Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 with funding from Duke University Libraries littp://www.arcliive.org/details/kitetrustaromancOOroge THE KITE TRUST (A Romance of Wealth) LEBBEUS HARDING ROGERS KITE TRUST PUBLISHING COMPANY 75 MAIDEN LANE New York City Copyrif^ht, 1900, By Lebbeus Harding Rogers. RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO A WHOLE ARMY OF STATESMEN ASSESSORS AND TAX GATHERERS WHO DON'T KNOW A TELEGRAPH POLE FROM A SHOTGUN. IT IS APPALLING HOW VERY LITTLE PRACTICAL BUSINESS EXPERIENCE IF ANY IS POS- SESSED BY THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE WHO ASSUME TO REG- ULATE COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Micky Flynn I II. Fred Schmidt 7 III. Satn Forbes 13 IV. Ed Webster 19 V. Flynn & Schmidt 28 VI. Kites 35 VII. A Fair Beginning 43 VIII. Business Booms 51 TX. Labor 58 X. Prospering 65 XI. A Great Law Office j}^ XII. Genius 80 XIII. The Three Kingdoms 88 XIV. Capital 96 XV. The Silver Question 105 XVI. Wealth ... .7 118 XVII. Blavatsky 127 XVIII. The Iron Standard 138 XIX. Brick Standard 144 XX. Check Standard 150 XXI. The Art Standard 155 XXII. Taxes 163 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XXIII. Revenue 176 XXIV. National Debts 185 XXV. Protection 194 XX\'I. Business Quarrels 220 XXX'II. Economy 228 XXVIII. Damages 236 XXIX. Travel 247 XXX. . Progression 264 XXXI. Money 270 XXXII. Banking 292 XXXIII. Education 309 XXXiy. Madame Guyon 317 XXXV. Nationality 331 XXXVI. Strikes 342 XXXVII. Speculations 348 XXXMII. Commerce 355 XXXIX. Leap Year 2>7Z XL. Cagliostro 382 XLI. Clearing House 393 XLII. Plunging 409 XLIII. Croesus Paled 417 XLIV. Trusts 427 XLV. Billionaires 450 XLVI. The People 465 CHAPTER I. MICKY FLYNN. On the 29th day of February at three o'clock a.m. Micky Flynn was born in Hamilton, Hamilton County, O., and as it was generally considered a good State to come from he did not offer the slightest objection. Later he lived in the village of Utica, near Pittsburg, Pa., where he learned to swim, swear, swop, and swag- ger to the same degree of proficiency that was cus- tomary with the small boy of that locality. He went to the public school, and was at the foot of his class in geography, spelling, and reading, but when it came to arithmetic he was the first boy in the room. He did not see the use of history or any study excepting fig- ures, and his teacher could not hammer other things into his head. Micky's father was baptized Patrick, and Pat Flynn was known as a pretty hard character; but he was a good worker and had a steady job as a track hand on the railroad. Patrick did not care for ancestry, and never bothered himself or any one else as to who was his grandfather or great-grandfather ; all he knew about it was that he himself was an Irishman, and that was pride suflicient for him, with the exception that he 2 THE KITE TRUST. had an idea that he, with all the rest of his race, were descended from the father of St. PatriT:k, that being glory enough for any mortal. So he folded his hands and rested content, not caring who were kings and princes ; all he wanted in addition to something to eat, drink, and wear was to be able to smoke his clay pipe in peace after his usual evening quarrel with his wdfe. But his son Micky was rather of a commercial turn of mind, forever amazing his father and mother with his conversation regarding figures of high degree; he seemed to know the names of all the people of the country who were worth a million dollars ; and when his father or mother was not giving Micky a whipping they were wondering what kind of a man he would make. Between themselves they had a sort of awe for the figure-smartness of their only boy. A foreshadowing incident of Micky's future oc- curred w'hen he was nine years of age. The Demo- cratic County Convention was to meet in Utica, and Micky thought it was the occasion for him to make money. It was the first time that any large delegation of men had met in the village since he lived there, and it was the talk among the boys as much as it would be with the young people of New York City, Chicago, or London if two or three hundred thousand strangers were going to assemble with them at one time. Micky had earned sixty cents the month before, and thought he would go into some commercial enterprise for gain ; and at last, without consulting any one. he decided on the lemonade business. So, borrowing a crock and ladle, a table and table-cover, and a dozen tumblers, and investing his sixty cents in lemons and sugar, he was up bright and early and ready at the corner of the main street w^aiting for the convention to meet. The assembly occupied the concert hall near the lem- onade stand, and the members passed backward and MICKY FLYNN. 3 forward, but for several hours Micky did not have a single customer. His only admirers and would-be tipplers were about forty penniless boys and girls who crowded around his stand, looking upon him with envy and awe. Not a single one of them could raise five cents to buy a drink. About four o'clock in the after- noon Micky was becoming very much discouraged, and about to give up in despair and throw his lemonade into the gutter or divide it up among his young fellow- townsmen, when at that hour a company of nine men from the convention passed by. Seeing a lemonade stand, they made some bantering remarks about lem- onade, with the result that a glass was passed to each one of the nine, thus bringing to Micky's cash box forty-five cents. That was the only sale he made dur- ing the entire day, and when the e\'ening came and the convention departed the discouraged boy was fifteen cents the loser by his investment ; he was able, how- ever, to sell back to the groceryman the remaining un- cut lemons for sixteen cents, and was one cent ahead for a hard and anxious day's toil. That night when Micky's father came home and heard of the business venture, he gave him a good whipping and a lecture, and charged him never again to bring disgrace upon a respectable Irish family by selling lemonade at a Democratic convention. If he wanted to sell lemonade and make money, he ought to wait until the Prohibition Party should hold their meeting in the tOAvn, and then he might have some chance of doing business, without aspersing a great political party, as in this present case. For three long weeks Micky nursed his wrath and disappointment, vowing he never would be a Democrat ; and accord- ingly he was lost to that party forever. At the end of the three weeks the Prohibition Con- vention met in Utica. ]\Iicky had been maturing his plans regarding it for some time, and determined to 4 THE KITE TRUST. profit by his father's poHtico-commercial suggestion and again embark in the lemonade business. With the sixty-one cents he had left from his first venture and $2 that he borrowed from his mother he commenced on the night l)efore the convention to carry out his well and secretly deliberated plans. He went around to the twelve grocery stores in the village, and found that in the whole place there were exactly one hundred and ninety-eight lemons. After this canvass he returned home, obtained a basket, and went around and bought up every lemon in the village at one cent each, thus fixing it so there would be no opposition from the other boys who had been talking over the same idea of sell- ing lemonade. Bright and early the next morning he was at the ac- customed corner with his lemonade crock. Prohibition customer after customer came, and by noon he had sold over fifty glasses of lemonade at five cents each. His young friends, seeing his success, had been doing their best to buy lemons in the village, but not a single one could be obtained. IMicky overheard one of the boys say he was going to walk down to the village of Dover, three miles distant, and buy some lemons there. Micky's sister Sally was standing by, and after the boys had started, Alicky hailed a passing wagon going in the direction of Dover, and told the driver he would gi\e him a glass of lemonade if he would let his sister ride down quickly to that village. Micky was success- ful in the negotiation, and furnished Sally with suffi- cient money to buy out the entire stock of lemons of the whole town of Dover, which she did, amassing fifty-two lemons, all that were in the place; then she walked back, as Micky had not said she could use any of the money for a return ride. The disappointed boys on their arrival at the village wanted to mob Micky when they found out what he had done, but he told them " he'd break der heads if dey fooled wid him." MICKY FLYNN. 5 At three o'clock in the afternoon Micky paid his mother back her $2, and at the end of the day had $11.15 fi'oni the sale of lemonade, and seventy-two lemons left, which he induced the grocerymen to take back at the price he paid, as there was not a lemon left in the stores, and a considerable demand. Sally, who had been helping Micky all day, buying sugar, carrying water, and other sorts of work, was delighted at the rushing business, but in the evening, when she found that her brother had made so much money, she demanded a dollar to buy a doll. Micky almost fainted and looked at her in perfect astonish- ment, and said he would do nothing of the kind, and upbraided her for such high and extravagant notions. Then Sally flew into a mad fit and threatened all sorts of things, and Micky, to make it all right, offered her ten cents, which she would not take, and she com- menced to cry and called him mean and stingy. She said she wanted a dollar or nothing, as she had helped him all day and walked back from Dover through the heat, and he ought to give her a dollar for the doll. But Micky to stop her crying offered her twelve cents, and at last raised the amount to fifteen, saying he would not give a cent more, and placed it in her hand much against her will. Sally was mad, and in anger threw the whole fif- teen cents at him with all her strength. The pennies scattered over the grass in every direction. Micky spent nearly forty minutes hunting for them, and by the time it grew dark had found all but one. The next morning he was'up before four o'clock and hunted an hour and ten minutes for that one cent, at last finding it over near the fence corner. When Micky's mother heard of his treatment of his sister she gave a sigh, and said it was " jist loike all the men folk's treatment uv der wimmen folks" and that Micky was stingy and mean enough to get to be a rich man. 6 THE KITE TRUST. Micky's mercantile fame spread throughout the village, not only among the children, but the grown people, and one gentleman met him on the street and said to him that he had heard he had made a " corner" on lemons. Micky disclaimed all knowledge of any real-estate transaction or of having any corner lots, and did not understand the word "corner," but gradu- ally it entered his head that a " corner" among business men meant a man's buying up everything of one par- ticular line of goods, so that no person else could buy any of the same kind, except by coming to him for it. At the end of that year Micky's father died, and Mrs. Flynn moved, with her two children, to Cincin- nati, where her widowed sister was residing, and settling in that humble portion of the city called Buck- town, she started in at washing to earn a living for her little family. CHAPTER II. FRED SCHMIDT. Fred Schmidt lived on the outskirts of the village of Lotus, near Springfield, O., where he was born on the 29th day of February, at three o'clock a.m. Summer-time had come ; schooldays were over, and Fred was asked by Mrs. Carleton, of the village, if he would look after her horse while she and her maiden daughter w^ere away for the months of July and August. Fred answered " yes" so promptly that it almost startled the good old lady. The horse, whose name was Jupiter, was nothing to brag of for style, speed, or age. He was blind in one eye and could not see out of the other. He was at least twenty-two years old, but still had ambition and strength to keep up his old jog-trot that for the last ten years was as steady and as measured and as rickety as the strokes of the old ramshackle pump that day and night raised water at the railroad station. Mrs. Carleton's ancient victoria was a match for the ancient horse ; the antique, rusty harness was a match for the ancient victoria ; Mrs. Carleton and her daugh- ter were a match for the rest of the ancient outfit ; and her old and faithful man-servant, when seated on the 8 THE KITE TRUST. box and drivinjjf. completed a picture that would have been a lingerinj^ dream for the world's most talented caricaturist. Mrs. Carleton told Fred that for his pay for looking after her stable she would give him the pleasure of exercising the horse every day with the exception of Sunday. She was a strict Presbyterian, and had never been known to ride on the Sabbath. The horse knew when the Lord's day morning arrived as well as Mrs. Carleton herself, as he had never been known to see the outside of the stable on Sunday since he was two years old, when he entered the service of the now lamented Hon. Jeremiah Carleton, who once repre- sented the Lotus district in Congress. Fred waited at the depot for the family to arrive in the victoria. He saw them all depart, and received the key to the barn from the ancient man-servant as the train was moving toward the far-off seashore. Fred drove the victoria back to the deserted home- stead, locked the establishment in the stable, and then climbed up in one of Mrs. Carleton's apple-trees to meditate on the great responsibility that had been so suddenly thrust upon him. Hay, oats, and corn for Jupiter's maintenance had been provided by Mrs. Carleton, and were safe in the barn. The only other necessity Fred could now think of was water, so he slid down from the tree, went to the cistern and satisfied himself entirely on that point, for it was nearly filled to the top. Climbing again into the tree, he hid himself among the leaves, and first eating one of Mrs. Carleton's green apples, he next continued his meditations on his summer's future, and when two hours had thus passed he had mapped out his vacation's course and came down from the upper branches to the ground. He had l)een told by Airs. Carleton that for his pay he could exercise the horse. He had areued to himself FRED SCHMIDT. 9 that as no particular style of exercising had been men- tioned, he certainly was at liberty to arrange that little matter to suit himself. He never before had had at his own individual disposal the whole of a real live horse, and such an opportunity might never come again. He determined to make some money and to start an express and passenger line from Lotus down to Springfield, which was four miles distant; and for that purpose he would utilize Mrs. Carleton's two- seated spring wagon, that was seldom used, and was standing in good condition in the barn. Fred wasted no time in the matter, and by two o'clock that afternoon had painted on cardboards and posted along the route twenty notices, as follows : FreD SchMiDt wiLl RuN aN eXpreSs, paSSenGeR AnD PacKaGe buSineSs frOm LotUs to SpriNgFieLd eVerY MorNinG & AfteRnOoN FarE lo ceNtS PacKaGeS 25 CenTs The first three days Fred made his two daily trips to Springfield and back without a single passenger or a package, but he went regularly through the form as faithfully as any stage or mail line in the mountains of the far West. On the fourth day he had one customer — a stranger — who desired to ride down to Spring- field. At the end of the journey he refused to pay the ten-cent fare demanded, which resulted in Fred getting mad, calling a policeman, and having the man arrested. The particulars of the arrest were mentioned in the next morning's paper, and proved a good advertise- ment for Fred's express line, which resulted in his obtaining passengers and packages to carry backward lO THE KITE TRUST. and forward, and at the end of July he had made and saved $27.60. On the first Sunday morning- Fred went as usual to the stable to harness the horse for the day's business, but Jupiter would not budge an inch. Fred coaxed him, and pushed him, and then used the whip, but to no purpose, for the old " steed" proved faithful to his religious training, and gave Fred most unmistakably to understand that he was a Presbyterian horse and observed the Fourth Commandment. So the stage line had to be abandoned on Sundays, which gave Fred time to count and recount the money he was accumu- lating. Business increased during August, and by the 21st he had added $40.10 to his earnings, making a total of $67.70 on hand. On the last-mentioned morning Fred was thrown into a state of consternation by seeing a rival express line started by that same stranger whom he had had arrested for not paying his fare. The newcomer cut the rates to five cents for passengers and ten cents for packages, and announced four trips per day, instead of Fred's two. Fred immediately reduced his price to correspond with the opposition, and- at four o'clock met the stranger in Lotus as he was ending his third trip. He called Fred to one side and told him confidentially that he was going to reduce the fare the next day to three cents and packages to five, but that if Fred would buy his horse and wagon for $75, he would quit the busi- ness and leave the field free and clear to the old line. It was a fine horse and wagon, and Fred saw that it was cheap at the price, and offered $67, which was about all his accumulated capital. The purchase was made, the money paid, and Fred, after putting Mrs. Carleton's horse and wagon in the stable, started on his regular trip to Springfield in his new rig. He was FRED SCHMIDT. II the happiest and proudest fellow in Ohio. He mused to himself that he owned the whole " bloomin' outfit." and commenced to dream of making hundreds of dollars in the express business, and by the time he had reached Springfield he had in his fancy worked his future business up to that point where he had an imaginary $1000 in bank; but unfortunately for Fred, at that particular point in his dreamings he was arrested for having a stolen horse and wagon in his possession. The judge heard the prisoner's story, but discharged him from custody, as the owner of the stolen property withdrew his complaint, being satisfied to get back his property. The thief w^as never found. Fred walked back to Lotus with a boy's tear in his eye. He was as thoroughly mad as a boy of nine years could be; he had worked nearly two months exercising Mrs. Carle- ton's horse ; he had made about $68 ; he had been swindled out of it all, except $1, and now he was walk- ing home through the dust over the road he had many times ridden without a passenger. By the time he had reached Lotus he had made up his mind to spend the balance of his life in hunting for that swindler, and when found to kill him on the spot ; and in order to do so. he would buy a pistol with his remaining money, which he did. His misery was augmented on his arrival home to find that Mrs. Carleton had suddenly returned, and on sight of Fred she gave him a good sound scolding, and wanted to have him arrested for using- her poor, dear old horse Jupiter and her wagon for an express business. Just to think, said she to a neighbor, that Jupiter, behind whom had ridden her lamented illus- trious husband, who represented the county in Con- gress — to think that such an honored horse should be subjected to such dishonorable plebeian uses! IJ THE KITE TUrST. Fred stood in disgrace. On the fourth day, when his mother had scolded him for the twenty-seventh time, he could stand it no longer ; and, taking his newly acquired pistol with him, he ran away from home, going all the way to Cincinnati on foot, where at the end of two weeks his poor, distracted mother found him. She felt that her family was in irredeemable dis- grace in the village of Lotus ; and, liking Cincinnati better, she concluded to move there and live with this runaway boy, her only child ; and, taking up her former profession of washing clothes, she settled in Bucktown in the Queen City, sending Fred to the public schools. CHAPTER III. SAM FORBES. Sam Forbes was born in Ohio, February 29, at three o'clock a.m., in the village of Ronseville, situated on the banks of the Ohio River, near Maysville, Ky. The boys of the place considered themselves rich if they could ever manage to accumulate and have on hand at one and the same time as much as two cents ; but when Sam was nine years old he broke the village record by gathering into his possession the sum of nine cents, thus winning no small fame among his comrades as a capitalist. He chanced at that time to overhear a conversation between two farmers to the effect that during that season nearly every man in the county was going to try the experiment of raising hops, as the soil and climate had been pronounced adapted for their produc- tion. Sam had never seen hops grow, and being of an inquisitive turn of mind, he asked his mother about it, who explained all the particulars she knew regard- ing the subject. Sam had the habit of never forgetting anything he ever heard, and when his mother had finished, her information was securely and forever fastened somewhere in his brain, but without any 14 THE KITE TKUST. thought on his part that he would ever be able to make use of what he had heard. But the next day, while playing with a crowd of boys at the river bank, he saw floating down-stream a vast quantity of hoop-poles, that had been lost from a flat-boat, which had sunk forty miles above. There was such a quantity of them that they immediately attracted Sam's attention, and he happened to remem- ber his mother had said that hops had to twine or grow around poles that were stuck in the ground, same as bean poles ; so immediately taking one of the many skififs that were drawn up on the river bank, he rowed out and gathered sixty-three poles, and then called to the other nine boys that if they would try their hand at it, he would give them one cent a hundred for all they could save. Knowing Sam was a capitalist and could make his word good, the entire nine boys in their respec- tive confiscated skiffs were almost immediately out in the current gathering poles. Each one succeeded in securing his hundred and then claimed the penny ; but Sam refused to pay out the^cash until they carried their piles of poles up and into the cellar of his house, which they did, consuming the best part of the afternoon. When Sam had tirne to count the pile he figured up nine hundred and sixty-three poles, and thus his entire capital of nine cents was invested in the lucky find from the river. A month later the hop-growing season commenced, and Sam had no difficulty in selling to the townspeople the poles at two cents each, delivered. He hired the boys to carry the poles to different places at the rate of one cent for twenty poles, and when he had them all sold and delivered, he found he had on hand $18.88, making a net gain of $18.79 on his investment of nine cents, which he figured out was 23,487?? per cent, profit ; and as he was not versed in business affairs, he did not think much about it, as he had an idea that such a SAM FORBES. 1 5 percentage of profit was an every-day occurrence with men of money. It would be an interesting- book if everything were recorded in it that passed through Sam's head as to what he would do with that $18.88, but the climax would be reached when the reader learned that Sam's final conclusion as to the disposition of the entire amount was in the building of a flying machine of his own invention. Sam's father was dead ; he had worked in the village machine-shop as draughtsman and pattern-maker ; he was always inventing something, which was the main and natural reason why he was poor. Sam inherited an inventive disposition. By the time he was six years old he had dug a trench and turned some of the water in the brook up between the hills down onto the little farm that was on the outskirts of the village, where his widowed mother lived. The water from the trench turned a wheel, that churned the surplus milk from the eight cows that helped to make a living for the widow and her three children. Sam thus saved himself the drudgery of churning, and consequently had more time to whittle sticks, which was his favorite pastime. They owned a balky horse that' Sam drove in deliv- ering milk at the village, and at the age of seven the boy gained great notoriety by his invention of a means to make the balky horse go. His invention was nothing more or less than not giving the horse anything to eat before starting on the morning and evening milk trips, and then, after hitching the horse to the milk wagon, suspending over the horse's head a measure of oats twelve inches in advance of his mouth, thus causing the animal to have a continual prompting to go for- ward-marching, in order to get something to satisfy his hunger. Naturally, his next invention .was a means to prevent the horse from always moving on or running away l6 THE KITE TRL'ST. when Sam desired to stop at the homes of his custom- ers, which simple invention consisted of a short strap with a snapper at each end — one snapper for a ring attached hy a strap to the hoof of the horse's hind leg. and the other to a ring fastened on the forward wheel of the milk wagon. His third invention, at the age of eight, made him famous, and exalted him among the boys. He utilized the sun-dial in his front yard by attaching to it a focus- ing glass to fire off, at exactly nine minutes to twelve o'clock, a cannon he had improvised out of an old pistol barrel, and almost every boy in the town, wher- ever he happened to be at the time playing hookey from school, would spend about half an hour as noon-time approached in almost/ breathlessly waiting for Sam's signal to tell it was time to go home to dinner. Sam, in his spirit of investigation, had raised him- self above every other boy in the village by suecessfully putting his mother's clock together in good running order, whereas the other boys had made dire failures and received the usual thrashing before their parents sent for the clock-maker. But the reputation of Sam as an inventor was " above ninety in the shade" on the subject of kites. He had made and flown all the usual shapes of small, flat kites until he was tired of them. He then conceived of larger ideas, and made a kite twenty-one feet high, which thirty boys out in the fields raised to a height of three hundred feet by the assistance of thirty-two clothes-lines purloined from their mothers' back yards. They used a heavy step-ladder and fifty pounds of wooden kitchen chairs for a kite tail, all of which became a complete wreck when the clothes-line broke and the kite had a fall. The boys each received a flog- ging and were in disgrace, especially Sam, who was named as the ringleader; but while in disgrace he con- ceived the idea of redeeming his lost reputation, and SAM FORBES. 1 7 his mind began to soar amidst the altitudes where his kites formerly floated at their highest. He departed from the usual style of kites, and out of tissue-paper made one in the shape of a box, which took to the breeze in graceful pose. He then made out of tissue-paper a hollow swan six feet long, and it sailed up in the air to the astonishment of the whole town. Then he made a huge tissue-paper whale with red, white, and blue stripes, that he attached to a heavy cord in the usual kite fashion and sent it up on the Fourth of July to the delight of the entire populace. These, with fifty other kites of different shapes, gave him great local fame; but he came near being arrested when he induced a small boy to risk his life in making an ascent in one of his box kites built on a gigantic scale. The town constable pulled -the child out just as the kite was rising from the ground. But Sam's career as an inventor in Rouseville came suddenly to an end; his mother's house and barn, which they paid $200 a year rent for, burned down ; the furniture was destroyed, the old horse and eight cows were burned, everything they had was gone, and the little family at midnight stood homeless out in the road. This misfortune resulted in Mrs. Forbes's leav- ing the town and going down the river to Cincinnati with her family, where her only relative in America lived on the river front, near the water-works at Fulton, and where she and Sam obtained employment in a paper-box factory, jointly earning just enough to keep body and soul together for themselves and the two younger children. The $18.79 ^^^^ Sam had made the week before out of the hop poles was all used up in the steamboat tickets and expenses of travel, and thus the construction of Sam's great flying machine was indefinitely postponed. But Sam had not been in the Cincinnati paper-box factory six months before he suggested to the foreman THE KITE TRUST. eight labor-saving machines, all of which were pat- ented by the firm and no credit or additional wages given to the nine-year-old boy, who was in entire ignorance of the fact that he was entitled by law to a handsome compensation. CHAPTER IV. ED WEBSTER. Ed Webster was a lad of nine years, and lived in the city of Cincinnati, O., where he was born on February 29 at three o'clock a.m. His mother was poor, and consequently their home was not on a par- ticularly attractive street. She was ever happy in the thought that her son and only child was a descendant, on his mother's side, of one of the Mayfloiver Pilgrims ; and she herself was proud to say that she was born in Boston, and that her father and grandfather had both been judges of the Supreme Court. Her husband was dead, and left nothing except his name and ancestral pride, being a member of the Society of Cincinnati, a Confederate colonel, and a native Virginian. Ed's mother's heart was more than proud on account of her boy's precocity, especially in the direction of books. He was never known to earn a cent or bring a penny into the home, and would do nothing but read, read, read. When he was seven he found his grand- father's Latin grammar and studied it without the aid of a teacher. He seemed to be bright in all his books, but was especially so in grammar, being head of the 20 THE KITE TRUST. class, never missed a word in spelling', and was first boy for gentlemanly conduct. The best part of his life outside of school hours was spent in Squire Marchant's diminutive law office, where was a copy of the Statutes of the State of Ohio and other law books, and he read case after case with the same devouring eagerness as the other boys of the neighborhood ate their buckwheat cakes and syrup for breakfast. All the time he could spare from reading was devoted to listening to legal quibbles and quarrels that were constantly being brought before the squire for adjustment. By the time Ed w^as nine years old he had crude law down to a fine point, and could use all kinds of legal Latin terms and was becoming a seeming prodigy in his neighborhood, where all the boys and girls looked upon him as a wonderfully finished lawyer. The squire took great interest in Ed, and often con- versed with him in the deepest seriousness, and found the lad could give him points in law-book references, as his memory was marvellous. The squire on. fre- quent occasions in open court asked Ed to look up the statute on questions in dispute, which w^ould be clone while the squire kept order in the room, and it fre- quently happened that when the squire would ask for the reference Ed could promptly call it out from memory. One day, much to Ed's gratification, he was called upon for his opinion, which he gave to the audience with a wonderful look of wisdom. His con- struction of the law always gave satisfaction to every one in the case, excepting, of course, the party on the other side; but the squire had such unbounded confi- dence in Ed, that in a most autocratic and excited way he would subdue any opposition and uphold Ed, right or wrong, after which the case would proceed. Squire Marchant's office, nevertheless, w'as a very popular one among litigants; his adjustment of dis- putes almost always resulted in complete satisfaction ED WEBSTER. . 21 to both sides, for there was an unusual amount of what the populace called horse sense in his ideas of justice. He did not himself have the law down " extra fine," but his Solomonic decisions were very impressive and convincing. He was also quite a political boss in his ward, consequently no one in the district cared to appeal a case to a higher court for fear of his dis- pleasure. Ed was warmly envied in having the official patronage, friendship, and endorsement of so great a local tyrant. The squire was on intimate terms with the registry clerk in the great law office of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts ; and one day, at the request of Ed's mother, but really on the suggestion of the squire himself, he asked the clerk's good offices in securing a situation for the lad as office boy, thinking it was about time he was bringing a couple of dollars a week into the family treasury. This respect that the squire had for Ed's smartness was indulged in by other grown-up persons, and became " catching," so that the young gamins of the neighborhood soon imbibed it. In using the term " gamin" it is with a desire to convey to the reader a full and rightful impres- sion of the boys of that vicinity, for no fellow amounted to much unless he belonged to " de gang." There were several gangs in that section of the city, whose foremost object in federation was to wage war- fare upon one another. In fact, it was the principal occupation of the policemen of the district to intimi- date the young " rascals" to such a degree that on the mere presence or approach of a " cop" the gang would all stampede; they were afraid, since they well knew that all a policeman had to do was to arrest them on a charge of some kind and they would immediately plead guilty without asking questions, for there was nothing in the nature of a bov's offence for which their 22 THE KITE TRUST. consciences did not continually upbraid them to a greater or less degree. It happened one afternoon that the gang was playing in Bender's lot, which covered ahout two acres. It was enclosed by a high board fence, official ingress to which was only through a large gate that was continu- ally kept locked by the owner; the only other modes of entering were by climbing over the high fence or squirming through an aperture made by the removal of a very narrow board. This hole was only large enough for a boy to get through, no policeman ever having succeeded in squeezing in. At first the police- men determined to knock off another board for easy access, but on second thought, and after consultation among themselves, and also upon mature deliberation, they concluded to let it remain just as it was and thereby encourage the youth to go in. for there was no better place in the neighl)orhood for boys to congre- gate, and when they were in this enclosed place they were out of mischief elsewhere. So the policemen left the urchins in full possession, and it thus l)ecame an ideal city of refuge to which they could flee on all occasions. Upon this particular afternoon above referred to a quarrel was in progress between " Dutchy" and " Red," two of the gang, in which the whole crowd had taken sides. " Dutchy" was so called because his face resembled that of a Dutchman, but otherwise he was Irish to the core, including his name, which was Jerry McDugan. " Red's" name was Patsy IMcGuire, and it is almost needless to add that he received his nickname from the color of his hair, which was about five shades brighter than any other of the many bovs in the gang who were similarly embellished. The object or cause of their quarrel was a meek little white dog that had earned its title for meekness by just ED WEBSTER. 23 having submitted without resistance to a very rough pulhng, jerking, and hauhng during the two claimants' struggle to possess him. Angry words, interspersed with impolite language and blows, had passed between " Dutchy" and " Red;" the thirty other " kids" took sides and entered into the dispute, and the culminating point of aggressive attempts for the dog's possession was just about being reached when the slim, nine-year-old body of Ed Webster was seen to slip through the fence hole and approach the disputants. Barney Higgins was the first to see him ; he cried out for the crowd to stop fussing and " let de ap- proachin' lawyer decide de case." All agreed to the proposal. As Ed neared them the quarrelling ceased and all eyes turned in his direction, for every one of them had respect for the little fellow, as he was their superior in every way excepting as to strength and size. He had no muscle at all, and there was not a boy in the crowd but knew that he could " lick" Ed with one hand ; yet no one had ever had a quarrel or even a desire for hard feelings against him. Barney told Ed that " de gang wanted him ter settle der bloomin' fuss." Ed was listening to the case with the deepest atten- tion when the talker's statement was refuted by several others, and in a minute more all was confusion ; every one was talking at once, giving his respective story. Words ran high and loud, and a pitched battle was almost on hand when Ed raised both hands and asked for silence. It took a minute for the quarrelling to subside sufiiciently for Ed to be heard, and then he addressed them as follows : " Gentlemen, if you desire me to help you settle this case, you must be orderly and do things in a legal and lawful manner. In that case I will be happy to assist you in adjusting the difficulty, but you must consent 24 THK KITE TRUST. to act like law-abiding- citizens." Barney spoke for the crowd and said : " All right, go on wid der racket in yer own way ;" and they all agreed, as Barney insisted, upon having " de law take its course." The boys, at Ed's request, then brought a large empty mortar box to the centre of the lot, where they turned it upside down. Ed mounted it and sat on it on an inverted soap box, and when all was adjusted he asked the whole crowd to sit down on the ground in front of him. After they were all seated he slowly said : " Gentlemen, if you want the law to be enforced, it will be necessary to appoint a sheriff to take cliarge of the dog — the property in dispute. The sheriff must be a man who will obey the law and turn the dog over to whomsoever this court decides it belongs. In the next place, I will state that there is no use having a sheriff unless the majority of you. as honorable citizens, have a profound respect for the sheriff's high office, and back him up or stand by him when he starts to obey the order of the court." Then he asked the audience if they would consent to such arrangements and stand by the sheriff; all agreed, and then he asked them to elect a sheriff. One of the boys proposed the name of " Jack" Sullivan, the largest boy in the gang, because he " could lick any feller in de crowd what would interfere wid him;" but Ed from his bench told them " that that would not be respect for the law, it would only be respect for the great strength of ' Jack' Sullivan, but that if they wanted to really be honorable citizens, they should elect some boy who was small, and thus prove that they were all gentlemen by respecting a sheriff who was under their size." The new proposition was received with great appar- ent earnest favor, but secretly in some of their hearts they approved of it because their highest ideal was to have just such a sheriff or a policeman whom they ED WEBSTER. 25 could overpower if occasion came. It was part of their education to long for such a Utopia. They agreed to respect the sheriff's office, and elected Matthew Arnold, a little fellow of the gang, who, on being instructed, went over, took possession of the dog, brought it back to the mortar box, and sat down with the animal on his lap near the feet of the judge. Ed next asked the boys " to appoint three court officers to maintain order during the trial," which was done. "Jack" Sullivan, the mighty, was the first one named, then two others of the larger boys, and then all three came and sat on the edge of the box to be near the court. When all was arranged Ed said : " Gentlemen, the proper thing to do now would be to choose a jury ; but as every one present is prejudiced and has taken positive sides in the matter, the case will have to be decided in the manner of a ' reference.' I shall have to be the referee and not a judge on this occasion, so I will ask for testimony, and will first call upon ' Dutchy' to give his side of the case." " Dutchy" stood up to tell his story, and had not said ten words before " Red" called out that it was a lie. Ed stopped the proceedings and calmly told " Red" that he must keep quiet and let " Dutchy" finish, and demanded of the court officers that they must keep order. When " Dutchy" had finished Ed then called upon " Red" to give his version of the affair, which he did. Then Ed asked " Dutchy" to state whom he wanted for his first witness ; a boy was named and called upon for his testimony, which was given. Then Ed asked " Red" to also name his first witness, which was done, and his story was heard. The court officers upon two or three occasions had to suppress would-be interrupters; but take it alto- gether (for such an unusually uncontrollable crowd) 26 THE KITE TRl'ST. they behaved tliemscKcs orderl)-, much more so on an average than they did at school. Ed then gave every boy in his turn an opportimity to tell his view of the case ; he positively insisted that no one should be interrupted ; and when all were through, Ed, finding the testimony so conflicting, asked time for reflection, and it was five minutes before he again spoke. The boys sat orderly and in silence awaiting the referee's decision as to whether the sheriff should deliver the dog to " Dutchy" or " Red." At last Ed broke the silence and said: " Gentlemen, the testimony is so much at variance that I as referee am at a loss how to decide, but I have concluded to settle the question not by a rule of jurisprudence, but by one of prudence." These two words created a most profound impression on the boys. They did not know their meaning, l)ut concluded they must be Latin or Greek and something very severe, or else Ed would not have used them. Ed then asked all the boys to arise, and for those who thought the dog belonged to " Dutchy" to stand on the right hand and those who favored *' Red" to stand on the left. The division was about even. Ed next directed the three court officers to stand in front of him between the two factions, and that the sheriff holding the dog by the collar should stoop down in front of them. Ed then sent " Dutchy" and '* Red" fifty feet to the front of each of their respective adherents. When all was arranged Ed in a loud voice directed that both " Dutchy" and " Red" should call in a kindly tone for the dog to come t(^ them, which they did in their most coaxing voice, and when the sheriff, at Ed's command, let the dog go, the little creature with a whinny and a wagging of tlie tail and a happy bark frisked off as fast as his little legs would carry him direct to " Red" and jumped up in his arms and tried ED WEBSTER. 2/ to kiss his face, while " Dutchy," mad as a hornet, rushed over to " Red" to seize the dog; but the crowd hilariously yelled and with one voice cried out, " It's ' Red's' dog, it's ' Red's' !" and then " Dutchy" left the field crestfallen, and " Red" triumphantly carried the dog away. CHAPTER V. FLYNN & SCHMIDT. Everybody has heard of the great " Kite Trust." The company originally consisted of Micky Flyna and Fred Schmidt, and was organized in the city of Cincin- nati, in the cellar under the cottage of Widow Flynn, which sheltered herself and two children — Micky and Sally. Mrs. Flynn took in washing for a living. She was a devout Catholic, and was respected hy her neighbors as a hard-working woman who wanted to pay for what she bought and live at peace w^th all the world. Her daily household affairs and duties were as regular as the clock itself, but if there was one thing attended to more faithfully than another, it was her prompt arrival, rain or shine, every morning at the five o'clock mass, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, day after day as the years rolled by. She had one longing wish, which was to give " both the childer a dacent edication." Micky was listless at school in every study excepting arithmetic, and he much desired to work and earn money ; but as he was only ten, his mother compelled him to go to school, in spite of his regular morning, noon, and cx'ening protest. Sally was more willing to learn. In fact, she was eager to studv, and was bright FLYNN & SCHMIDT. 29 and at the head of the class in ahnost everything. Tidy in her appearance, her habits in this respect were a terror to Micky, who was forever being nagged by her for his tramp-hke clothes, uncombed hair, and muddy, bare feet. The day of the organization of the kite firm is one long to be remembered in the annals of Bucktown Hill. It was in March, yet the Fourth of July was coming, and Micky and Fred put their heads together as to how they could raise and save money to have on hand for the national celebration. They wanted a pistol, a cannon, some powder, ten packs of fire-crackers, and a few pin-wheels and Roman candles for the night show, all of which they figured would cost $3.80. A stiff breeze was blowing at the time, and that suggested kites ; so after considerable planning they concluded to make and sell kites, and then they went down into Micky's cellar to talk the matter over secretly. Their combined capital was eight cents, of which Micky had six and Fred two. But when the subject of " division of profits" was discussed, the future great Kite Trust was in the gravest danger. Indeed, it came near never having any existence at all, as Micky in- sisted that he, having six cents and furnishing the cellar free of rent, while Fred only had two cents, should have three-fourths of the profits and Fred only one-fourth. Fred insisted on a " square game," and wanted half. A regular free fight ensued, and there is no telling what might have happened if Mrs. Flynn had not " taken a hand" and thrashed both boys soundly for raising a row in her cellar. In the afternoon the boys " made up" and tried to talk on the subject of kites calmly and dispassionately. After half an hour of argument there was almost an- other explosion, but peace finally prevailed, for Micky, true to his grasping nature, had succeeded in convinc- ing Fred for various reasons that he (Micky) ought 30 THE KITE TRUST. to have the larger share. Finally the proportion of interest in the firm was arranged to be nine-sixteenths for Micky and seven-sixteenths for Fred. On that basis of a division of profits was the firm of Flynn & Schmidt founded, the partners then leaving the cellar and going out to invest their capital in material suit- able for the business. When they reached the street they met Ed Webster, who lived in the neighborhood and was one of their " crowd," and who was looked upon by all the rest of the boys with awe on account of his knowing Greek and Latin, and also because he was earning $2 a week as sweep and office boy in the great law firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts. The " Bucktown gang," of which all three boys were members, was not exactly agreeable to Ed Web- ster as companions, because they were rough and boisterous, while he was of a quiet and thoughtful disposition, and had very little to say on boys' subjects ; but seemed, as the Bucktown crowd said, " always to be thinkin' whenever he wasn't readin' or talkin' law." He was a member of the gang from force of circum- stances, as he lived in the neighborhood and there were no other boys to play with. He was so frail and such a little mite of a fellow that all the rest of the crowd seemed individually his protectors, and no one dared touch or hurt him Avithout earning the wrath and indignation of the others. So with his little slim body of only eleven years' growth, and his big head, pale face. deep, piercing, black eyes, heavy black eyebrows, neat-fitting but faded knickerbockers, and patched but always polished shoes, he would come silently among them and say wise things and use such big words and legal expressions that they wondered how he could know so much. All this, with his connection with the great law firm of Lincoln. Seward & Evarts. made his opinion and companionship of wonderful value. FLYNN & SCHMIDT. 3I Micky and Fred confided to Ed their thoughts about their new kite business, whereupon Ed asked them in a most serious and professional manner if they had drawn up and signed the proper partnership papers. They both professed entire ignorance of what part- nership papers were; whereupon Ed explained the necessity among business firms of having written and signed agreements, so there could be no subsequent misunderstandings and fussings, as nine-tenths of all the disputes and law suits in the courts were caused by people not having proper and written under- standings before they entered into business transac- tions. Both Micky and Fred protested that there would be no misunderstandings or fussing between them, as they " was on de square wid one another," and ex- plained that they had settled the ratio of profits at nine and seven-sixteenths. Ed then asked Micky if he was aware that there was a rule in law that partners were compelled to share for losses in the same proportion that they were to share profits, but Micky insisted " there wasn't to be no losses." Ed then asked them if they had agreed to the kind of work each was to do, as to who was to do the buying or selling or manufac- turing, and who was to hold the money and pay the bills, and how long the partnership was to last, and such things as that. This kind of suggestion was a bombshell in the camp, and in less than a minute Micky and Fred were quarrelling as to who should hold the money. After half an hour's wrangling and almost a fight it was decided that Ed was right, and partnership papers should be drawn up and signed, and Ed was asked to prepare the documents. Ed said he would do it for a fee of five cents. This was a sad blow to the partners, whose capital was only eight cents. They saw, however, the necessity of the papers, but felt the 32 THE KITE TRUST. burden of contracting a debt for more than half of their funds. Micky, who was never known to part with a penny wilhngly, commenced in a coaxing way to ask Ed to do it for nothing, but Ed insisted that it would not be professional to do it for nothing; he must insist on the five cents named as the fee, and they must leave it to him as to whether he would insist on their paying the bill if they made no money. Micky then asked him if he would not take his pay in kites or an interest in the business. Ed said no, that he would have to follow the example of his firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts, who never took from their clients merchandise or interests in patents or real estate, etc. The law firm always insisted on " cold cash," for they would never allow themselves to be drawn into business enterprises, as it distracted their attention from their regular pro- fession. Ed insisted that he had no use for kites, and would not go into business with them, as he wanted to be a lawyer of high standing, and must insist on profiting by the example of his illustrious employers. He must have his bill paid in money when it was paid. He said that Lincoln, Seward & Evarts did not present bills to some of their clients for a year or more, and he would not bring in his bill until that length of time if they preferred it. Micky said " he didn't want to run up no bills wid any one," and then in a patronizing tone said that if Ed would not charge for drawing up the papers, he would let him kiss his sister Sally for a month " widout interferen'." Micky had touched a tender chord in Ed's nature, and his little white cheeks and face turned red with blushing. Ed thought Sally was the smartest girl in the world, and Sally thought Ed was the smartest boy in the world. Alicky had kept his eyes open and knew what was what, and so for the sake of saving a penny or two, he, like many older persons, was perfectly FLYNN & SCHMIDT. 33 willing to sacrifice all of his relations to carry out his plans; but Ed, remembering the dignity of the pro- fession he aspired to, and the disgrace such a transac- tion would bring to the legal fraternity, and especially to the great firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts, of which he was now office boy, straightened up and said he did not want to kiss "Sally, and insisted on five cents as being the amount to be paid for his professional services. Micky proposed several other plans, but had at last to give in, as his partner Fred concluded it best to have regular papers drawn up, and it was agreed to pay the charge out of the profits of the concern for the first month at the end of the month, and if there were no profits, then there was to be no immediate collection of the bill. Ed consented to that, but after considerable talking Micky had him agree that the five cents to be paid at the end of the month was to include any addi- tional legal services wanted during the month ; and then the whole of that afternoon and evening was consumed in writing, rewriting, changing, and altering the duties and responsibilities of each partner; but at last, after much fussing and almost fighting on the part of Micky and Fred and the frequent threatenings of ]\Irs. Flynn to come downstairs and turn the boys out if they did not make less noise and stop quarrelling, Ed finally had the papers written out on manila wrap- ping paper in satisfactory shape. The boys both signed them, Sally coming down and witnessing it. It was agreed by all parties, at Ed's suggestion, that there should be two papers signed, of which Sally should be the custodian or holder, and then all went home happy, but not before Micky insisted on Ed's drawing up and signing a paper explaining about the lawyer's fee of five cents for the entire month's advice and services. If it had not been for this partnership agreement, the firm would not have lasted two days, for every time 34 THE KITE TRUST. a quarrel was threatened they would go to Sally and ask for the papers, each taking one, and reading in unison to see who was wrong; and as Fred was some- what in love with Sally, all would end peacefully, especially as Mrs. Flynn, who knew of the written contract, threatened to give Micky " a lickin' " if he did not do right and stand by* his agreement. Sally would read the papers over three or four times a day just to admire Ed's neat handwriting, and at the end of the week told her mother that he must be awful smart in writing law, for there had not come up a single point of difference between the two partners that had not been foreseen by a clause in the agreement to meet it. CHAPTER VI. KITES. There was never a Thursday ushered in with more at stake to the entire commercial world than that lovely March day in the city of Cincinnati when Micky and Fred, at six a.m., met to arrange for the investment of the entire capital of the firm of Flynn & Schmidt. Perhaps every one who reads this has not been instructed in the mysteries and secrets of the kite industry ; but be that as it may, there was not a doubt in the minds of Micky and Fred as to their thorough, complete, and masterly knowledge of every detail in kite manufacturing that had ever been invented, known, or published up to that day, hour, and minute. Micky was up at three o'clock that morning, as he could not sleep. Procuring a piece of brown wrapping paper, he wrote out the following rules, and handed them to Fred upon his arrival. They were read sol- emnly and in silence. " Purest — Yez cut 2 longe stikks like these in figur i wid a hole or knotch cutt outer de ens, same as der knotch on der cloths line poal, & each one uv der stix der same length as der odder, and den yez cutt anudder shorter stix like figur 2 allso wid knotches cutt outer 36 THE KITE TRl-ST. ■ \ '1 V .1 1 1 w /:,-G Fie. J. each ov der ends. Then yez takes er long pece iiv thrcd and tyes deni altergether, Hkes in figur 3. Plez notis yez furest tyes ther thread around der stix at der center tite az yer kan and den keeps on wid der same pece uv long tread rite up ter der end uv eny one uv der stixs and slips it in der knotch and den yez keeps rite around wid der same pece of long tread alaround der udder 5 knotches & kum back ter der fuerst knotch & den yer pulls der tread tite az yer kan & keeps rite on wid der same pece uv long tread down ter der centur aggain and tyes der last end uv der tread tite az yer kan, same as Figur 3, and yer must have der ens uv der stixs all strate an even distance from der centur, an der top and bottum stix even frum der syde stix same as in Figur 3. " Den when yez have der frame maid all rite like in figgur 3 den yez lays it doun on der tisher paper like in figur 4 & den yez cutts out der paper like der shape uv der dottud lynes like this & then yez puts payste on der edgez uv der kyte shaped tisher paper & den yer putts der kyte fraime on tu der tisher pap- per aggain & turn der edgez ovur der edg uv der thread & den yez have a kyte made komplete az in fig'gwr 5 ^vid der stikx outer sight at der back, & den yez take the skraps (which is der shaded parts uv der paper in Figur 4) uv tisher paper that is left or waisted & kuts out wid der scizzors sum FiG.3. KITES. 37 harts & starz & paystes dem on der frnnt ov der kyte same as in figiir 5 only yez must have a differunt ktiller ov tisher paper fur der harts and starz than der kuller uv der kyte so as ter show der differurence uv kuller in der Kontrast uv kullered tisher pa- per; der starz kan be one kuller, der harts anudder & der kyte an- udder kuller. " We sells der kytes same az in figur 5, but we puts der belly band & der tail string if der kus- tumers pays i sent more fur der kyte same az in figur 6. Der belly band iz der two cross threds tu which yez tye der stryng tu, that yez fly der kyte wid, & wich i have marked A & B, and der tail stryng is marked X & wich iz ter tye der tail tu outer der kyte. D is der stryng & E is der tail. Der last two thyngs D & E we does not sells at all." When Fred finished reading the above rules he looked very seri- ous and then sat down on the steps and read them again. Handing them back to Micky, he said in a very grave tone ''that he approv- ed the whole bloomin' layout." They then proceeded to business. After wrangling for three- quarters of an hour as to the exact quantity of everything to 1)e purchased, they went to the stationery store, finally agreeing that three cents should be invested in tissue- paper at the usual rate of one cent per sheet of the Fig. 5. 38 THE KITE TRUST. Standard size of twenty inches wide and thirty inches long. They figured that four kites, each eight by twelve inches, could be cut from a sheet, thus making a total of twelve kites from the three sheets, which at the retail selling price of two cents per kite would produce a total revenue of twenty-four cents. This was a very important mo- ment in the kite industry, as it settled the future standard as to size and price. That sum of twenty-four cents was the figure for which they should strive, and for the present it was agreed that it was to be the height of their ambition to make and sell for spot cash twelve kites at two cents each. One sheet each of red, white, and blue tissue was agreed on as the colors that best suited their tastes. Micky at first wanted a sheet of green, while Fred in- sisted on a sheet of yellow ; but it was finally decided to drop all " foreign colors" and stand by Fourth-of-July decorations. Fred suggested that one cent be invested in flour to make paste, but Micky said that that was " a ded waist uv coin," and suggested they should go down to the bakery where their daily bread was bought and ask for the privilege to scrape the insides of the empty flour 1)arrels. This permission they received, and after about two dollars' worth of time was invested in much (lusting and turning of the barrels upside down and severe shaking, they succeeded in gathering about two pounds, enough, as they thought, for the season. The next item was kite sticks, which they set down as not costing them anything, for they went to the carpenter shop, and from among the scraps obtained KITES. 39 a piece of pine board of very straight grain. The final article was thread, almost proving to be the last straw to their cash account. Five cents was all they had left, and it was the exact price demanded at the dry- goods store for a spool. In vain did Micky try to have the price reduced to three cents, and then he raised up to four cents. Then Fred asked if black thread wasn't cheaper, and if the man would not unwind it and sell them half a spool; but '' no" was the only answer they received to every inquiry ; it was a whole spool or nothing, and five cents was the price. When Micky found there was no use to talk any longer, he was about to hand over the " nickle" when he suddenly conceived of a brilliant idea, and wanted to know of the proprietor if " both uv us boys" couldn't earn the spool of thread by cleaning out the cellar or carrying bundles or something of that kind. The dry-goods man seized upon the opportunity, telling Micky and Fred he would give them the spool of thread if they would clean out the cellar, which they proceeded to do, play- ing " hookey" from school all morning, and only finish- ing in time to get home for dinner. Both Micky and Fred felt elated at having saved the price of the thread, because now if the firm " busted," they could pay Ed the five cents they owed him for professional services if he should present the bill. Both boys went back to school in the afternoon, received with much wailing the teacher's usual thrash- ing for not being there in the morning, and when they reached home at four thirty p.m. they went to whittling kite sticks with a will, but were unable to finish until bedtime. The following day, Friday, they finished notching the kite sticks, arranged the framework, and cut the tissue-paper into the proper shape for the twelve kites. Sally cut out for decorative purposes the " hearts and stars" from the scraps or wasted portions of the tissue 40 THE KITE TRUST. sheets, and also boiled the flour for the paste. By nine o'clock that night the twelve kites were finished and ready for the next morning, at which time the two partners were to go off on different routes to sell the kites, each carrying one half dozen. Saturday was just the day for kites. A stiff breeze was blowing, and the voices of Micky and Fred calling out '' Kites for sale, Kites for sale" w^ere heard above the cries of the fruit venders, rag-man, and scissors grinder. Fred sold out his entire six kites and was home by twelve o'clock, but Micky did not get back until fi\-e in the afternoon, when he nearly got into a fight with his partner because Sally said that Fred was the better salesman of the tw'o; but they stopped the disputing to give utterance to their joy and satisfaction that they had sold out everything in one day, this proving almost beyond their brightest hopes. They counted out their money, amounting to tw^elve cents each, and by the terms of the contract or partner- ship papers Micky was the treasurer, and Fred handed him his twelve cents, when a solemn silence for five minutes ensued, at the end of which time Fred asked for a division of profits. Fred, who afterward became the great accountant of the " Trust," figured and wrote up the statement as follows : Capital of firm at commencement of business 8 cents Less amount paid out for paper 3 " Balance of cash left at commencement of Inisiness after buying goods 5 " Sale of twelve kites at two cents each 24 " Total capital at end of first week's business . . 29 " Less capital invested 8 " Total profits end of first week 21 " (Two-thirds spool of thread and some paste on hand.) KITES. 41 Fred wanted to divide up the profits, or at least have seven cents to spend for himself. Micky attempted to coax him to leave all the money in the firm to increase the business, but Fred referred to the partner- ship agreement, declaring it read nine-sixteenths for Micky and seven-sixteenths for himself, so he wanted sixteen cents divided up in that proportion and leave the five-cent balance of profits in the concern, thus increasing the cash capital from eight cents to thirteen cents. One word led to another, and before they knew it they were fighting. Mrs. Flynn, however, came out, and finding what was the matter, gave Micky a good flogging for not " doing der strait bizness as der con- tract agreed." So Micky handed over seven cents and went into the house mad. At the supper table he explained to his mother that he did not want " ter ' do' his pard out uv der money;" what he wanted was for both of them not to spend the money as fast as they could make it. but to keep it in the business for a big capital. After supper he went over and again ex- plained the question to Fred. He told him the object of his solicitude was to have a large capital to work on. He talked about thousands of dollars ahead for them if they would not spend their money, urged him to economize in every form he could, and agreed to resign as treasurer, giving up that place to Fred, or, what might be better, let Sally hold all the money. What he wanted was to make a hundred kites next week, which would require more cash capital than thirteen cents. What was the use of spending the money for candy and tops and such things ? He said : " Come, Fred, let us get rich and be merchants by and by, and have a store of our own." Fred objected ; but Micky, fearing another " licking" from his mother if he got into another fight, suppressed his temper and talked on and on in a coaxing manner until Fred at last yielded, gave back the money, and went down for Ed 42 Till-: KITE TRUST. to come and change the agreement, so that they could not spend any of th.c money until July 3, also arranging for Sally to be treasurer. Ed altered the papers to suit, and Micky chuckled to himself that the alteration and charge for additional legal services for the month was included in the "' five- cents" contract. The money was turned over to Sally, and all went home and to bed the best of friends. As they parted Ed said in a most solemn, professional manner : " Gentlemen, this hour is the turning-point in your business career; the firm of Flynn & Schmidt has come to stay." CHAPTER VII. A FAIR BEGINNING. If boys were compelled to play Imll, they would growl and call it pretty hard work, and likewise if they were ordered to make kites, there would be grumbling and " kicking" ad infinituni. The foreman of any factory where boys worked would have turned green with envy could he have real- ized the industrious energy of the senior and junior members of the firm of Flynn & Schmidt cutting kite sticks the first three days on the second week of its existence. Every morning at six o'clock until school time, then at the dinner hour, then again from half- past four until six, and lastly from seven until as late as Mrs. Flynn would let them remain, the boys whittled sticks down in the cellar until the pile of splinters would have startled the slumbering liberality of an insurance inspector. Every night Sally and Ed came down and joined in the conversation, and by the second night Sally had learned to notch the sticks, and " did it first class." For the first time in years she was complimented by Micky, which really made her a little suspicious as to whether he meant it or only wanted to encourage 44 THE KITE TRUST. her to work. Ed never lifted a hand to do a thing; it was not professional, he said to himself. Fancy either member of the great firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts calling on their clients and taking part in the common work of a mechanic. No, indeed ! was his secret conclusion. So he simply sat by and talked — talked just as he imagined his illustrious employers would talk, and he confined himself strictly to legal technicalities, and every moment increased the respect of his clients for his wonderful knowledge of the law and Latin, and also doubled and trebled the admiration of Sally at his smartness. He never smiled ; it was a serious world to him and he wanted no levity. By \\'ednesday evening they had one hundred and twenty kite frames finished, and Thursday and Friday were devoted to purchasing supplies and cutting the tissue-paper and pasting it onto the kite frames and decorating them with hearts and stars. Two more spools of thread had been used and thirty sheets of tissue-paper, for which, by l)uying by the quire or more, they had to pay only at the rate of half a cent a sheet ; and by buying two spools of thread at one time, they had succeeded in getting a reduction of ten per cent., or nine cents for the two spools. Saturday morning at seven o'clock saw IMicky and Fred starting from Bucktown with twenty-four kites each, both agreeing to come back as soon as sold out, and thus a rivalry sprang up as to who would return first. But Micky w'ent away out of humor. Sally had been talking to him all the week about his dirty feet and untidy appearance, wanting him to wear shoes ; but Micky Avould do nothing of the kind, and Sally, after breakfast that morning, had " riled" him by once more nagging him on the subject. He went away, therefore, in no good frame of mind. It was a bright and windy ]March day, boys and little children being eager for kites, and by half-past A FAIR BEGINNING. 45 nine Fred had sold out and was back again for more. Micky did not return until noon, and met Fred coming back from his second trip, having sold a total of sixty kites to Micky's twenty-four. This touched Micky's store of jealousy, and a quarrel ensued as to who was the better salesman. Blows and blood followed, and things would have gone all to pieces if Mrs. Flynn had not sallied forth from the house into the street with a broom and pounded the prostrate bodies of both boys until they were glad to stop. Micky got the worst of the fight. He was ashamed of his action, and began to realize how foolish it was for " pards ter care who sold der most." So after dinner he hunted up Fred and told him he was sorry, and that Fred was the better salesman of the two, and he did not care who sold the most kites " az long az they waz pards ;" and from that moment there was never a jealous feeling between them. Fred recognized that Micky was a hustler for organization and schem- ing, and was the real boss or " head of the whole racket;" Micky appreciated his partner, and let Fred know that he considered him the best salesman and bookkeeper he ever heard tell of, and from that day on their seeming flattery of one another's ability was earnestly from the heart, and a girdle had been formed that sincerely united them for their giant commercial enterprises of future years. At two o'clock they started out for a second trip. Micky picked out twenty-four kites and gave the balance, or three dozen, to Fred, and off they went in different directions. Fred returned at half-past five without a single kite left, having sold during the day seventy-two, or six dozen, at two cents each, and had $1.44 for his day's sales. Micky did not return until half-past seven. Mrs. Flynn was alarmed, as Fred had had his supper and had come up to hear of Micky's experience. He had 46 THE KITE TRUST. waited nearly an honr. Sally was afraid something had happened, and her eyes were almost full of tears at the memory of how she had nagged Micky and started the day wrong for him. Ed came up, and after learning the cause of their anxiety told them in a most patronizing manner with his little weak yet pleasing voice not to be alarmed, as the city was in a good state of security, the law being upheld on every hand, fewer cases coming before the police courts than for many years past. He begged them to quiet their fears and all would be well. In the meantime, Micky had had one of the experi- ences of his life, one that was to affect his whole future; and he always remembered it as a prominent mile-stone in his career. He had started off in the most prosperous portion of the city, and went from house to house, ringing the door-bells and asking if there were any little boys living there who wanted to buy a kite. Out of about twenty houses he succeeded in selling four kites at the regular price of two cents each. The next house that he applied at was a large, beautiful stone-front man- sion, having a hallway in the centre, and with great rooms on either side with plate-glass windows and magnificent lace curtains. It was in the centre of a grand yard, with a handsome stable in the rear. Micky felt sure he could sell a kite here, so with much assurance and in a happy frame of mind he rang the bell. A maid with a kindly face opened the door, and he was about to ask his usual question about kites when lo and behold ! his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He could not speak, but stood transfixed, for there, behind the maid, looking at him, was a vision such as he had never before beheld. Micky's eyes almost popped out of his head. Could he be dreaming? was his first thought. But no, he was not, it \xd^ all real. There in front of him was the most beautiful little A FAIR BEGINNING. 47 girl of his own age he had ever seen ; she was dressed in a perfect maze of pure white lace, covered with spangles and diamonds, all ready to go to an afternoon party, and had come to the door, thinking it was the carriage. Micky tried to speak, but could not. She was his ideal of what he dreamed must be a little angel or a fairy queen. It was half a minute before he knew what he was there for, and at last he gained control of his voice. Presenting a kite with one hand, he was about to ask the usual question when suddenly the little angel face tvu^ned to one of anger. He saw the pretty little nose turned upward, and heard her say quickly, sharply, and scornfully : " Git out, you dirty little Irish kid." If a hundred-ton cannon had been unexpectedly fired off back of him, or if a bullet had struck him, or if anything else dreadfully startling had happened, it would not have surprised or Avounded Micky more. When he fully understood what had occurred, he in- stantly comprehended what she had said, and hastily glancing at his feet and clothes, he realized for the first time in his life that he was dirty. It was an awful contrast. Never before had he thought so many things in the short space of one and one-quarter seconds. He found himself growing warm all over, the deep blush coming to his cheeks, and he knew he was red in the face from his chin to the roots of his hair. He was mortified, embarrassed, and wanted to run, but could not move. At last when he was almost in command of himself and was about to hang down his head and go away, he once more gazed at the vision and saw the girl " make a face," and heard her laugh. It was like an electric shock. His humility turned to anger and his strength all came back; he felt as if he wanted to run in and " smash" her turned-up nose and " sass" her liack. This he was about to do when once more he thought of his own uncleanly appearance; involun- 48 TTIE KITE TRUST. tarily he turned around suddenly and fled from the presence of the vision as if he were followed by a hundred ghosts. He ran like a deer until he reached the corner and then stopped. He stood in a fearful state of anger for a minute, clinching his fists. With almost white cheeks for five minutes he gazed back at the house with a steady^ winkless eyelid, and then, sinking down on the curbstone, he became faint and dizzy. In another minute he was roused from his stupor by the clashing of horses' hoofs. Looking up, he saw the beautiful face of the girl who had just insulted him driving past in a magnificent carriage, the little girl's eyes met his, and he saw her once more turn up her dainty nose and laugh. That again aroused his anger, and he sat there for half an hour nursing his wTath. At last he asked a passing boy the name of the person who lived in the fine house, and was told who it was. He was a great rich merchant. JMicky swore in his inmost heart, deliberately vowing that he, too, would be a great and rich merchant, living with his mother in a fine house. He also would have a carriage. His sister should wear beautiful white clothes, and some day he would meet that girl and make her sorry for calling him " a dirty Irish kid." He would do this and do that, but in the meantime another half hour had passed by, no sales of kites l)eing made. He had been sitting on the curb in front of a grocery, and as he was about to go the groceryman, who was standing in his door, asked him what he was doing with so many kites. Micky replied he was selling them. The man looked at them, noticing that they were large, nice ones, and wanted to know the price. Micky said two cents each. The man offered him a cent apiece for a dozen. Micky said no, two cents each. The man told him he ought to sell them cheaper at wholesale than at retail. Micky then had a long A FAIR BEGINNING. 49 conversation on the subject of what " wholesale" meant, and in the end saw it was sensible to sell cheaper in large quantities, and at last struck a bargain with the grocer for eighteen cents a dozen, which was twenty- five per cent, discount on his regular retail price, and was a good enough profit, he thought, for the retailer. He also sold the groceryman another dozen at the same price, to be delivered the next Saturday, and went away. He was about to ring another door-bell to sell a single kite when the thought struck him of commenc- ing to be a great merchant right off, and visions of revenge on that rude girl stirred him all up again. Coming off the stoop of the private house without ringing the bell, he started for another grocery, and talked that man into buying four kites at the rate of eighteen cents per dozen, and an agreement for an- other dozen the next Saturday; so he asked for a piece of wrapping-paper and wrote down on it both the grocers' addresses and entered up the two orders. He then went to the next grocery and sold two more of -his kites for cash at wholesale, and took an order for a dozen to be delivered one week hence. That made all his kites sold for cash, excepting two, and he also had orders for three dozen more for future delivery; so he started home. On the way he passed many more groceries, all being pleased with the sample kites. Before he reached home he had wholesale orders for thirty-one dozen (or three hundred and seventy-two) kites at eighteen cents per dozen, to be delivered the following Saturday. He sold the last two, or sample, kites that he carried in his hand at two cents each, retail price, to a man going home from Market ; and tired out and hungry, Micky arrived home at half-past seven and told his anxious friends of his new experience as a wholesale merchant. All were amazed and delighted, Fred insisting that Micky was the better salesman, and Micky claiming that 50 THE KITE TRUST. Fred was tlie better salesman; but Micky kept the story of the beautiful little girl all to himself. That night his anger softened ; he became ashamed of his dirty appearance, and wet his pillow with tears. He made a new resolve to be neat and surprise Sally and his mother, and all that night long he dreamed of a sweet little angel face that kept constantly changing into visions of a hundred varieties of horrid, ugly turned-up noses. CHAPTER VIII. BUSINESS BOOMS. The Sunday morning- sun had not yet risen when Micky awoke from his disturbing dreams. He heard the clock strike three and four and five, and then springing from his bed, proceeded to carry out his detennination to be a changed boy. He built a fire in the kitchen, heated some water, and in one of his mother's tubs took the first voluntary bath of his life. Every other one he had ever submitted to bore recollections of a mother holding him by the ears and hair, and dousing soapsuds into his smarting eyes and protesting mouth. But now he carefully rubbed and scoured, and scoured and rubbed, and enjoyed see- ing his body clean. He actually, thinking it was dirt, rubbed at and discovered two orthreelittle moles on his chest and arms that he had never noticed before. Then he cleaned up things around the room, put on his Sunday clothes, and shined his shoes over and over again, until he could almost see his face in them. His most difficult task was combing his hair into anything like peaceful submission. He brushed and brushed the sides, and wetted the front, and combed and combed the back until it at last seemed to be some- 52 THE KITE TRUST. what conquered. Then he looked at himself in the glass, saying to himself in half mortified and sup- pressed anger, "I'm a dirty little Irish kid, am I?" He brushed his hat and walked out with the dawning sunlight, sitting down on the wooden stoop to wait for " his pard" to come, which was very soon. Fred hardly knew Micky, and was about to ask the '' new feller" sitting there whether Micky was in. Micky explained to Fred that as they were now going to be merchants and do a wholesale business they must look decent and " paralyze der publick." Fred said he would go home and fix up too, but first he wanted to hand in his second weekly statement of " the biz," that he had made up last night before he went to bed. Report of Flyuii & ScJunidt for the ivcck citing March 12. Amount of capital invested 08 Net cash profits for first week 21 Total cash on hand end of first week 29 Deduct piircJiascs: 30 sheets tissue-paper at one-half cent per sheet .15 2 spools thread 10 Less 10 per cent 01 .09 .24 Cash on hand after purchases .05 Sold 102 kites at 2 cents $2.04 Sold 18 kites at 24 cents per dozen. . .36 Less 25 per cent 09 .27 $2.31 Total cash on hand $2.36 Less capital invested .08 Total net profits $2.28 BUSINESS BOOMS. 53 On hand : One-half spool thread, some paste, 2 pieces pine board for sticks, some scraps of tissue-paper. Micky read the statement and said : '" Fred, it's a beaut, but next week we'll break der rekord." Sally almost fell over backward when she first saw Micky; but recovering herself, said nothing. She went up and gave him a kiss, and said: " Why, Micky, you're the best-looking boy on the hill." In a few minutes more Mrs. Flynn came home from early mass, and when she saw Micky she stopped dead still for ten seconds, almost froze with surprise; but she walked right past him without saying a word, went into the house, and, going up to Sally in great alarm, whis- pered in her ear: " Saints praserve us! What in ever the whole worruld do be der matter wid Micky?" Monday morning at six o'clock found the senior and junior members of the firm whittling kite sticks in good earnest. Fred figured that the 31 dozen kites sold for next Saturday's delivery would require 11 16 sticks — 744 long ones and 372 small ones, and they calculated they would have to '' hustle." After supper Ed came in as usual, but Sally had to stay upstairs and study, as her examinations were coming on. Fred got mad because they could not make sticks fast enough, while Micky caught the same im- ])atient fever, and both the boys mixed an unusual quantity of profanity in their conversation. Ed listened for a long time, and at last said : '* Boys, why do you always swear? Can you not get along without profanity?" Fred replied that it soothed their feelings to say cuss words. " But," said Ed, '* I have been considering this subject of swearing, and have come to the conclusion that it is nothing but an admis- sion of downright ignorance on their part for persons 54 THE KITE TRUST. to swear." *' A\ liy, what docs ycr mean," said Micky, looking np from his work; "don't edercated people ever swear?" Ed replied " that some men who have been educated swear, but no gentleman of real educa- tion would swear." " You see, boys," continued Ed, " educated people like to use choice and grammatical words, and when a person swears it is a ' deadly' ad- mission on his part that he cannot find any other words to express himself, and is therefore lacking in educa- tion. Now, as you boys are going to enter the whole- sale business, you will have to come in contact wath some people who are educated and some who are not; and if you get in the habit of sw-earing, you wall swear on all occasions, and may offend some one, and thus lose customers and business ; but if you are not in the habit of swearing, then you won't swear, and you w'\\\ never have to blame yourselves and feel afraid you lost business on account of swearing." The result of the argument was that the partners agreed not to swear, as possibly they might lose some business that way. Both thought Ed's advice was good, and Micky said he was glad they had the contract with Ed by the month for advice, and would not have an extra charge in the bill for " talk on der swearen rackit." When the evening work was finished they counted the kite sticks made during the first day, and were dis- mayed to find that with but three days to put aside for stick making they had only one-fifth of the necessary quantity completed. Micky and Fred both looked dejected, for, to put it according to Micky, " Dey couldn't fill der kontraks." All three sat in silence for five minutes looking like they had lost their last friend, when Ed broke the silence by solemnly saying: "Yes. gentlemen, that is the one serious obstacle to your success." " What is der obsterkle?" asked Micky. " Sticks," said Ed, and another silence ensued ; and BUSINESS BOOMS. 55 then they solemnly bade one another good-night and parted. The next morning Ed arrived at the cellar earlier than ever before and found the boys working for dear life. He had a deep-set " professional" smile on his face, and after saying " Good-morning" he announced that he had solved the problem. " What problem?" asked Fred. " Sticks," said Ed. "Well, what's der solution?" said Micky. Then Ed, with an air of importance, said that he had given the matter much thoughtful consideration since last night, and it had come to his mind that one of the clients of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts was en- gaged in the manufacture of matches up on Wade Street, there being a machine in their factory that made little slim sticks twenty-five inches long, just about the thickness of kite sticks, and that the sticks had necessarily to be the full length of twenty-five inches when they were put in another machine that cut them and made them into small matches. He had noticed when he went up there to deliver a legal paper for his firm that a number of the long sticks would break and were thrown to one side, and he was under the impression that through the influence of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts the match company might give Flynn & Schmidt some of the waste or broken sticks. " Do you think they would give them to us for noth- ing?" said Micky. " Yes, I think my mentioning the name of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts to the foreman would have great weight toward that end." " Let's go right ofif," said Micky and Fred in one voice, dropping their work at the same second. All three started on a half run, being down on Wade Street at the factory by half-past six, before the door was opened. When the firm of Flynn & Schmidt saw a lovely pile 56 THE KITE TRUST. of waste l)rokcn kite sticks about ten feet high they nearly fainted. When the foreman recognized the representative of Lincohi, Seward & Evarts, and heard his request in behalf of his clients, he told the boys they could have all of the scrap pile tlrey could carry away. Ed then left them, and with a grand air of importance bid them good-morning, and said he guessed he would go down to the office. Micky and Fred could hardly believe their eyes and ears, and when they found the foreman was really in dead earnest they fell down in the tenth of a second on their knees in front of the waste pile and straight- ened out into bundles enough sticks to make about twenty-five thousand kites, and nearly broke their backs carrying them home. The thirty-one dozen kites were finished by Friday night and delivered on Saturday by the firm, who now had on clean clothes and shining boots, and the cash was received for the entire output and orders taken for fifty-three dozen kites for next Saturday's delivery. Fred made out the statement as follows : Sfafciiiciif for Week Ending March ip. Amount of capital invested $0.08 Net cash profits at end of second week 2.28 Total cash on hand commencement of week. . . $2.36 Deduct purchases: 4 quires tissue-paper at 12 cents per quire .48 6 spools thread at 5 cents 30 Less 20 per cent 06 .24 I box shoe blacking - .05 4 candles for cellar at 2 cents 1 .08 .85 Cash on hand after ])urchases $i-5^ BUSINESS BOOMS. 57 Sold 31 dozen kites at 24 cents per dozen $7-44 Less 25 per cent 1.86 5.58 Total cash on hand end of third week $7-09 Less capital invested 08 Total cash profit of business to date $7.01 On hand : 3 sheets tissue-paper, I cupful flour, 13,465 kite sticks, ■J candle, I box blacking, I lot of scrap tissue-paper. " Isn't that a daisy?" said Micky, looking with ad- miration at the statement. '' Fred, you're a great man to know how to write up a biz in good shape like that," and then they turned all the money over to Sally and sat down and talked business for the coming week, and when they parted the last word Fred said was : " Bully for the sticks;" and Micky said: " Yer bet cher life on it." CHAPTER IX. LABOR. The flour for paste had now given out, and early Monday morning the " firm" started down to the bakery for the especial purpose of despoiling the dusty insides of more empty barrels. The work was in progress when one of the workmen said, " Vat for you cleans oud dot embdy parrels, don't it?" Fred told him they wanted the flour to make paste for kites. " Den why ain't it you don't goes mit dem Lock Sthreed down, und ghedts blenty of dem flours for noddings at dem piggest fire of dot week last gone, ain't it?" So off the boys started for Lock Street to the scene of the great flour-mill fire of the previous week, and there scattered around were hundreds of barrels of flour damaged and splintered, any quantity of the precious article being scattered in piles on the ground. Micky informed the watchman what they wanted flour for, and was told that they could help themselves, so they carried off almost fifty pounds in two broken soap boxes, and were in high glee over their find. Their next good fortune came through their legal counsellor. Ed called that nisrht and told the firm that LABOR. 59 one of the clients of his law firm was engaged in the wholesale paper business. While he was down at their store or warehouse that afternoon attending to " legal business" (delivering legal notices), he saw a pile of quires of various colors of tissue-paper that were marked " samples," and he thought through the in- fluence of Lincoln, Seward .& Evarts that Flynn & Schmidt might buy the paper at a large reduction or at least at wholesale prices. So at eight o'clock the next morning Ed and his clients appeared at the paper ware- house. Ed stated their mission, and that he personally w^as connected with the firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts, and that those gentlemen with him were his clients. The salesman suppressed a smile, and called for one of the firm, who questioned and tried to cross-question Micky and Fred regarding their business. Micky said he was the head of the firm and would do all the talk- ing, Fred keeping quiet. Micky was smart in his replies, and would not divulge the sacred secrets of profits or particulars about kite making. Half a dozen of the clerks gathered about to listen to the conversa- tion of the little fellow, and the proprietor was so much pleased with the self-important air of Mr. Flynn that to encourage him and his associate he sold the whole pile of sample tissue for $i, which was a little more than the price of waste paper, as it was somewhat damaged. Fred said he would go up home and get the money. The proprietor, however, told him that if their counsel (Ed) would vouch for their responsibil- ity, he would trust them for the paper, and they could carry it away at once, and pay for it any time in thirty days. Fred said he did not want to pay for it in thirty days, but would pay spot cash if there was any advan- tage to be gained, and was told if he wanted to pay for it to-day, he would get a discount of 2 per cent. Ed vouched for the responsibility of the firm of Flynn & Go THE KITE TRT'ST. Schmidt, and the l)oys had hard work to carry the whole of the tissue-paper away at one time. That afternoon the firm came down and paid the bill of $i, less 2 per cent., receiving a receipted bill for 98 cents net, made out in the name of Flynn & Schmidt. Their firm name was entered in the great ledger of the paper warehouse, which made the boys feel important, as they now realized that their partnership name was recog- nized and down in writing somewhere in the Ixisiness world. That night they sorted the good from the damaged and counted the paper, finding there were seven reams, with only about one-third of it spoiled. There was enough that was good to make ten thousand three hun- dred and eighty-six kites, and when Micky corrobo- rated Fred's figures, they stared at each other for ten minutes, the deep silence being only broken when Micky said, " W^ell, I'll be blowed." That night Micky could not sleep. He was very much worried on the subject of thread. Flour for paste did not cost them anything. Sticks were free. Tissue-paper was almost without price, but now star- ing him in the face was the prospect of his having to pay for thread the next day, for they were nearly out. Why should he pay for thread? \\'here could he get it for nothing? And as he tossed and tossed about he concluded the best thing to do was to call on Ed early in the morning and see if Lincoln, Seward & Evarts did not have a client in the thread business. This was answered in the affirmative, and Micky and Fred started with Ed down to a wholesale dry-goods firm, who sold them two hundred spools of thread for fifty cents for the lot. The thread had been damaged by fire and water, and had been on hand for nearly ten years. While it was not rotten, it was not strong, but was good enough for kite frames. The experience of the last few days in looking for LABOR. 6 1 bargains was a great event in Micky's life. It turned his head into the channel of first trying to get what he wanted, if possible, without costing him anything, and then, if that was impossible, to figure how he could get it for as near to nothing as possible. When he after- ward became worth millions and millions, the habit seemed to have grown rather than to have diminished, as further events in the history of Flynn & Schmidt will prove. That evening Micky and Fred received their first lesson in political economy, which helped them in after life to know so much about things. Ed and Sally were down in the cellar, and joined as usual in the conversa- tion while the kite making was going on. The subject of the price of tissue-paper and thread came up, and Micky said he did not know how people found out what they should charge for things anyway, and Fred said he didn't either, for how does the man know what to charge for a ream of paper or a stove or a table? How do they get the price ? All eyes, including Sally's, turned to Ed, who sat silent for some few minutes and then said : " The subject is a vast one, and I have been reading about it in the big books in the library of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts. It is very easy to ask such a cjuestion, but it is much harder to answer it in a com- prehensible manner. It comes under the heading or subject called " Values." " What is the value of any- thing that is for sale? is the question," and the nearest answer is, that the value of anything is the amount it costs in dollars for the number of days' labor it took men to make the thing. " But," said Fred, " the man didn't make the wood for the table, it growed itself, so how did he know what a piece of wood was worth to put in his table?" Ed was silent for some time and then replied : " Fred says the man, in the first place, did not make the piece of wood, and that is very true ; but what is truer is that 62 THE KITE TRUST. no man since the world commenced e\cr created any- thing at all. Nature gave everything to start with, and ever since then nature has been making and grow- ing things without price, and all a man can do is to take these things and manufacture them or change them into something else. Nature never charges a cent for anything; everything that is for sale or that you can see around you never cost any man a cent so far as making the stuff itself is concerned. '' The tree that Fred's wood for a table came out of was produced in the forest, and any man could go and cut it down if he wanted to. Some men own parts of the forest, but there are plenty of forests that no one seems to own, and where you can go to-morrow and cut down a tree if you want to. The tree grew all by itself, no man doing anything to make it grow. It did not cost any man a single cent, but as soon as any man wants to cut it down and it takes him a whole day to do it, then the tree is worth $1.50, which is the amount of a day's labor in the lonely places where the forest is. Then two more men cut oft the branches and haul the tree to the river, and it takes them a week to do it. W^ages for two men for a week at $1.50 per day is $18 for the two, so the tree or log has cost $1.50 + $18, or a total of $19.50 by the time it gets to the river, at which place a man comes to buy it. " Now suppose the men who cut down the tree and hauled it should ask $50 for it, the would-be purchaser would get angry at them and not pay so much, because other men want money for their wives and children, and would be glad to go and cut down another tree and l)ring it to the river for $19.50. So by having competition, or other men wanting to do the same kind of business, people do not get cheated and are not charged too much. " Next, the sawmill charges $5.50 for lal)or or time in sawing up the log, the boards being then worth that LABOR. 63 much more, or a total of $25 ; and as there are twenty- li^'e boards made from the log, they are each worth one twenty-fifth of the total cost of the log, or $1 per board. A carpenter comes later to the sawmill and buys three of the boards for $1 apiece, being a total of $3, and goes home and spends one week in making the table that Fred asks about. The carpenter in the town or city gets $2.50 a day, which is $15 for that week he worked in making the table, and he pays out $2 addi- tional for some varnish, glue, nails, and iron rollers ; so the carpenter has paid out $3 for boards and $2 for other things, making a total of $5, and then he adds that to his $15 for his week's labor and wants ($5 + $15) $20 for the table. So that is the way the price of anything is fixed. It is the total labor put into it. If the carpenter should ask $100 for the table, the cus- tomer would laugh at him and go to another carpenter, who would be glad to get $20 for making a table, and he would have and be satisfied with $15 for his labor to take home to his wife and children." " But," said Fred, " how about the $2 he paid for glue and nails and paint and iron rollers?" "Well," said Ed, " the paint is made from lead that men dug out of the ground. All the mining man had to do was to go and work at $1.50 per day, and get it out of the ground free of charge for the stuff itself. All it costs is the wages he wanted, and it was the same way with the iron rollers on the bottom of the table, and every- thing else about the table. Then when the customer buys it for $20 he has to pay an expressman fifty cents for his labor and time in carting it home, and so the table cost the customer fifty cents more, or $20.50; and every cent of it was for some workingman's labor, and not a cent of it was for any of the original material on which the men spent their time working. All man does is to change God's gifts from one thing into another, the doing of which is called transmuting or 64 THE KITE TRUST. niaiuifactiiring. Your flour was made from wheat that grew out of the ground. The thread was made from cotton that grew out of the ground. The paper was made from rags that were once good cloth, and the cloth was made from cotton that grew out of the ground. The farmer worked or labored to raise them from the ground, and sold them, and so received his pay for his hard labor in directing and cultivating and caring for the things that nature permitted to grow out of the ground. So everything comes out of the air or water or ground, and God originally made or created them, and all man has to do is to get them together and change them into things we want." " Then," said Fred, " if our kites represent our labor, we are getting very good wages." Ed said that was just the point on which he was having considerable anxiety for the firm of Flynn & Schmidt, for at any moment they were liable to have competition, and then the other boys who might go into the business might make kites and sell them for a less price, and thus cut down their profits. Micky said he " would bust any feller's head that would try and hurt their business," and Fred said he would too. Sally was much alarmed at such a possi- bility of competition, and asked Ed if Lincoln, Seward & Evarts could not stop other boys^from making kites, so that Fred and Micky could have it all to themselves, or, as Ed called it, a monopoly. Ed said he did not see at present how such a thing could be done. Then all bid one another good-night. CHAPTER X. PROSPERING. The next evening, when all were assembled in the cellar, Micky said to Ed that he had been thinking about the statement that the value of a thing repre- sented only the amount of labor put into it. " Now suppose," said Micky, " that I should go out into the wild woods and find under a stone in a creek a beautiful diamond that I could sell for $1000, would I have put a thousand dollars' worth of labor into it? All I did was to stoop down and pick it up." " No," said Ed ; " that is one of the chance things you would run across in life, just like yesterday, when you discovered and got for nothing two dollars' w^orth of flour. You will not always have such luck. You might spend a month or a hundred dollars' worth of time in hunting around for another $2 pile of flour lying around loose in some street. Such things do not occur often ; and so in the same way 3^ou might hunt for a hundred years before you would ever find another diamond, which would be only an average of $10 per year for your hundred years of time, and you certainly would not work for $10 a year. If any one person could go out and find a diamond as easy as the 66 THE KITE TRUST. one you speak of, then diamonds would not be worth even a quarter of a dollar apiece, because it would be the easiest way in the world to make money if all you had to do was to go out in the woods in the morning and look under a stone and get a diamond and then come into town and sell it to a man for $1000; why, if you could do that, every man, woman, and child would start out in the country early in the morning and almost break their necks to be the first to look under a stone and get a diamond or a dozen of them if they could, and then hasten back to town to find the man who would give them $1000 apiece for them; and the man would have so many diamonds presented to him by ten o'clock on the very first morning that it would break up twenty Vanderbilts to pay for them all, and when he got them what could he do with them? No person would give the diamond dealer over twenty- five cents apiece for them, because they could buy them at that price from plenty of boys who would be glad to pick up diamonds all day long for less than a quarter apiece, if they were so easy to get. If you should find that diamond you speak of, then a thousand men would get excited and start out the next day to look for more diamonds, and when they came home in the evening without a single one between them, each man would have lost a day, a thousand days between them all, and thus a thousand days' time would have been wasted; so your diamond would have cost the average labor or time of a thousand men for one day, or a total of a thousand days' time, which would make for the $1000 just $1 a day for a thousand men. They had better stayed at home and worked at their trades and earned something, if only the price of a loaf of bread. " If hams and biscuits grew on trees all the year round, and hot coffee ran out of the ground like spring water, then most of the people in the world would only work long enough to get money to buy a ham and bis- PROSPERING. 67 cuit tree and a sweet coffee spring, and their children would afterward own it and never have to work at all, but just lie on their backs and let sandwiches drop down into their mouths, and then they would chew away until they went to sleep." This idea of a ham sandwich grove set the hearers into a laugh.. They wound up the evening with a still more exalted opinion of Ed's knowledge, and Sally was up later than any of them, studying harder than ever to try to be even half as smart as Ed. By Friday night the whole fifty-three dozen kites were finished, and on Saturday were delivered and money received, excepting for one dozen. Fred deliv- ered that dozen to a groceryman in the morning, who said he was busy, and would Fred come back in the afternoon for the money. Fred trusted the man with the kites, and when he returned in the afternoon for the money the man refused to pay for them or give them back. When Micky heard of it he wanted to go right down and smash in the man's windows with cobble-stones, but Ed warned him against such a pro- ceeding, as he would be apt to get arrested; the best thing for them to do was to let the law take its course, and he would bring suit against the groceryman. Ed took down voluminous notes on a large piece of manila wrapping-paper for the purpose of properly preparing the case. That evening Fred made up the statement for the end of the fourth week, and after consulting Micky they paid Ed his five cents for legal services for the first month, as per agreement, and Ed wrote out the following receipt : 68 THE KITE TRUST. Cincinnati, O., ]\Iarch 28. Messrs. Flynn & Schmidt, To Edward Webster, with Lincoln, Seward & Evarts, Dr. To professional services as follows : March 3 Drawing up Partnership Papers 3 Altering " 8 Advice 10 Advice 15 Ser\ices in the matter of sticks [ Five 16 Services in the matterof tissue- V cents paper 17 Services in the matter of thread ^ (5 cts) 18 Advice 19 Advice 20 Advice 22 Advice Received payment, Edward Webster, With Lincoln, Seward & Evarts. Ed received the five cents, and in the most courteous manner thanked his clients for the fee and wished them the greatest of future prosperitv, being about to bid them good-evening, when Micky detained him and wanted to know if he would give them legal advice for another month for the same price. Ed replied promptly that he could not, as the kite business had been success- ful, with a prospect of a still greater draft upon him for professional advice, and that the least he could consistently undertake the responsibility for during the coming month was the sum of $1. " What !" cried Micky, jumping up in excitement, and upsetting the work-table and paste-pot. " What ! $1 !" and he glared at Ed as if he would eat him up. Ed stood placid and undisturbed and eyed Micky for half a minute and calmly said: " Yes, $1." Micky was about to get mad when Fred interrupted PROSPERING. 69 and insisted on his coming upstairs, as he wanted to talk to him alone. Micky did not want to go upstairs, but at last yielded to Fred's request, and after five minutes' absence returned and offered Ed fifty cents ; and if he could not take that, they would do without a lawyer. Ed hardly moved a muscle, and calmly said : " $1 is the charge, and I do not wish to argue the matter. You are at liberty to employ our firm or not, just as you please;" and, bidding them good-night, left the cellar for home. Sally had overheard the conversation, and asked Ed to stop, but he said: "No; his firm was not seeking business ; business sought it." After Ed had gone Sally and the boys talked the matter over, and con- cluded it was best to send for Ed; but he would not come, so the firm went down to see him and talked the matter over on his front stoop, coming to his terms of $1 for the ensuing month. They went up to Micky's cellar, and made out and signed the contract ; but Micky insisted on including in the fee the charges for services in the coming suit against Lowenstein, the grocer who owed them for the dozen kites. Ed consented, but had it understood that the charges were only for advice or Services to be performed during that month, and not beyond that time. After it was all over Ed said : " Gentlemen, you have done a very wise thing, for I am sure if you had gone on without a legal adviser, you would have got your- selves into trouble before the end of the month. The firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts do not need you as much as you need them. They are prosperous and not de- pendent on anyone person or firm for their daily bread ; they are honorable, and give good advice and prefer to charge their clients for keeping them out of trouble rather than getting them out of trouble, and I would advise you always to remember that that plan of action will ever be the wisest one for you to pursue. Look ahead and keep out of trouble, so you will not be running yO THE KITE TRUST. around for lawyers to get you out of trouble. The best clients that lawyers have are those who draw up their own papers or make their own wills, and who try to attend to their own legal affairs. Some lawyers are in need of business, and will take any case they can get hold of and complicate it, and let it run along as slowly as they can and get their client into all kinds of ex- penses and mystifications and then take the poor distracted man's home in part payment for services ; but Lincoln, Seward & Evarts will do fairly by you, and my advice is for you to pay them well while you are prosperous, and if trouble comes, they will then stand by and help you for moderate fees to suit your circumstances. Please remember that any fool can get into a lawsuit with his fellow-man, but the real diplo- macy of life is in masterfully skirmishing on the edges of disputes and avoiding the conflict. Right will ultimately prevail." After Ed had gone Micky said to Fred that Ed would make a great lawver some day, as he knew how to give advice in carload lots. Statement for Week Ending March 26. Amount of capital invested $0.08 Net cash profits at end of third week 7.01 Total cash on hand commencement of fourth week $709 Deduct purchases: 7 reams damaged tissue-paper. . . . $1.00 Less 2 per cent, for cash 02 .98 200 spools damaged thread .50 Legal services to Ed Webster, with Lincoln, Seward & Evarts .05 4 candles for cellar .08 1.61 Cash on hand after purchases. . . . $5- 48 PROSPERING. 71 Sold 52 dozen kites at 18 cents. . . $9.36 Less 25 per cent 2.34 7.02 Total cash on hand end of fourth week $12.50 Less capital invested .08 Total cash profit of business to date $12.42 On hand : 13,306 sticks, 281^ pounds flour, I candle, ^ box blacking, 2081 sheets tissue-paper, I lot of scrap tissue-paper. Sally felt the weight of responsibility In carrying so much money, so she told her teacher on Monday morning about the funds of the firm. Her teacher advised her to put $10 of it in the savings institution, and said she knew the president of the bank and would stop with her at noon and introduce her, having her open an account and deposit the money. Sally was quite impressed with the silence prevailing In the great bank ; all was quiet, excepting the clinking and echoing of the coin as it was being counted. The president said something quietly to a clerk, who took Sally to a counter, and the clerk spoke quietly to an- other clerk, who looked up calmly from his big ledger, and this second clerk quietly beckoned her to follow him, and they walked on a rubber carpet In the most quiet manner possible to a third clerk, who quietly asked her name. Sally said her name was Sarah Matilda Flynn, and he handed her a pen and book In which to sign her nam.e to show her style of hand- writing or signature; it was a gold pen. and glided over the paper without the least noise. Sally was then quietly conducted to a fourth clerk, who quietly took y2 THE KITE TRUST. her money and very quietly counted it and laid it away in a drawer, and then a fifth clerk quietly wrote some- thing in a little book and (juietly handed it to Sally, who stood awed and half frightened at the quietness, being almost afraid to breathe for fear of disturbing the etiquette. She quietly walked out of the bank and wondered what the quietness was for, and gave a loud sigh when she reached the sidewalk and asked her teacher what it was all about. Miss Baker, her teacher, explained everything satisfactorily, and when she reached home she told INIicky about it, who got quite excited and dreadfully alarmed that their money w^as gone, and wasn't a bit satisfied with a little book that was only worth ten cents " fur der security ;" indeed, he was inconsolable until Ed came in in the evening, examined the book, and explained that the money was safe and everything all right, with the exception that Sally should have signed the word trustee after her name; but as it was now done that way there was no necessity of changing it, as he could make it all right by having Sally sign an acknowledg- ment. So he sat down and wrote out a paper, stating that the money was in trust for account of INIessrs. Flynn & Schmidt, and that she would well and faith- fully hold the same subject to their order. Sally signed the paper. CHAPTER XI. A GREAT LAW OFFICE. The law firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts was known far and wide in our own land and also in Europe, Asia, and Polynesia. There were forty-seven persons connected with the office, eighteen of whom, besides the three principals, being practising lawyers, making twenty-one in all who appeared in the courts ; the other twenty-six were clerks. It was a most orderly and systematic law firm and divided into departments or specialties. There were lawyers who attended to nothing else but corporation affairs, others to insurance cases, others to real estate, others to surrogate details and estates, and so on through the general division of practice. It was a proud moment for any of the boys and young men who entered the office when his name was written on the great ledger as a participator in the profits of the con- cern. The clerks' salaries were charged under one heading, called expense account, none of their names ever ap- pearing in the sacred pages of the great ledger; but when at last they were promoted to the dignity of an 74 Till-: KITE TRUST. associate, and liad a clientage from wliich fees were received, then the index to the ledger was embellished with one more name for reference, and the object and aim of a cherished ambition was realized. Ed Webster was the last employe engaged. He had been faithfully at his post for fourteen months and never missed a single day, and had been actually known to keep on steadily writing at his desk while the band went marching by. Lincoln, Seward & Evarts had seldom come into contact with Ed, and upon the few occasions he was summoned to their private rooms he went into their presence with as profound respect and awe as that with which a Hindoo would enter the inner dungeon containing the sealed and sacred em1)lem of the sub- lime essence of the great unknown. Monday was pay-day for the clerks, and before the rolls were completed Ed walked up to the chief clerk and without saying a word handed him the five cents received from Messrs. Flynn & Schmidt, accompany- ing it with a neatly written diiplicate or memorandum of the bill he had receipted for to his clients. The chief clerk, sitting on his high stool, first looked down at Ed for a few seconds as much as to say, " What do you want, sir?" then at the five-cent piece as much as to say, " What is this, sir?" and then at the paper as much as to say, " Who sent it ?" and then he slowly read it, after which he took off his eyeglasses, slowly wiped them with the corner of his handkerchief, and re-read the paper. He stared with a blank expres- sion at the wall in front of him, then he looked at Ed once more, and then at the five-cent piece. His face clouded, and a bewil'dered expression seized him. He put down his pen, and after again reading the memo- randum he scratched his bald head with the tip end of the nail of the little finger of his left hand, and abruptly asked in a withering tone, " What do you A GREAT LAW OFFICE. 75 mean, sir, by this ? Who are Flynn & Schmidt ? What is this five cents for, sir?" Ed explained the situation in as few words as possi- ble, but by the time he was through the chief clerk was almost " wilted," and all Ed could hear was a sort of slow gasping out of the two words, " five cents." The chief clerk had been at that desk for over twenty-two years, and had never seen a new firm's name or a client's of any kind entered on their books without a retaining fee of at least $1000; and to have an individual or firm get legal advice for five cents for a whole month from one in any manner of remote con- nection with Lincoln, Seward & Evarts nearly took away the little blood that still remained in his cheeks. He did not say another word for five minutes, but silently gazed at Ed with an expression as much as to say " God help us!" Then he told Ed to take a seat, and he started off toward the private rooms of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts. Ten minutes passed, which seemed like ten hours to Ed, when suddenly all three of the senior partners came with the chief clerk to the door cff the room, and. standing in the hallway for a minute, gazed in at Ed with as solemn faces as if they were looking for the first time into the open gate of a Parsee's tower of silence. Ed immediately stood up in their presence and returned their gaze without shrinking. It was the first time the senior partners had really ever taken notice of him, and his erect, slim little form, with his white cheeks, deep, flashing black eyes, heavy eye- brows, and tall, narrow forehead, rather impressed the onlookers, and then Mr. Lincoln and his two partners went in and kindly asked Ed all about Flynn & Schmidt and the five cents. Ed gave a detailed and graphic account of his entire connection with that firm, and explained that his charge of five cents was made at a time when their 76 THE KITE TRUST. entire capital was only eight cents, and he thought that that proportion of their assets was as much as a lawyer could conscientiously ask. When Ed had finished Mr. Lincoln told him to fetch the documents that he had drawn for Flynn & Schmidt, as it was a rule of the office that one of the three senior partners or the head of a department should see all papers hefore delivery. Then Lincoln, Seward & Evarts went back to the last gentleman's room, and after closing the door, so that no one could see them, they smiled on one another for the first time in three years. Without saying a word they once more knitted their brows in unison, and silently returned to their respective rooms to their serious and solemn duties. In the afternoon Ed brought the documents and all the papers and gave them to the chief clerk to hand to Mr. Lincoln, who next morning told Ed to bring down his clients at five o'clock that evening, as he wanted to make their acquaintance. Flynn & Schmidt made their appearance at fi\'e o'clock prompt. Their shoes were shining and both looked clean and self-possessed. Lincoln, Seward & Evarts had half an hour's conversation with the kite firm, and requested them to send all of their various weekly statements for inspection, since they were par- ticular as to whom they had for clients, and desired to know something about their business ability and finan- cial standing. Fred was much pleased that his book- keeping statements were going to be read by such great men, and promised to send them next morning, which he did. Ed presented them, and all four papers were read. Mr. Evarts called the chief clerk and told him, in front of Ed, to enter the name of Flynn & Schmidt on the books as clients, and Mr. Seward told him to place the five cents to Flynn & Schmidt's credit and charge up the memorandum for services, entering the name of A GREAT LAW OFFICE. 'J'J Edward Webster on the ledger for participation in profits. The chief clerk nearly collapsed at this last order, but did as he was bidden. Ed was then told by Mr. Lincoln to take charge of the legal affairs of Flynn & Schmidt and report to him as things progressed. Thus was the firm of Flynn & Schmidt received as clients by the great law firm of Lincoln, Seward & Evarts. The clerks treated it as a great joke, but they could never tell from a word, look, or gesture whether the senior partners considered it a joke or not. All the clerks knew was that the three famous lawyers seemed to be more interested in the affairs of Flynn & Schmidt than in those of any other firm or individual on their books. Each of the twenty-one lawyers in the great office had his own private room ; on the outside of the door was the last name of the occupant with simply the abbreviation " Mr." in front of it. It was Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith or ]\Ir. Brown. Ed had a humble little desk in a corner of the great entrance room, and one afternoon when he arrived later than usual from dinner he found that the clerks as a joke had pasted on the side of his desk a neat, white piece of paper, on which was printed in plain letters " Mr. Webster." Ed gave it one glance, and then without changing a muscle of his face moved or altered the position of his desk so the name could be more plainly seen from the entrance door. He then took off his hat, hung it in its proper place, and as if nothing unusual had happened, sat down at his desk, and without looking up busied himself with folding the letters and papers that were under his care. Ed had always been quiet, gentlemanly, accommo- dating, silent, prompt, and obedient, and all the clerks treated him kindly, and among themselves respected his demeanor and unusual precocity ; for although smaller and younger than any one of the clerks, he 78 THE KITE TRUST. knew more of Greek and Latin than many of the oldest of them, and spent most of his spare time in reading books on pohtical economy. In addition, he was going through " Blackstone" for the eighth time, and seemed as much interested in it as the rest of the boys were in baseball, of which he knew nothing and cared less. The clerks were watching Ed as he entered the office that day, wdien he saw for the first time his name in print on his desk, and all enjoyed the matter-of-course way in which he accepted it. From that hour every employe in the place called him " Mr. Webster," which name he responded to with as much promptness and apparent unconcern as he formerly did to the simple summons of " Ed." In the course of a few weeks the whole details of his connection with the firm of Flynn & Schmidt became common gossip in the ofiice, and gradually as the weeks and months and years rolled by the interest in the welfare of Ed's clients increased among the clerks, until the morning papers had not half as much attrac- tion for them as had the latest news from Flynn & Schmidt. Secrecy was the corner-stone of the rules regulating the great law ofiice, and when one's affairs were once committed to its keeping they were as safely guarded from the public as are the precious diamonds in the Tower of London. No matter how great or small the nature of the business was, it was sacredly pigeon- holed in the breasts of the employes, and so while the affairs of Flynn & Schmidt were common gossip among the clerks on the inside, they w^ere an unknown quantity, as far as they were concerned, to all the rest of the .world. Ed made no mention to Micky, Fred, or Sally about the transaction regarding his name being entered in the great ledger, since it would detract from his past greatness in their estimation, for they had not a single A GREAT LAW OFFICE. 79 thought but that he was and had all along been the confidential adviser and managing director of the whole law firm. The only person to whom Ed confided the incident was his mother, who was still patiently singing the song of the shirt, with its stitch, stitch, stitch, to pay the rent of their rooms; but she did it sweetly and hopefully, feeling in her heart that there was to be a great future for her gifted and only child ; and while sewing, when Ed was with her, she never lost a minute in helping him with his home studies in his preparation for college. That was now the ambition of her life, and when she would lay herself down to sleep she dreamed by night, as she dreamed by day, of her noble ancestry and of her abiding confidence that " blood would teU." CHAPTER XII. GENIUS. When Ed arrived at the cellar in the evening he found IMicky, Fred, and Sally discussing lawyers, doctors, and other professional people. The question was why some people must work hard all day and receive so very little money for it and almost starve, while others, like the lawyers, didn't work at all, but just sat down and did nothing but talk all day, and received more for it than the hardest workingman. Sally said it was not only the lawyers and doctors who did not work, but that the storekeepers did nothing either, and she wanted to know why one person in the world was not obliged to work as hard as another. When Ed put in an appearance they laid the matter before him. After thinking for five minutes he said : " Now, you see, it is just this way; you know I told you the other day about how the value of anything was the number of days' labor put into the thing, and how the wood-chopper and sawmill man first gave value to the boards, and about the man who went to the carpenter for a table that had cost him $20, the whole ol the $20 representing labor. Suppose that customer was obliged to go to. another carpenter and GENIUS. 8 1 see his style of tables. If he did not Hke the ones there, he must go to another carpenter, and so on to a dozen carpenters, so that before he knew it he had spent a whole day away from his work looking for a table. Still after all his trouble he might not find the kind he wanted; it was not to be found. At the last place the carpenter told him that no one in Cincinnati made the kind of table he wanted, and that all such tables were manufactured by a man in St. Louis at about $20 apiece. Therefore, if the customer must have what he wanted, he would be obliged to wait and have one made in Cincinnati or write to St. Louis, or spend a day in going there, with no certainty of being suited, which would cost him $25 railroad fare. By the time he would finally get his table from St. Louis it would cost him $50, instead of the $20, which was all that it was worth in days' labor in Cincinnati or St. Louis. " Now a certain man named Smith finds out about the trouble it has caused the customer to get the kind of table he wanted, and he also knows that many other people are having the same kind of bother, so he says to himself : ' I think I will get a room and call it a furniture store, and put in it all the twenty-five differ- ent kinds of tables that are made by various carpenters. Then if any person wants a table of any style or pat- tern, he can come to my store, and in ten minutes' time pick out anything he fancies of all the different makes. I will thus save him the trouble of hunting up all the makers in Cincinnati, and so losing a day from his work or of going on that expensive trip to St. Louis.' " Now, if Mr. Smith were a very rich man, willingly paying rent for a store and staying there year after year while gathering together a hundred different varieties of tables to exhibit and sell them to people, charging the customers $20 apiece, just what they cost him, he would be a very kind-hearted man, and people would call him a philanthropist. Storekeepers, how- 82 THE KITE TRUST. ever, do not do such things. They have children to support, food to buy, and clothes to purchase, and they must make money to pay for such things, just the same as a mechanic has to support his family. '' So I\Ir. Smith, having very little money, goes to each one of the carpenters and says : ' Send me down to my new store one of your tables ; and if you will trust me, I will pay you for it \vhen it is sold.' All the carpenters consider Mr. Smith an honest man, and they do as he requests ; and at last he has a hundred tables of all varieties of patterns, sizes, and styles for sale, wdiich are advertised in the papers. He sells ten tables the first day, and says : ' I have saved all these people a lot of time in going around and hunting up carpenters, so I w^ll for my time and trouble charge them $22 apiece for the tables that have cost me $20 each ;' and thus Mr. Smith makes $2 per table, or $20 profit on the ten tables. Out of this profit he has to pay rent and advertising and other expenses, with a little gain left to support and clothe his children; but for the day he saves $2 or $3 out of it all and puts it in the bank, and when three or four years have passed, if he has been a saving man, he will probably have $1000 put aside, and with that money he can go to all the carpenters and pay for all the tables as he gets them without asking to be trusted. Then he pos- sesses something of his own. " It is the same way w'ith your kite business ; you are not making tables, but you are by your labor making kites. You go to the grocery store and sell them for eighteen cents a dozen, the grocers sell them again for twenty-four cents per dozen. The grocery- men thus make for themselves six cents per dozen, or twenty-five per cent, on the sales, or, as some people would say, thirty-three and one-third per cent, on the cost price. You thus place your kites all over the city in the various groceries, some of them two or three miles GENIUS. 83 away from your factory, and the little boys in those neighborhoods can go down to their corner and get one ; but if the grocery-men did not keep them on hand, then some little boy who wanted a kite would have to ride on the street cars all the way up to your factory to get one, and it would thus cost him five cents fare uptown and five cents back, or a total expense of ten cents carfare to go and buy a two-cent kite. Thus, you see that stores are necessary to have all around, so that people can have things handy. The man that keeps the store is doing a service for other people by putting in his time and capital to do it, although he is not working hard with his hands like the blacksmith; still, he spends his whole lifetime in thinking and find- ing out the best things to have on hand to suit and please his customers; and if he is foolish enough to overcharge, his customers will go to some other store where they will sell cheaper, and he will lose business. Thus competition, honest or dishonest, is the thing that keeps the prices down. " Just as long as boys want kites and you have no competitor in the kite business you can keep on charg- ing a retail price of two cents apiece ; but if any other boy or boys go into the business and make them cheaper or are willing to take less profit, then you will have to come down in your price or go into another business or support yourselves in other ways. " By this plan of men keeping stores and bringing things from all parts of the earth, it saves your mother the trouble of going all the way to far-off China to get a pound of tea, or to Brazil to get a pound of coffee, or you yourselves walking five miles out in the country every morning to get a pint of milk. All men who engage in this kind of business are doing a service for others, and get their pay by adding a little for their labor or services to the price of the original articles. All things cost nothing in their original form; man 84 THE KITE TRUST. labors or ' presses the button,' and nature ' does the rest ;' and man only changes or prepares for the changes, or profits by the changes of every article used that originally costs the world nothing and was given by nature. "It is on the same principle that you ask for the services of doctors and lawyers and ministers. If you get nearly killed or are dying wath some disease, you want some one to help you at once; and I am sure if you were dying, you would not send for a boiler-maker or a kite-maker to hasten to your bedside; but you would want some person to come who knew something about sickness and medicine. " In order to help people wdio are suffering with disease, some boys when they are as young as we are make up their minds to be doctors, so they study all kinds of books that help them to understand the J3ody and its diseases. The boys grow up to be men, and have knowledge regarding these ailments. Conse- (|uently, when you are sick you do not send for the boiler-maker or the kite-maker, but you w'ant the doctor to come right off, and you want him awful quick, too. Doctors are not all rich. They have to live and they need things to eat and wear for themselves and their families. They, therefore, charge you for their labors, which they call services. " In the same way, if you get into difficulty or dis- putes with people, or one man wrongs another, or you want something done correctly and right about prop- erty that you own, at such a time you certainly would not go to a match-stick maker or to a flour dealer or to a l)lacksmith ; but you would want to have a man who has studied all his life about how disputes should be settled, or, better still, a man who can show you how to prevent disputes. Thus, vou go to a lawyer, who has himself and his family to support; but he cannot afford to do things for nothing", and so he has GENIUS. 85 to be paid. All these bills in the end must be added to the cost of all the things that are manufactured, and represent so much for labor or services, the same as the work done by the carpenter or the man who chopped down the trees in the forest. In some way or other, that you must carefully and consecutively think out in its complications, the ' fee' gets onto the ' cost' and is added to the price of the things which nature at first gives free to mankind." To Sally's question, why it was that one person has to work harder than another, Ed said : " That is a very hard question to answer. If every person in the world were poor to-day, and all had to commence life over again, then there would be some people who were smarter than others, because they were born so or helped to make themselves so ; and in twenty years' time some men would be lawyers, some doctors, some merchants, and some laboring men. Whatever a man is best fitted for he would soon drift into, thus finding his level; but some men would be more saving, and before long would be richer than others. Then they would be able to pick and choose their employment or profession; but even if they were rich, and could be doctors or lawyers or merchants at their own sweet will or choosing, still they could not make themselves great. Greatness is born in a person, and just as sure as one and one make two, just so sure will the poorest as well as the richest boys who have genius grow up and pass all others in every department of life, whether the competitors are smart, skilful, or stupid workmen, or whether they are millionaire merchants or far-famed professional men. Every one will sooner or later get to his level of capacity. It is genius that permanently commands, and genius ever courts infinite pains and hard work. " Many persons get started wrong. All around us in the world are blacksmiths who ought to be ministers. 86 THE KITE TRUST. and ministers who ought to l)c l)lacksmiths; yet neither the minister nor the blacksmith shoiikl complain. If he had genius, he would surmount difficulties in some manner and be great to a considerable degree in what- ever he undertakes. A successful minister would be a successful blacksmith, and a poor minister a poor blacksmith, and vice versa. Possibly he might stumble into riches or greatness, but the untiring spirit of genius that never slumbers is the force that lifts one man above another. " The great trouble in the business world is that men do not know that mankind is divided into three classes. First, those who can work for themselves ; second, those who are only adapted to work for others, and third, those who are not good for anything. The first are born to command and direct, the second to follow and obey; and when the first and second find themselves in reverse positions, it is inevitable that sooner or later they will change places, and the first two classes must take care of and support the third class, who are tramps, criminals, unfortunates, or incapables. " Remember," concluded Ed, " what I have said about genius ; and I will here repeat it, that the untir- ing spirit of genius that never slumbers is the force that lifts one man above another to his inborn special- ty; and whether he be a minister or a blacksmith, a merchant or a mechanic, if he has genius within him, he will make history within his environments, instead of simply reading or writing it." When Ed had finished they all sat silently for a few minutes. Then Sally said : " Ed, I think you have genius to be the greatest of lawyers away up at the top of the ladder;" and Micky said: "Fred, I think you have undreamed-of genius to make you the greatest financier and accountant that ever lived." And Fred said : " Micky, I think you have the most remarkable genius ever born in any man for organization and GENIUS. 87 accumulating and directing, and I am willing to be directed if you will do the directing." And Micky said : " Fred, I will do as you say, but I am not willing to direct anything without first advising with our counsellor;" and then Ed said: " I agree with you that both of you have the genius of which the other speaks, and am sure you have qualifications to impel and com- pel you to rise in the business world; and I offer you my professional services in your enterprises and take your case; but, gentlemen," said Ed, " I never read of a case where there, was not a woman in it, and Sally shall be the woman, for she has genius for banking, and she shall be the custodian of the funds." And Fred said that Sally would not only be a banker, but a great lady, and some day be mistress of the White House. Then Micky slowly and earnestly said : " Den if we has between us der korner on genius like that, den why kant we fellers just skoop in der whole earth?" And they did it. CHAPTER XIII. THE THRKR KINGDOMS. If we of the present could have hved five thousand years ago, we should not have had to study hard or to apply ourselves intensely to learn or master pretty nearly all there was known that was of practical value ; but during the centuries that have since intervened a vast fund of information has been accumulated — a terror to the schoolboy of to-day who is indifferent to a college course, but a maze of anticipation to the aspiring youth who desires to grasp what is at hand and push into the jungles and mysteries of the great unknown. • It is of no use to try and shove forward a young person who has no ambition or inclination in that direction. He will gravitate to his own level without effort; and per contra, genius will surmount every obstacle that stands in its pathway. There is nothing impossible with man from a mate- rial point of \'iew. If you will give him time enough, he will at last, in some way, master the- difficult prob- lem of lifting himself over the fence by his boot straps, and succeed in controlling the forces of the solar system to such an extent that for advantageous pur- THE THREE KINGDOMS. 89 poses he will move or slightly alter the swing of the earth on which he dwells into an orbit of his own selection. Every well-conceived plan that ever succeeded has had its beginnings in effort of some kind ; and the greater the outcome, the greater the amount of energy back of it, much of which is never seen on the surface. Enterprises that have succeeded in our own day have been applauded by mankind, and the master minds have been honored by their fellow-men. No one but the man himself knows that the success which he achieved was the result of silent, patient, persistent work, or an ever-increasing application toward a cher- ished end. Messrs. Flynn & Schmidt, from that night in which '' genius" was recognized and conceded to each other, spent the remainder of their lives in one continuous effort after information, along wnth the possession of material things ; and one of the simple channels through which their earlier knowledge was garnered was a childish game or pastime indulged in while working on their ever-increasing orders for kites. It was the game of the " Three Kingdoms." Ed told them that everything on the face of the earth was either animal, vegetable, or mineral; and that all we ate, drank, wore, handled, bought, or sold was com- posed of one or more of " these three kingdoms." Man took these things that nature gave free, and manufactured or made or transmuted them into other shapes and sizes and forms ; and the labor w^iich man puts on all these things gives them intrinsic value. If they would look at any object around them, and learn from what it was made, how it was manufactured, how much of it there was to be had, and whether it was made by common workmen or skilful artisans, then they could, as soon as they saw the oliject. guess just about what it was worth. If they could do that, 90 THE KITE TRUST. they would never get cheated during their Hfetime, and would have sound ideas as to the money value of objects. The game or pastime was as follows : Ed secretly thought of something, desiring his companions to guess what it was. He was then asked if it was animal, vegetable, or mineral ; he replied, " mineral" (if such was the case). Is it in "America"? Yes. Is it in Ohio? Yes. Is it in Cleveland? No. Is it here in Cincinnati? Yes. Is it downtown? No. Is it uptown? Yes. Is it in this house? Yes. Is it upstairs? No. Is it in this cellar? .Yes. Is it on the work table? No. Is it on the floor? No. Is it on any one present? Yes. Is it on Micky? No. Is it on Fred? No. Is it on you (Ed)? No. Is it on Sally? Yes. Is it on her dress? No. Is it on her hand ? Yes. Is it on her finger? Yes. Is it her ring? Yes; and then when they had thus determined the name of the object, it was Sally's or some one else's turn. In that manner hundreds and hundreds of things were silently thought of one by one, and guessed by the others. Simple as such a game is, how few people there are who can tell offhand from what kingdom surrounding objects are derived? The first real dispute they had as to the origin of an article was " indigo." All except Ed said it was a mineral, and came out of the ground. He was not sure, and said he would look in the encyclo- paedia next day and find out positively ; and he after- ward reported that it was " vegetable," and came from the sap of plants in India. The next dispute was about " alum," which was thought to come out of some bitter tree; but on inquiry it was found to be mineral, ex- tracted from rock or shale. The}^ learned the nature of wearing apparel, and had disputes as to whether it was asbestos, cotton, or woollen ; found out what was the nature of calico, gingham, silks, velveteens, crepe, THE THREE KINGDOMS. QI etc. ; differences in leather, as calf, morocco, kid, patent leather, etc. ; varieties of food and material, such as yeast, baking powder, sugar, mustard; nature of com- binations, such as brass, steel, solder, etc. It was a grand schooling for them, and Ed knew so much that he rose higher than ever in their estimation. A piece of newspaper caused them much anxiety. Micky said '' he thought of something," and wanted them to guess what it was. It proved in the end to be the ink that made the black printing. To start with, he told them it was of the " vegetable" kingdom, which in the end caused the discussion. Ed settled it the next evening by telling them that newspaper ink was made from a substance known as "lampblack;" but that such " black" could be made from either the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom. Bones were burned to make " animal black." Wood was burned to soot for " vegetable black," and coal or petroleum was burned to make soot for " mineral black;" but he had found out that " mineral black" was the cheapest, and he presumed the paper must be printed with ink made from mineral black, and therefore they should class it in the mineral kingdom. This form of mental amusement gave no end of variety to conversation, but it became more interesting from a geographical view-point. Micky and Fred had never before cared for geography; but now they were more than interested in the countries from which things came, and there was a map of the world con- stantly on the work table before them. The names of cities and provinces all over the globe became familiar to them, and when the map became soiled Sally made a drawing of a large map of the world. Micky had her write in fine print in the different parts the names of the things that came from each country that were mined or produced or grew there. Ed read in the encyclopaedia about the low wages men received in 92 THE KITE TRUST. different parts of the world. They were all astonished to find that the people received in some countries only three cents a day for working tliirteen hours, and Ed said he hoped those people would never make kites in that place and send them to Cincinnati to be sold. He asked Sally to write on the map in the different lands the wages the natives received, and all were wonder- fully pleased to find that the people in the United States had higher wages than those of any other country. The next subject they " switched'' to was the routes by which goods were transported from one country to another. These were the kinds of ships, railroads, camel caravens, wagon trains, mule packs, and so on. This was a great subject. Sally was required to draw on the map all kinds of lines to show the paths of steamships and other modes of transportation, and then they commenced to guess or estimate as best they could what it would cost for freight on various kinds of merchandise from one place to another. After in- forming themselves in all these subjects, they would figure up what such things as a bag of coffee or one thousand pounds of nutmegs ought to be worth in Cincinnati, until they settled the values of nearly every staple product. They figured the cost to the planters of growing and handling coffee in Brazil with labor at twelve cents a day, and added to it the cost of a bag large enough to hold one hundred and sixty pounds ; then they placed with it the amount the merchants, cartmen, and porters in Brazil wanted for their labor in handling and carrying it ; estimated what the steamships wanted for their labor in transporting the coffee from Rio Janeiro to New York ; what our Go\-ernment wanted in duties for its labor in " running" the Government ; added the freight charges the railroad wanted for its labor and expenses in carrying the coffee from New York to Cincinnati; footed up the amount the whole- THE THREE KINGDOMS. 93 sale grocer in Cincinnati wanted for the labor of him- self, his workmen, and his clerks for bringing it there so people could have it handy in a great city whenever they wanted it; added what the retail grocery-man wanted for his labor and his clerks in having it handy down at the corner so people would not have to spend ten cents carfare to go downtown to buy fifteen cents worth of coffee. They found out that, putting it altogether, the price of a pound of coffee down at the corner grocery was not very dear, but " awful" cheap, wdien they considered how many people had to labor at it and get their living out of it ; and not only their living, but they figured out that the laboring man had to get a living for a lot of other people besides himself and family, for away down in Brazil on the plantation and in Rio Janeiro, on the steamships and in New York and in Cincinnati all these laboring men, includ- ing the farmhands, cartmen, railroad men, steamship captains and crews, and Custom House workers and officers, and everybody all along the whole line who get part of the money or charges, all of these people had to employ doctors, lawyers, ministers, school- teachers, dentists, and others who are called " profes- sionals," who had to be paid out of these laboring men's wages; and besides these professionals being supported by the laboring man, they also had to pay their share out of the wages for policemen, street cleaners, road builders, and firemen ; to suppor.t a lot of rascals in jail wdio do nothing, and to feed a lot of miserable lazy tramps who would not work. So they figured out these details, and found that everything in the end came out of the money that workmen received for their labor. During all the evenings devoted to figuring, Micky and Fred never ceased one moment from their work, but kept their hands busy, hardly taking time enough to look up from their kite-making. Sally did all the 94 THE KITE TRUST. Ilguring, and used decimals down as low as ten thou- sandths, so exact were they in getting at prices; and while she rattled off the arithmetic Ed sat by her side supervising the calculations. It was not all play to Messrs. Flynn & Schmidt. They were serious about it, and day by day as they went to school or around the city they would figure out what it would cost to manufacture familiar objects, which impelled them to compare the prices they guessed with the real asking prices of metals, woods, and material of various origins, until they would undertake to calculate offhand what it would cost to build a wagon or pave a street or make a locomotive. In fact, they were not backward in guessing as closely as they could to what the contents of a whole store was worth. Thus, they educated themselves to value things at their real value, soon learning that a thing was worth just about the amount of labor expended on it from the time when the natural material was first laid hands on by men. The heads of children are like the empty barrels in a cooper shop. The barrels will be bought by a hun- dred different men for as many different purposes. Flour goes into one, ashes into another, molasses into a third, whiske}^ into a fourth, candy into a fifth, poison into the sixth, sand into the seventh, and so on. A child's empty head from babyhood is ready to receive whatever its parents and environments put into it. It is seldom a child turns aside of its own will into a path of its own choosing. It thus becomes a great responsibility for parents to oversee what is being daily poured into the brains of their young offspring; but genius seems to be drawn in some mysterious manner toward its own inclination, as if an unseen magnet was within a few inches of the brain, drawing it gradu- ally and persuasively toward its own longed-for ideal. Micky and Fred seemed to have had suddenly awak- THE THREE KINGDOMS. 95 ened in them a burning desire to own things and to learn what things were worth ; and if there was an affinity to which they were unknowingly being at- tracted, it was eight thousand miles in diameter and twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, and they afterward aspired to learn its aggregate value and own it all. y Micky's mother was astonished at the sudden transformation regarding neatness of dress and gen- eral appearance that characterized Micky and Fred's entrance into the kite business, that was nothing com- pared to the surprise of their teacher at their sudden metamorphosis from dull boys to the brightest ones in the class. They had no time to study out of school, but when they once crossed the threshold of the school-room there was not a moment wasted. Pre- viously both were good in arithmetic, but now they seemed brilliant. Geography was as enjoyable as eating buckwheat cakes with syrup for breakfast ; Micky commenced to take an interest in spelling and pro- nouncing English in a proper manner; and Sally, who was the head of her class in grammar, was actually politely thanked for correcting him, and no longer scolded for doing what Micky used to call " nagging him fur not speaking der korrect glib." CHAPTER XIV. CAPITAL. Those evenings in the luinilile cellar of the Widow Flynn were rememhered as the choicest moments in the lives of the young founders of the most far-reach- ing association that the world has ever seen. From the realms of the unknown came the goddess of a new era and kissed the brows of these humble children in whose genius a new hope was born for mankind. One evening Fred said that he had been figuring on the value of a steamship, charging up the labor of this man and that man, and following the thing all the way through from the beginning. He found an item that bothered him — the " interest" that was charged for the use of the money to buy the raw or unworked material, and also another item for the " rent" that was paid for the dockyards. Ed replied that he was sorry that Fred had brought the matter up just then, as it was a very complicated affair to explain ; but he did not blame him for doing so, as it was natural for a great financier and account- ant to consider such things. He then stated that when a person speaks of " interest" it immediately implies CAPITAL. 97 that there must be capital or money back of it. Some person must have money he wants to lend, and receives his pay for it. " Yes," said Fred, " that is it exactly. The man that has the money sits down in his chair and does nothing at all but write checks. He does not labor or do anything for mankind, like the laboring man or the furniture dealer or steamboat captains and owners or railroad men, with their presidents and officers. He is just idle and does nothing but eat, drink, and sleep, coolly taking in his interest money to pay for his ex- penses. How can I add the interest expense to my labor in building the steamship, and then say every cent of the cost of the ship represents labor? That shows to me there is something wrong about your statement that all value represents labor; and then there is also the amount I have charged up against the building of the steamship for that rent of the great shipyard. The landlord does not do anything at all, but just comes around to make the poor shipbuilder pay out his money for the use of his property, going home in his carriage and eating and drinking and going to sleep without doing any labor at all, except walking from his carriage into his house. How do you call that labor?" Ed then said that " both the banker and the landlord were once as poor as we are at present, and had to work for a living. Maybe they were both of them carpenters, starting out when boys to learn their trade with two other young fellows, and when all four were men and became real carpenters they got $2 a day apiece. " Two of the four boys spent in the saloon all their money by the end of each week, but the other two saved $4 apiece each week. Now, what did that $4 represent? Was it not the price of two days' labor? They each went and put those two days' saved-up 98 THE KITE TRUST. lal)or in the savings bank, and wiien the year came around they had saved a considerable sum, each having $200 accumulated, which was the same as putting their days' labor in the bank, instead of in the saloon. After thirty years they each had $6,000 saved, which repre- sents about three thousand days' labor, while the other two men who never saved anything were still getting $2 a day and spending it as fast as they made it, the same as they did the very first day they began. " The first of the two careful, saving men bought the shipyard ground with the savings of his many days' labor, and built on it a large shipyard shed, putting machinery in it for shipbuilding, and rented it to a poor but honest shipbuilder, who did not have money to buy the place or build a shipyard of his own. The poor shipbuilder said to the rich landlord : * You have labored hard all your lifetime and saved your money. You are getting old and want to have some comfort in your declining years, and you cannot work hard any more, so I will pay you $1000 a year for your place, and probably I may later be fortunate enough to make and save some money also ; and then if you will at that future time sell, I will buy your place and own it myself.' " The other careful carpenter who saved his money or days' labor takes his $6000 and opens a bank. The man who is building the steamship goes to this banker and says : ' You have worked hard all your lifetime and saved some money, and I have very little. Your friend who owns the shipyard has rented the place to me, as I want to build a steamship for some respon- sible men in New York, who will pay me for the ship when it is finished. I have not enough money to pay the wages of my workmen, nor to buy all the material with which to build the ship. If you consider me hon- est, I wish you would lend me $20,000, and I will pay you six per cent, per annum, or $1200 CAPITAL. 99 per year, for its use ; and you can thus get the heneht in your old age of your saving up of your money;' and the banker lets him have it, because he knows he is honest and will keep his word and pay him back. " These two rich men were at one time poor journey- men carpenters, and every dollar of the one who is the landlord and every dollar of the one who is the banker represented their hard days' work or accumu- lated labor. It also represented economy and self- denial ; and if they had not saved their money, and no other person had saved any, then the man who wanted to build the steamship and who had no capital could not have gone into the shipbuilding business ; and thus five hundred men that he put to work would not have had any method of earning money for themselves and families. " Among these five hundred workmen who will be employed and get the benefit of this capital or accumu- lated labor are some who had not a dollar in the world the day they commenced to work in that new ship- yard, and some of these poor workmen from that day will also commence to save their money as the landlord and the banker did when they were young men, and when twenty or thirty years roll by they will also be rich and own houses and shipyards and go into the banking or other business, and all they have will represent their saved days' labor as they went along and laid it up for future use. They did not spend it in saloons, like most of their companions, but put it aside, that they as Avell as others might have some future benefit. " Some half-crazy people think that when that land- lord and that banker were rich they should be compelled to give their money away to poor people or divide up with those fellows who saved nothing, or else lend it for nothing, without interest, not getting any benefit or just reward for their industry or saving habits, and lOO THE KITE TRUST. prol)ably going themselves to the poorhouse. If such were the case, no one would want to save anything. Who, then, would have money upon which to do busi- ness or to start enterprises or to build railroads ? The people would be one vast mob, and there would be no government to start or conduct anything or go into business. "If when the world started every person had kept on spending all they made, and no one up to this day had saved anything, then there would not be any money accumulated anywhere and no great enterprises could have started. We should all be like wild Indians w'ithout education and going around like tramps, try- ing to scrape up something to eat ; and suppose a nation or colony of tramps issued paper money and tried to pass this among themselves, then all the work any of them would want to do would be to print money and make $1,000,000 of it for each of them. Jn reality, it would be worth nothing. If, however, they had to work to dig gold or silver, their days' labor would be turned into gold dollars; for if they could find one or two dollars' worth every day, there would be some value to it. If they could find more than two dollars' worth per day, almost every person would go to gold- mining, as it would be easier than driving street cars or carrying bricks to housetops " In this selfish era the whole nation is not one family, the father owning it all and wanting every one of the children to be well cared, for, educated, and clothed, and the weakest and most helpless one in the flock being the one to be most loved and watched over ; this is the ideal family. But such is not the case; in its stead every man seems to be for himself. Of course, men want to own all they can save up, getting interest and rent for their capital or accumulated labor. When they die, they like to leave it to the children they love, not giving it to Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they do CAPITAL. lOI not care for, some of whom would spend their gift in a week if they once got hold of it. Capital, you see, is all right and should be respected. Rich men have a right to what they get lawfully; but before many years you will hear a great deal about capital and labor, and how labor ought to put down capital, and all such nonsense as that." *' Yes," said Fred, " I see that part is all right, just as you say about capital being accumulated labor; but I do not see how 5^ou can call or think of as labor the interest money that I spoke of at first. You said the banker had only $6000 of his own, and in my calcula- tion for interest I borrowed $20,000 of him at six per cent, for one year. How was it that he had $20,000 to lend me if he was only worth $6000? " Well," said Ed, " it is this way. All during that banker's lifetime he behaved himself like a gentleman and an honest man, and people learned to know him and to have confidence that he would do things straight and right. When he grew older and wanted to go into the banking business, many of the people wdio knew him asked him also to take care of the little monev they had ; and there were so many people that had confidence in him and trusted him, that before he had been in the banking business a month he had $100,000 entrusted to his care, and he paid all his friends four per cent, interest on their money, and he loaned it out to other persons, like your shipbuilder, at six per cent., and thus made two per cent, for himself for his trouble and also for his expenses to help pay for the rent of his banking ofiice and for salaries or wages for the labor or services of the clerks he employed." " But," said Fred, " that is just the point of my whole argument. The banker got his interest on his own money or saved-up labor. Why should he be profiting by other people's accumulated labor?" " Why," said Ed, " I thought I just answered your I02 THE KITE TRUST. question by saying- that he made a small amoimt, only two per cent., for his labor or time and for the labor and time of his clerks to pay him for his trouble and thoughtfulness about the banking business; and all the rest of it, or four per cent., went to the other men who trusted the banker with their saved-up • labor money Do you think the banker ought to work for nothing? He keeps a " money" store, just as others keep dry- goods or grocery or kite stores. Is he not entitled to pay or profit for his services? " There are a lot of demagogues and crazy labor leaders who, through deception, earn a living by talk- ing and selling their newspapers to people wdio do not know how to think right, and are all the time trying to tell poor people that the man who has money is his enemy and the one to be despised and put down. But this is not so. The richer a man becomes, the richer the whole world becomes, the better it will be for all poor men, and especially for poor men who want to save money and get rich themselves; for no matter how much the rich man gets, the laborer gets it all in the end. liithe rich man builds an extravagant palace with his savings, then the whole structure represents the money paid laborers for days' wages. If he buys ornaments or decorates the mansion in a most lavish manner or spends it in a great feast or " house warm- ing," it is all paid for in days' labor to the artisan and to the butcher, the baker, and the ice-cream maker. If he puts his profits in railroad bonds or railroad building, it represents so many days' labor for work- men in mining and forging the iron, building the bridges, laying the tracks, and constructing the cars, locomotives, and depots. Wherever he places his money for investment, it means so much for the laborer. If he puts it in bank, it will be loaned out to ship- builders and other people, who will use it where it is represented by the labor of farmers, mechanics, and CAPITAL. 103 the world of workmen who are employed by the people who borrow it. " The only way the rich man can escape benefiting the laborer with his money is to put it in greenbacks or other money and sit down on it. So there need be no sentimentality on the part of any one at what is called the extravagance of the rich or a wilful waste of money, providing the wilful waste does not injure mankind. It all goes in the end to the laborer, who needs it most. The man who loses his fortune in stock speculations has the cold comfort of knowing that some one else has gained it, and with the lucky profits will more than likely invest it in luxury that will cost days' labor; but if he also speculates it away, another man will get it to buy a home with costly furnishings, for which the laborer has already been paid his wages, and then when he gets the palace he will have to spend his money to keep it going. His food represents labor, so do his clothes and comforts. In almost all cases of speculation what one man loses another man gains, and the profits of men in speculation or business or professions are eventually paid to the workman. So you see, Fred, interest is all right, and will be so until a better day comes on earth, when everybody will belong, as it were, in one home or family and feel as children do in their father's house when they look all around at the furniture, books, and pictures, and every- thing, and talk about otir things, realizing that their father is ' square' and is not keeping a set of books and charging them up with everything that is spent for them, and som.e day going to make them pay it back. " But that better day will never be brought about by anarchy and bloodshed and stealing or taking away what others have, for people who would seize or steal money in that way are people who after they had other people's money would not work in an honest manner, I04 THE KITE TRUST. but would soon spend it. Then these anarchists or thieves or murderers would commence to divide up again, murder and bloodshed following among them- selves. In twenty or thirty years there would be no person left to tell the tale, for, like the Kilkenny cats, they would have clawed and chewed each other ' out of sight.' " There is a way everything in the world can be equally divided, and that hour will only come when people all love one another and all are willing to work and do their share of the saving; and you can just bet your bottom dollar that that time will never come to stay in any other manner." CHAPTER XV. THE SILVER QUESTION. Micky came in late one evening to the cellar and said he had been trying to sell a hundred dozen kites down on Vine Street at Thurber's wholesale grocery, and had offered them at thirty-three and one-third per cent, discount, or sixteen cents per dozen net, in such large quantities. He stated he had had a long con- versation with Mr. Thurber, who said his firm had unusual facilities for reaching all the retail grocers in the country, as they had two hundred salesmen travel- ling in all directions, and that his company would probably be contented if they bought at thirty-three and one-third per cent, discount and sold at twenty-five per cent, discount, and thus receive only two cents per dozen profit on kites. They sold millions of dollars' worth of goods annually, and could, of course, sell for much less profit than a retail grocer whose business only amounted to a few thousand dollars every year, out of which he and his few clerks had to get a living. Micky did not consummate the sale, as he promised to return the next week and give a lower price, if possible, on the kites in one-thousand-dozen lots, and he wanted I06 TIIK KITI-: TRUST. a few days to figure on it and talk the matter over with his partner. Micky said that while he was waiting in the great grocery ofiice to see Mr. Thurher there were some Congressmen and Senators there from the East, West, and South, all talking about something they called the " Silver Question," and he must confess that after they were through he did not know anything more about it than when they commenced. The principal thing he could make out, however, was that some of them wanted sixteen dollars' worth of silver for one dollar in goM, which he thought was a big piece of " cheek ;" for if that were the case, everybody who had a gold dollar would go out and buy sixteen silver dollars, and then with these silver dollars could purchase all the things they wanted to eat, drink, and wear, not using their gold dollars, but only spending them for buying up silver dollars whenever they wanted to pay for any- thing. Ed told Micky that he certainly must have mis- understood their meaning, as Congressmen and .Sena- tors were supposed to have some sense ; and no one of them would expect to receive sixteen dollars' worth of something for one dollar's worth of something else, no matter whether it was kites, tables, flour, houses, gold or silver, or anything whatsoever. Everything that was for sale represented the labor of just so many days, and no person, unless he wanted to get rid of it for some funny reason, wanted to give anything that cost sixteen days of labor for something that cost only one day of labor, whether it was gold or silver, copper or lead, or anything man needed. If it could be shown by miners that one man could go out and find and dig just sixteen times as much silver in one day as he could gold, then it was a foregone conclusion that the gold was worth sixteen times more than the silver — that is, if it proved to be the experience of the average dig- THE SILVER QUESTION. lO/ gings or minings of all the men who were engaged in that business in the world. It might be that a gold-miner some day would luckily find a big piece of gold above the average size and make himself rich all at once; but it was also just as likely to follow that the silver-miner might do the same, and so the whole thing would keep about even. Some day it might happen that a few lucky gold- miners would suddenly dig into a mountain chain and find the w^hole inside to be a mass of pure gold, which could be quarried out by the ton, the same as iron ore, and also enough of it to supply coin for more than ten worlds. What would be the result? Why, it would be just this, that every person would just rush to that mountain chain by the earliest and fastest express train, working night and day to be the first to dig or bore holes into it and get out the gold by the carload and take it to Washington by long freight trains as fast as they could and sell it to the United States Treasury. The Government would have to receive it, because the law said it must do so, for there is a law saying that the Assay Office shall take all the pure gold that is presented. If such a thing should ever occur, the early birds would be the ones that would catch the worm, for the first carload that would arrive from the West on the first morning at the Assay Office in Washington would be received and paid for, and so would the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth carloads. By noon-time the cashier of the Treas- ury would become almost paralyzed with astonishment, and would telephone to the Assay Office to know why in the name of heaven he was drawing all at one time such big checks on the Government bank, as all the money that was on hand in the morning was nearly paid out and gone, and what was left would not hold out half an hour longer if he did not stop drawing such enormous checks. The chief at the Assay Office would Io8 THE KITE TRUST. telephone back to the cashier to mind his own business, as he (the chief of the Assay Office) was too busy- attending to his own duties taking in gold to be both- ered by such " fool questions," for it was no business of the Assay Office about paying for the gold — that was the cashier's duty — for they at the Assay Office were obliged by law to do what they were doing, and would keep on doing so. Then the cashier would hasten to his chief, the Secretary of the Treasury, and tell him about it, If such a bonanza as he had mentioned should be discovered in Colorado or elsewhere, here is probably about what would take place. Another check for a carload of gold would very soon be presented to the cashier, who would find that there was not enough money on hand to cash it. The Secretary of the Treasury would tell the cashier to save back enough change to cash their own salaries due the next day, and to pay out all the rest of the money on hand on account of this last presented check for a carload of gold, and then for the balance of the amount due, for which they could not pay, he must give the man a draft on the Assistant Treasurer at New York, where the Government still had millions of dollars on hand. The cashier then telephones to the chief of the Assay Office that all his money is gone, and that the Secretary of the Treasury orders him to draw the rest of his checks for that day on New York. So the chief of the Assay Office, as the fresh carloads arrive, draws his checks on New York and gives them to the long line of thirty-four miners from the West who have arrived with their train loads of gold, and they all go to the Treasury in Washington to get the checks or orders approved : then they take the evening train to New York, and by noon the next day every dollar in the United States depository at New York is paid THE SILVER QUESTION. IO9 out, except the money retained to pay the salaries of the officers and employes, as no doubt they would look out for themselves in that direction. In the meantime, telegrams reach the Treasury at Washington that three hundred and fifty-nine trains of gold were scattered all along the railroads from Colorado to Washington, each of them with two loco- motives pulling and pushing ahead to get to Washing- ton as fast as they could, so as to reach there first ; and the additional news is received that enough for five hundred train loads of gold are scattered along the side of the mining stations and ready to ship, but no cars or locomotives arrived to carry it away. The Secretary of the Treasury becomes alarmed. At midnight he tells the President of the United States that he cannot pay for a thousandth part of the gold he hears will be presented for sale during the next few days at the Assay Office. So at a quarter to six o'clock in the morning all the Cabinet officers are awakened and summoned to the White House to see what can be done. The chief of the Assay Office is also summoned, and is told by the Secretary of the Treasury that there is no more money on hand to pay for the gold that will be presented, and that he must not give out any more checks. " But," says the assay officer, " the law reads that I must buy all the gold that is presented. What shall I do? You should first change the law and not make me liable for dismissal, removal, or prosecution." The vSecretary of the Interior replies that Congress is not in session and the law cannot be changed ; and then the whole Cabinet sit in silence, until the office boy suggests that they had better coin the money out of the gold received on the day before, and pay it out for the gold to be received to-day. That was a good suggestion, but the office boy was put out of the office for venturing to open his mouth. His proposal, however, was adopted, and all were no THE KITE TRUST. about to leave when the chief of the Assay Office happened to think that he could not coin before bank- ing hours, which commenced at ten o'clock, the one hundred thousandth part of the coin necessary to pay for the gold that would be presented, for he had heard that even as early as four o'clock in the morning a line of miners was forming in front of the Assay Office, so as to be in position to get their pay first. The Secretary of Agriculture then asked in what shape the new gold was received from the cars, and w'as told in bars, each about the value of $25,000. " Then," said the Secretary of Agriculture, " why not during the day pay the miners for their gold bars with the other gold bars received on the previous day?" That was considered a good plan, so it was adopted ; but at eleven o'clock another Cabinet meeting was hastily called, the chief of the Assay Office giving information that the miners would not make the exchange, as they could find no good excuse for taking back the same kind of thing they were giving, the metal being too heavy to carry around. They had no place to put it, and clam- ored for checks. It was then decided to offer them silver for gold ; but they would not accept that, as they said there was as much silver, if not more of it, out West than there was gold. Thus, the Cabinet was in a quandary. It was then decided that the best thing to do was to give the miners certificates of deposit in amounts of $100,000 each, stating that they had left gold for that amount in Washington, and with these certificates they could go out to the various national. State, and private banks and get money on them. This satisfied the miners, and they all went to New York on the evening train to raise money on their certificates of gold deposits. In the meantime the bankers of New York had heard by telegraph all about the vast discoveries of THE SILVER QUESTION.- Ill gold and about the gold certificates, and held a meeting at the Clearing House that night, which lasted until one o'clock in the morning; and they figured up the whole affair, and found that the cjuantity of gold in the new mines was fabulous and previously undreamed of, and was now of such unheard-of volume that they could not take care of or pay for it all. One banker from Bethlehem, Pa., said he had just received a dis- patch from Colorado that the mountains were just full of solid gold, and that one man could dig out twelve tons of it in one day. " Then," said the banker from Beth- lehem, " in Pennsylvania one miner can dig out twelve tons of iron ore in one day ; if it was solid stuff, the miner could earn $24 per day ; but it is not solid iron, only the ore, and it is hard work now for a miner to find good ore enough in one place to earn $2 a day, as it is not all pure iron; but now P' (the banker from Bethlehem) " have learned that out West unlimited quantities of gold have been found, one man digging out twelve tons of the solid stuff in one day, which at this present hour sells for $750,000 per ton, twelve tons being worth $9,000,000." " Can it," said the banker, " be possible that we are going to be called upon to pay out our savings and the savings in our banks of others entrusted to our care at the rate of $9,000,000 per day for a Colorado laboring man's wages, while a hard-working man in Pennsylvania can only earn $2 per day? If," continued he, "it were only a small, lucky find of a few tons or more, then it would make no difference ; but the news is confirmed that there are unlimited quantities of it, just as there are unlimited quantities of iron ore in some places and of sand on the ocean shore ; and," continued the banker. " the President and Cabinet have issued certificates of deposit for genuine pure gold bricks, and the miners and holders of them will be here in this city to-morrow morning wanting us to advance money on them at the 112 • TITE KITE TRUST. rate of $9,000,000 per day for one man's labor. Can we do it ? Shall we do it ?" The president of the Clearing House then called the speaker to order, and told him he did not think that the association wanted any such " fool question" put to them by any banker from Bethlehem or Jerusalem or any other seaport; of course, they would not do such a thing; for if, said the presiding officer, any person is going into a business where they could make $9,000,000 a day or $1,000,000 a day or $100,000 a day, he would like to resign his honored position and go at it himself. The meeting finally decided that the President and Cabinet at Washington and the chief of the Assay Office had a perfect right to issue a piece of paper that said that a miner from Colorado had deposited a cer- tain quantity of gold ; but that as Congress had not made the certificate a legal tender with an agreement that it was good for payment of debts, therefore it did not follow that the bankers or any one in America or elsewhere were obliged to take it; and that as far as the bankers' association was concerned the Govern- ment could keep on receiving gold until they had a pile as high as the Washington Monument if they wanted to. The only possible objection they could think of was that the Cabinet ought not to charge the expense to the Government, but ought to pay out of their own pockets for the handling of the gold and the paper on which the certificates were written. The next morning, when the miners from Colorado presented their gold certificates at the banks, they were not cashed or placed to their credit, and there was much howling and an odor of sulphur in the language used. The miners found out for the first time that their gold was worth nothing, not even so much as iron, for it wotild cost more davs' labor to get out an equal weight of pure iron. Thus, it was telegraphed all THE SILVER QUESTION. II3 along the line of the railroads, the freight trains being stopped in the woods. The miners had no money to pay the freight up to that point or any farther; the railroad companies dumped the gold at the side of the track, and no one cared to take it away, because it was too heavy and they could not get anything for it or did not know what to do with it. The only demand that ever came for it was from a board of trustees of a " New Jerusalem" church, who wanted it, as a matter of sentiment, to pave their sidewalk with. The only persons who profited by that great gold discovery were the few lucky miners who got their gold to Washington the first day, and received Govern- ment checks, which they deposited to their credit in the various banks, and who were fortunate to check the money out immediately in payment for real estate and railroad and other investments. The only great advantage that came to the country was the lesson it learned that gold was not worth any- thing in itself, but was only valued in proportion as it was scarce, and cost about one dollar's worth of daily labor to get one dollar's worth of gold, and that its past value was also in consequence of the Government having never refused to take at a uniform price all that was presented. " Now," continued Ed, " the silver question has a good many points to it, one of them being the ques- tion of supply and demand just explained. Some persons claim that there is silver in such great quan- tities to be obtained that one man can dig sixteen dollars' worth of it while another man in the same time can only dig one dollar's worth of gold ; and so has come that familiar expression ' sixteen to one.' It is a question of quantity, and means sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. But other people claim that silver is so plentiful that one man can dig thirty- two dollars' worth of silver while another man can dig 114 THE KITE TRUST. only one dollar's worth of gold, or thirty-two to one, thus making an ounce of silver of still less value than an ounce of gold ; others claim twenty to one, others twenty-five to one, and it is so unsettled as to what really is the right proportion that everything is rnixed up ajjout it. and no one knows what to say or do. All they really do know is that silver was once scarce and for centuries was hard to find. People were anxious to get it, and there was not enough to be found to satisfy the demand for it by the governments and the people. Suddenly great silver mines were discovered in the West, and almost immediately other silver mines were found in many distant countries, and the precious metal commenced to pour into the great money centres in vast quantities. In one little town out West three or four men made $20,000,000 apiece in two years. This luck made other people wild and half crazy, and hundreds of thousands of people in different parts of the world commenced to hunt and dig for silver, and so much of it kept coming in that the bankers could not take care of it all. The different governments of the earth who bought most of the silver got frightened, as they did not know what it was really worth, for a silver dollar was authorized by law to buy just as much as a gold dollar; and as silver dollars in the great aggregate could be mined cheaper or for less days' labor than an equal amount of gold dollars, it began to upset things, especially in the settling of exchanges between the nations. In consequence, some of the nations stopped coining silver, and said it should not be legal to pay off a w'hole debt with it ; but those governments said they would only buy just enough silver to use for ' change,' as it was handy to have in the pocket and also convenient, and they had always been accustomed to use such change from their boy- hood. Thus, the nations repealed all their laws that authorized a man to pay for a $50,000 house all in THE SILVER QUESTION. II 5 silver if he insisted on doing so. The reason they repealed the law was because the price of silver was so uncertain. The man might go out to-day and pay only $49,000 in gold for enough silver to pay for the $50,000 house, and then again the next day the price of silver might go down so that he could buy the same amount of silver for $45,000 in gold. He would be angry and feel as if he had lost $4000 by not wait- ing the extra twenty-four hours. " Had all the nations stood together, offering to buy all the silver at a certain price, and say : ' Come on, boys, bring on your silver to any amount, and here is your cold cash for it,' then there would be no daily fluctuation in the price of silver, and the man that bought the house for $50,000 could have nothing to get angry about, for the price of silver to-day would be the same to-morrow, and then it would make no difference to him whether he had paid for it in silver or gold, for he would just as soon have silver as to have gold in bank. " That is what makes gold steady and even in price, as the governments of the earth say : ' Come on, boys, bring on your gold by the wagon load or trainful and we will take it all.' Miners can never find enough of it to satisfy the bankers and the Government, and men are to-day digging gold in all the corners of the earth to get more of it. " If the time should ever come that they could find gold in unlimited quantities, it would cause the same trouble that silver is now making. The reason the governments refuse to say : ' Come on, boys, with all your silver,' is because they are afraid to say so, as they fear they will get swamped with the enormous supply that would roll in by every train. If silver should go up to the old pcice, then a million men over the whole world would start again at silver-mining and swamp the world with it. If the people who mine Il6 ■ THE KITE TRUST. silver could only just satisfy the governments and the bankers of the earth that they (the bankers and gov- ernments) are all mistaken, and that there is not such an awful lot of silver as is supposed, things Vsould come back to the old times again, the governments singing the same old song of ' Come on, boys, with all the silver or gold you can scare up, and we will give you a price that is fair to all concerned, and wiien we fix the price we will stand by it.' The fact remains that the miners have not succeeded in satisfactorily answering the question, and now the governments and bankers only want one kind of metal for money, as after paying for all the gold that is presented they would not have enough money left to pay for all the silver that would come pouring in. One kind of metal is or ought to be sufficient for a standard, and silver can be bought in small amounts by the governments to use for ' change.' the same as they buy copper and nickel for the smaller pieces of change, like pennies and nickels." Micky told Ed that his explanation was quite easy to understand, and he supposed the kite business was in the same position. " Yes," said Ed, " the term ' supply and demand' steps in and takes a part in the problem of values. If kites grew on trees, and you had to raise and take care of a kite-tree grove, from which you wished to sell one hundred thousand kites per year at two cents each to satisfy the entire demand for kites that would come from exactly one hundred thousand boys, then every- thing would go on all right and well, and you would get rich if you had the monopoly ; but if some Robinson Crusoe came back from a long voyage and told of an unknown and previously undiscovered island full of kite trees growing wild, fiDm which fell like leaves to the ground five hundred million kites every autumn in each year, then I guess you would have to go out THE SILVER QUESTION. 11/ of the kite manufacturing business, as kites could be brought over by the ship-load from that island cheap enough to sell to the boys at the rate of fifty-seven of them for a cent." This last suggestion rather startled Micky, and so disturbed his slumbers that night that he worried whether the whole world had actually been fully dis- covered and explored. If not, then there might be any morning an announcement in the papers of a new island or new country found where kites actually grew. The result would be that his whole kite business would be " busted." CHAPTER XVI. WEALTH. A FEW evening;!; later ]\Iicky said that while he was down at " Thnrber's" he heard some of those Senators and Congressmen in their discussion say that there ought to be only one standard, and that it should be a "Gold Standard;" and he had been thinking over how Ed had explained the silver question, and sup- posed that the explanation in some way answered also why there should be only a single or gold standard ado])ted ; but the whole question was so immense for a fellow of his size to swallow that he would like to have Ed make it a little clearer to him, if he could, what was meant by the gold standard. Ed sat quiet for at least ten minutes before he opened his mouth. All the rest of them kept still for fear of disturbing his meditations, for they felt sure his thinking cap was getting wound up and would soon be ready to work, which was exactly the case, for at the end of the interval he said : " Micky has just stated that the whole question is too immense for a fellow of his size to swallow ; but if he will only look at the whole subject at one glance by taking a bird's-eye view of it, then it will be easy WEALTH. 119 to understand. The great trouble with people is that they do not look at the whole thing at once, but take it in sections and then get mixed up. If a man should stand on an elevation and take a bird's-eye view of or look down into an immense maze, he would perceive all of it at a glance and see the way in and the way out of the passageways in the puzzling thing ; but if he got down on the ground level and walked into the maze, he would soon get mixed up in the intricacies of the arrangement and wish he had not come. Now," continued Ed, " the great trouble with people is that they think there is an awful, prodigious, unthinkable aggregation or quantity of movable things on this earth that people have manufactured and own, or, in other words, an immensity of personal property or made things, and it appalls them to think of the enor- mousness of it. They are afraid to tackle the subject, but when you come to boil it down there is not so much personal property or so many chattels after all." " Not so much after all ?" said Micky in surprise ; " why, what do you mean ? Are there not houses and stores and pavements and furniture and things to eat and wear and ships and boats and railroads and iron and lead and copper and silver and gold and everything else, and don't you call that very much?" " No," said Ed, " it is not so very much if you would bring it all together brick by brick and board by board and rail by rail and stone by stone, and all the solid metal and everything just as man manufactured or quarried or mined it, just the solid stuff as it was before it was built into houses or made into furniture or clothing, or all that originally grew out of or was formed in the ground. "If you could bring everything that is on the face of the earth to-day that man has manufactured with his hands or with machinery, everything that man owns in the world, that he has made or altered or I20 THE KITE TRUST. changed from one thing to another, and pile it up in one mass as a monument to man's wonderful material achievements on the earth, so that the coming genera- tions would travel or make a pilgrimage there to see all that was left of what their ancestors for six thou- sand years had done, why, it would not be over a mile high and only fill up a valley a very few miles long, and people could get on top of the surrounding mountain peaks and look down at it in surprise, it would be so small ; and if you would lay the whole pile down on the plains out West, it would only look like a respectable ant-hill, compared with the great, far- sweeping Rocky Mountain area; and the gods of the Grecians and Romans would sit on the floating clouds and look down and laugh at it and joke among them- selves at man's boastful but diminutive collection of earlhly manufactured material." Micky laid down the unfinished kite he had in his hand, and for the first and only time lost his confidence in Ed. He looked at him for two minutes in blank astonishment, and then said : " Why, I bet you there are more houses and stuff in Cincinnati alone than would make a pile a mile high and a few miles long." Ed shook his head and simply said, " No." Micky then said : " Why, can't I see it with my own eyes — all these houses, factories, stores, warehouses, and everything around the whole city ? I'll bet you it would make three or four cul)ic miles in itself of solid piled-up stuff, let alone all the rest of the things that must be around and over the world somewhere." Ed sat quiet for a few minutes thinking, and then quietly said : " Why, Micky, all the houses and stores and goods and everything in the whole United States now on hand or that have been moved and sold if brought together and put in one solid mass, would not amount to half that pile you say is in Cincinnati alone. Why, Micky, the whole of the stuff in the WEALTH. 121 United States would not pile up three cubic miles. Please remember, I am not speaking of the value of the chattels, but of the bulk." Micky did not answer for a few minutes, for he was roaming all over the city of Cincinnati in his mind, thinking of the block after block of factories and houses and stores and of their immense contents, and then when he could stand it no longer he said : '' Ed, I'll bet you're not in it. I'll bet you're away off." Fred and Sally both silently sided with Micky, but kept quiet and wondered that Micky had nerve enough to dispute anything Ed said, even if it was not so. Micky stuck to his point, which resulted in Sally, by request, getting her slate and commencing to figure. The figuring and discussion continued during the e\Tnings of nearly two weeks, and every item when it was properly calculated, " flattened out," reduced to cubic measure, and approved by Ed, was put down on a piece of paper. They had all passed " cubic measure" in their arithmetic class at school, and were up on the the subject. Their manner of arriving at the result was by cal- culation that there were seventy million people in the United States, and that they all had or ought to have homes, and there ought not to be over five persons on an average to a house, and some houses ought to be large and some small ; and at last, after considerable disputing, it was agreed upon as to what an average- sized house should be. Then they calculated the cubic contents of all the material in the walls, floors, roofs, and partitions, and when that was done it was put down on a sheet of wrapping paper under the heading of " houses." Next there ought to be a certain number of stores to a certain number of people, and then the average size of same with their contents and cubic measure of its construction was tabulated. Next came factories, next Government buildings, next rails and 122 THE KITH TRUST. railroad ties and bridges, next wooden and stone fences, next paving stones, then clothing, furniture, and food, and a hundred things that people ought to have, including iron and other ores, and gold and silver, and also diamonds and gems and everything they could think of. It was a wonderful schooling and a never-ceasing fountain of information for them in after years. The thing that astonished them was to find out that all the gold that people and banks and the Government owned in the United States and in the whole world, if melted into one solid mass, would not be enough to fill the cellar in which they were working. One of the things they learned about was specific gravities, or the weight, and then the value of a cubic foot of the various commodities ; and when they found that all the silver in the United States and in the world would not make a pile as large as their school-house, they had a good laugh, and wondered why people were making such an awful fuss about a little pile of silver like that. And then they found that all the iron would not pile an eighth of a cubic mile, and that all the railroad rails would not cover a square mile ten inches high, and that all the railroad ties would not cover the square mile two feet high. The largest pile of anything was their collection of mortar, bricks, and stone material of the United States, which was less than a cubic mile, and they laughed at that, for it was not near as much as the cubic contents of Pike's Peak ; and it caused them much amusement to think that all of man's building material on the earth to-day that had accumulated during six thousand years was not equal to the size of one respectable mountain peak with its foot-hills. They immediately had a howling contempt for the boastful " heaven-high building intentions" of the WEALTH. 123 workers on the Tower of Babel, and Micky said that the " whole ancient blinky crowd ought ter have had Sally there to kalkerate for dem before dey commenced such a foolish building job." At last when everything they could think of in the United States was averaged and calculated, Fred sug- gested that all the people be thrown into the pile, and it amused them very much to find out that all the inhabitants of the United States in one crowd could stand on less than the area of Cincinnati. Sally added up the total cubic feet of everything and divided it into cubic miles, and announced two and three twenty-eighth cubic miles. When the answer was repeated Micky gave up kite-making for the evening, and, leaning over Sally's shoulder, went over the vari- ous items and said: " Is dat all der is?" Then, sitting down, he said : " If dat is all der is in der whole bloomin' United States, then wid all our combined genius I don't think it would be very much of a job to scoop in and own der whole thing;" and then he apolo- gized to Ed for doubting his statements, and they bid one another good-night. Micky hardly slept, for he was scheming how he could get everything in the United States that was in that little contemptible cubic pile into the possession of Flynn & Schmidt. The next evening Micky said to Ed that he wished he would go on with his explanation of the " gold standard," which was interfered with by his taking exception to the statement about the cubic contents of the earth's visible store of fashioned material ; then Ed, after thinking awhile, said people could get along without money, but it would be very inconvenient, as something easy to carry and small and valuable and acceptable to everybody is needed for a medium to buy things when wanted. If the governments said iron should be money, it would provoke people, because 124 "T^^E KITE TRUST. there is so much of it nnd it is so easy to g-et and, besides, so inconvenient to carry around. If the Gov- ernment said a small, round piece of iron the size of a silver fifty-cent piece should pass for a dollar, then such a dollar would be a legal tender, and every person would be obliged to take it ; but it would be in a certain manner a waste of iron, for if the Government wanted the people to have cheap money like that, they might just as well stamp the word dollar on a nickel piece and call it a dollar, instead of calling it a five-cent piece; but if the Government insisted on it, then the people would have to take the nickel piece for a dollar. " Now, if our country had an immense high Chinese wall around it, and no person or thing was allowed to come in or go out, then the little nickel dollar would be as satisfactory as a piece of paper that costs less "to get and make than a nickel, and will pass for a dollar the same as a dollar bill or a fifty-dollar bill or a hundred-dollar bill, just as the government sees fit to change the type and make the same piece of paper good for a thousand-dollar, instead of a one-dollar note if they want to. " But if we tear down that big wall around our country and look outside, we will find there are ' other pebbles on the beach,' there are other nations than ourselves, and we cannot compel them to do as we want them to do. We cannot hold a pistol to their heads and order them to take our iron or nickel or silver money. " Those outside nations, as well as we, have their ideas of what money should be made of, and whatever thev sav has to be the law of their land for buying and selling among themselves. " PUit when it comes to the various nations buying things of each other, they have the privilege to refuse to take any other kind of money than their own for their goods. WEALTH. 125 " If there are two or three kinds of money that every nation is wilHng to take from the others, then there is no trouble; but at the present time gold money is the only thing that each is willing to take of the other, and that settles it, unless you send over a few ironclads and an army and make them take whatever you in- sist on. " The seventy-five million people of the United States are not willing to leave their homes and go abroad to ' lick' the rest of the sixteen hundred million people in the world and make them our abject slaves and compel them to do just as we say. So we cannot have our own way, and must join the majority. The majority of the nations want only gold, and so gold becomes the single standard between the nations. We can have a gold, a silver, a lead, a copper, a nickel, or a paper standard among ourselves here in the United States if we want to ; but when we come to owe money to our neighboring nations we have to settle in their own gold standard or fight it out or quit buying of them, and that is all there is to the silver question and single standard question until we can talk them into it, if we have a good argument ; but up to the present time our arguments have not prevailed, and gold is the single and only standard now in general international use." Ed then said : " What I wanted to explain to you when you disagreed with my statement about the quantity of earthly things was the real insignificance of the aggregate of all the things that man has made since the beginning of the world and that are now on hand ; that they were utterly small compared with the awful mass that people generally supposed was scat- tered over the earth ; and then, lastly, to show that if a person could only grasp all there was at one glance, he would not be bothered in his mind by chasing all over the world to think of it. In order, however, to 126 TIIK KITE TRUST. bring it easily before the mind of Flynn & Schmidt, I will at some future time commence away back at the beginning of things and give you a bird's-eye view of wealth." CHAPTER XVII. BLAVATSKY. In the retrospect of life we often find that the prin- cipal guide-posts directing our pathway are incidents in our history that corroborate the trite saying, "It is the unexpected that always happens," and when we more accurately survey our past and look for an ex- planation, we find that many persons designate our guide-posts as merely '' chance." Their conclusion is unwarranted, for every life is directed or guided by some unseen force ever impelling it onward and on- ward, and it is our own will or inherent power or de- termination, or, per contra, our leniency with our- selves that sends us onward and upward, or onward and downward. Many persons are imbued with the thought that there is a spirit or intelligent force of some kind that ever hovers over and around us, calling upon the secret forces of nature to assist in securing a certain wished-for happy and glorious end or result, while at the same time they say that there is another resist- ing force ever trying to annoy and thwart or destroy the better impulses that would lead us to the green pastures and still waters of success. 128 THE KITE TRUST. We see this enemy all around us in material objects. There seems to be nothing of atomic construction that can resist the ravages of time. Everything in the animal and vegetable world strives in its own way to accomplish the mission for which it was given existence, but when it draws toward its end it finds nothing to look back to but a continual fight for exist- ence. Back of the curtain that hides our vision are unseen controlling forces which in some manner or way in- fluence our hourly and daily existence. Magnetism, hypnotism, clairvoyance, spiritualism, guides, and other terms give expression to that unknown force or power. Many persons with one majestic sweep of the hand flippantly wave the subject out of the category of even implied existence and call it humbug or fraud; but science comes to the rescue and says there is some- thing, but candidly acknowledges it does not know what it is. In its dilemma it looks with pity upon a non-investigator who has the audacity to belittle such mystery without even attempting to approach it. " Ignorance was bliss" to Micky, for he had never heard of hypnotism or clairvoyance or anything mys- terious, excepting ghosts. Ghosts were an unknown but tangible quantity to Micky; he had never seen one, but had heard so much about them and believed in them to such an extent that if any boy had said in his presence that there was nothing of the kind, he would unhesitatingly in youth's language have called him a falsifier. Ghosts were a reality to Micky, and he wanted to give them as wide a degree of latitude and longitude as possible. He had once heard some people talking about Theosophists, Mahatmas, reincarnations, and such things, but it was all Greek to him, except that the whole conversation flavored of something uncanny and sounded very much like ghost stories. That he BLAVATSKY. 129 should ever come under the influence of anything of the kind was an undreamable and unthought-of proposition; but one evening it came all the same, and made an impression on his life that was ncfver effaced. The firm of Flynn & Schmidt, with their counsellor and fair young treasurer, had been indulging in con- versation relative to the kite business in particular, and the commerce of the world in general, and Micky had repeated for the twentieth time that he saw no reason why Flynn & Schmidt could not own the whole continent if they tried. Fred twitted him re- garding his " cheek" in wanting to own the whole earth, and Sally had nettled him by saying he had better leave a little something or other for Queen Vic- toria and King William, and Ed had entered into a long dissertation on the subject of legal and illegal possession, and by the arrival of the time for the usual parting, Micky had been quite severely crushed, or, rather, in their own language, considerably " sat down on;" and when Ed and Fred had said good-night and had gone, he found himself alone with Sallv. who had fallen into a deep sleep. The cellar was only dimly lighted by one small tallow candle that was flickering and flickering, and shooting its faint and dying rays into the far corners back of Micky where the shadows fell deepest. He felt sad that his friends were unable to appreciate the wish to possess the world that dominated his breast. He felt lonely, and the silence grew oppressive. He thought of himself as a unit in the wide, wide world. Sixteen hundred million people were on the globe, but there he sat in an humble cellar, disappointed in not having one single heart to respond to a gigantic wish that seemed to him only an easy task in its ac- complishment; but he had earnestness, the one thing essential in life. Micky was in earnest, and sitting up close to the 130 THE KITE TRUST. work table, he planted his elbows on a pile of tissue- paper and then pressed his two cheeks down aj^ainst his clenched fists, and with knit brow thought of the whole woHd as traced on the map that Sally had drawn and later had filled up with data regarding com- merce. He was absorbed in himself, and the candle burned lower and lower, and the cellar corners and shadows grew darker and darker, and the silence grew intenser, and the cold shivers played over his body, and his frown grew tleeper and tleeper, and his heart beat harder and faster, and he certainly would have fallen into a stupor if he had not been awakened by the sudden echoing from the cellar walls and ceiling — the repeated reverberations of his own deep, agoniz- ing voice saving determinedlv and slowly, " I will own it all." When the last echo died away there came an un- earthly, blood-curdling thump or knock from directly beneath his elbows, and the table was lifted up ten inches from the floor, the jarringalmost extinguishing the last gasping of the struggling candle. He gave one look of alarm toward Sally, but saw her reclining five feet away in the calmest and deepest of slumbers. To say Micky was frightened is not sufficiently expressive. His first thought was of ghosts. His jaw' dropped two inches, but when, almost immediately, a second louder thump and higher movement of the table followed he fell backward, chair and all, into one heap on the floor. He lay cuddled up in a l)all for a full half- minute without breathing, with both arms entwined around his head, and with one foot lifted upward toward the table to protect himself from whatever it might be that was ghostly or ghastly that did the knocking. Gradually he opened one eye and, peeping out, was grateful to know that the candle was still burning and that he was alive; but the silence, however, was op- BLAVATSKY. I3I pressive, and all he could hear was at intervals the deep breathing of Sally. He waited half a minute longer, and was about to jump up and run to his sister when another more uncanny knock on the table came that brought his heart almost up in his throat, and caused him once more to lie low and cover up his face and head with his arms, and kick one foot and leg upward toward the table to defend himself from its nameless awfulness. It was two minutes before he again ventured to open an eye, which in the oppressive, silence he slowly accomplished, and then, after wait- ing a few seconds, he jumped up with almost the speed of a bounding ball, thinking to awaken Sally and run for the cellar steps; but he had hardly risen to his feet when he stopped and stood like a frigid statue, for as he rose he saw the heavy worktable lifted like a feather from off the floor and ascend almost to the ceil- ing; it sailed around in the air and came gently and softly down in front of the stairs, completely blocking his exit. He tried to scream, but his throat seemed frozen; he tried to start or run to Sally, but he was as immovable as the cellar wall; and all the while sweetly slumbering was his unconscious sister. He stood for a minute, and then, horror of horrors, the candle went out, and all was dark, and he could hear his heart beat; then came a low, ghostly moan or wail close to his ear, suddenly changing to a sweet, gentle sound and then to a murmuring strain, and in turn to a lulling tune. He felt himself growing warm and the blood flowed back to his cheeks; then came little sparks of light floating around in the darkness, and then longer flashes; and as the flashes lengthened the strains of music filled the whole place and he seemed fairly floating in an ocean of melody; and when he was almost lifted to the seventh heaven of ecstasy, it all suddenly ended with a crash and a bang, like to the sound of an awful peal of thunder and cym- 132 THE KITE TRUST. bals. Micky in the intense darkness dropped on the floor like a collapsed balloon, for with the crashing noise the sparkling light disappeared, and he heard nothing in the silent darkness but the deep breathing of Sally. For ten minutes Micky did not move a muscle; he had his senses, but was afraid to stir. At last he raised himself up, and as he did so the sparkling light returned. He gazed around and saw the table noise- lessly and slowly lifted without hands from the floor and sail gently around and around in the air. Then it settled slowly down on the floor directly over him, leaving him beneath it; then up again the table slowly rose until it reached the ceiling and rested. Some unseen force lifted him up to the ceiling, turned him over and placed his back against the underside of the table, and left him, with arms and limbs outstretched, suspended, face downward. For a seeming half an hour, amid the strange light and the intense silence, he remained there unable to move or scream or call for help, while down below him he could see Sally sleeping in the deej^est sleep, not another soul being in sight. Then the table slowly descended to its accustomed place; the bench or chair righted itself to where it belonged, and Micky felt himself gently wafted from beneath the table and around and around through the air, and at last once again he found himself in his accustomed place, sitting just as he was before, with his cheeks against his fists and his elbows on the table. But it was now all dark, and Micky said to himself, " What a strange dream I have had !" and was about to rise and awaken his sister and go upstairs, when there came a deep voice from out of the darkness, slowly and solemnly saying : " What you have seen and heard is not a dream, ex- cept as life is all a dream;" and then came a strange noise and a blinding light, and suddenly appeared be- BLAVATSKY. I 33 fore him, at Sally's side, an aged woman, with electrical sparks and flashes encircling her body, with lightning flowing from her hair and hands and fingers, all gyrat- ing around her with brilliant kaleidoscopic effect. She was wrinkled and gray, but beneath it all was the trace of a fair young face. For five minutes she looked steadily yet kindly at Micky, who was too completely scared to move or say a word ; she did not remove her gaze until suddenly, with a tone of authority, she calmly and slowly said, " I am Blavatsky," and imme- diately with her announcement came a clapping as of thunder and the cellar beamed with a thousand times the splendor of day, and the name of Blavatsky was flashed in the letters of a hundred different languages around the walls. The word Blavatsky struck a thousand terrors to poor Micky's soul. He had never heard of her before, but it sounded so much like the name of a man in the neighborhood who had been hanged for boiling alive and devouring two small boys, that Micky was now more than a million times alarmed at the prospect of a horrible ogreish ending to his ambitious life. Then came Blavatsky's voice, saying in deep and solemn tones : No cause for fear should emanate from me; I dwell where lives the essence of the vast eternity. On earth I breathed and passed allotted days, But did not garner in my life the holier ways That soonest earn for all that longed-for rest, Where in the joys of Karma souls are blessed. I came from other spheres before I flew to earth, Where, in the ages gone, I first found birth In that vague thought that means the Ego, I, That ever from one life through others fly To be reincarnated with a wish for blessed goal, Where upward in the evolution of a soul 134 THE KITE TRUST. The spirit or the Hfe can lodge at last With its earned blessing- from the struggling past. And as I wandered in the realms of space, I saw to-night your earnest, upturned face, And read the thoughts that dominate your zeal, And by attraction could your deepest longings feel. Thrice happy is the woman who gave birth To a son who has ambition to possess an earth. O'er all this globe there is no one like you, Thoughts so o'erwhelming only come to few. Such overtowering grasping is indeed quite rare, No one has lived w^ho can with you compare. Age is no barrier for the planting soil Where noblest seed develops noblest toil. A child can be the channel for the greatest deed, And you shall be receptacle for fruitful seed. The Brotherhood of man in you shall surely find A leader who will give to earth a holier mind. Your sleeping sister is the medium through Which mystic knowledge shall unfold to you. And from the spirit land through her I call The shade of one whose name is known to all. Josephus ! come ! I summon you at last To give this youth a knowledge of the buried past. Immediately a Hashing light illumined the whole place, which sent Micky almost into a fit, for he saw the figure of a man suddenly form itself from out of the surrounding nothingness and then stand beside the sleeping Sally. It was a clear case of materializa- tion, but as Micky had never heard of such a thing, his overwhelming dread of ghosts almost took away his breath, and he certainly would have dropped dead if he had not been won back to his senses l)y the kindly voice of the new apparition, saying: " Do not fear me, lad, you are safe from harm. I am the spirit of Josephus, an historian of the long ago. BLAVATSKY, 135 and I have been summoned here by the seeress Bla- vatsky, who bids me talk to you of events upon this earth occurring millenniums since. Your sister is also safe from danger, but cannot yet awaken, as it is through her unconscious life I am enabled to appear to you. She is one of the few or chosen human organ- isms that have inborn adaptation to be the channel or medium through which spirits passed to future spheres can reappear to men. I am come to do you good, to help you learn of unknown things, to give you insight into past events that governed all the commerce of an earth. You have conceived a most wondrous thought, to grasp a world, and boy as you are, have attracted to your side the passed-on spirits of most wondrous souls. Look to your right and you will see Napoleon come again to earth." Micky in an instant looked as directed, and once more lost his nerve, for there beside him, as natural as life, with massive brow, piercing eye, drooping head, and hand folded within his bosom, all in graceful pose, stood the man of destiny, thoughtful and silent, gaz- ing at Micky. " Fear not," said Josephus; " Napoleon sought to grasp the world through blood and war, but failed. He will ever be at your side and project his soul within your own. He sees the error of his day; he lived be- fore his time; this age in which you live is the era of commerce, and could Napoleon live to-day, in fifty years the earth and all upon it would be his. You have conceived his thought of thoughts to own a world, and in you will the genius of his life be poured. Into Napoleon did great Caesar pass; in Caesar did great Alexander live; in Alexander did Alkimos, greatest warrior of Atlantis, dwell, and in Alkimos was reincarnated the warrior Boeotarchus of your pre- historic world, he who dwelt in that palatial city cov- ered now with your Antarctic ice. So through your 136 THE KITE TRUST. life shall all these g'athered anibilions of an aeon find its vent. " Look on your left and see the wizard Cagliostro, guardian spirit genius that hovers ever near your part- ner Fred." Micky looked and nearly fainted at the presence of another ghost, whose eyes almost sent a dart of flame into his very life; but Josephus said: " Be not afraid; Cagliostro has rich words to say, but not just yet. More than a year will pass before he gives to you the secret wisdom of alchemic lore, and when he speaks your partner Fred must also be on hand to hear. " Look once again and see behind your back the hovering spirit genius of your youthful lawyer friend. His name is Dondros. the leading legal mind of a noble civilization long extinct. He has lived over and o\er in the lives of giant lawyers through two scores of thousand years ; he also will pass much infor- mation to you when Ed is by at some near future date. " Now look once more at the side of where your sister sleeps, and see a woman with whom none other of these later centuries can compare, Madam Guyon, a soul from earth, freighted with gentleness and love; she is the guardian angel of your sister's life, and she will in the days to come inform you how when power would seek companionship with noble love, that earth will then have fruitage in its perfect form." Josephus then proceeded, saying: " I have been summoned here to tell you of the past — the buried past. Much can I say. for history has its many chan- nels, with their various special data for students' whims, btit you require information of cominercial ways, and wisdom in the systems that give finance its strength and in the end its death; and so in that direc- tion I will freight you with knowledge of the vastness and the ending of accumulated wealth that wall be a ELAVATSKY. I 37 partial foundation to you for your future great career." During the first of this conversation of Josephus, Micky Hvecl a day of agonizing fright for every minute it lasted, but toward the close his confidence returned and a feeling came over him that now there was some one to sympathize with him in his wish to own a world. If his ideas of ghosts were correct he ought to have been ground to powder by the end of the first three seconds, but as five minutes had passed, and he was still alive, he came to the conclusion that it was all right, and so in a short time, as Josephus proceeded with his talk, jMicky became an open-mouthed lis- tener, drinking in every sentence as it came, and for an hour in the presence of Blavatsky, Napoleon, Cag- liostro, Dondros, Guyon, and the sleeping Sally, he sat respectful and silent, learning of things that to him were new and strange. CHAPTER XVIII. .THE IRON STANDARD. After the formal introduction of Micky to the "shades," Josephus — in the language Micky afterward used in relating it to the kite firm — -proceeded as fol- Ipws : " Those people who study the Bible claim that the earth has been peopled for six thousand years. Others say it has been inhabited for six thousand million years; but their disputes make no difference to us, so far as our talk to-night is concerned, whether it is six thousand or six thousand million, for there is not a thing left on the earth that any one to-day knows of that was made or fashioned by man back of only a little over six thousand years. Some say the pyramids, which are the oldest monuments on earth, were erected ten thousand years ago. To satisfy such chrpnologers, we will go back to fifty thousand years, if necessary, and commence the earth at that date with nothing of man's handiwork, just as you would find it if you went to some lonely island in the far-off South Pacific Ocean to begin, like Robinson Crusoe, to raise a nation. " So we will say that fifty thousand years ago there THE IRON STANDARD. I39 was not an object on the earth that man had made, because there had never been a human or intelHgent being there to make anything. Everything that was there at that time grew of itself. There were some animals, insects, and other living creatures, and trees and other vegetation. " At that date, 50,000 B.C., a lost balloon arrived at your uninhabited earth from the planet Mars with a man and his wife and a small colony of a dozen of their neighbors. They had been sailing in the air for a long time, and their provisions had given out and they were hungry. So they looked around, and found fruit and vegetables and fish and game and plenty of good drinking water, and that made them feel better; and after their long ballooning experience they con- cluded that as there were eatables and drinkables around, they had better make up their mind to settle and stay, and not venture back through space to their old home sixty million miles away. They afterward had children and grandchildren, and they died and were buried ; and at the end of fifteen hundred years there were living many thousands of their descendants, who, finding the climate cold, had learned to make clothing to wear and huts to shelter them from storms. During their first few years on our earth everything they made belonged to the whole party, and there was no word in their language that meant ' mine' and ' thine' ; the only expression of that kind was one word, ' ours.' They were all like a loving family of father, mother, and young children, not knowing any such thing as selfishness ; but each wanted the other to have enough of whatever there was. But later they grew numerous, and divided themselves into families, who moved hundreds of miles apart ; and they then felt responsible for their own people only and their neigh- bors. It was all the men could do to find time to raise food from the ground and hunt game ; and it took all 140 THE KITE TRUST. the time of the women to spin yarn, make clothes, and cook food, as none of them had any inchnation to go back one or two hundred miles or so to visit their old friends and relatives. Then in eighty or ninety years the g-reat-grandchildren forgot their fifth cousins and otlter distant relati\-es ; and as they did not know how to write, and there were no books or newspapers to read, or even alphabets to form words, in a few centu- ries they were forgotten to one another as kindred, and only heard of each other throug^h those who were \'enturesome enough to travel. All of these came back and told their friends that wdierever they went they found unfamiliar things to eat, and saw other kinds of clothing- and new inventions ; but they could not bring any of the new things back home, because they them- selves, like tramps, had nothing to give in exchange. " But later one of these travellers who had returned home thought of something in a distant settlement he wanted ; he concluded to go after it and take some apples, of which there were none in that far-off place to exchange, or, in other words, to pay for it. But he could not carry such a large quantity of fruit, and was about to give up the trip when his wife asked him if they did not need some sheep up there. He replied : ' Yes, I think they do.' ' Then,' said the wife, ' why do you not drive up some of our sheep? You will not have to carry them as you would apples, for the sheep can carry themselves.' So the man patted his wife on the shoulder and told her she had a ' big head ;' and he drove up a lot of sheep and a yoke of oxen, paying the stranger the sheep for the goods he wanted, which were fifteen buffalo robes and a wooden sledge ; then he hitched his yoke of oxen to the sledge, and thus hauled his buffalo robes home. " After that sheep became the money or medium of exchange I'jetween the two settlements, and the custom spread to other villages ; and by and by horses were THE IRON STANDARD. I4I added to the list, and then other animals, until this ani- mal money became quite complicated ; for one horse was equal to ten sheep, and one cow equal to five sheep, and one sheep equal to two dogs, and one dog equal to four cats. Things were getting badly mixed as to the kind or breed of dogs and cats that were to be given, and some one said he wished there was only one thing used for money, or a single-standard arrangement for ex- changes; but as there was not a single standard, disputes arose; and, having forgotten their relation- ship, the men went to war, and had unhappy times generally, until one day a man made a great discovery. He found a piece of iron, something unheard of before, and with it made an iron hoe; and he became widely known as the Man with the Hoe. Then every farmer wanted an iron hoe; and as almost every person needed one, they became a sort of single standard of value. A good-sized hoe was worth a horse, a half-sized hoe purchased a cow, twenty hoes could buy a hut, and three hoes a suit of clothes. It kept on in this way for hundreds of years, until hoes were recognized as money over the whole known earth, which extended for five hundred miles in all directions from the ancient Plymouth Rock, where that balloon from Mars first landed. " But one day a vast deposit of heavy rock or ore was found in a distant province, and some one dis- covered that by burning or melting this heavy rock they could extract iron out of it at very slight expense. They erected a smelter and made so much iron that the whole system of ' hoe' currency ultimately col- lapsed, for a company of a hundred men could now produce as much iron in one week as the whole known world could previously gather in fifty years. The nation was then flooded with hoes, and iron was melted into large blocks and stored up in high piles, and enough hoes were made to supply the farmers with ten 14^ THE KITE TRUST. thousand per month, while all a farmer needed or could really wear out was only one hoe per year. " The iron miners kept selling' hoes until they found the people did not care to take any more, so they inveigled the government into buying all they could mine and manufacture. Before long the government's money and storage warehouse capacity gave out, and heavy taxes were levied to raise money to satisfy the iron miners. It was not long before the government found itself in trouble ; the people were willing to pay the taxes as well as they could, but there was no other money known except ' hoe' money for the tax col- lectors to receive, and they took the hoes that were deposited in the banking houses and offered them to the iron miners in exchange for their product; but the miners wanted something else than the hoes made last year in exchange for their output of new hoes made this year, and the whole business world came to a standstill. Two hundred billion dollars' worth of chattels had accumulated during the four thousand years since the landing of the ballooners from Mars. It consisted of the houses in the cities and towns — not the land — and articles of furniture and luxury and of farm improvements and other things owned and needed by man, and a grand civilization was about springing into existence. No doubt they could have adjusted the hoe-currency affair by abolishing it en- tirely, and letting every person on a certain day lose the value of all the hoes they happened to have on hand, pocketing their losses and then burying their hoes from sight and wetring their graves with their tears. No doubt some arrangement could have been made of that kind. But a disaster came to the earth, which sa\-ed all the sorrow that would have fallen to all those citizens on whom the hoes had been ' saddled' l)y a few smart financiers, who, foreseeing the im- pending trouble, had got rid of their hoe holdings in THE IRON STANDARD. 143 exchange for houses and land and other good mer- chandise. " No doubt this smart scheme of shifting the losses on to the unsuspecting by the sharp financiers would have resulted in some men being sad and others happy; but fortunately or unfortunately,' just at that time the earth, in its far-sweeping orbit, swung into a snowflake nebula that was floating around in the universe, and in one night that whole part of the earth where these descendants of those few adventurers from Mars lived was buried under five miles of snow, which afterward turned into solid ice, the ponderous weight of which, in sliding onward to the ocean, de- stroyed the people and all traces of their accumulated wealth of houses and other chattels. The tonnage of ice crushed every piece of man's handiwork, and as it moved forward it rolled and tumbled and crunched and ground everything to powder. Thus, a whole civilization, people and all, was blotted from the face of the earth ; and not a monument or a brick or an article or a trace of anything of value can now be found, except that the Sahara Desert is covered with the powdered and sanded remains of that past civilization ; and the gods sat on tiie clouds and winked an eye at each other and laughed at the vanity of man ; and as they saw the $200,000,000,000 of human handiwork disappear they satirically said in a strange language of their own : ' Thus passeth away the glory of the world.' " CHAPTER XIX. BRICK STANDARD. " But," continued Josephus (in Micky's way of tell- ing the story), "the earth still remained, and went roll- ing on and on, and on and on, and in other lands than the present site of the Sahara Desert the animals and insects and trees and vegetation kept growing, but there was not a human being left to claim or quarrel about an inch of the vast domain, for wickedness and man left the earth at one and the same time, and the earth was free from sin ; but four thousand years later, about forty thousand years ago, a new sort of a flying machine came eight hundred and ten million miles, with a colony of eighteen souls from the planet Saturn, and landed on our globe and took possession of the entire earth in the name of their country. " Now these strangers from Saturn were entirely different from those who came from Mars. The latter were primitive and ignorant, and worked their way upward along the slow lines of progress to civilization: but these Saturn voyagers were somewhat advanced in the arts and brought with them knowledge. They had an alphabet of hieroglyphics, and were the off- spring of the planet Saturn people whose bent of mind BRICK STANDARD. 145 turned in the direction of astronomy. Their planet was seven hundred and fifty milHon miles farther from the sun than Mars was, and, being more distant from its influence, they had grown up, under a sense of its mystery, to be sun-worshippers. " They were a nation of builders, spending their greatest energy in erecting temples, of which untold gigantic examples dotted their own entire planet, and they brought to earth with them their custom or medium of exchange, which was bricks. Their money was bricks, and a certain size brick was the unit or of standard size in a day; therefore, one hundred bricks of standard size in a day; therefore, one hundred bricks, or a day's labor, was the dollar bill or measure of ex- change, and each brick equaled one-hundredth part of a dollar, the same as one of our cents. If one man was stronger or quicker than another, it was his in- born advantage, and he could make more per day than his neighbor. "When these new colonizers reached our earth, they landed on that portion of it now known as Egypt, and after looking around and satisfying themselves that the soil was capable of supporting life, and finding fruit and game in abundance, they concluded to stay and to venture no farther with their air-ship toward the centre of the solar system. Having been taught that labor was honorable, they set to work to make bricks thirty-five minutes after they landed, which was at twenty-five minutes after five o'clock a.m.; and by night-time of the first day each person had made for himself or herself a hundred bricks. Then after ar- ranging their handiwork in individual piles, they sat down on top of them and commenced to talk. " They all agreed that they were not making bricks for the fun of it, nor because they especially liked it, and they all also agreed that they were not exactly making them for eating purposes. They knew per- 146 THE KITE TRUST. fectly well that something to eat and to wear and a house to live in were necessary, and that some of their number on the next day had better spend their time in gathering food, others in making clothes, and others in building houses; and, according to agreement, they commenced their separate vocations the following morning. Some added the bricks they had made dur- ing the second day to the previous pile that they had made on the first day, while others from their individ- ual piles of bricks made on the first day took enough when the second evening came to pay others for their second day's necessities; and each of them added to their brick piles the additional bricks received .from their own individual sales of food and clothes they had accumulated or made during the second day. But as the weeks flew by, somehow, the quick and more in- dustrious and the economical among them found their individual piles of bricks growing larger, while others, who lagged or idled, found their piles diminished, with sometimes all their bricks gone and nothing left but their empty plot of land; but they had good sense enough to see why this was so, and why others grew richer and had more bricks than they, and thus they did not upbraid the others for their own personal idle- ness and extravagance. The only man who made himself obnoxious during the first ten years of the colony was one who, in a moment of pride, paid all of his pile of bricks for a beautiful diamond that one of the party happened to find. After the purchaser's wife had adorned herself with it two or three times, and the novelty wore off, he wanted to sell it back; but when the lucky finder would not repurchase it, and no one else was extravagant enough to buy it at any price, a fuss ensued, of his making, that endangered the har- mony of the entire settlement. " Three hundred years passed by, and bricks were still the single standard of exchange. The accumulation BRICK STANDARD. 1 47 of bricks of the three centuries was represented in beautiful residences. The population had increased to nearly half a million souls, and the more powerful and wealthy directed and governed affairs, until at last strength ruled entirely and kings owned everything in sight. " A thousand years passed, various kings ruling in the different cities. They fought, bled and died, but the one great satisfaction they experienced at their last moment was in the fact that their wealth could not be carried away to distant empires, for they had increased the size of their bricks to such enormous proportions that no one wanted to remove them. When a rich man had a thousand bricks of the regulation size he would exchange them for a large piece of scarce build- ingstoneof the same aggregate cubic dimensions, and ifhehadamillion bricks, the stone would be still larger in proportion. As an indication of wealth, rich men placed these large stones in their front yards as a boastful sign of their prosperity. Kings outshone their richest subjects and erected monolithic or obe- lisk evidences of wealth, covering them all over with hieroglyphics, telling flattering things about them- selves; and not satisfied even with such things, they erected great abiding pyramids, and as the people passed by, or as distinguished travellers came from other lands and viewed the mighty treasure piles, the keepers or officers pointed to them with great pride and told of the multi-billion evidences of the prosper- ity of their kings. " All around the bases of these brick or rocky treas- ure heights were groves and temples with sphinxes at a thousand points, and down underneath the pyra- midic piles were gold-lined chambers, the resting places of the kingly dead, and their burial-service songs told that he who rested beneath that pyramidal form was covered or roofed over with the wealth of a mil- 148 THE KITE TRUST. lion, million, million days of labor, all of which he hoarded in the hours he ruled on earth. *' The currency of the Egyptian kingdom was seem- ingly everlasting, but certainly inconvenient for more modern methods. The wealthy had numerous slaves to follow them and carry along the bricks necessary for daily purchases, and this currency thus had the advantage of being safe from extensive robbery. Trusted men never absconded with a brickyard in their valises, and although gold and silver abounded, it was never dreamed of for monetary purposes. It was too plentiful one year and too scarce another, and did not represent to them a day's toil, as its value was too often changed by each great and newly discov- ered mine, and every king could alloy it at his own pleasure, and thus cheat his overburdened subject slaves; but bricks for money were all right, as one hundred bricks were all an average person could make in one day. It was established and satisfactory. " But wealth is never safe when gauged by any form of earthly toil, and after their fifty centuries of existence, one hundred bricks still was the standard of a man's daily work, that daily work being repre- sented by the stately monuments on every hand that rich men owned. " But a sad day came for all their hoarded gain, for from the brain of a man evolved a thought which gave impulse to inventive skill, and brick machines of wondrous size were built that gave a man the power to make a million bricks a day. A score of men built up a pyramid with liquid cement that hardened into blocks, and finished in a week's time what heretofore had cost the labor of two million men for fifty years. Thus the finance system of five thousand years col- lapsed in ninety days, and rich men walked the streets and found themselves compelled to enter into com- petition with their former slaves.. BRICK STANDARD. 149 " That Egyptian era was the richest known to earth, but it passed away, for in that far back hour, when brick machines unsettled the foundation of weahh, the earth suddenly swung forward through a great nebula of mist that turned to tropic rain, and bursting, clouds came pouring down the mountain sides, sweeping the towns and cities out of existence, and the entire race of man, with all his wealth, was buried beneath the roll of a million-fold Niagara's gathered force; and when at last the earth in its orbit emerged from this vapory, nebulous cloud, the waters swiftly eddied to deep caverns in the earth, sucking down with it the soil and surface coverings in its dreadful onward rush, and thus a world's wealth of architecture and ornament disappeared with the mighty flood. All that remained on the surface of the storm-swept globe w^ere a few gigantic pyramids and a massive sphinx to tell the tale of the slavish toil of millions of souls whose labor represented a world of wealth that vanished in an hour. Man and sin were once more gone, and naught but silence reigned." CHAPTER XX. CHECK STANDARD. JosEPiius, continuing, said (according to Micky) : " Nothing of financial importance occurred to our world after the aforementioned incidents until the year 20,000 B.C., when the inhabitants of the moon emigrated in a body to our earth, coming in private conveyances of their own invention. The facts re- garding the moon and the causes of the emigration are as follows : " When the various planets were originally formed they were hot to the degree of ten million furnace power, although in the course of ages they cooled off. Of course, the smaller the diameter of the sphere, the sooner it parted with its heat ; consequently, the moon's inhabitable life was of comparatively short duration on account of its smaller bulk, and when at last it parted with its remaining store of heat it gradually grew colder and colder, until the people could endure it no longer. They then (with the exception of one man left to guard the place) came to our globe and settled on an island continent called Atlantis. " They had the industrial experience of their ances- tors in their moon life, and had found out that all of CHECK STANDARD. I5I man's treasure and workmanship was liable to tumble or decay, for they had seen two eras of the moon's prosperity entirely destroyed by cyclones and other disturbances. So in their third and last era in the moon they had abolished the erection of buildings, that they readily saw could only be built to come down again. To profit by past experience, they dug for their habitations^ vast holes in the ground, that could not fall down in any manner, and at the same time they could thus dwell nearer to the central source of what little heat still remained in the interior of their sphere. " The island of Atlantis was almost the size of our South America, and the Moonites upon arrival plotted off the whole land area into square yards and divided it up equally, so that every man, woman, and child started even. They did this because of former experi- ences. All their previous buildings and treasures had been torn away, and had left them an impoverished people: and they had to desert their former homes in the moon, that had cost countless treasure, and now they concluded to try and own just the barren, naked land of Atlantis, and to depend on that and nothing more. " For each square yard of land was issued a certifi- cate, each certificate being divided into nine shares of one square foot each. Each square foot had attached to it one hundred and forty-four coupons, representing square inches, and every full certificate was recorded in the record office of the great city of Alladina, the capital of the nation. These certificates became cur- rency, and great prosperity ensued ; but it was the old story over again of some people saying ' the rich grew richer and the poor poorer,' until the Emperor was empowered to behead any one on the spot who whis- pered such an untrue sentiment. The poor people, when they found they had to do so, opened their eyes and found out the true state of affairs; and a new 152 THE KITE TRUST. motto came into existence, which was, that the saving man was the one who grew richer, and the spendthrift the one who grew poorer. At last, when every one appreciated the truth of the new saying, there came an era of economy, and land certificates became the cur- rency of the nation, being sold and hoarded up until every one was on the road to wealth ; when, to the sorrow of the great majority, it was discovered that fraudulent certificates had been issued by unscrupulous parties. A panic immediately ensued, the bad certifi- cates could not be told from the genuine, and anarchy prevailed in the general scramble of each indi\'idual to save himself. " Two thousand years had passed since the Moonites landed on the earth, and a change had come in refer- ence to ideas regarding the erection of houses, for the great island continent of Atlantis had become beautiful with its dwellings and temples so lavishly erected ; but when the panic came no one knew who was the proper owner of the soil. " In the midst of the tumult the Emperor called a halt, deciding that all certificates, good or bad, were null and void, and seized tb.e entire ground for the benefit of the government. He, however, gave a privi- lege to every one to use for himself that portion of the earth on which his house, store, or factory stood; and to every farmer he leased as much land as one man could till, and when all was adjusted he found every man, woman, and child provided for, and all started anew. The Emperor agreed nevermore to disturb or tax a dollar's worth of anything that was on the land, providing his subjects would pay, per agreement, a rate of tax per square yard on all the land they needed or used. In this manner the land belonged to the Emperor or State, wdiile the subjects owned everything else on the land, on which no tax could be levied : and thus capital, or accumulated wealth, was forever free. CHECK STANDARD. 1 53 " Land certificates for the entire surface were then the property of the King, and used by him for financial security to the nation ; and a new system of currency was adopted, which was checks on banks. Everything down to a penny was paid for in checks, and no one, under penalty of death, was allowed to buy anything unless he had funds in the bank to pay for it, and gave his check at the time of the purchase. All bank officials who defaulted were executed on five minutes' notice. " This monetary system prevailed, a model of suc- cess, for two thousand years, making a total of four thousand years since the landing from the moon. They had no other nation to deal with, and the integ- rity of a check was the safeguard for them all ; and when a check was found to be spurious the general government made it good one day after the execution of the delinquent. "' The most gorgeous houses and luxurious furnish- ings abounded, property valued at $12,000,000,000 had been accumulated, and every one was rich and happy. Living on earth was voted a success, but earthly possessions were considered not abiding or lasting. " But again, in a moment's time, all was changed ; a great monster sun spot suddenly affected the terres- trial magnetic currents ; an awful earthquake occurred, houses and temples and palaces tottered and fell, and upturned, terror-stricken faces saw the dark, gathering clouds suddenly descending and enveloping them in a blinding mist; and then came a rumbling, reverberat- ing, roaring, appalling sound, deafening every one. Then a sudden sinking of the earth, a rushing in of mighty waters, and a whole island continent, with its freight of struggling human beings and garnered treasures, dropped like a huge mountain and sank far down beneath the inrushing ocean waves. Almost in an instant the great island of Atlantis and four thou- 154 Tin: KITE TRUST. sand years of humanity, with its strug^gles and hopes, (Hsappeared forever from earthly \ic\v. Man and sin had once more vanished ; l)nt the stars looked down, and alone saw the surging waves gradually receding, until a peaceful calm sent back to their silent eyes nothing but their own abiding reflection, and Atlantis was no more." CHAPTER XXI. THE ART STANDARD. " Venus," continued Josephus, " like the rest of the planets controlled by our sun, as well as the plan- ets of every other system, commenced its usefulness under circumstances common to them all; that is, it took ages for its surface to cool sufficiently to admit of both animal and vegetable life, and when that era did at last arrive, then seaweeds, grass, flowers, trees, fruit, insects, and animals in their order began their upward progression from indefiniteness to perfection. In fact, no world has power within itself to resist its own order of evolution. Each earth has the life-prin- ciple in its general make-up, which is bound to assert itself sooner or later, and at last reach its highest ideal in man. And then from manhood evolves a some- thing, that after death can emanate from the planet itself, to live eternal amid the general cosmos. '' The inhabitants of Venus from their own humble life germ developed into superior mortals, as their turn of mind was toward the scientific and aesthetic; and when, in one of its inventive centuries, a daring company of experimentalists were rash enough to allow themselves to be shot in a steel cvlinder from a 15^ TIIK KTTK TRUST. pneumatic cannon into the spaces beyond the control of their own world's gravity, they sped for a woeful period, until by chance they reached the attracting influence of our earth, and then commenced their downward flight until they plunged and sank into the ocean that surrounds the beautiful Eutomia island, now called Ceylon. At the depth of one mile, the mighty force or dive of their descending air-tight cylinder was arrested by the water's resistance. It arose to the surface and drifted landward, where the occupants made their exit, and found themselves on solid earth, breathing the pure atmosphere of an uninhabited world. " The company consisted of eight married couples, and their first act was to take possession of the earth in the name of the planet Venus, by planting on the mainland their flag, which consisted of a large field of deep blue silk, on which was exquisitely designed in white the figure of a beautiful woman, covered loosely with only the most delicate of gauzy apparel. " For their new earth name, these Venusians called their island Eutomia, and styled themselves Euto- mians. It was a word from the language of the planet Venus, signifying what would be defined in English as 'grafting' or 'cross breeding'; for the principle underlying the whole structure of their Venus civil- ization was an endless effort to assist nature to the loftier ideals in the aesthetic. " For instance, they cultivated flowers for the sake of creating a rivalry to unfold the highest perfection as to beauty and fragrance; and grafting was the manner of its accomplishment. But fragrance and beauty were only portions of their cherished pur- poses. Artificial zephyrs were created by a system of delicate machinery, to convey the pollen from one flower to another that was placed in special and ex- perimentally discovered proximity; and heat to cer- THE ART STANDARD. 1 57 tain temperatures was adjusted to produce scientific results. New varieties of insects were propagated with a view to their influence in their gentle flittings from one flower to another, to help the original pre-blooming organizations; and the more beautiful the advancement in the floral art, the better were the results gained by placing them near the bearers of un- born children. '' This last thought was the real basis of their high ideas regarding the reproduction of the human spe- cies; for that which surrounded human beings at cer- tain periods of existence was deemed to influence future lives, and thus ' environment' became the chief concern of humanity; and in this thought art, in directing nature, became the central incentive to oc- cupation, as human beings craved the possession of that which would help to mould posterity to loftier perfection. " Grace and beauty were deemed of far more conse- quence than speed or utility; and animals, flowers, vegetation, and manufactures were arranged for with careful forethought, as object lessons for the vision only. If outward imperfections existed in life or in objects of any form, they were destroyed or removed from the sight of man. " The entire Venus world bathed in a continual presence of grace and beauty. Curves predominated in all classes of architecture, as well as in everything adapted for man's uses. An artist's canvas was never debased with a single reproduction from flora, forest, or lower animal nature; to paint a rose or a woodland was a misdemeanor, as it was deemed an encroach- ment on the domain of nature itself, and no one would dare to approach nature for the purpose of imitation; it was considered beneath the dignity of lotty genius. Art was legalized only for an advancement in perfec- tion in the realms of the ideal; one exception only was 158 THE KITE TRUST. made, and that was the imitation of the human form was encouraged. Perfection in the naked was de- manded, but the nude was shunned, and every safe- guard was thrown around the sculptor's and artist's efforts to raise the mind of mankind to exaltation in the chaste and pure. Human form in perfection, in marble and on canvas, was met with at every turn; pose and muscular strength in man was depicted to make mind impressions of power, sanitation, and longevity; woman's form was constantly before the public to give the highest ideals of grace and beauty; and all of this was primarily intended to assist in bringing into existence perfection in physical man- kind; and the longing wish, above every other, was for noblest parenthood. "Thus was the planet Venus clothed with a mantling of man's handiwork that ever appealed to the aesthetic. The cities were masterpieces of imagina- tion, and the villas and country scenes were wide- sweeping day-dreams of classic beauty. Lawns were floral pictures of scenes of love, and vast grain fields were arranged to be tinted tableaus of prowess and valor. Statues of Jupiter, TIercules, Venus, Hermes, and a thousand others abounded in every place of vantage, and homes and palaces were beautiful visions of delicate lacework in marble. But the temples of music were divine, and oratorios were the acme of the world's education. Everything of pastime was subor- dinated to music, and from childhood onward the conservatory was their chief delight, and temples to the Muses were erected on even a greater scale of grandeur than is, or has been, characteristic of the glorious cathedral buildings on our earth. " Gold, silver, and metals were unknown, but for- estry was the chief department in the Royal Service, and foliage of a hundred tints was arranged each with its respective trees, to form a pictured national THE ART STANDARD. 159 thought when viewed in vast area from some great mountain height. Such were the scenes in Venus, the beautiful morning or evening star to earth, when came their emigrants to our Ceylon's shores. " The sixteen souls commenced in an humble way to colonize our earth and stamp the impress of their home civilization on the coming man of earth, and w^hen three thousand years had passed, a second Venus scene had spread o'er*Ceylon's balmy isle, and lovely homes and charming groves and dazzling cities were owned and peopled by a race of men and women whose perfection of physique was envied by the gods. '' These beings from another star felt humbled at the thought that money must be used to measure things in art. Experience had taught them the neces- sity of having a standard of value. It was hard, very hard to feel that ' price' was one of the requirements of daily life. They loved their art work, and in their love would gladly give away whatever another wished; and it was so for ages that each one toiled at whatever his talent directed. Every one's needs were met, and no one took of anything which he could not in equal measure return. No one went hungry, naked, or in lack of anything that could be lovingly supplied, for it was all exchange of love. " But selfishness at last developed, and when it came, a change was necessary in the manner of sup- plying wants. Price was fixed; each man's work or service had its grade, and money developed into use. Statues of the human form became the money or medium of exchange, and little art-work forms of men and women represented smaller change. Larger carv- ings, covering special days of work employed in their making, had their corresponding value, and marble statues had their higher buying capacity in propor- tion to time and skill in workmanship. When a ' Venus de Medici' or a ' Milo' was created by some l6o THE KITE TRUST. master hand, it was placed in the royal gallery, with its value affixed, and rich men had shares in its pos- session, these shares being represented by ivory tags that passed as currency; and rivalry existed among wealthy men to gather in the entire issue of one series of tags, so as to own an entire statue to carry to their homes. As the years rolled by, tags became numer- ous, wealth abounded, and banking houses were es- tablished, in whose deposit vaults were marble and ivory gods and statues of every name, all of which passed from bank to bank and hand to hand in the usual course of banking or channels of trade. " A man's precious wealth, if not in the bank, was in his parlor or on his lawns, and no one would steal a statue, large or small, for fear of the anger of the gods. No one could counterfeit art. Attempts were made by moulding powdered marble in imitation of cele- brated forms, but the world was educated in the small- est details of its choicest work, and no one dared or wished to offer spurious work for sale. " No trouble was experienced in this ' currency of art,' and the wealth of the government was seen on every hand in the lavishness with which beautiful statuary lined the thoroughfares and decorated the public buildings; and the people loved the money that was in their pockets, parlors, lawns, or highways. They could see the highest ideals of manhood and womanhood constantly before them to remind them of the responsibility devolving on them in their desire to realize what they owed to posterity. " And so our beautiful Ceylon Island of Eutomia became the garden and art paradise of earth, and would have given its share of glory to mankind to- day had it continued to exist ; but in the four thousand nine hundred and sixty-seventh year of the national existence of the Eutomians a great plague of stone- boring and wood-powdering insects came swarming THE ART STANDARD. l6l down on the island from the unknown cloud-lands. As they approached, the heavens were darkened as at midnight; they came like the cloud-bursts on our Western plains; like the rushing of a tornado, with the ponderous might of a volcanic wave; they came in hunger, like the fury of starving, savage lions. They covered the entire land to the depth of the sands of the desert. They came in the morning; they pow- dered and ground and destroyed everything on the surface of the land and sea, excepting living human- ity, and when evening time settled over the land, the insects flew away as suddenly as they came; but the glory of the fairest place that earth had ever seen was gone. Vegetation had disappeared; not even a tree or its trunk, or a branch or a twig or a leaf remained. Not a house or the smallest object of its contents could be seen. Not an article of clothing was left on the people. Not a blade of grass or a flower or a statue or a penny's worth of a world's wealth was vis- ible; not a living object save naked mankind. Noth- ing around but powdered wealth. " In all directions, north, south, east and west, up the mountains and down the dale, over the field and over the moor, in the city and over the farmland, everywhere, stretching in uneven layers, was a yellow- ish, sandy vista, mocked by the golden smiles of a glorious evening sunset; and bewildered, terror- stricken, dazed mankind sat down on the new-made desert, and, speechless, looked into one another's faces and bowed their heads on their knees and wept. The rollicking gods refrained from jesting and sat in silent sorrow as they gazed down on the heart-crushing agony of the most magnificent types of physical hu- manity their eyes had ever beheld; and when morning dawned, not a human soul was left alive to tell the tale, and heart-broken Eutomia was no more. The angels of earth who had folded their wings and sor- l62 THE KITE TRUST. rowfiilly bowed their heads the niglit before now wel- comed the new-born spirits into their kingdom, and talked with them of the vanity of mortals who labor for ages to accumulate treasures on earth, that give no permanent or abiding joy. " And thus, fair Ceylon — beautiful Eutomia — was for a day one vast ' Tower of Silence,' strewn with the snowy-white lifeless remains of the loveliest of earth's forms of manly grace and womanly beauty, and the breezes drifted the new-made sand in wavy rifts. When the second evening spread her mantle o'er the scene, a hundred million mounds told of a hundred million buried human temples, whose winding sheets were powdered remnants of a once-loved wealth of glorious art that had been all their own." At the close of Josephus's talks on the money standards of vanished civilizations of former ages, he graciously bowed adieu, and with a sound as of a clap of thunder Blavatsky and her associate " shades" sud- denly disappeared. CHAPTER XXII. TAXES. " What do yoii mean by free trade?" said Sally to Ed one Eriday evening in the cellar when Micky and Ered were pasting the tissue-paper on and giving the finishing touches to their week's work of kite frames. All eyes turned to Ed, but he sat silent for ten minutes ; the silence was " catching," and the rest kept quiet to let Ed get his thinking mill wound up, which, when accomplished, he commenced as follows : " Eree trade, as you hear it spoken of, and as you read about it in the papers, is mixed up or interwoven with those other questions of tariff and protection and taxes and internal revenue. I will first talk to you about taxes, as that is the easiest understood, for you all know that people in communities have to first support themselves by getting food and water for themselves and their families ; for getting food and sustaining life is the primary requisite on earth of each individual, as it is quite evident that a community of dead people is not a very enterprising one ; and no food and drink means death. The next thing of importance is to get clothing, and the next is houses to live in, and 164 THE KITE TRUST. after that there arc hundreds of things that men want that follow in their regular order. " Now, clothing, food, houses, books, and such things do not grow wild in the woods ; and to get food, clothing, houses, and other desirable things, it takes about all the time a father or brother has, for he goes away early in the morning and comes back late at night barely to get a living. The mothers and sisters work even longer hours than the men-folks; and as all their time is so fully occupied, it is necessary in the city where we live and in other cities and towns of the land to have some one to look after the government of the place, and people must be hired and paid for that purpose. There has to be a mayor, or head man, and he must protect the people in their lives and property; so he employs policemen for their respective duties; fire-engines are bought and men paid to save property ; streets are expensively paved and kept clean, and parks and pleasure places arranged for; reservoirs are built, pipes are laid, and men hired to supply pure water; school-houses are established and judges elected to settle disputes, and all the other necessary numerous arrangements are made. How to pay for them all is the important question. "' The mayor of the town has grave duties to per- form, one of which is to see that every person in the place who is able to do so pays his or her rightful share of all those expenses ; so he employs men to study into the subject and find out who has money in bank or property of any kind, and how much. " The sum of money to be raised that is necessary to pay for all the city expenses is called taxes, and the question is, who shall pay the taxes ? There is a great controversy on this subject. Some say that labor should be free, which should also really mean accumu- lated labor or wealth. Now, what does all that man uses, excepting God's earth or ground, represent? Is TAXES. 165 it not all, as I have said, accumulated labor? Have I not explained to you that everything man owns, ex- cepting the land itself (or the original earth or globe), has been made or manufactured or changed from one thing into another or cultivated in some way or attended to by the work or time of some one, such as houses and their furnishings, fields of grain, orchards and food, clothes, and all other of man's possessions? So there are only three grand subdivisions of every- thing on earth that can be taxed in order to raise the necessary money. " The first subdivision is the people themselves, for some say the best way to raise taxes is to charge so much per head, or, to use the Latin expression, per capita; but this is very unpopular and not adopted. The second subdivision is the bare land, or real estate, as it is called ; and the third subdivision is the chattels, or, in other words, all the handiwork or accumulated labor of man that he has placed on the land or real estate. Now, as the per capita tax is unpopular, the other two — land, or real estate, and chattels, or ac- cumulated labor — necessarily are attached or levied upon by the tax collectors to raise the money for the city expenses. " I cannot vote yet, and have no say in the matter ; but when I am old enough to vote and make speeches I am going to use my influence to show people that labor of all kinds should not be taxed, whether it be to-day's work or the work accumulations of last year or the last century ; for wealth is labor, or what you might call stored-up labor. I am going to show people that the easiest and best and fairest way to raise taxes is to tax the real estate, or land, only; and that all houses, stores, and accumulated labor or chattels or personal property, as it is called, of every kind should be free. " Everything comes out of the earth, and man l66 THE KITE TRUST. shtAild be charged or taxed for only just the part of the ilat earth he wishes to use. And when he or his father or his grandfather or his great-grandfather has been smart enongli to get an3^thing out of the earth, lie or they ought to be compHmented for it, and not pounced down upon l)y their fellow-men and made to pay taxes for their smartness. *' When a citizen of the nation travels over his country and sees the treasures, homes, and factories of the cities, and the cultivation and habitations of the farms, he should be proud and glory in the business of his people; for the work or labor of all can really be called by one name — business ; and why should busi- ness be taxed? Business should l)e free, as all pros- perity depends upon it, and all that business produces should be free." " But," said Sally, " how can you tax the land only and not the houses and call that fair ; for the rich city man only owns a little piece of land a hundred feet square with a palace on it, while the farmer owns a hundred acres and a cottage? You certainly would not want the poor farmer to pay a great sum in pro- portion to the extensive land he holds with his humble cottage, and the rich merchant pay only on his little small lot, and all his fine, expensive place and furniture and fixtures on it go free?" " Why, no!" said Ed. " If it were arranged to tax only the land, and not the house or other things on it, the farmer would not have to pay any more tax than he does now, or the rich city man any more than he does now; there would be no difference whatever in the end, because city lantl is worth so much more than country land. Why, I read in the paper the other day of a piece of land, one hundred feet square, on Fifth Avenue, in New York City, on which there is no house whatever, just simply a vacant lot, and the owner has paid for this year's taxes $8000. Just think of it! Why, the TAXES. 167 taxes he paid for one year on his httle quarter-acre city lot are more than any one of three-fourths of the farms of the whole country are worth. " There are just so much taxes to be raised to run the, city government and just so much to run the country government; and if the sum is charged all in one lump on the land itself, the farmers are no worse off in the end in their district, and each one is saved the inquisitory humiliation of some assessor coming to his home and questioning him — a freeman — as to how many horses and watches and pigs and carriages he has, and about his wife's clothing and about his furniture and how much money he has in bank and how many stocks and bonds he has, which should be no man's business except his own. The great differ- ence it would make is that the rich farmer and the rich city speculator would not try to grab so much land ; and if taxes were heavy on land, and houses and stock and other things free, they would only want to own what land they could cultivate or use, which would, consequently, give other people a chance to get the good unused land and farm it. Just think of the thou- sands of farmers who have five or ten times as much land as they can cultivate, and who would soon part with their farms if taxes on land were high. They would take this money received from the selling of the unused land and build houses on which there were no taxes, or put it into some kind of trade or business where there were no taxes ; and in this way their money would give employment to laboring men, and not be in uncultivated land tracts, doing nobody any good. " It would be the same way in the towns that grow to be cities, where hundreds of men, in advance, buy ground on speculation and let their money lie idle, wait- ing for energetic business men to erect houses around them, start stores and build street railroads. Thus, 1 68 THE KITE TRUST. without any effort on their part, others make their property vahiable, and they become rich through other people's energy, hard work, and suffering. It is not a bit fair that great landed estates, owned by idle men and boys who never did a day's work in their lives, should increase so in value; it is not right that those boys should* have been made rich and indepen- dent by their fathers buying land around cities, which land became valuable not from any labor of their own, but because working people and pushing business men built up all aroimd them and made them rich. If the people made the land rich or valuable, who should get the benefit of it? Why, I think the land or ground should belong to the State or the people themselves ; and every person who wants to use land should ask for as much as he or she actually needs and can pay rent for to their community, city, or town. The price they pay per year would be the necessary tax per year ; and then if the ground grows valuable, the whole people would get the benefit, and not a few heirs to estates which have become vastly valuable because other people than the owners made them valuable by building up around them. If these land speculators had to pay an equal tax on all their land, they would not be able to hold it ; and then, instead of their invest- ment money lying idle for years in land, it would, directed to other channels, be doing good all those years in business enterprises, in employing people and supporting families, and other people would be tilling the vacant or unused soil. " This thought of a land tax was advocated by Henry George. It was not altogether new with him ; it is as ancient as Joseph and Pharaoh. Henry George deserves great credit for writing about it and talking it up, and when other people know more about it they will agree with him. He has written a book that every one should read. Most of the people who talk against TAXES. 169 the plan are those who do not know anything about it or have not looked into the subject. " The question of land tax is a very deep one. In the first place, nature gave the earth free to man, Adam and Eve at one time having it all to themselves. They needed no money to buy clothing; and the climate being perfection itself, no house was required. As for something to eat, all they had to do was to go out in the natural groves and pick bananas, pineapples, and peaches until they were tired, and they had good sense enough in those days not to eat meat ; but when a change came to Adam and Eve's independent mode of life, and work was instituted on the earth, then they had to hustle and earn a living as man does to-day. " As the centuries rolled by, people took up the land and farmed it or raised cattle. Various communities or tribes were established, settling in countries of their own selection ; and as the centuries rolled by, they in- creased in numbers and grew rich, having kings and rulers, who taxed the people in various ways. Later a number of tribes joined together and formed nations, and after this some king, more warlike and formidable than others, conquered various provinces and formed empires, and on several occasions aspired to have the whole earth under one government, like the Assyrian, Babylonian, Grecian, and Roman Empires. Adventu- rous men went beyond the bounds of the then known world, discovering new continents and islands, until now every land is known and owned by somebody ; and out of our planet's soil, air, and water everything that man uses is derived. " All of us are on this earth without any will of our own. We were born and could not help being born. We did not have will or sense enough even to object to our own birth ; and by the time we began intelligently to realize that we were on the earth we, in order to live and keep our soul and body together, had to start lyO THE KITE TRUST. in to work and hustle to earn a living, digging it out of the earth or else doing a service or work of some kind for others who do get it out of the earth ; for if man stopped work in getting things out of the earth, air, or water, then in a year or two, when everything was gone out of the stores and off the farms, we should all die. " There is no good reason why some few men should own all the land. The earth itself belongs to all the people and not to individuals ; and every one should have all he can rightfully and economically use or till or personally occupy, and thus pay his share of the earth's expenses. He should have that and no more. It should not be in his name or ownership; it should be in the name of the whole people or govern- ment, as it is called, and every person who thus takes the land should pay his share of the expenses of the government. Everything that man produces or builds on the earth — that is, all of the accumulated wealth — should be free of taxation, for w^ealth is accumulated labor, and labor of no kind should be taxed. " Thus, when any person asks the government for a piece of land to till or build on, it should be a lease and be his or his heirs or assigns forever or as long as the taxes are paid, the same as ground is held now; for if a man to-day does not pay his taxes, his land is sold to some one who will pay. It would be just as is the present way of leasing for a long term of years a piece of land, only instead of leasing it for a few years from some individual who has speculated for it, you lease it from the government or the people, and all you, with your enterprise and energy, put on the land belongs to you free of taxes, and your personal property can be sold when the lease is transferred to some one else as improvements on leased property are now transferred. In this way no man will be defrauded of his goods or personal possessions, and he will be TAXES. 171 smart enough not to want to ask his fellow-citizens for more land than he can use or on which he can easily pay the taxes. Then as the valuable lots in the city or the suburban property or farms become more valuable, the people or government will get the profit or advantage of it, instead of the individual specu- lator; and the profit to the people will show itself in reduced taxation to every one, including those first persons who leased their portion of the ground and used it at the time the town or city was founded. Laboring men will then have to pay less rent; for, in other words, more people will have assembled in one community to share the expenses of the government, and the people all together, both rich and poor, have reduced the taxation by making for themselves the profit, instead of a few rich families who now make their landed wealth by sitting down and doing nothing, letting enterprising people build all around them, thus making more valuable their ground every year, and making them richer day by day and even by night while they are sleeping. The great landed wealth of the country to-day is in the hands of a few rich fami- lies in each town and city, whose wealth was produced by no labor of their own, but by the efforts of the people who built up around them. The people who made the additional values are the ones who should be benefited by it in some way, and the way to do it is for the people as a community to own all the land themselves." " But," said Fred, " how can the people get back the land, now that other people own it ; would it be ' square' to take it away from them?" " No," said Ed ; " they got it all right, according to law, and they deserve it, as it is the custom and usage and way of the present time ; and nothing that belongs to a man rightfully should be taken away from him without pay. Please bear that always in mind. Do 172 THE KITE TRUST. not get any crazy, anarchistic notions in your head to want to take away from any one or rob him of what he has and owns rightfully and according to law. For the good of the common cause all present landowners should be paid with land certificates, bearing a low rate of interest, by the government for the land only (not for the houses or improvements), and a small amount of the taxes set aside for the next fifty or a hundred or two hundred years to gradually pay the owners for it ; but nothing on the land should be purchased, but should be the owner's personal property, free of taxes, to sell and dispose of and transfer to whomsoever they please, just as houses on leased land are disposed of at present. But the owner would have one advantage, and that is, that the new lease of the land would be forever (or as long as taxes were paid), and not for only a few years, as at present, and a lease would thus have stability." " Has the government," asked ]\Iicky, " a right to buy the land from any one or all who own it ?" " Yes," replied Ed ; " the government has what is called the right of * eminent domain' — that is, they can take land from any one or all of its owners where the public requires it for the good of all the people; and this proposed plan of the people taking all the land, and gradually paying for it in fifty or a hundred years or more, could come under that ruling if the people thought it was best. If the rich men of to-day would only look carefull}' into the matter themselves, and not let a few smart writers or stupid ones do their thinking for them, the}^ would find out that they and all future generations would be far better off to have business and corporations and houses and everything else free of taxation, excepting the land, and the land all owned by the people or-government, the people getting the profit on the rising of land values, instead of a few families. Every person on the earth would then be TAXES. 173 paying a small rental or his rightful share of the rent of the whole earth for the privilege of being on it. " Land only would then be taxed. The farmer's house* and barns, live stock and implements, clothing and furniture, grain and fences, and everytliing, except the land itself, would be free of tax; and the well-to-do farmer's shares of stock in the cheese fac- tory and creamery, oil wells and gas mains, and other investments would also be free of tax, and it would be no person's business what personal property he owned. " The village man's house and furniture, his store building and stock of goods, his shares in the village factory, and all his possessions other than land would be free of taxes, and it would be no person's business what he owned. " The town man's house and furniture, horses and stable, watches and jewelry, clothing and ornaments, store and goods, factory and material, county bonds and trolley stock, bicycles and rowboats, stock in town enterprises and gas companies, all would be free of tax, no assessor coming around yearly to pry into his private affairs. " The city man's residence or palace or country seat, with their costly furnishings, that by his lavish expen- diture gave employment to hundreds of laborers and skilful artisans; his clothing and that of his family; his horses and coaches ; his bank and railroad and a thousand other stocks; his government, railroad, and other bonds; his great business house and stock of merchandise ; his cash in bank and debts owed him by merchants all over the world ; his great factories and steamship lines and corporation stocks and all his pos- sessions, excepting land, would be free of tax, and he could be independent of an assessor's prying into his affairs. " Each community would practically pay its own land taxes, as each township has its own characteristic 174 THE KITE TRUST. grade of expense. The city would pay its own heavy taxes for its own expensive style of government and the farmers would pay their lesser amount of taxes for their less expensive governing necessities. '■ It costs just so much for taxes each year in each community, and wdiat difference does it make w^hether the tax collector charges all of it to the land or divides it up into a dozen items? The tax bill is all the same in the end ; and the farmer, townsman, and city dweller would average up the same dollars and cents in the annual tax bills as in former days. Some men might pay more than formerly and others less, but it would soon adjust itself in a righteous way. " To tax land only is the fairest way, as no one can evade or cheat the tax commissioner. His land is all in sight and cannot be hidden; and if the government accumulates and has on its hands an unusual surplus area of unused or idle land, then the taxes will have to fall in heavier amount on the land which is being used ; but that w^ill adjust itself in time in a proper and satisfactory manner. " As taxation stands now it is very unfair ; for the enterprising man who is successful and helps others by gixing them employment, thus supporting them and their families, is pounced down on by the tax collector and made to pay on all he has gathered, while the shiftless, idle man who has the land, and lets it run to weeds, and employs no one, and is in no way a public benefactor, and makes his land no good to any one, and is a nuisance on the earth, is assessed at a low figure. The present system thus puts a premium on idleness and slothfulness; and the energetic, enterpris- ing man whose land is teeming with grain and cattle, and who employs others and who is born w^ith genius for business, has to pay doul)le or tenfold price for his enterprise, for his land is assessed so much the higher. It is all wrong: for if there is a man wdio owns a large TAXES, 175 tract of land and will not work it, he ought to be taxed his full and high share for his idle or disgracefully kept land, and thus be compelled to work it himself or give others a right to do so, not being let off with a paltrv tax. If he will not work hard enough to pay his full share of taxes, the government or people who own the land can transfer the lease to some one else who wants it and will work and employ others ; and he can sell at private sale or auction his personal property that is on the land or move it to some other place, as leaseholders do at the present time. "If rich men tried to own no land and schemed to get rid of their holdings, and only own chattels on which there were no taxes, then there would soon not be enough chattels to meet the demand for the invest- ment of their money ; and, consequently, there would be a great impetus to business and manufacturing so as to create more personal property. But there is no danger of such a thing happening, for the people can- not get permanently away from or off the land if they try. They are obliged to have homes, factories, farms, and mines, and somebody will be found ready to build the houses for other people to live in if they do not want or are not able to build on their own account; and before they commence to build they would have to procure leases from the government, and on this leased land they would have to pay the taxes. Rents might be a little higher, but other things would be cheaper and average up the same in the end. There is bound to be a supply where there is a demand." CHAPTER XXIII. REVENUE. The next evening Ed resumed his talk as follows: " Every city, town, or village has its idea of how it should carry on its own system of spending its tax money to make its citizens comfortable and have pro- tection for life and property, and I have explained how I think tax on one thing — land — would be the easiest and simplest plan to meet city or town ex- penses. There are a hundred or a thousand towns or villages in a county or state, each of which has no particular interest in what the others are doing. Each one of them says : ' We want to be let alone to edu- cate our children, and pave our streets, and arrange for our fire department and police force, and we will raise our own taxes and pay the amount, whatever it is, ourselves, just as we please, and it is no other town's business.' " While each city or town is thus in a measure in- dependent of the others, still they cannot live like hermits all to themselves, since it is necessary for each community to have both friendly and business or trade relations with the others. They have to be con- REVENUE. 177 nected by wagon roads, canals, trolleys, railways, tele- graph lines, and telephones; and in order to do this amicably, for the good of all, and not be continually quarrelling or at war with one another, as the small towns were in the old Bible days, they necessarily have to band or join together in townships and counties or parishes, and as most of the people indi- vidually are busy with their own affairs, they have to employ some of their number to look into and attend to the matter of government for them. Then, again, a number of counties or parishes join together into a large state, and for this reason still other men have to be employed and paid to attend to their respective duties for the state. In this manner there grows up in a community an ever-increasing army of office- holders, clerks, and public laboring men who, with their families, have to be supported by the rest of the people. In many places in the country the farmers take turns and spend a few days a year in making and repairing roads, and in some towns there are no paid fire departments, but they organize volunteer com- panies and ' whoop it up' themselves. In this man- ner a little money is saved to taxpayers, but the sum total does not amount to much. " Now, as these county and state officials must have rooms and buildings in which to attend to their duties, the people have to build a state house and court houses, county jails, state penitentiary, lunatic asylums, and other institutions, all of which require money; and more money is required for the officials to take care of the buildings and keep them in proper order. " Many plans have been devised for raising such state taxes, but after much experience it is found easiest to look ahead for twelve months and calculate about how much money will be needed, and then ask each township, county, or city to contribute its just 178 THE KITE TRUST. share for all these general state expenses — those that are necessary outside of town limits or boundary or corporation line. Each town or city then adds its small porportionate share to the larger general tax levy, and when collected pays it over to the state treasurer; and thus the state and county expenses are settled by the united townships, all of which is done once a year. If there were enough criminals or luna- tics or orphans in one village, then that place or town would erect buildings of its own and ask no other town's help to pay the expenses; but as such is not generally the case, the whole county or state does it for the benefit of all, and each community pays its small share. " How much better this is than among the old uncivilized communities, where they killed off or left to die the old folks who could not care for themselves, and burnt up insane people for witches ! The world is growing better every century from a humanitarian point of view. The sick, insane, cripples, orphans, blind, deaf and dumb, old persons, and all unfortu- nates who have no money are not left to perish, but every year new appliances are invented and paid for by the whole people to make brighter and more com- fortable the days of the aged and the afiflicted. If a man who lived a thousand years ago could arise from his grave, one of the chief things, if not the chiefest, would be his admiration for the manner in which our age tries to care for the unfortunate. " I have now explained to you how towns, cities, counties, and states raise money to pay the expenses of their various institutions and the salaries of the army of office-holders and laborers who are chosen to look after their local aft'airs; but there is one more depart- ment for which money must be raised by taxing the people. It is the general government. A number of states join themselves together into one federation REVENUE. 179 and call themselves a nation, and choose some cen- tral headquarters or city in which shall be the capital. Rulers must be elected, executive and legislative buildings provided, an army and navy maintained, post-offices established, and people employed to do the clerical work, all of which requires more or less money in proportion to the extravagance or economy of the government. " In olden times, as in almost all 'of the nations of the earth to-day, kings and emperors ran their nations as if everything in the whole land was theirs. They ruled and owned everything by what they called divine right — that is, they said God had made them kings or emperors, and they spoke of every man, woman and child and boy and girl and baby as ' my people' and claimed to own them body and soul, as well as all their property. The fact of the business is, that if God would speak out as we can, He would show^ them all to be liars for making such a statement, because they do not rule by divine right. Every good or wicked one of them or their ancestors obtained their throne through intrigue, strength of arms, bloodshed, war, fire, and destruction generally; yet every one recog- nizes that some one must rule a nation. Almost every one would like to do so, but as all cannot, then it is best some one should have the power who will do it right. In our country we choose from among the people the one whom we think will do it right and best, but what is best or right is always the question. " This question of what is right troubles citizens of all nations, as people differ in their opinions regard- ing things. In absolute monarchies, like Russia, the people have no right to have an opinion of their own as to what is right. The Emperor is the only one who can settle any great debatable question, and what he says ' goes,' and any person who values his life or freedom had better be particular what he says over l8o THE KITE TRUST. there, for if he has the courage to differ with his ruler, he is Hable, at the whim of the Emperor, to have his head chopped off or go to prison or Siberia. " Going to war and having his soldiers killed off is not the worst thing an emperor of king can do. When a person gets killed that is an end of his earthly exist- ence, and he is past worldly cares and sorrows, but the real hardship comes to those who are left behind, as in past ages kings and emperors have made the lives of their subjects awfully miserable by imposing heavy taxes on them to pay for wars and for their riotous and luxurious living and round of pleasure, and regal entertainment for themselves and friends. Often the people have had to give up to the tax-gatherer one- half or two-thirds of all they made, and then hardly had enough left to keep themselves from starving. There is a great book in heaven where an account is kept of the sorrows and sufferings of the tax-ridden poor of earth, and their old rulers will some day have to rise up and explain things. " The highest thought of governments should be to make their people contented and happy, and pro- tect them in their lives and property, and then for their own services to take as little as possible in the name of taxes. " But how to tax a nation for its expenses is always a debatable question. In our country at present we have two great parties which differ on that subject, and some of each of them wish the others were all dead — a foolish wish, for the safety of the Republic is in having an honorable opposition to the party in power. If the party in power had no opposition it would grow despotic, and the people in the end would suffer; for the meanest animal on the face of the earth is man when he has absolute power. It is always best to have two parties, so that in the end they may settle that vexed question, What is right? Because if REVENUE. lOl they do not settle some great questions by argument, then it too often is settled by war, and right does not always win. " * What is right' is hard to determine, and some- times both parties are right, like the two witnesses in the country court. One witness swore by all that was holy that the guide-post sign was black with white letters painted on it, and the other swore by his sacred oath that it was white with black letters painted on it. As both men were reputable citizens the judge adjourned court for all to drive out and see it for themselves, and they found out that both witnesses were right, for the sign board was painted differently on reverse sides, and each witness had seen it only from the branch of the road from which he was in the daily habit of approaching the sign, or from his point of view; and both swore according to the truth as he knew it. " We have two parties in our United States of America who swear to opposite statements regarding the same question of taxes or tarifif or internal rev- enue, and the reason they do so is because they look at the question — as at that guide-post — from different view-points, and I will now show you that both parties are right, or how Free Trade is all right, but the policy all wrong, and how Protection is all right and the principle all wrong. " There is no question as to the necessity of raising the money to pay the expenses of the general govern- ment, for every one is patriotic and loves his country. He wants it to exist as a nation, keeping the flag waving from our ships and forts and school-houses for- ever and ever, and to do so every person with common sense admits that it is necessary to have money; but the great question is, How to raise the money? " In the old days, when the emperors or kings rob- bed the farmers and traders of everything they had, 162 THE KITE TRUST. and found the poor people with nothing- left at the commencement of the harvest, they would turn to the chief tax gatherers and tell them to go down with their compliments to a place like New^ York or Boston or Chicago and call upon the Vanderbilts, Peabodys, and Pullmans, and request a little contribution of twenty or thirty million drachma?, and as the said Vanderbilts, Peabodys, and Pullmans were somewhat anxious to keep their heads, they sent the money back wath * thanks, awfully.' Nor was it altogether kings who did such things. For instance, young Julius Cresar, after having a good time, when he was only twenty-two years old, found himself with all his inherited fortune gone and in addition thereto he was $10,000,000 in debt. Such a trifling thing as that did not worry him even a little bit. He simply gathered together a band of his fellow-gladiators and marched to a rich town in a distant province, and by force of arms carried off $25,000,000, with which he paid off his debts and divided the balance between himself and companions. Such plans of raising money, however agreeable to the strong and mighty, were inconven- ient to the other fellow; but in these days of enlight- enment and commercial integrity money for govern- ment expenses is raised according to law and order, and the people who have to pay it all look into the matter closely and w'ant to know about it, and ask such questions as ' What for' and ' Why.' " Now the best and most convenient way to pay the general government expenses and ' run the na- tion' would be, in my opinion, to charge so much per head for every person, man, woman, and child, and each State be responsible for, or see that the amount was collected; in this manner every person w^ould pay for dwelling on the earth whether they thought life was worth living or not. It would be the cheapest, easiest, and most direct way of taxation. In this man- REVENUE. 183 ner all taxes could be derived from two things. First, the land only should be taxed for city and State ex- penses, and it would be easy and non-fraudulent, as no one could hide his real estate, as no matter how small the area, it is four thousand miles deep and can- not be carried away, and every person in some way would thus be obliged to pay rent for living on the earth. Secondly, the people should be taxed so much per head for the expenses of national existence. But the working people foolishly object to this poll tax of a certain sum per year for each person, and ],et other ways be adopted that in the end cost them twice as much without their realizing it — twice as much per year for every man, woman, child, and baby. I hope some day to talk up, and write up, and make speeches in favor of abolishing all the present complicated forms of gathering taxes and see that all revenue or governing expenses come direct from tw^o sources : first, from the land for local expenses, and second, from each person direct for national expenses; and if, then, it is found that some unfortunate people can- not pay their poll or per capita tax, why then each vil- lage, town, or State should he required to raise among themselves, in some manner of their own choosing, the deficiency." When Ed was through, Micky said he was glad to hear about all these things, as he never knew or under- stood much about taxes before or where the money came from. He approved of Ed's plan and said it was good as far as it went, but that he (Micky) when he was a man, was going to turn his attention to writing and talking up some plan of doing away with taxes altogether. (And he did it !) All laughed at Micky, and as they were parting for the night Sally remarked that Ed had not answered her question yet as to what was meant by Free Trade. 184 THE KITE TRUST. Ed replied he would finish up the subject the next night; and thus from day to day the firm of Flynn & Schmidt filled their heads with information that be- came useful to them personally, and in coming years useful to the whole world. CHAPTER XXIV. NATIONAL DEBTS. " Several times," said Ed, " I have tried to tell you of the utterly helpless condition of the people under the ancient and mediaeval kings and emperors. The poor people in those days were nothing more than slaves trying to work something out of the earth or air or water that somebody wanted, and thus earn a little money; but when they got it, the king's officers gen- erally took it from them forcibly under the name of taxes, and even the poor men's families were taken from them and sold into slavery for debts. Life was a burden, and they could have truly said it was not worth living. In this advanced age there are at pres- ent millions of men in distant parts of the earth who are still working year after year for five and ten cents a day. " The workingmen of the civilized world, especially those in the United States, where wages are the high- est, think they have a hard time of it; no doubt they have had and are having a hard time, but it is child's play compared with the long hours under the lash of the taskmasters in the olden days. A poor man of to-day spends more for beer in a month than would l86 THE KITE TRIST. equal an entire two years' wages of a laborer in the middle or earlier ages. Things are getting better for the poor as the centuries roll by, each hundred years as it passes is an improvement on the preceding one, and when any politician tells a poor man that such is not the case, he simply lies. He is a mischief-maker, and ought to be placed where he will do no further lying. " The taxes of this country per person are small compared with those of Europe a thousand years ago. To-day they are higher than they ought to be because government expenses are higher than they ought to be, and the principal cause of the high rate is war. Abolish war and the happiest kind of an era will come to man. " Only two or three centuries ago wars were paid for as they occurred. When a king wanted money for fighting purposes, he put on extra taxes for imme- diate necessities, and called on the rich people for the balance. But war has become so expensive since gunpowder, cannon, ironclads, and other modern improvements have come into use, that a nation can- not raise in a month or a year for lighting purposes all the money necessary for that month or year. And as wealth has so vastly increased, rulers, when war is declared, have resorted to borrowing large sums on long time and they give bonds that promise on their face to pay the money back. " This new bond plan puts another burden on the people in the way of annual interest, which in the end, in some cases, amounts to more than the original loan, beside the fact that the money-lenders often only give the government about $50 to $80 for a $100 bond. Thus, when the amount of the loan has been paid back by the government at the rate of one hundred cents on the dollar, the people have that much additional taxes to make up and be accountable for, or to pay back NATIONAL DEBTS. 1 87 money that the government has never even received. For instance, a nation might want to borrow this year for war purposes $500,000,000 on bonds payable at the end of twenty years at 5 per cent, annual interest, and the Treasury or War Department can only get $400,000,000 cash down for them, which is a shortage of $100,000,000, or a discount of 20 per cent.; but when the bonds are due at the end of twenty years, then the government has to pay the bondholders the full $500,000,000, which includes that extra $100,- 000,000 that the treasury never got, and which was clear profit in advance to the investors, they being generally banks or money-lenders; and then, beside, during that twenty years at 5 per cent, interest per annum, the government has paid out another enor- mous sum of $500,000,000 for interest, which in itself was equally as much as the original loan of five hun- dred million issue of bonds, or, in other words, in the end, the government would have paid out $1,000,- 000,000, where they only actually received $400,- 000,000 twenty years before, for the war expenses. This makes for the bondholders a total profit of $600,- 000,000 on the original $400,000,000 loaned the gov- ernment, and the people have to pay every dollar of this eventually in the shape of taxes. " It is this that makes modern warfare so heavy a load to the people. But dreadful as the burden is, the people do not in the end seem to lose by it, for who is it that gets the profit? It is certainly not the gov- ernment, for they pay out $1,000,000,000 for that for which they only received $400,000,000. It was the rich people and the banks who had the money to lend who made the profit; and at the same time it is not the rich people alone who are chiefly benefited by the profit, because the question arises. What do those rich people do with it? They certainly do not draw out of bank the bills or gold and sit down on them or I05 THE KITE TRUST. let the money stand idle. No; they build houses and factories and machinery and railroads, and buy mines, and travel on the cars, and give entertainments, and buy furniture and horses, and build churches and trolleys and steamboats, and invest it in a thousand other ways, and all this time the laboring man and clerks are getting it all in wages. It is thus that that vast sum of $1,000,000,000 paid out by the govern- ment has been making business and supporting fam- ilies and supposed to be doing untold good. "If there had been no saved-up fortunes, and no rich men in the first place to lend the money, there would have been no $1,000,000,000 put into the la- boring man's pockets. Under the present commercial system some persons must get rich, or no one would have money to do business with, and in most every case it is the saving man who gets rich in the end. Almost every rich man of to-day was once poor like the rest of us, and the poor men of to-day who save their money will be the rich men of the next genera- tion. Every one who has ability has a chance at for- tune. There is no way of accumulating money ex- cept by saving it, only by stealing, and that is what anarchists want to do. A man who earns $2 a day and saves 50 cents is better off, if others are depending on him, than the one who gets $2000 a year and saves nothing. This $2-a-day man will be the rich man in thirty years, and he will be employing men and loan- ing money to others, and his family will be the one to have the comforts and ' put on style.' " The reason why the rich men loaned that $400,- 000,000 dollars to the government was because they believed the government would in the end be able to pay the money back, but if the government had asked for ten times the amount, or $4,000,000,000, then no one would have been willing to advance that much, for all would feel ' dead certain' the government could NATIONAL DEBTS. 1 89 not repay and they would never see their money again. You thus see there is a hmit even to the amount of money a nation can readily borrow, and when the governments have to confiscate or forcibly take money, then their character as a nation and credit are gone. "It is in the same manner that in war times the Treasury Department can print paper money called greenbacks, bearing no interest, and ask the people, for their services to the government, to take it and use it instead of gold, and the patriotic people say yes, they will do so, and they will take it for all their wages or services or for war material furnished, a total of $500,000,000 or a $1,000,000,000 of it, because they believe the government is good and in future years can pay back or redeem that much paper money; but if the government should become over-needy or over- extravagant, and want to issue ten times as much, say 5,000,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 greenbacks, then the people would not willingly take it from the gov- ernment for wages, or services, or material, nor would they take it from their employers, because they would know that the paper money was worthless, as the gov- ernment in the end would not be able to redeem so much, and they would consequently ask for their wages to be paid in coin. *' In the West India Islands a gentleman once went ashore from his boat to entertain two or three of his travelling friends at a good dinner. After the meal was finished a bill w^as presented amounting to $6347.15. The gentleman was astounded at the out- rageous charge, and as he could not pay it he was arrested. He oft'ered $20 in gold, w^iich was all the money he had in his pocket, and was quite surprised to see the pleased expression on the face of the hotel man, ^^•ho counted out $4 of the gold, and returned the other sixteen, with many apologies, stating that 190 THE KITE TRUST. the charge of $6347.15 was in the i)apcr money or greenbacks of the island, and this fabulous sum was worth only $4.03 in gold. It would result the same way in any country where the government issued paper money or greenbacks beyond its ability to pay back or redeem — no person would have faith in it. " It would be just the same as your confidence in trusting some man. If you have the money to lend, you would probably trust a certain man with $10,000, because you know something about him and also know that he is a hustler and an energetic and honest man, and has property and credit, and is able and will- ing to pay back that $10,000; but if he, being a man in moderate circumstances, asked you to lend him $500,000, }ou would think he was a crank. If he issued his paper notes for so large a sum no person would take them at 5 cents or i cent on a dollar; and likewise the people soon find out if the government is over-issuing its ability to pay back, and in this en- lightened age they are bold enough to ask the rulers the pertinent question : ' What are you giving us?' *' It has not always been war that has brought heavy taxes and burdens on the people. There was once an era of cathedral building in Europe that nearly sucked the life-blood out of the people. The erection of that magnificent cathedral at IMilan impoverished a whole province for nearly two hundred years, and thus, in the name of religion, were the poor people allowed to go almost starved. " But next to war, that which has been the greatest curse to burdened mankind was the awful selfish mag- nificence and lavishness on the part of the kings and nobles of the realm. They lived in idleness, and the definition of the word gentleman in those days was a man whose father and grandfather and great-grand- father, as w^ell as himself, liad never worked. Some person had to do the work and pay for the other man's NATIONAL DEBTS. I9I fun, and it was the laborer who did it. The poor stood it along with the insults of the noble libertines, until in France, a hundred years ago, it could not be borne a day longer. The suffering, insulted people rose and for a short time inaugurated a reign of bloody terror previously unknown to the world. " In England the imposition upon the poor was as bad if not worse than in France, and similar bloody scenes might have been enacted on the shores of Cornwall and eastward, if it had not been prevented by religion, and in large part by the teachings of a good man named Wesley, who exhorted the poor to suffer in silence, as did the Master before them. France was not justified in her bloody manner of righting the wrongs of man, as two wrongs never make a right. England, with her right hand in the grasp of the Master, silently suffered and withheld the avenging sword, and in a civilized manner the people thought and talked the matter out, and she has con- sequently given more real liberty to the world than her southern neighbor. In the art of honest and ef- ficient government England leads the world to-day. She has much yet to do to right the wrongs of the downtrodden, but the day will come, and soon, when those who feel the most oppressed will be rewarded for their patience, for argument and ballots are more powerful and potent than dynamite in the hands of lawless men. " War and government extravagance has lately piled upon all the civilized nations of the world gigan- tic bonded debts, until the amount has grown so great that the people are perplexed as to how they can pay the annual levies or taxes made upon them by their respective rulers. Many ways have been devised to collect the taxes from the people, and the plan that seems to give satisfaction, or the one that is gener- ally adopted, has a flavor of trickery about it that 192 THE KITE TRUST. would be rather laughable if it were not so serious. The governments, instead of putting the question to every one in a manly way and saying, you are a part of the nation and your share of the running expenses is $5, and you will be called upon once a year for that amount — instead of doing that, the governments burden the commerce and industry of the nation, which really ought to be untrammelled and free from taxes, with all kinds of troublesome and vexatious charges, and change and alter the rates so often that very few understand it, and those that do, do not know what to expect next. " To explain more fully, the present system of rais- ing the government revenue is designed to not let any man know exactly what he is paying; it fools many persons into thinking it is costing them nothing; it amounts to a little on what a man drinks, but how much he does not know; it is something on the clothes he wears, but how much he cannot calculate, and thus the rich miser who buys only one suit in two years gets the advantage of the liberal man who gives employment to others by ordering two or ten suits a year, and thus a mean rich man gets ofT cheaper than his enterprising and poorer neighbor. " There have been many wars in the last century. Some of them have been for concjuest, some for free- dom, some for defence of home, and some because of downright foolishness and stubbornness on the part of rulers, but whate\'er was the cause, the result has been that enormous debts have been fastened on every country, and as nations should be as honorable as individuals, it is the pride of each people to keep up their credit and pay dollar for dollar for all they owe. " Public improvements and pension rolls have added to the great burden, and each government is now at its wit's end to know how to raise the grand NATIONAL DEBTS. 193 annual national taxes or assessment. These great debts are having one good effect, and that is, that some of the nations cannot borrow any more money and are obliged to suffer insult and are really forced to remain at peace. Such kings and their nobility are suffering a good deal of wounded pride at this present moment, as they have no funds for war purposes. If they should issue greenbacks no other nation would take them, and the paper bills would not be worth 2 cents on the dollar among their own people. If to- day all European nations were free of debt and could commence to borrow all the money they wanted, there would be in two months' time such a general war as was never known in the history of the world. There would not be enough iron or armor-plate factories or shipyards to build one-fiftieth part of the squadrons wanted. They are just aching to get at one another to satisfy their cruel rivalries and right their fancied wrongs." CHAPTER XXV. PROTECTION. " There are two general plans for raising money to pay government debts and annual expenses. The first plan is to tax home productions, such as liquors, matches, patent medicines, business documents, etc., by a system of revenue stamps; and the second plan is to tax or charge duties only on things that are made in foreign lands. " In the United States, as elsewhere, there is a great difference of opinion as to which way is right. Some say : ' Tax things made in our own land, but nothing that is imported from other countries.' Such people are called ' free traders,' as they want free trade between all the nations, and claim that we should raise our taxes only on our own home industries. Others say : ' Put a tax on everything that is made in other lands, that we import or bring into our country, and have no tax on anything that is made or produced in our own land.' Those who think this last plan is the best, vote to have laws passed so that our laborers and artisans can make everything we want here in our home factories and get the wages for it here, instead of sending orders abroad and permitting workingmen IPROTECTION. 195 in foreign workshops to get the employment and wages. People who believe in this last plan are called protectionists, because their thought is to protect our own working people against foreigners, to have the money earned here and spent in our own land, and not to give the employment to workmen of other nations. " The two parties in the United States that have been quarrelling over the question for so many years are the Democrats and Republicans. The Democratic party are the free traders, and the Republicans are the protectionists. " The free traders say that merchandise shipped between the various nations should be free of tariff or tax charges, exactly the same as goods are shipped free of duties or tax charges from one State in our Union to another, where there is now no such thing as a tarifif-collecting custom-house anywhere along our own various boundary lines. " There is one thing that both parties agree about and have to admit — viz., that money has to be raised by some means for the United States treasury, and raised promptly, or else the national expenses that Congress annually arranges for cannot be paid; the government would then fail and go into bankruptcy, like any unfortunate business man. " The people of our land have a sense of commer- cial integrity, and would not permit such an event to happen; if perchance any party in power should let such a thing occur, it would be defeated at the next election with such overwhelming majority that it would think it had been struck by chain-lightning. " It makes no difference, therefore, whether Demo- crats or Republicans are in power, each has to see that the National debt and expenses are paid. The ex- penditures amount now annually to about $1,000,- 000,000, a sum to make one dizzy. It is about $14 196 THE KITE TRUST. per person of our population, and is all raised by diarizing- a little on what every man, woman, and child eats, drinks, wears, handles, or enjoys. " If every man, woman, and child paid his or her proportion, or $14 per head cash down (they pay it now in duties and revenue tax, but do not realize it), doing away with all classes of revenue and duties, then all would be just as well off in the end, for the poor man would have to get that much additional wages out of his employer, and at the same time, if such a plan were adopted, it would save years of wrangling and disputing and do away with heated discussions on the subject of free trade and protection. " By such a system of per head or per capita taxa- tion there would be less government extravagance and fewer wars, as the people would then be more forcibly and personally made aware of each additional 10 cents or $1 added to their own share, as shown by the rising or falling of their annual personal tax bill, and they would feel perfectly cool and contented if the rate went downward toward zero, but they would make it ' hot' for their representative when the extra added dimes forced their tax upward among the higher figures on the tax thermometer. " But this plan of per capita or per head tax is un- popular, and the poor people and farmers will not have it. They are really working against their own interests by talking it down. It seems to be so un- kindly regarded that I probably had best never have mentioned it, although in bringing it before you I have tried to inform you of what the individual re- sponsibility of citizens will be. " On the other hand, when the tax is put on what we eat, drink, and wear, we do not exactly realize it or know about it, and it sweetly glides from our con- sciousness; the politicians know this, and have schooled themselves to this kind of deception in rais- PROTECTION. . 197 ing revenue; that is, the deception of letting no one know exactly what taxes they are personally paying, and then they, the politicians, can more easily raise the grand total. " The reason why most people are poor and have so little to pay taxes on is because they do not know how to save money or to do business. They are born without the least particle of genius in that line. They will always be poor an