the most intelligent and earnest of the

Anti-Trust members have been placed on this committee by its chairman.

The meetings are now secret.

The first meeting is held in the hall that had been used for the big meetings of the conference. After this the meetings are clandestine.

The comment that was provoked by the conference of the radical leaders of the Trust opposition died out in the usual way, and then the interest in the efforts of the special committee was confined to the few people who realized the earnestness of the men who had decided to take the Trust problem up and bring it to a speedy settlement.

Day by day the members of the committee met to discuss the phases of the all absorbing question.

The managers of some of the largest corporations are warned of these secret deliberations and institute a vigorous investigation. The aid of the police is secured, and the officers of a dozen of the shrewdest private detective bureaus are put in possession of the few facts that have been ascertained. In a hundred directions public and private sleuths are set in motion. But their untiring efforts are unavailing. They have to combat a more adroit, more nervy and more intelligent force than they have ever before been brought in contact with.

The Committee of Forty has its ever watchful sentinels on guard, and every move of the detectives is anticipated and provided against.

Thus matters progress until on the night of June tenth a startling climax is brought about by the report of the secretary of the committee.

At this memorable meeting there is a full attendance. The chairman, in his call for the meeting, has intimated that very important business will be transacted. He has in mind the discussion of a plan for awakening the interest of the wage-earners in the effete Eastern States, and the reading of a report.

What actually transpires is a surprise to him, as it is to all but three of the committee.

When the routine of business has been gone through with, the chairman announces that the meeting will proceed to the consideration of new business, if there is any.

William Nevins, the man who had carried the Stars and Stripes at Hazleton, now a committeeman who has always taken a subordinate part in the work, asks to be heard.

Supposing that he is to speak on the one subject uppermost in the minds of the committee, the chair recognizes him. Rising from his seat in the back of the room Nevins walks to the front of the hall, and standing before the chairman, half turns so as to face the men in the assembly.

From his first words it is apparent that he has a matter of grave concern to impart. The attention of all is engaged.

"Mr. Chairman," he begins, "I am unaccustomed to speech-making; yet on this occasion I feel that I am capable of expressing myself in a manner that will be clear and forceful. I am to tell you a few truths, and in uttering the truth there is no need of depending on rhetoric or oratory.

"As you all know, I am a poor man. How I came to be reduced to a position little better than beggary is not known by any of you, for I have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will be called upon to discuss later.

"We have no time to hear the life-story of any one," sententiously observes a man in the front seat.

"But you will have to take time to hear me," retorts Nevins, and he continues.

"I was a graduate of Yale, in the class of 1884. My name was not Nevins, then. After a year spent in travel in Europe I returned to the United States and began to practice my profession of a civil engineer, in the city of New York. My father had died when I was a child and had left my mother a fortune of about $40,000. From this sum she derived an income of $2000 a year. She gave me an allowance of $800 up to the time that I began to work as an engineer.

"Two years after I had entered the office of a leading railroad I planned an extensive change in the working of the road and submitted it to the president. He approved of the suggested changes and put the matter before the board of directors. Shortly afterward I was informed that I could proceed with the work. The work was accomplished and the officials were more than pleased. They made me chief engineer of the road and a stockholder. I soon had a considerable block of stock. Then a great Magnate looked at the road with covetous eyes, and ruin came upon us.

"The stock of the road was depreciated and borne down on the Exchange until the road became insolvent. All my money was in the road, and when the crisis came I found myself stranded. The King of the Rail Road Trust, Jacob L. Vosbeck, bought up the stock and then raised it to even a higher figure than it had ever before attained.

"Ill-luck followed me and I have gone down, down, until I can scarce make a living as a draughtsman in a shop. The curse of monopoly has caused my ruin. I did not succumb to fair competition. I am now enlisted in a fight against the usurpers of the free rights of the people, and I declare to you all, that I am in this fight in dead earnest. By an appeal to justice we can gain nothing.

"I was one of the sixty miners who were attacked on the highway at

Hazleton by the High Sheriff of Luzerne County. I witnessed the mock

trial in Wilkes-Barre. I have thought of all the possible means the

Trusts have left to us, and find that there is but one available.

"They have all the money and all the agencies of the law; they have intimidated the humble and ignorant workingmen until these poor creatures are no better than serfs, and to be assured of bread, they work as voluntary slaves.

"What is there for us to do but to fight the magnates with their own weapons? Intimidation is their deadliest method. The horrible picture of a starving family is held up before the wage-earner, and he is asked if he will vote to put his wife and children on the street. He is told that if he will accept starvation wages, the Trust will let him make such wages. In desperation he accepts the terms.

"What I propose is to intimidate the criminal aggressors so that they will fear to make their fortunes at the expense of the honest, hard working and credulous people.

"How shall it be done? Ah! it is a simple matter."

Here the voice of the speaker becomes husky, and he turns to face the chairman of the committee. In almost a whisper he exclaims: "I propose to give them an object lesson. They have given many to us." Again he resumes his normal voice.

"Have you not seen mills closed before election time so as to coerce men to vote as the mill owners directed? Has not this suspension of work brought distress, starvation, death, to thousands of homes? Is it not murder for men of wealth to resort to such means to win an election in a free country?

"Well, I now propose to form a syndicate-a Syndicate of Annihilation!"

"Mr. Chairman," cry half a dozen voices. "Mr. Chairman, Point of order!

Point of order!"

Before the chair can recognize any of the speakers a general commotion ensues. Men begin discussing with one another excitedly; there is a perfect bedlam.

All the while Nevins remains standing as if awaiting an opportunity to resume his speech.

At the expiration of some minutes order is restored so that his voice can be heard. "Permit me to explain," he cries.

The committeemen, as if acting by a common impulse, cease to squabble, and are attentive again.

"I propose to hear the circumstances under which each of you has been brought to the condition that leads you to combine against the Trust; and if there is sufficient ground for belief that you will be zealous workers in my syndicate, I will admit you to membership. No man who has not had a more serious grievance against the Robber Barons than I have outlined, will be eligible. I have told you but one incident of my case.

"The work that I shall outline to you after hearing your stories, will require stout hearts to carry it into execution.

"It cannot be accomplished by fanatics. It requires the concerted efforts of men of sound judgment; men of courage. The assassin is a coward at heart-the political martyr must be valiant."

The novelty of the suggestion that has just been made is the first thing that appeals to the minds of the committee. They begin to realize the horrid character of the proposition. Much discussion follows. Men want to know what Nevins means by a Syndicate of Annihilation. Whom does he intend to murder? Annihilation and murder are considered synonymous.

To all questions Nevins replies that the details will be given as soon as the men recite their grievances.

Professor Talbot and Hendrick Stahl, the two men who are in the secret with Nevins, advise the members of the committee to comply with the demands.

Then begins the strange, startling recital of the stories of human distress. Of the forty men of varying professions and trades, there are those who tell of their efforts to stand up under the weight of the yoke of commercial despotism. Each man is of impressing character and strong individuality.

The chairman, Albert Chadwick, is the first to tell his story. It is the prelude to the concerted cry of the oppressed-the cry which has sounded through the ages as the one never varying note in the music of the universe; the dread inharmonic monotone that marks the limitation of humanity, exhibiting man's inability to convert the world into a paradise.