Chapter 9 ARRAIGNMENT OF THE TRANSGRESSORS.

Standing upon the little platform which serves as a rostrum, Chadwick, a man of fifty, seared and bent, lifts his hand to command the attention of the committee.

He is a figure that would do credit to the brush of a great artist. His appearance is that of a man who has been deprived of the power of looking at the world as a place of rest; he is a bundle of nerves, and at the slightest provocation bursts into a storm of irascibility. A tortured spirit lurks in his soul and is visible in his stern, tense features.

As he begins the recital of his grievances against the Trust, it is apparent that he means to give the audience an embittered story. So the attention of all is centered upon him.

"Human liberty is the boon which man has sought since the dawn of creation; it has furnished the incentive for his struggle to reclaim the earth from the domination of brute force; it is the inherent idea that the founders of this Republic sought to embody in the Constitution. But Liberty must have as a complement unhampered opportunity," are his opening words.

"The man who is dependent upon another for his livelihood is not capable of enjoying real liberty, or of attaining happiness. When the men of a nation are debased to a position of minor importance, where they can only act as servants, they lose the stamina necessary to make them good citizens. This condition now prevails in the United States.

"My own experience will exemplify this statement.

"Forty years ago I attained my majority. I was a citizen of the state of Pennsylvania, and considered that I was a freeman. By the death of my father I had come into a fortune of fifty thousand dollars. I lived in the oil region, and sought to engage in the oil industry. To this end I purchased land contiguous to a railroad. On my holdings a well was located which yielded three hundred barrels of oil a day.

"No sooner had I begun to operate my well than the agents of the Oil Trust, which had then but recently sprung into existence as a menace to individual refining, came to me with a proposition to incorporate my well in the Trust's system. The well was capable of earning a net profit of seventy thousand dollars a year. The Trust offered me a paltry two hundred and thirty thousand dollars for my plant. This I refused to accept, for the actual value was one million dollars.

"Then by crafty insinuation the agents of the Trust intimated that unless I sold my property and accepted inflated stock in the Trust and allowed my well to be absorbed in the system, I would find myself opposed by the mighty consolidation. Still I refused to abrogate my right to conduct an independent business.

"Failing to allure me by their offers, which would have proved valueless in the end; or of intimidating me by their threats, the agents reported to the office of the Trust that I was obdurate and must be disciplined.

"Accordingly pressure was brought to bear on the railroad over which I sent my product to a market. The railroad discriminated against me; it gave the Trust a rebate on all oil shipped over the road and made me pay the full schedule rates. Even against this detrimental condition I was able to sell my oil at a small profit.

"I might have survived the unequal struggle had not the 'pipe line' system been introduced. By this the Oil Trust transports its oil to the sea-board at a cost that enables it to undersell all competitors. And for a time the price of oil was reduced, and all the minor competitors were driven into bankruptcy or forced to sell out to the Trust at a ridiculously low figure.

"Owing to my well being centrally located I was able to hold out longer than many others.

"John D. Savage, the Oil King, realized that some more potent means had to be devised to crush me. This means was found in the expedient of 'Sacrifice' sales. At every depot where I sold, the agents of the Trust offered to sell oil at figures lower than I could possibly sell it. I lost my trade. In an effort to retrench, my fortune was consumed, and from a position of affluence I descended to beggary, and had to join the ranks as an employee. So bitter was the animosity of the Trust that it sought to rob me even of the opportunity to earn a living. I have been hounded from post to pillar; my life has been made miserable. I have seen my family want for bread.

"And all because I withstood the assault of the Oil King.

"As an American I protest against the existence of a corporation that can set at naught the mandates of the law; a corporation that can, with utter impunity, resort to arson as a final means of gaining its illegal end, as the oil Trust has done, again and again.

"I thank God that I still possess my fore-fathers' spirit of resistance against oppression. There are few men who are in want, or in actual dread of being thrown out of employment, however unremunerative, who will assert their right. A nation composed of such men is not free, no matter what its form of government may be.

"I am ready to do anything that will restore the right to the individual citizen to engage in business; I am ready to make a stand against the few plutocrats who now usurp the avenues of human activity; and I believe that we will be able to enlist men in support of the idea that the rights of the majority transcend the aggressions of the oligarchy of American capitalists."

As Chadwick concludes his statement, Hiram Goodel, a delegate from New

Hampshire, obtains the floor.

"Coercion is the word that epitomizes my grievance against the Trusts," he begins. "It was by the exercise of coercion that I was driven out of business. I conducted a retail tobacco store in Concord, in my native state. My business sufficed to insure me a decent living, and a comfortable margin to be husbanded as a safeguard for my declining years. I had a wife and three sons. My sons were all under age, and I kept them at school to provide them with good educations.

"There was competition in my business; such natural competition as is met with in all pursuits. It did not, however, prevent my making a success of my business.

"Then came the Tobacco Trust. It set out to control the retail trade. This was to be effected by the inauguration of a system of "consigning" goods to the retail stores with strict provisos that the retailer would not handle the product of any concern out of the Tobacco Combine. In order to ingratiate themselves with the store-keepers, the Trust managers at first offered terms that were so far below the current prices that a majority of the stores bound themselves to handle the Trust goods exclusively.

"Three years passed, in which the independent tobacco manufacturers strove to hold out against the ring. Then came a crash.

"I had opposed the innovation of binding myself to buy from one concern; for I felt intuitively that as soon as the Trust was all-powerful it would begin to exercise dictatorial sway over the retailer.

"My fears were soon justified.

"The Trust advanced the price of its goods to the retailer, and compelled the trade to sell at the same retail figures.

"When this system of extortion was successfully launched the Trust determined to reward its patrons, as a means of pacifying them for reduced profits.

"The reward came in the shape of discriminating against the store-keepers who still handled the goods made by the fast vanishing opposition concerns.

"I was informed that unless I signed an agreement to use only the Trust brands of cigarettes and tobacco no more goods would be sold to me. As the Trust embraced all of the leading brands, that meant that I must go out of business.

"My puritan blood boiled at the thought that I must submit to the tyranny of a band of robbers. I determined to fight to the last. Four years of business at a net loss, drove me into insolvency; then a mortgage was placed upon my freehold, to be followed by foreclosure. I still struggled on, under the delusion that I was in a free land and that the Trust iniquities would not be permitted to crush the individual citizen forever. The decision of the courts of the several states where the Tobacco Trust was arraigned, upholding the Trust, disillusioned me. But it was too late, I was a ruined man.

"My sons were forced to work in the cigar factory of the local branch of the Trust; and I was obliged to apply for a patrimony from the Government, as a veteran of the war for the emancipation of man from slavery. On this slender pension I now live.

"Can anyone blame me for being a volunteer in the crusade against the most insidious and dangerous foe that has ever assailed a land; a foe that seeks to entrench itself by emasculating the citizens and degrading them to a position of servants of mighty and intolerant masters?"

There is a pause. The aged speaker trembles with emotion.

"I am an old man, over seventy years of age, yet whatever vigor remains in me will be expended in my last battle with the destroyers of free government.

"What right has Amos Tweed, the Tobacco King, to tax me?

"I was born a free man; I fought to free an inferior race. Alas, I have lived to see the shackles placed upon the wrists of my own sons. So help me God, I shall strike a blow to make them free once more."

Overcome with the exertion of delivering his fervent speech, Hiram Goodel totters. He would fall, did not the strong arms of Carl Metz support him.

"Where is the man who can view this picture of patriarchal devotion, and hesitate to give significance to the prayer that freedom may again be the inheritance of the youth of America," demands Nevins in thrilling tones.

It is apparent that the recital of the grievances of the members of the committee is making a deep impression on every man.

Horace Turner, a farmer from Wisconsin, who had migrated to that state when it was in its infancy, preferring its fertile plains to the rocky hillside homestead in Vermont, is the next to speak. He is sixty years of age, well preserved, temperate and fairly well educated.

"I can quote no higher authority than the Holy Bible," are his opening words. "If in that book we can find authority for complaining against tyrants; if we can find a prayer that has come down from age to age, shall we not be justified in uttering it?

"Are these words from the Psalms meaningless? 'Deliver me from the oppression of Man; so will I keep thy precepts.'

"There is vitality in this cry from the oppressed; because the oppressor exists. You and I are both victims of oppression.

"I am a producer of wheat, the great staple of this country. You are all consumers of my product. When I cannot make a living by producing wheat, and you cannot purchase it without paying tribute to a band of speculators, there must be in operation a damnable system of oppression to bring about this condition, for it is not natural.

"The Wheat Trust determines what price I shall receive for my wheat; it sets the price at which you shall buy it in the form of bread.

"Whether there is a bounteous crop or a short one, the Trust still controls the wheat and flour and arbitrarily fixes their price.

"When the newspapers assert that the farmers enjoy the advance of the price of a season's crop, they state an absolute falsehood.

"By the system that prevails in this country to-day, as a result of the Wheat Trust, crops are sold a year in advance. There are never two years of exceptionally large crops; so the benefit of the advance of one year does not go over to the next.

"The farmers of this country are compelled, by the present system, to pledge their next year's crop to the local wheat factors who control the elevators. The purchase price is determined by the factor. The farmer receives a certain number of bushels of 'seed' wheat from the factor, agreeing to repay him with two or two and a half bushels of the coming crop; a large percentage of the remainder of the crop is pledged to the local store-keeper for the goods that the farmer must have to do his work and to live upon.

"Wheat is the medium of exchange. The Trust's price is the measure of value. Why? Because the farmer cannot sell to any one except to an agent of the Trusts, as the Trust has arranged traffic rates with every railroad; and the wheat, if bought by any one outside of the Trust, could not be transported to a market and sold at a profit. This statement is indisputable.

"The Wheat King, David Leach, depresses the market when the crop is to be sold, and so gives a semblance of reason for the inadequate price he allows the farmer.

"It is the farmer who does the planting; he has to run the risk of the loss of the crop by drought, or excessive rain; he has to do the harvesting. Yet he does not share in the just profits of the sale of his product.

"And the consumer is made to pay exorbitantly for the bread that keeps life in his body.

"If there were no Wheat Trust, no speculation in wheat and no discriminating traffic rates, bread could be sold at a fair profit for three cents a loaf, and the farmer would still be able to get a higher price than he averages now.

"I have toiled as a farmer for two score years, and all I have in this world is a farm of two hundred acres, valued at thirty-six hundred dollars, on which there is a two thousand dollar mortgage at six per cent. When the interest is paid and my yearly expenses are defrayed, I am lucky to have one hundred dollars to my credit in the bank. For the past six years I have been obliged to send whatever I had remaining to my son, who has married and who is struggling to live in Milwaukee. He is engaged as a brakeman on the railroad that exacts thirty per cent. of the value of every bushel of wheat I raise.

"I am not one of the discontented, homeless vagabonds who the Plutocrats declare are alone demanding the destruction of Monopoly. I am a citizen who can foresee the inevitable result that will come from a perpetuation of Commercial Despotism. I am not afraid to assert my opinions, nor will I fear to act on any suggestion, that will insure independence to the farmer and to all the citizens of the Republic."

Donald Harrington, a delegate accredited to Maryland, now begins his arraignment:

"It will not be necessary for me to take the story of my ruin back to the beginning; you are interested only in that part which has to do with the effect of the Trusts upon me.

"I could say that they were the sole cause of my downfall, but in this statement I should be doing the Trusts an injustice. I felt the first downward impulse given me when I was a lad of sixteen. I had entered the employ of a banking house and was a clerk in their counting room. It was my especial duty to see that the books of the company were put in the safes at night. This duty I faithfully performed for more than three years.

"One day I was tempted to steal.

"It was an easy matter for me to take a sum of money from the drawer and make away with it. I was not detected in the first peculation; this encouraged me to take more. So matters went on until I was guilty of having stolen a sum aggregating ten thousand dollars. I knew that I could not keep the game up much longer, for the annual accounting would disclose the deficit.

"Of the sums I had taken, I had less than half saved. I did not know how I was to get out of the position in which I was placed. Then the idea struck me that I might make the entire sum good if I could make a successful turn on the Exchange.

"This I determined to try.

"From the first I was successful. Soon I had three times the sum required to make up my peculations.

"I restored the money to the safe and breathed easily.

"This was my first venture in dealing with other peoples' money.

"The experience led to my entering upon a career as a banker and broker.

"For eight years I was actively engaged in rolling up a fortune. I was sought out by the Magnates of many of the largest Trusts, and they extended me unlimited credit.

"When the country was precipitated into a panic in 1893, I was not one of the sufferers; I was one of the scoundrels active in bringing the distress upon the people. I aided in the establishment of the all-powerful Money Trust.

"Later I was interested in a big mining scheme. It appeared to me to be one of the best things in which to invest money. I put the bulk of my fortune in the mining stocks, and lost.

"In attempting to retrieve my losses I dissipated my fortune to the last cent.

"The whole of my career as a banker was of a criminal nature. Nearly everything I had touched was a speculative venture. The cursed practice of watering stocks to three and four times their actual value was the common work of my days.

"At the end I was caught in the net which I had so often thrown out to ensnare others. My former partner, James Golding, the Napoleon of Finance, wrought my undoing.

"All of this leads to this conclusion:

"I am an enemy of the Trusts now, because I know their methods; I know the results that follow the practice of fictitious speculation. Before you all I acknowledge that my past has been of the darkest and most disreputable nature.

"I also wish to state that I have experienced a change of heart. It has not come upon me solely because I have lost my fortune; I have felt it creeping upon me for the past three years. In my inmost heart I feel a beating that will not be stilled unless I am engaged in the work of destroying the power of the accursed Trusts.

"That there is a chance on earth for a man to redeem himself, I am confident. I have heard the call and have responded to it. I am resolved to use the rest of my strength in battling with the enemies of the people. And I am the more in earnest since I can never forget that I am personally responsible for the distress of hundreds. Widows and orphans, young and old, all have been my victims.

"What object Nevins may have in getting us to recount our grievances, I do not know; but if it will lead to any good result, he may depend upon me to give my untiring aid.

"I have but a word to add. Since my ruin, I have seen my wife and only child, a daughter of twenty, languish and die before my very eyes. This has embittered me against the men who have worked the ruin of the masses more than anything else. I have pledged myself to avenge the sufferings of humanity. I shall be doing something for the good of the race; something to atone for the evil deeds I myself have done."

There is nothing in the recital of Harrington's life's history that is of an exceptional nature. True, no one present is aware that he had at one time been the head of the great bond issue plot.

But the delegates are looking for something of a far different tone than a mere recital of crime and a fall from affluence to penury. Several of the committeemen are on their feet demanding the floor.

Cyrus Fielding, the delegate representing the federation of stone masons, is recognized by the chair.

Fielding is a man of short stature, his eyes betray a lacklustre that might be the result of over-indulgence in liquor or want of rest; he is thin and poorly clad, his face is cleanly shaven. At every pause in his speech he runs his fingers through his thick dishevelled black hair, and finishes this mannerism with wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. His delivery is awkward and these repeated movements intensify this awkwardness.

"I have a grievance against the Trusts that dates back as far as my birth. I never had a fair start. My father was a victim of the power of gold and I inherited his misfortune.

"My first work was as a helper in the great Pennsylvania Iron Trust's works that are owned by that old man, the self-styled philanthropist, Ephraim Barnaby, a hypocrite of the first water, who goes about the world asking people how he can best dispose of his fabulous fortune.

"From the rank of helper I soon rose to the position of foreman of the moulding shop. This was a most important place and I felt proud that I had attained it in so short a period as three years.

"It was my ambition to learn all I could relating to the work in the iron industry. Toward this end I spent four hours every night in reading and experimenting. At the end of another three years I had a fund of knowledge that put me in the front rank as a constructing engineer.

"But I was not a graduate of a college of engineering, so I could not get the degree. The opportunity of utilizing my practical knowledge by forming a competing company was closed by the bar of traffic rates.

"My employers advanced me to the rank of superintendent of the shops in the largest iron manufacturing city in the state. I had to be satisfied with a position under the iron masters.

"Then came the memorable strike that led to the killing of the men by the paid detectives of the Iron Masters.

"The claims of the men were just, and as a man I could not side against them. I put my fortune in with them. The details of the strike are known to you all. The story of the shooting of unarmed mill hands at the instance of the mill owners will never be forgotten; it has marked an era in the history of this country.

"Well, I was a conspicuous figure in those days. The strikers hailed me as a champion; the mill owners first sought to win me over; then they contrived to do away with me. Three times I was assaulted by murderous men who had been hired to kill me.

"When their schemes of violence failed they resorted to the most effective method of destroying me. They discharged me and refused to let me return after the strike was declared off. Not satisfied with having turned me away from their mills they dogged my every step. Since that day I have been unable to get employment in any mill in this country.

"As I am acquainted with the methods of the iron trade I have been able to give the trade Union many valuable points. It was upon my suggestion that the amalgamation of the unions was effected.

"From my intimate knowledge of the manufacture of iron I know that the item of wage is less than fifteen per cent. of the cost of the completed casting, yet the tariff on manufactured iron is on the average thirty per cent. Where does the additional fifteen per cent. go? To fatten the pockets of the favored manufacturer. But that is only half the story. The fifteen per cent. that is supposed to protect the American laborer, does it go for this end? Not at all. All of you are familiar with the wage schedules in the iron industry. They have not been advanced five per cent. since the imposition of the high tariff. So the manufacturer gobbles more than ninety per cent. of the tariff bounty.

"It is because I keep telling the iron workers this truth that I am hounded by the minions of the Trusts.

"We have allowed ourselves to be robbed long enough. I am an American to the back-bone, and I propose to fight the men who have disputed this country till I die.

"Let me say that to whatever Nevins may propose I am willing to lend my support, provided the ends he seeks to obtain are honorable and the means reasonable.

"As I am talking I cannot keep out of my mind the home which the Iron Masters destroyed. I had a wife and two children who loved me and were the idols of my heart. I saw this home destroyed. I saw my children turned adrift and their mother forced to work to support them; for during the first three years after the strike I could get nothing to do.

"With these memories which had as a climax the deaths of two nearest and dearest to me, I have nothing left to live for but the fulfillment of my resolve to break the power of the Monopolists who have control of this country."

"This meeting will be protracted to the middle of next week if we all take a half hour or more to tell our tale of woe," observes one of the committee who cannot foresee the end of the discussion.

The chairman asks if the members wish to limit the time of the speakers to five minutes, and this proposition meets with the approval of all.

So the remaining stories are told in short intensive sentences which describe the heart-breaking history of men who have been trodden down under the heel of monopoly.

There are examples of every type that can be imagined. Men who have been defrauded of their ideas and patents; others who have been the victims of unjust legislation, the dupes of the speculator, the betrayed friends of men who have ridden to fortune on the backs of those who gave them their first start.

Under the new ruling, the first man to be recognized is Herman Nettinger, a man known to all the assemblage as an anarchist. He had been admitted to the councils on the supposition that the best way to pacify and placate the Anarchistic element was to offer them full representation in the work of regenerating the government.

Nettinger had been one of the few men who succeeded in eluding the police during the days of the reign of anarchy in Chicago in 1885.

He is a man of gigantic build, and of imperturbable placidity. When a soldier in the German army had provoked him to the point where he had to fight, this modern Titan had seized his tormenter and without apparent effort had dashed the man's brains out by butting him against the wall of the barracks. For this episode Nettinger had been compelled to serve eleven years in the military prison.

During these years he had familiarized himself with the teachings of the socialists, for his companions were, many of them, students of sociology. Upon his release he had come to this country. He invented a compressed air motor, but the American Motor Trust robbed him of his patents.

In the space of five minutes Nettinger strives to defend the theory of anarchy. He denounces all government as a make-shift, and asserts that man should accordingly dispense with the forms of government and depend upon animal instinct to regulate the social community. He names Samuel L. Bell, chairman of the International Patent Commission, as the man who contrived to rob him of his patent rights.

The meeting adjourns at the conclusion of this harangue.

In the hour that has passed the elements for a political revolution have been brought together and combined by a master mind.