Chapter XI: Part 11

This book is made up of the articles which were published in _Everybody’s Magazine_, and which created such a profound impression by their calm, relentless exposure of the most cruel and most lawless and most despotic Trust on earth. Not even the Standard Oil Company grinds the common people as the Beef Trust does, for the latter deals with food products which are indispensable to life, and the Beef Trust can and does say to the people, “Pay my price or die.”

The book treats of the might of this monopoly; of the great yellow car, the bandit of commerce; of the manner in which the Trust intimidates the railroads; of the manner in which the Federal Government white-washed the Trust; of the union between rotten business and rotten politics.

It is a book that all should study.

=American Diplomacy.= By John Bassett Moore. Harper & Brothers,
Publishers, New York City.

My own impression has been that “American Diplomacy” has never amounted to much, and I cannot say that Dr. Moore’s book has convinced me to the contrary.

The only apparent triumph of American Diplomacy was the securing of French aid in the Revolutionary War; and as to that most students will agree that “diplomacy” had nothing to do with it. France saw an opportunity to strike at her hereditary foe, Great Britain, and she sent an emissary to the American Congress to drop certain hints which led to the sending of Dean, Lee and Franklin to Paris. Where France was already so eager, “diplomacy” could claim no triumph.

It is to be regretted that Dr. Moore fails to mention John Laurens in connection with French aid. The fact is that Washington and Congress became dissatisfied with Franklin, and that John Laurens was despatched to France to hurry matters up. He did so. He got the money with which Washington made the decisive Yorktown Campaign, and brought it home with him. Surely Dr. Moore ought to have mentioned the name of John Laurens.

In the famous Jay treaty, “American Diplomacy” made a craven surrender to Great Britain, and in the Treaty of Ghent we certainly won no laurels. Andrew Jackson and his Southern volunteers threw the only crumb of comfort which the situation could boast when they shot the life out of Wellington’s veterans at New Orleans.

In the various negotiations concerning the Northwestern boundary, “American Diplomacy” has yielded up an Empire to British bluff and shrewdness. During the Civil War, “American Diplomacy” ate humble pie with a vengeance more than once; and even in the Venezuelan affair when Cleveland’s attitude seemed so heroic, England, it would appear, packed the arbitration board and got pretty much everything that she wanted.

In the last tilt between us and the mother country, touching the Canadian boundary, we were assured that the arbitration was a mere matter of form, and that Great Britain could not possibly get anything at all. Yet when the award was made, it developed that Great Britain had got slices of stuff all along the line—the land line and the water line.

American Diplomacy?

Bah!

Look at the manner in which Great Britain used us as her depot of supplies during the Boer War.

She held John Hay in the hollow of her hand, and with our aid crushed the republics of South Africa.

=Fables and Symbols.= By Clemence De La Baere, Sacramento, Cal.

Those who love truth and humor served up in the literary form of the fable, will find this an entertaining little volume. There is much wit and wisdom packed away in these stories; and they reveal a thorough knowledge of human nature and of present conditions.

=Garrison the Non-Resistant.= By Ernest Crosby. The Public
Publishing Co., Chicago.

When a Southern writer eulogizes such a bitter foe to his people as was William Lloyd Garrison, his words will bear the same discount as must be given to the words of a Southern ex-Brigadier, when he goes North and tells pleased audiences, “I am glad you whipped us.”

The truth is the South does not love Garrison and is _not_ glad she was “whipped.”

When Mr. Crosby frankly states, as he does in this book, that Garrison had no sympathy whatever for the sufferings of the white laborers of the land, he put his finger upon the trait which caused Garrison’s great unpopularity in the South.

He was narrow and fanatical, and while he hated slavery for its own sake, he hated the South about as much as he hated slavery.

Wendell Phillips, after the negro was freed, went on broadening in the scope of his sympathies and his work. He became one of the stalwart champions of the rights of white labor. He studied its case, denounced its wrongs, demanded better things for the millions of toilers who were being exploited and destroyed by insatiable commercial greed.

Not so Garrison. The negro freed, the South reeking with her own life-blood, her homes in ashes, her soul crushed in utter desolation, Garrison was happy. His work was done. White men, white women, white children might groan and suffer and die in a worse slavery than had afflicted the blacks of the South, but Garrison did not sympathize—did not lift a finger, did not utter a word in their behalf. Another trait in Garrison’s character was just the trait to stir the dislike of a Southern man. He carried to such an extent his doctrine of non-resistance, that he declared he “would not defend by force his own wife in case of an assault.” In other words, rather than forcibly resist the criminal who sought to violate his own wife, he would stand idly by and permit the crime to be committed. I do not know how many Northern men endorse a sentiment of that kind. In my judgment they are few, very few. But I do know that there is not a respectable man in the South or West, who would not feel disgraced by the utterance of such a doctrine. Mr. Crosby deserves great credit for his courage and candor in admitting that while slavery was wrong, the war waged upon the South was wrong. Of course it was wrong. The whole negro race, here and throughout the earth, were not worth the frightful cost of the Civil War. Mr. Crosby’s book would have been more valuable had he omitted the last two chapters. The author is a very talented man but he cannot get to know the true status of the South by listening to the talk of loafers in the office of the hotel where he happens to stop.

=Sidney Lanier.= By Edwin Mims. Houghton, Mifflin & Company,
Boston and New York.

A more interesting biographical work than this it would be difficult to name.

The author is temperate in his estimate of the genius of his subject, and relates the life struggles of the Georgia poet with sympathetic spirit.

As the years go by the fame of Sidney Lanier will grow. That he wrote some poems which have little merit is true; that his peculiar and unfortunate mannerism mars the beauty of other poems which do possess merit is also true; but after all this is conceded, it can be confidently claimed that he sometimes rose to the heights of Keats and Shelley, and that his art sometimes equalled the marvelous skill of Edgar Poe.

Here and there, throughout Lanier’s poems, can be found gems of thought and expression which in loftiness, purity and exquisite form lose nothing by comparison with the higher work of the best English poets.

Nor will the story of his life ever lose interest. It is so full of innate nobility; he met the most exacting duties so cheerily, so bravely; he fought the battle for bread with such manly confidence, such sweet sympathy for others; he gave to the world so much more than he asked from it; he was so independent and yet so companionable; he so long held at bay, with buoyant pluck, the ghastly White Terror, Consumption; he was so refined and strong and lovable and valiant and nobly aspiring that always and everywhere the simple facts in the life of this Georgia boy, Confederate soldier, painstaking lawyer, aspiring author, heaven-endowed musician, original poet, will move the hearts of men to respect, to sympathy, to admiration and love.

=Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.= By Walter L.
Fleming. The Columbia University Press, New York, Publishers.
The Macmillan Company, Agents.

All things considered, this is the most valuable contribution that has yet been made to the literature of the Reconstruction Era.

The book contains some 800 pages, and the mass of important data is a monument to the industry of the author.

Not only are we given a full account of the manner in which Secession was brought about, not only do we get the story of military operations during the Civil War and Carpet-Bag operations afterward, but we are given illuminating pictures of social and economic conditions, the unspeakable rottenness of negro government; the cotton frauds and stealings; the troubles in the churches; the movements of the Ku Klux Klan (which Tom Dixon most unaccountably traces back to the clan life of Scotland); the struggles of the native whites to throw off the carpet-bag and negro yoke; the upbuilding of an educational system; the gradual creation of a new industrial system; and the final triumphant vindication of Alabama of the right of local self-government and white supremacy.

Mr. Fleming has done a great and beneficent work in the gathering of the mass of facts which he embodies in this volume.

Compared to his, every other book on the same subject seems fragmentary.

=Frenzied Finance.= By Thomas Lawson. The Ridgway-Thayer Co.,
New York.

No matter what Mr. Lawson’s motive may have been, he has done a public service in the exposure of the methods of Wall Street which cannot be overestimated. For thirty years the story which Lawson has told has been asking for an audience. Time and again, books and magazine articles were published warning the people of the ways of the system. As far back as the days of Peter Cooper, loud voices of clear-eyed men were raised in the effort to rouse public attention. The literature of the Greenback movement, of the Farmers’ Alliance movement, and of the People’s Party movement was full of notes of warning, full of statements of fact exactly on line with Lawson’s revelations.

Why then did the revelations of Lawson sound like a new trumpet and rouse the country so quickly and so universally? Because Lawson spoke from the _inside_: because Lawson was one of the kings of finance himself: because Lawson had played the game himself: because Lawson drew to himself that peculiar attention which attaches to the witness who “turns State’s evidence.” A robber who has worn the mask and ridden with the band on many a midnight marauding foray is always listened to with breathless interest when he enters the box and tells how the robbery was planned, how the crime was committed, and now the spoil was divided. This is but natural. No matter how much proof one may have to establish the guilt of the accused, one feels, always, that there are details which none but the criminal can supply. Here Thomas Lawson’s value is beyond dispute and beyond price. That the methods of Frenzied Finance are substantially what Lawson says they are, can no longer be a matter of doubt.

“=When You Were a Boy.=” By Edwin L. Sabin. The Baker & Taylor
Co., New York.

It seemed impossible that another successful book on school-life and boyhood days could be written, but the author has shown how easily one may be mistaken about a thing of that sort. Here is no story of a fascinating but impossible “Little Lord Fauntleroy”; here is no coarse, witless, stupid “Stalky & Co.,” here is no “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer,” or “Tom Brown,” or “Peck’s Bad Boy,” or “Master William Mitten.” The hero of “When You Were a Boy”—is you. The author has looked into his own heart and drawn your picture to life. You had your little “fist and skull” fights—and here they are in this book. You had a pet dog who did all sorts of funny, aggravating, endearing things, and then died while you were off from home; and the author tells of it, intimately. Your first experience with your father’s shot-gun, your savage rapture over the first thing you killed—here it is in the book. And the first fishing trip, the first “party” you attended, the first girl you “saw home,” the first sweetheart—it is all put down, accurately, vividly. Even that time—you mean little whelp!—when you determined to punish your parents by “running away from home,”—the author found it out on you, and you will hang your head once more, and your eye will dim, as you read about it, in the book. The author does not preach and does not prose, and does not sentimentalise—but “When You Were a Boy” is one of the most life-like delineations of the American boy—his character, his feelings, his habits, his fun and frolic, his passions, his standards—that has ever been put in a book.

=Bossism and Monopoly.= By Thomas Carl Spelling. D. Appleton &
Co., New York.

An exposition of the evils of the twins—Bossism and Monopoly. Mr. Spelling brings the record of trust robbery and boss despotism down to date, and while he necessarily has to treat the same facts and conditions which so many other writers have handled, none of them has a firmer grip upon the subject than he—nor have any of them produced a more essentially useful book. He is the only writer who has seized upon and utilized the tremendously important facts set forth by Albert Griffin in the financial articles which he wrote for this MAGAZINE some months ago. What Mr. Griffin calls Hocus Pocus Money another may call fictitious values, unsupported credit, wild-cat inflation, or any other name, but the fact as first pointed out by Mr. Griffin is that the Privileged Few in the Banking world are taxing the people to an enormous amount for the use of bogus money.

Mr. Spelling also deals with the Railroad problem in a masterly way, advocating, as all sane men will soon be found doing, Government Ownership.

=The Coming Crisis.= By Gustavus M. Pinckney. Walker, Evans and
Cogswell Co., Charleston, S. C.

This is a book to read closely and to think about. It is full of solid fact and sound reasoning. Its tone is calm, but its thought is deep, and it deals with matters of gravest import.

A quotation will give some idea of the scope of the work:

(1) “Society under government naturally tends to fall into two parties, one attached to the consumption of taxes and increase of power, the other attached to the decrease of taxes and to the limitation of power.

(2) The tendency of the first party is to absorb the rights and property of the second: the tendency of the second is to resist the process.

(3) Remaining unchecked, the first will steadily encroach and absorb until the second is compelled in self-preservation to resist by tendering the issue of force.”

That’s a clear bold statement and a true one.

Illustrating the method by which the one party appropriates the property of the other, Mr. Pinckney cites our infamous Tariff System.

“The amount of prices advanced under a 40 per cent. tariff and _transferred from one private pocket to another_, would ... soon extend to figures to _dwarf the national debt_.”

Some one has calculated that from Independence to 1861, the amount thus transferred from private pockets to other private pockets, without consideration, was something like $2,770,000,000.

The sum so stolen from private pockets by the damnable Tariff, since 1861, and put into other private pockets is a great deal more than the colossal figures mentioned above.

Mr. Pinckney likewise takes up the National Banker and shows how the Government allows him advantages over his fellow man that are “utterly without right, reason, or justification.” After explaining the juggle which takes place over the bonds, and the notes, he sums it up thus:

“_The people are taxed in order that the privilege of issuing money may be farmed out to the banks._”

Nobody has ever summed up the iniquity of the National Banking System in a more startling sentence, and a good Democrat, like Mr. Pinckney, must have been sorely grieved when he saw every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Representative unite with the wicked Republicans in 1893-1894 to renew the charters of the National Banks for twenty years.

Space forbids the extending of these comments further. I will only add that no student of present conditions can afford to miss Mr. Pinckney’s book.

=Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson.= Edited by Wm.
B. Parker, of Colombia University, and Jonas Viles, of the
University of Missouri. The Unit Book Pub. Co., New York.

When two college professors start out to give the world a new book on _Thomas_ Jefferson, the world has a right to expect an unusually valuable book.

Professors Parker and Viles did not undertake an original composition. Theirs was the simpler task of making a good selection from the letters, State papers and addresses of Mr. Jefferson. That such a selection should be a success, it was necessary that the compilers acquaint themselves intimately with all that Jefferson wrote, and that the selections made should fairly represent _Jefferson himself_—Jefferson the man, the scholar, the farmer, the builder, the inventor, the advanced thinker, the man of bold speculative ideas, the statesman, the student of social and industrial problems.

Have our learned professors done this?

Mr. Jefferson’s book, “Notes on Virginia,” contains more than 300 pages. It is full of his most characteristic thinking. It displays the working of his mind on matters great and small, social, racial, historic practical and speculative.

Our Professors quote eight pages from the book, wherein Mr. Jefferson discusses Religion, Slavery and American Genius—three subjects only. These are important quotations, but what a pity it is that the Professors did not quote Jefferson’s profound study of the Indians, their physical and mental peculiarities, their mode of life, their love of their children, their fortitude under suffering, their undying loyalty to friends, their skill and bravery in war, their eloquence in council, their system of tribal government. Mr. Jefferson wrote nothing more interesting than this account of the Indians of Virginia. It was in this that he reproduced and handed down to posterity that gem of oratory which we boys used to “speak” at school—“Logan’s speech” sent to Lord Dunmore.

On page 166 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson gives a concise and comprehensive statement of the wrongs which the colonies suffered at the hands of the King. Inasmuch as we have developed a school of Tory historians who make light of the American grievances, it might have been a good thing had the Professors quoted Mr. Jefferson’s summary of those grievances.

On page 172 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson makes a remarkable prediction of the manner in which abuses will creep into our Government, and he solemnly warns his countrymen to combat these abuses “before they shall have gotten hold on us.”

Inasmuch as the abuses which Mr. Jefferson dreaded have gotten hold on us, his prophecy, published more than a hundred years ago, deserves a place in any collection of Jefferson’s works.

On page 216 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson has a word to say on popular self-government which every American boy should read as soon as he becomes a voter. I am sorry the Professors left it out.

The most powerful chapter in the “Notes on Virginia,” is that beginning on page 228 and ending on page 235. As it stands written, it is a masterpiece. To spoil a good thing is easy; and the Professors spoilt the best chapter in Jefferson’s book by cutting out only a portion of it for use, and not the best part at that.

On page 240 of the “Notes” is Mr. Jefferson’s splendid tribute to the working classes of the rural communities—but the Professors seemingly attached no value to it.

What could have been more timely than the re-publication of Mr. Jefferson’s magnificent plea against War, and against Militarism, which covers pages 253, 254, and 255 of the “Notes”? The Professors could not have embraced in their collection anything of greater intrinsic and eternal value than this, and they have given much space to matter which, compared to this, is mere trash.

I have neither the time nor the patience to compare the letters which these Professors have collected with those which they have left out. If they selected the letters in the same spirit that they culled from the “Notes,” their compilation is just as far from doing justice to Mr. Jefferson as “The True Thomas Jefferson,” by W. E. Curtis, was from the truth. There is no American book of the same size that contains more errors than Curtis’s “True Jefferson;” and when I saw that these two Professors had named that book as one of their authorities—well, you can see for yourself how it stimulated my attention.

=Democracy in the South Before the Civil War.= By G. W. Dyer,
M. A., Pub. House of the M. E. Church South. Nashville, Tenn.

The author modestly calls this a compendium of a more comprehensive work which will be published later.

It is an exceedingly valuable study. The author has dug up a lot of buried treasure. His refutation of many unfounded opinions concerning social economic and political conditions in the South prior to the Civil War is supported by a diligence of research that gather all the necessary evidence.

Among other facts of importance which Mr. Dyer establishes, Prof. John Bach McMaster to the contrary notwithstanding, are:

(1) There was no land monopoly in the South. On the contrary there was a better pro rata distribution of land than in the free States.

(2) Manual labor was not a badge of disgrace. On the other hand, the white population of the South was engaged in all kinds of manual labor, excepting menial service.

(3) The South had a larger number of miles of railroads in 1860 in proportion to her free population than the rest of the country.

(4) In 1860, Southern people were engaged in almost all kinds of manufacturing.

(5) In 1860 the South was the richest section of the country, and her wealth was increasing with greater rapidity than that of the other sections.

It will be remembered that in one of his great speeches in Congress William L. Yancey demonstrated this truth.

(6) Wages were higher in the South than in the North in 1860.

So they are even now. The laborer who produces that free trade product, cotton, gets nearly one-half of the value of the cotton produced. In the Protected industries of the North the laborer does not receive an average of twenty-five percent of the product of his labor.

Mr. Dyer proves another fact worth mention:

The idea of a State fund for the education of those who were not able to pay their tuition originated in the South. In other words, the present American system of State free public schools was born in the South. If Mr. Dyer’s more comprehensive work increases in value as it increases in size it will deserve to be a most successful book.

“=Sonnets to a Wife.=” By Ernest McGaffey. William Marion
Reedy. St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. McGaffey makes his Sonnets a continuous hymn of the beautiful in Nature. The clean atmosphere of the open world is in every sonnet. All the airs of heaven blow pureness about these lovers. The spiritual significance of the great Nature, of which husband and wife and their love for each other are a part, is always strongly suggested, and this without cant either of orthodoxy or of the dolorous minor poet lamenting the loss of himself to the world.

=The Eternal Spring.= A Novel. By Neith Boyce. Fox, Duffield &
Co., New York, $1.50, postpaid.

The story opens at an Italian villa, overlooking Florence. Elizabeth Craven is wearing “second mourning” for a deceased husband who was too old for her, and who had never satisfied her womanly cravings for male companionship. Elizabeth is thirty-eight years old, but is still in the flush of health and strength and beauty. Hers is the villa, and to her comes Barry Carlton, who has been stock-gambling for several years in Chicago, and has quit because he had won a modest competence and had brought himself to the brink of nervous collapse.

Barry Carlton had known Elizabeth intimately five years before and had become warmly attached to her. Poor Elizabeth! She had loved Barry all the while, and she loves him yet.

She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust youth.

_Then_ she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know the passion of _living_.

But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat. Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the villa.

A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won _his_ heart, and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry; so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about to say:

“One Elizabeth were worth a dozen Claras.”

For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural and uncanny.

Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and interesting.

As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book.

_Cause for Joy_

“Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern. “Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?”

“D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?”

“No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out, up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.”

The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From every standpoint it is right.—_Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat._

* * * * *

Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds the _Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald_ of the story of the old darkey, never regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting, “Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—_Leeton (Mo.) Times._

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Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should heed the warning.—_Ozark (Mo.) Democrat._

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Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the skillet for a short time.—_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._

* * * * *

It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week. But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr. Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—_Darlington (Mo.) Record._

* * * * *

The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from the Tobacco Trust.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner._

* * * * *

The steamer _America_, from Honolulu for San Francisco, carried $750,000 in coin sent by registered mail by local bankers, in order, it is alleged, that the money might be at sea, and beyond the territorial jurisdiction on December 31st, when a tax of one per cent. is levied on all money on deposit by the banks on that date. It is understood that the money will be returned immediately. Deducting the charges of shipment, the saving made will be approximately $7,000.—_Argonaut, San Francisco._

* * * * *

The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State, has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back in history the Standard Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—_Howard (S. Dak.) Advance._

* * * * *

Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on, at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful, isn’t it?

This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is, safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand people fill its jails.

We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.

Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do real work be any more dangerous in high places?—_Parker H. Sercombe in To-Morrow._

* * * * *

And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—_Alma (Neb.) Record._

* * * * *

With the arraignment of Standard Oil officers, life insurance fakirs, Panama Canal investigations, United States senators losing their dignity, and being tried like other criminals, and all manner of “big bugs” having to shudder at the majesty of the law, we are made to wonder what is going to happen next.—_Durant (I. T.) Farmer._

* * * * *

Announcement is made of another donation by John D. Rockefeller to the University of Chicago. This time it is $1,450,000. Where did he get it?—_Granville (Ia.) Gazette._

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Rockefeller may fire Rogers for talking too much. Rogers admitted that he knew his own name and had heard of Standard Oil.—_People’s Voice, Norman, Okla._

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Now that railroad passes are abolished and the franking privilege is to be stopped, what will Congressmen do, poor things? They have been sending their soiled clothes back to their district and having them returned free, have been getting beef, butter, eggs, and vegetables in the same way, and to cap the anticlimax of their perquisites Hon. Shepard of Arkansas has discovered that their mileage allowance of twenty cents per mile made in the old stage-coach era, is a gross over-allowance and has introduced a bill to cut it down to six cents a mile, which is quite enough for the Pullman car accommodations nowadays.—_Luck (Wis.) Enterprise._

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The State of New York which has a population of 8,000,000 and wealth far in excess of any state in the Union has had no representative in the Senate since the holiday opening of Congress. Its two Senators, Platt and Depew, are prevented by ill-health from attending the sessions and it is not known when they will be able to take their places in the Senate Chamber. Senator Platt with his new wife is at Virginia Hot Springs, looking in vain for the fountain of youth. He is palsied with age and he is so feeble that he cannot walk about unsupported. On the daily drives and outings that Mrs. Platt is obliged to take to maintain her vigorous health she is never accompanied by the aged Senator, who remains in his room nearly all of the time. The situation with Senator Depew is scarcely more agreeable. Instead of the triumphant, jovial Depew of old he is now a man broken in health and spirit by the revelations of the New York insurance companies which have placed him in such a questionable light before the public.—_Kiowa (Colo.) Record._

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As this country becomes more and more a manufacturing country, it needs to give more heed to this fundamental problem. Urged by purely selfish motives, commerce and industry are ever tending to exploit the labor of the child because it is low priced, and to oppose restraining legislation. This, observes the _Chicago Tribune_, is why the child labor laws of England are considerably less stringent than those of progressive countries on the Continent. The latter, pressing upon each other’s frontiers, realize that child labor impairs the military efficiency of a nation. Military considerations may not weigh so heavily with the people of this country as they do with continental Europe. But child labor should be prevented in America with a view to securing for children that better preparation for life and that worthy type of ultimate citizenship which American ideals demand. In the interest of social and civic efficiency, and so of our national future, the rising generation, both North and South, should be protected against premature toil.—_Bath (N. Y.) Plaindealer._

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The new officials in Philadelphia should see that their predecessors get their just dues—a long term in the penitentiary.—_Winona (Minn.) Leader._

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When the People’s Party first submitted its platform of principles to the people, the soundness of its principles was questioned and doubted by many, and even by some who recognized the soundness of the principles, yet had not lost hope, or were not convinced, that reforms could not be brought about swifter through their old parties than through a new party organization, and for this reason never aligned themselves with the People’s Party; but the last ten years of endeavor to secure reforms through the old parties has convinced them that reform through the old parties was like tracing the rainbow to find a pot of gold hanging on the end of it.—_People’s Voice, Norman, Okla._

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The state legislators certainly cannot now have any reason for flinching on the question of railroad rates. The Pennsylvania road showed that while one third of their passengers rode on passes they were able to pay a nice dividend to stockholders. Now that nobody rides on passes the public certainly should secure the benefit by a reduction to two cents per mile for travel. The law makers can also consider the right of eminent domain for the trolley lines, as well as the right of electric lines to carry freight. The latter propositions would mean thousands of dollars in the pockets of the people. Instead of the discontinuing of the passes being a detriment to the people, it will undoubtedly become a benefit.—_Roscoe (Pa.) Ledger._

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Hon. Ezekiel S. Candler, Jr., a member of Congress from Mississippi, recently delivered a speech before the House of Representatives in which he favored legislation that would abolish hazing in the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Mr. Candler very justly ridicules the idea that hazing is necessary to make a boy courageous and keep him from being a “sissy boy.”—_Grand Cane (La.) Beacon._

From what can be learned of the dispatches concerning the punishment of grafters under the present administration, it seems that those who were brought in guilty, have invariably been men who were opposed to some of Roosevelt’s pet hobbies. Burton of Kansas, you must remember, strenuously opposed Roosevelt’s plan to reduce the duty on Cuban raw sugar, and made a brilliant speech in opposition to it. Poor old Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, also opposed some of Teddy’s pet schemes. He was pursued unmercifully and maliciously, yet the beef trust goes unpunished. Teddy’s investigators are now busy defending them. Those men arrested in Nebraska for the illegal fencing and use of Government land received but a nominal fine and a sentence of six hours in the custody of the United States Marshal. Secretary Shaw, another of Teddy’s proteges, has declared that John Walsh of Chicago is innocent of any statutory crime, and has only done what many other bankers have done. Just as soon as the failure of the Walsh banks was wired to Washington, plans were at once set on foot to protect them, also to protect Walsh. Teddy will have to shift his bearings a little or the people will soon begin to believe that he is not the Simon-pure reformer, graft crusher and trust buster that the press agents are claiming him to be.—_Ex Porte, Florence, Colo._

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The grain trust of Nebraska fixes the price of every bushel of grain in the state. Not an elevator in the state pretends to begin operations till the price of grain fixed by the trust comes, and it comes every day very early in the morning. Supply and demand! Who said supply and demand regulate prices?—_Broken Bow (Neb.) Beacon._

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Germany is putting the tariff question squarely before the “stand pat” Republican clique in the Senate. That country proposes to bar American goods by a prohibitory tariff unless this country reduces the Dingley tariff for Germany. This is a fair proposition and one that the people generally in this country would gladly welcome, but the eight or nine Republican bosses would rather see this country sink than give an inch on the present tariff.—_Vandalia (Ill.) Democrat._

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H. Clay Pierce, president of the Waters-Pierce Oil company, who has been holding up the people of the Indian Territory and Texas for a great many years past, pays $25 a day for seven rooms the year round at the Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s big hotels.—_Rush Springs (I. T.) Landmark._

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The Standard Oil Company has during the past year gobbled up about twenty gas plants in various parts of the country. Having an income of about forty millions a year. John D. Rockefeller must put his money into something that will bring him more interest.—_Delphi, (Ind.) Citizen Times._

Senator Burton has dismissed his private secretary, because there was nothing for him to do. There is also very little for poor Burton to do unless it is “doing time.”—_Princeton (Ky.) Chronicle._

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The Congressman, who, with his wife, aunts, and mother-in-law, franks their clothes home once a week to be washed, is going to be the loser by the investigation of the Congressional franking privilege pending.—_Delton (Mich.) Graphic._

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Tom Watson wants to know if Bryan will try to buy the throne of Peter the Great or the second-hand coat of Peter the Great. Mr. Bryan set the entire Japanese nation against him when he tried to buy the “war chair” that Togo had sat in, and the Watson inquiries suggest nothing more out of place than this foolish and very improper episode.—_Rushville (Ind.) American._

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The reply of Thomas E. Watson to Clark Howell is such a long letter that we cannot get it in this issue of the Rambler, but will give it Tuesday. The weakest of all the weak things that Howell’s advisers have let him do is the stirring up of Watson.—_Cordele (Ga.) Rambler._

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And so “I am a Democrat, D. B. Hill” has also been receiving a large sum of money ($5,000) each year for a long time from the Equitable Life Insurance Company. Mr. Hill says his salary was for his services as a lawyer and not for his political influence. Mr. Hill may have thought so, made himself think so. But to a man up a tree the salaries the insurance companies paid Hill, Depew and other men of great political influence were to make friends of them so that the graft of the insurance officers could continue. We presume most of the men of great political influence in the ruling parties are on the pay roll of one or more of the big grafting corporations. A list of the congressmen, governors, etc., who are getting salaries as attorneys for the railroads, trusts, etc., would be very interesting reading.—_Missouri World._

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The Georgia gubernatorial campaign has reached the letter-writing stage, apparently, though it must be confessed that the man who sprung the trigger isn’t profiting very much by the result of his action. The secret of the Sibley correspondence was carefully guarded until the Columbus debate, and then thrown upon the public in the form of a bombshell, the expectation being that Mr. Smith would be swept from his feet by the explosion.

The result was anything but what was anticipated. While Mr. Smith knew nothing of what was coming, he did exactly as he has done in the face of all the charges that have been brought against him—made no explanation whatever, because he had nothing to explain.

The matter was explained, however, and by the man who knew more about the whole business than any one—excepting, of course, Mr. Howell, and that man was Hon. Thomas E. Watson. And Mr. Watson’s explanation does just what it was intended to do—it explains.

Attempts have since been made by Mr. Howell to give further enlightenment on the Sibley and McGregor episodes by publishing the entire correspondence, but like a man in quicksand, every struggle to extricate himself only sinks him the deeper.

At no time has it been shown that Mr. Smith sought an alliance with Mr. Watson, or that one was ever made. Mr. Watson has no political ambition at the present time, and, in fact, states in one of his letters that instead of seeking the election to the United States Senate, he is supporting, and will cast his vote for Hon. John Temple Graves for the same reason that he is supporting Mr. Smith—because Mr. Graves stands for the same principles Mr. Watson has always advocated.—_Dublin (Ga.) Times._

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Howell and McGregor are trying hard to make it appear that Tom Watson and Smith made a firm trade before Smith announced for Governor; and in the next breath Clark says Sibley offered him Watson’s support six weeks after Smith announced. Funny how he could support both of them!—_Bullock (Ga.) Times._

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Mr. Howell is lustily calling to the “Loyal Democrats” to save him from Tom Watson and the bow-wows. Loyal to what? To Clark and the corporations? But a few weeks ago “Boss” Murphy was calling (and buying) both “Loyal” Democrats and Republicans to save him from Hearst and the penitentiary. Honest Democrats, by the Eternal, be loyal to yourselves, your wives and children, and to the God that made you.—_Dalton (Ga.) Herald._

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Why should ex-Populist Hon. Thomas E. Winn be allowed to use the columns of the only Democratic paper in the state, the Constitution, to advise ex-Populists to vote for Howell, and Hon. Thomas E. Watson be refused to say whom he is for and why. Tell us, Clark.—_Lawrenceville (Ga.) Journal._

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H. Clay Pierce, of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a branch of the Standard, has been in hiding at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, in New York, to prevent the serving of a summons to appear before Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri. Pierce has had his private yacht steamed up for days, ready to leave the country at a moment’s notice. Old John D. Rockefeller is also dodging around, keeping out of the way of the officers. The fact that the Standard Oil fellows are afraid to go into court, and are continually on the lookout for officers, ought to be sufficient proof to the people that they are guilty. Honest people are not afraid of law or officers.—_Garnett (Kan.) Independent Review._

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It seems that conditions down on the isthmus, where the Government is engaged in digging a big canal, will not stand much probing. A Republican paper, friendly to the administration, sent a representative down there to report on the conditions, and his report has caused an investigation to be begun by Congress. President Roosevelt will be fortunate if he saves himself from this Congress, and he can afford to keep on friendly terms with the Democrats.—_Malad (Idaho) People’s Advocate._

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The Federal Senate of the United States is becoming more and more like the House of Lords in England. It is clearly not of the people. Wealth is the title that makes membership possible. A man without money, in these later days, can no more enter this American House of Lords than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle. No matter how a man may have acquired his riches, even though every one of his dollars be tainted, this “honorable” position as the head of our Government is his—providing he has the “dough to go around.” Oh! the shame of it all! Why is it that the common people, the masses, those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—and they are in the majority—do not rise up in their might and make this office an elective one by all the people instead of a few subsidized purchased legislators, that it might come from the people, and in coming from them, represent them instead of the selfish money interests of the country?—_Detroit (Mich.) Courier._

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Common mortals have an awesome fear of the majesty of the law, but not so with Rogers, the Standard Oil lord lieutenant. They are regarded by him as but minions of the people; something far beneath his lofty station. Let’s hope he is taught a wholesome respect for courts of justice before this Standard Oil rottenness is all suppressed.—_Prescot (Wis.) Tribune._

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Of all the thin political tricks that have been attempted to be put off on the people of Georgia, that Sibley-Howell correspondence, sprung by tricky Clark in the Columbus debate, was the thinnest. Why they didn’t have sense enough to date their letters two months earlier, so as to antedate Hoke Smith’s announcement, is an evidence of the weakness of political trickery. There was never a meaner nor more transparent job, for it could deceive only fools.—_Sparta (Ga.) Ishmaelite._

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It is said that the various corporations of the country have employed and almost monopolized all of the best legal talent of the land. Be that as it may; no lawyer that is, or for the last ten years has been, employed by a corporation should ever be elected or appointed to a public office. Especially should they not be sent to Congress or state legislature.—_Cass (Tex.) Sun._

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Two insurance companies that have defied the state law requiring licenses and who have other charges laid at their doors have been taken into the civil courts by the State Insurance Department. It is to be hoped that they will not escape upon any technicality as they did in the criminal action. It’s time the insurance companies were made to understand that the laws, weak and incomplete as they are, must be enforced.—_Cortez (Colo.) Journal._

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