ABRAHAM LINCOLN RNME OVJ 3,6, 14 „t fl»t SWosioi, PRINCETON, N. J. % % Presented by T)t. F. L. Patton. Division 3&2A b Section . D 9 2 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/jeffersonianderno00dunl_0 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY , V * * ' ■ ' * o JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY Which means the Democracy of THOMAS JEFFERSON, ANDREW JACKSON and ABRAHAM LINCOLN “THAT GOVERNMENT IS BEST WHICH GOVERNS LEAST” BY JOHN R. DUNLAP PUBLISHED BY THE JEFFERSONIAN SOCIETY 120 LIBERTY STREET, NEW YORK, U. S. A. Copyrighted, 1903 JOHN R. DUNLAP THE WINTHROP PRESS NEW YORK TO THE MEMORY OF i&rePet 3Srtg;.'-(55eti. ptnrp Clap Dunlap This volume is reverently dedicated, as a civilian son’s tribute of love and honor for the soldier father whose manhood and courage prompted him to fight, through four years, in the ranks of the patriots who preserved “our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.” PREFACE. This book is a result of full thirty years’ study and observation of political, economic, and industrial conditions in the United States. During the past six years, also, four separate visits to and many months of residence and ac¬ tive work in Europe, have afforded me unusual opportunities for studying European institu¬ tions and conditions in comparison with our own. But the hook itself has been hurriedly written during the past winter and spring, while I have carried the responsible direction of the publish¬ ing business which is my source of income. For these reasons the work lacks the literary finish, and the completeness of evidence and argument, which I should like to have given it. But I think it carries the essential merit of making my position clear upon the main subjects discussed; and I have faith that the publication of the his¬ toric and incontestable facts which I present will do something towards putting the Democratic party back upon the broad highway of Jeffer¬ sonian principles and precedents. We need only follow that, to be sure of winning the highest des¬ tiny to which the Anglo-Saxon race aspires. I shall now be glad to have the name and ad¬ dress of every reader who wishes to go upon the honor roll of those who are determined to pro¬ claim anew the immortal principles of the great PREFACE. author of the Declaration of Independence. Pasted inside the front cover is a mailing card which explains itself. If the card has been used by a previous reader, simply write the following letter— a duplicate of the card— to the address indicated : For Charter Membership in THE JEFFERSONIAN SOCIETIES. To the Secretary, pro tem . The Jeffersonian Societies, 120 Liberty St., New York, U. S. A. Dear Sir: I desire to be enrolled as a charter member of The Jeffersonian Societies, upon the understanding (1) that every member pledges himself to promote the political principles of Thomas J efferson as applied to present-day con¬ ditions; (2) that each local Society is to govern its own affairs, by majority vote of its registered members in good standing; (3) that the Feder¬ ated or National Society is to be governed by a Congress of Representatives, to be elecled by majority vote of the local Societies; and (4) that all contributions of money for carrying on the work of the Societies are to be voluntary. Name . Occupation . .... Address . PREFACE. The plan is simply to duplicate the Democratic Societies which did such effective work in the time of Jefferson and Madison— but this time, to honor our Societies by giving them the name of the commanding genius who proved himself the creative and constructive architect of Ameri¬ can institutions. We know what Jefferson and his followers ac¬ complished; we know precisely how they organ¬ ized for effective effort; and, for our time, the opportunity is now full ripe to take up the great work “ which they who fought have thus far so nobly advanced. ’ 7 J. R. D. New York, May 20, 1903, CONTENTS CHAPTEB I PAGE li The Rule of the Millionaires. ’ ’ . 1 Jefferson’s Fears Realized — The People of the United States now Ruled by a Formidable Group of very Rich Men — The Machine, the Methods, and the Legislative Measures Clearly Indicated — With Searching Character Sketches of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. Pierpont Morgan, the Men who do the Danger¬ ous Work. CHAPTER II The Political Machine at Work . . Exact Plan of the Political Machine now in Control of the Party Organization and the United States Senate — Protection, the Party Slogan— Roosevelt, the “ Strenu¬ ous” Candidate— Hanna, the Major-General of Field Forces — Root and Knox, the Cabinet Representatives of the Corporations and Trusts — Aldrich, Senate Leader for the Combinations — Elkins, Allison, Quay, Platt, Depew, and the Lesser Leaders Named — With a Clear Exposure of their Methods, their Motives, and the Legis¬ lative System whereby they Manufacture Millionaires Wholesale. CHAPTER III Outlines of the Problems Now Confronting Us . 87 A Rapid Sketch of the larger Political Problems now presented for solution at the Ballot Box — The Conditions of To-day in Contrast with the Happy Conditions Ex¬ isting before the Civil War— Thirty Years of Desperate and Dangerous Agitation in favor of Fiat Money, Socialism, Paternalism, and Anarchism— The Utter Confusion of Thought now Current as a Result of Simple Neglect in Studying American History and American Precedents— The Remedies which are Certain to Cure Our Ills, so Soon as we Apply Them. VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV PAGE The Seamy Side of Our Prosperity . 118 Awful Facts of Common Knowledge, which should bring the Blush of Shame to the Cheeks of every Son and Grandson of the Patriots of America who fought, who bled, and who died, that this might be a Land of Lib¬ erty and Opportunity— Child Slavery in the Anthracite Region— Worse Child Slavery in the South— Adult Slav¬ ery Everywhere — A Slavery of White Freemen, beside which Negro Slavery in the South was Child-like and Irresponsible Happiness— “ Suffer Little Children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. * ’ CHAPTER V A Few Pages of Patriotic History . 155 We must get back to First Principles— And the Thing More Needful than All Others, is that we shall now Read and Understand Exactly what Our Fathers Fought for and Planned, for Themselves and for Us— Samuel Adams, the Colonial Leader of New England — George Mason, the Colonial Leader of Virginia — Alexander Hamilton, the Brilliant but Blind Leader who stood for “the European Past” — Thomas Jefferson, the Unmatched and Dauntless Leader who stood for “the American Future”— Jefferson’s Priceless and Imperishable Work. CHAPTER VI Andrew Jackson, Nullification, and Bank Monopoly.. 351 A Brief Record of the Superlatively Grand Work of a Born Soldier — The President who taught us how to Preserve Union without Senseless Resort to Warfare Among Ourselves — The Freeman who Personified the Genius of Our Race and Our Institutions — The Patriot who never Desired or Considered any other Thought than to Advance the Happiness of his Kindred and his Kind — The Soldier who Lived to Write, in Deeds of Valor and in Words of Dauntless Conviction, one of the Proudest Pages in all Human History. CHAPTER VII Abraham Lincoln and Forgotten History . 209 A Message from the Son of a Soldier who Fought and Bled in Defense of Lincoln’s Principles — For Young CONTENTS Yll PAGE Men who know nothing of Lincoln ’s Inner Thought and Purposes— For Old Men who have Forgotten the Fundamental Principles for which he Lived, Labored, and Died— For Thinking Men who have Neglected a Study of the Forgotten History which led up, Step by Step, to the Awful Horrors of our Civil War For American Freemen who now mean to Stand True to the Principles of the Man who Wrote: “Let us have faith right makes might. ” CHAPTEE VIII The Cause op Panics— The Money Question . 252 A Concise Eeview of the whole Money Question, from the Date of our Declaration of Independence to this Hour— Paper Money the Curse of the Eevolution— “ Not Worth a Continental, ’ ’ the Eock upon which Independ¬ ence was all but Wrecked— The Panic of 1837 due to State Bank Notes— The Panic of 1857 also due to “Wild-Cat” and “Eed Dog” issues of State Bank Notes— The Familiar History of the Panics of 1873-9 and 1893-97 in Parallel Columns— The Patriotic and Priceless Services of Salmon P. Chase in Firmly Estab¬ lishing our Present System of National Banks. CHAPTEE IX The Tariff as Eelated to Trusts. . 296 Environment Makes the Man — Intelligent Americans Believe in Protection only because the Living Generation has Grown to Manhood under that Stupid, Sinful, and Barbarous System — High Prices Explain the Fabulous Profits of the Trusts— “The Tariff is the Mother of Trusts”— And Carnegie’s Millions in “First Mort¬ gage Gold Bonds” are the Fruits of his Teaching Pro¬ tection for America (where he makes his money) and Free Trade for Britain (where he makes his home) ! — Facts which every American Freeman now needs to Eead about and Ponder. CHAPTEE X The Eegulation of Inter-State Commerce. 351 A Mere Assembly of Quotations from the Advocates, Promoters, and Beneficiaries of the Combinations and Trusts, with Eunning Comments by the late Chief Jus¬ tice Eussell of Great Britain, and the Author, to show that what we need, and all we need, is Publicity, in Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE Corporation Finance — The “ Legalized ” Aristocrats tried to Confuse us in Hamilton’s Day — The Bank Monopolists tried to Confuse us in Jackson’s Day— The same “Legalized” Aristocrats tried to Confuse us in Lincoln ’s Day— And a Few Rich Men and Rich Fam¬ ilies have now won Millions at the People ’s Expense — But Publicity will Cure All Our Ills — And the Genius of Salmon P. Chase has Pointed the Way. CHAPTER XI Mine Monopoly and Land Speculation . 388 A Revelation of the Methods whereby our vast Public Domain, the Richest Heritage to which a Free People has ever been Heir to, has been Deeded Away to Land Monopolists and Mining Speculators whose Sole Object is to Enrich Themselves, without regard to Cost or Con¬ sequences to the People at large— Our Fathers Fought the Battles and Paid the Price that we Might Enjoy Equal Opportunity before the Law in Cultivating and Producing from Nature ’s Bounty to all Mankind — And here is a Record of Indisputable Rights which every Freeman now Needs to Study — And then Fight for, Should Occasion Call. CHAPTER XII From Julius Caesar to Thomas Jefferson . 436 A Simple Record of the Obvious Fact that Julius Caesar Fought the Battles, Organized the System, and Wrote the Laws which have Governed Europe since the Hour that Caesar was Assassinated— A Further Record of the Insurmountable Fact that Thomas Jefferson was the Incomparable Genius who gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Code, as a Model for all the States, the System for Settling our Public Do¬ main with Producing Farmers, the Purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory, and then, by Precept and Ex¬ ample, Pointed Straight to Every Principle and Policy now Needful to Guide Us on Our Way. A Popular Edition of this book has been published — printed on thinner paper and bound with an effective Blue and Gray paper cover, for popular sale. PRICE, 50 cts. PER COPY DELIVERED BY POST TO ANY ADDRESS THE JEFFERSONIAN SOCIETY 120 LIBERTY ST., NEW YORK, U. S. A. THE RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. “ From panic, pride, and terror. Revenge that knows no rein, Light, haste and lawless error. Protect us yet again.” — Hymn before Battle. “I am a staunch Protectionist. ’ 1 —Andrew Carnegie. “The tariff is the mother of Trusts. ” — Henry 0. Havemeyer. “It is too late to argue about the advantages of industrial combinations. They are a necessity.” — John D. Rockefeller. Community of interest — “Is when a number of men who own property can do what they like with it. ’ ’ — J. Pierpont Morgan. “The public be damned. tf — William H. Vanderbilt. Chapter I. Jefferson’s fears have been realized. The people of the United States are ruled to¬ day by a formidable group of very rich men — a “community-of-interest” alliance between mil¬ lionaires and politicians who have captured the Republican party, whose only gospel is gain, and who, in consequence, have enacted the most scan¬ dalous legislation for fleecing the people that ever disgraced the statute books of a civilized state ! This is strong language. But I have weighed the words carefully; I do 2 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. not think they over-state the facts; and I shall straightway name the men and present the evi¬ dence to sustain so deliberate and bold a state¬ ment. The conditions of today are not new to Ameri¬ can politics. But I fancy that many thinking Americans, engrossed in business and too busy to study history, will be startled by the discovery that we are face to face with exactly the same forces of money and aristocracy, bottomed on political corruption, which at the birth of the Nation gravely menaced free institutions; which a generation later threw our finances into utter confusion and panic; and which, scarcely more than a generation ago, plunged us into a holo¬ caust of civil war the most frightful of recorded history. For in Jefferson's day it was Alexander Ham¬ ilton's system of monarchy and aristocracy, “bottomed on corruption," as opposed to demo¬ cratic principles of government. In Jackson's day, and in Jackson's memorable phrase, the issue made out was simply, “Shall the govern¬ ment or the people rule I ' ' And in Lincoln 's day, it was Slavery and secession, in open array against Protection and confiscation, that enabled a group of reckless Southern leaders to lash a patriotic and loyally Union people into unwilling rebellion, through a persistent and sinful appeal to the pocket-interest of a slave-holding aristoc¬ racy. “For where the treasure is, there will the heart be also. ” In later chapters I shall present the evidence of RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 3 history to prove all this. And here and now, I shall present evidence in plenty to show that in the coming Presidential campaign the issue to be squarely presented— again in Jackson’s telling phrase— will be : Shall the Trusts, or the people rule? Shall we govern ourselves, or shall we dele¬ gate that duty to a group of our great Captains of Finance ? “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. “Can he then be trusted with the government of others? “Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? “Let history answer this question. ” — Thomas Jefferson. There can be no doubt of the answer that the American people will give. It will be the same answer that they gave when they swept the Fed¬ eral party into merited contempt and oblivion— The same answer that they gave when they en¬ shrined Andrew Jackson in immortal fame for his priceless service in stamping-out the rebel¬ lion of the Nullifiers and in choking-off the mon¬ opoly of the people’s banking facilities— The same answer that they gave when they made a President of a rail-splitter, when they tore the shackles from four million slaves, and when they dyed the Constitution in blood and sacrifice to prove, in Jefferson’s prophetic and immortal words, that “we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becom¬ ing an arena of gladiators.” And that we may clearly foresee the exact na- 4 .JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. ture of the answer which is surely coming, it is only necessary to review the recent past— only necessary to show that the Republican party long ago betrayed and forfeited the confidence of the American people, as repeated defeat has clearly proved. Thus, as early as 1876, barely more than ten years after the great Civil War had been fought and won, the corruption of the whisky ring, the Star Route frauds, and the Credit Mobilier out¬ rage, fairly elected Tilden to the Presidency— and that, too, by a popular majority of nearly four hundred thousand freemen. Again in 1880 an enormous majority of the people voted in favor of Hancock, the Democrat, Weaver, the greenbacker, and other candidates; but through the folly of the greenback and prohi¬ bition enthusiasts, in dividing the great popular majority, Garfield was elected by a plurality vote of the States— and that solely because the re¬ sumption of specie payments in 1879 gave us the boom of 1880, thus enabling the Republicans, under Blaine’s shrewd leadership, to claim full credit for the prosperity born of the first triumph of sound money, and to buy enough votes “in blocks of five” to carry the doubtful States. In 1884 Mr. Cleveland was elected over “The Plumed Knight” of the Republican hosts— ob¬ viously because “magnetic” Mr. Blaine had identified himself with all the legislative and po¬ litical corruption that the people repudiated in the Reform campaign of 1876. True to his Democratic trust, and well-know¬ ing that he would imperil his re-election, Mr. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 5 Cleveland gave us the famous Tariff Reform message of 1887. Then it was, for the first time in American history, that the Tariff question was squarely presented, apart from all other issues. Mr. Harrison stood for Protection; Mr. Cleve¬ land stood for “a tariff for revenue only.” Mr. Harrison was elected by a plurality vote of the States— but once more, take note, Mr. Cleveland received 98,017 more votes than the people gave to the Protection candidate. The significance of the latter event is shown in the sequel. The Republicans were no sooner restored to power than they passed the McKinley Bill, for the exclusive benefit of the protected manufac¬ turers; and worse than that, they passed the Sherman Silver Coinage law, as the price delib¬ erately paid to the silver miners of the Western States for votes enough to enact the McKinley Bill. Now observe the result! Protection and Inflation began at once to do their work. All the materials of manufacture were enhanced in price, and the startling ad¬ vances in the prices of all the necessaries of the home, furnished the newspaper sensation of the day. Then again the people declared themselves — and this time with unmistakable emphasis! An overwhelming Democratic majority was returned in the Congressional elections of 1890; and Mr. Cleveland, having declared himself on the silver issue, was foreordained as the only possible Democratic candidate. In the Presidential elec- 6 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. tion which followed in 1892, Mr. Harrison stood squarely for Protection and proved sympathy for silver inflation; and Mr. Cleveland stood squarely for Tariff Reform and Sound Money. Mr. Cleveland was triumphantly elected ! He went hack to the White House armed with a statesman’s courage to execute the people’s will; and he did a patriot’s work— as history cannot fail to tell. But, alas, Republican Protection and Republi¬ can Inflation had done their deadly work. The seeds of disaster had been sown. We were plunged headlong into the most desperate and most prolonged panic and industrial depression that the American people have ever been called upon to suffer ! The history of what followed is too recent, and too vivid in painful recollection, to call for rec¬ ord here. I will simply point to the conspicuous fact, known of all men, that Mr. McKinley was twice elected because he had been forced to de¬ clare for sound money, and because patriotic Democrats and tariff reformers were forced to vote for him to save the Nation from a maelstrom of repudiation and financial chaos. In other words, they voted against Mr. Bryan’s free coin¬ age for silver — not for Mr. McKinley’s Protec¬ tion. It was, therefore, the weakness of the Democratic platform, not McKinley’s strength, that twice made the American people unwilling victims of the deep schemes of the Protection leaders. And how adroitly they have since used the golden opportunity we shall now see. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 7 Though they were clearly commissioned and definitely pledged to put our finances in order; though they well knew that the people had em¬ phatically and repeatedly repudiated Protection; yet the Republicans were no sooner back in power than McKinley’s first act was to send a brief message to Congress calling for the immediate passage of a law increasing tariff duties — calling for the iniquities of that crowning measure of po¬ litical perfidy, the Dingley Bill. Not a word was said in the message about cur¬ rency reform. Not an honest move was made to legally affirm the gold standard. Not until March 14th, 1900— three full years after McKin¬ ley took his seat— did they pass the Gold Stand¬ ard Bill. And to this day they have done abso¬ lutely nothing to give simplicity, uniformity and elasticity to our numerous, confusing and in¬ adequate issues of paper and silver money. In naked truth, they have used the money ques¬ tion precisely as Hamilton used it in his day ; precisely as Blaine used the greenback issue in his day; and precisely as we have lately seen Morgan and the Standard Oil bankers make ef¬ fective use of the money stringency in Wall Street— used it as a threat and a club to brow¬ beat the banking and commercial classes into submission to their tyrannous rule; used it to put stocks up and to put stocks down ; used it to sow confusion and dread in the minds of the peo¬ ple; used it as the one terrible weapon which makes men of vast wealth easy masters of the 8 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. wild scenes of speculation which have been enacted in Wall Street in recent years. 11 But time at last sets all things even; And if we but wait the hour, There never yet was human power That could evade, if unforgiven, The patient search and vigil long Of him who treasures up a wrong. ’ 1 Verily the poets speak the people’s thought! At last, at last, we have the beneficiaries of Pro¬ tection cornered where they can not get away. For deception is now no longer possible ! Within the past five years Wall Street stock¬ jobbers have done what thirty years of honest tariff reform effort could not do. American manufacturers now plainly see that there is in¬ deed boundless prosperity in Protection— for a few people ! American workingmen now scoff at thread-bare threats of “the pauper labor of Eu¬ rope.” American farmers in Iowa and the Middle West are in open revolt over the low prices at which our manufactures are sold in for¬ eign markets. And the vaunted “economies” of industrial combinations — which Rockefeller shrewdly tells us “are a necessity” to cheapen production— have been turned into maddening mockery by the high prices which the combina¬ tions exact for all the materials of home manu¬ facture; by the higher prices which they exact for every necessary of home consumption — not¬ ably beef, coal, and coal oil ! There is indeed but one pretense left to the Prosperity Prophets— and that is that we shall be plunged into another panic if they be driven RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 9 from power. Blaine fooled some people with that pretense before; but it is a pretense which can fool them no more. For since Blaine’s day the people have been thoroughly well educated in problems of money and finance. They read with too-evident satisfaction — unalloyed by alarm — the terrific tales of panic and disaster which overwhelm Wall Street when Morgan and Hill go up against Harriman and Kuhn-Loeb; when Rockefeller and Rogers tackle Lawson and Heinze; when Gates and his friends shrewdly corner control of the L. & N. ; or when Standard Oil “bandits” (as Gates called them), make money tight and issue solemn warnings through Mr. Vanderlip to save the Nation from the foul plots of the “Western plungers.” The people clearly understand, also, that the promoters and underwriters of “industrial com¬ binations” have made many millions by putting these stocks up ; and now, in cruel ‘ ‘ bear ’ ’ fash¬ ion, they are beginning to make other millions by putting stocks down— by selling short “to shake out the little fellows.” The process is spectacular, and it is exceedingly rough on the “little fellows.” But it spells something very different from panic. For obviously men with millions at their command are certain to buy when stocks are really cheap — and then straight¬ way they turn “bulls” again! They want divi¬ dends. And to get dividends they must keep the factories going! No, no; they want no serious panic— and we may rest entirely sure they will not permit one. They know, as the people now clearly under- 10 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. stand, that the causes of panic and industrial de¬ pression lie deeper. They know, as men of in¬ telligence the world over well know, that our last panic, with all its direful results, was due solely to the silver craze— due specifically to the Sher¬ man Silver Coinage Law. And we have no less an authority than John Sherman himself, for the statement that he introduced and passed that bill in a Republican Congress, because a majority of both the Senate and House stood ready to pass a measure for the free coinage of silver, while a Republican President in the White House stood ready to sign it. The world well remembers, also, that Mr. Mc¬ Kinley was the outspoken advocate of the free coinage of silver ; and previous to his nomination for the Presidency his speeches teemed with dec¬ larations rivaling the worst that Mr. Bryan has ever uttered. The record further proves that it was Mr. Cleveland, a Democratic President, who called an extra session of Congress to repeal the Sher¬ man Silver Coinage Law ; and it was Mr. Cleve¬ land who stood manfully to his duty, through long weeks of dire panic and bitter warfare with Free Silver Republicans and Free Silver Dem¬ ocrats— in the Senate— until that Republican legislation was wiped from our statute books. And to that priceless public service, more than to all other causes combined, we owe the prolonged prosperity which we enjoy— and shall continue to enjoy ! For in the light of this glad day even school boys understand that this mighty Nation is yet in the infancy of its power, its wealth, and RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 11 its greatness. No menace of foreign nations can now affright ns. No sort of panic can now stay our progress. And should an earthquake engulf Wall Street; should all its millions and its multi¬ millionaires be swept into oblivion in a night— this eighty millions of freemen would wake up next morning to marvel at the havoc that had been wrought, and then straightway begin the work of counting the cost, repairing the damage, filling the places of the missing men, and going straight on with the mission “which they who fought have thus far so nobly advanced. ’ ’ 11 Future events, of whatever nature they may be, will not de¬ prive the Americans of their climate or of their inland seas, of their great rivers or of their exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, or anarchy, be able to obliterate that love of pros¬ perity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to be the dis¬ tinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish the knowl¬ edge which guides them on their way. “Thus in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at least is sure. At a period which may be said to be near, the Anglo-Americans will alone cover the immense space contained between the polar regions and the tropics, extending from the coast of the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.” —M. de Tocqueville, in 1835. But the time has come for plain speaking. The time has come when prudence and patriot¬ ism alike demand that we shall name our rulers, disclose their motives, and describe the exact methods whereby they win their millions. The task is not a pleasant one. I should gladly leave it to others. I should much prefer to credit every public man with all the good intentions he professes— much prefer to believe that the “mighty millionaires ’ ’ and “princely benefac- 12 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. tors’ ’ who manage onr finances, manipulate our politics, and “organize” our industries, are real¬ ly concerned for the public welfare. But actions speak louder than words. No man can blind him¬ self to what all thinking men plainly see. The mil¬ lionaires are thinking only of their millions and themselves— “the public be damned!” The mo¬ tives which dominate the thought and purpose of every man of them, are (1) greed of wealth and power; (2) glory in triumph over personal ri¬ vals; and (3) the delusive hope that splendid gifts in money can delude the people, buy the ad¬ miration of living men, and mortgage the loving gratitude of men and women yet unborn. I know, as millions of others well know, and as a great scientist has aptly said, that ‘ ‘ the inherit¬ ed predatory tendency of men to seize upon the fruits of other people’s labor is still very strong.” And Wall Street affords conclusive proof that the predatory tendency of the strong men of our time takes the very definite form of stocks and bonds, watered wholesale, and issued for billions of money — upon which the people are heavily taxed to pay interest and dividends. I see plainly, also, that whereas the whole Ameri¬ can people realize that we are being thus ruled and taxed for the special benefit of a few rich men and rich families, very few Americans un¬ derstand exactly how the thing is being done. But I have made a business of studying the prob¬ lem intently ; and through study I have come to see that the system is so simple and obvious, and the remedies so well-tried and so certain to cure the ills which afflict us, that the unvarnished facts RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 13 only need to be stated in cold print, without fear or favor, to make an end of the shameless system from which we suffer. For the truth is that, through deception and secrecy — through the ab¬ sence of publicity — we are actually ruled by men who hold no public offices, but who buy, own, bull¬ doze and direct the little politicians who scramble for the “ honors’ ’ and offices of the Republican machine. “Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art.” — Thomas Jefferson. The need of the hour, as I see it, therefore, is that we name the leaders among the millionaires who are ruling us; that we name the politicians in high office who obey the behests of these lead¬ ers; and that we describe the exact plan of the political machine through which the work is done. For the political machine holds all the se¬ crets of the millions that now amaze and menace us; and whereas long and costly experience has made us perfectly familiar with the little local machines, very few people clearly comprehend the system and organization of the formidable political machine which is centered in the United States Senate, and which, through “community- of-interest” between millionaires and politicians, now absolutely rules the whole country — under the personal direction of a few men who manu¬ facture and manipulate Trust stocks, and who control the invaluable franchises which the peo¬ ple have granted for railroads, pipe-lines, and all public utilities. What we need, in truth, and just about all we 14 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. need, is the spirit and language of Andrew Jack- son— as our fathers needed him sorely in 1860! 1 ‘This is only justice; this we ask of government ; this we are entitled to; and this we must and will have. This may be thought strong language; but it is the language that freemen, when they are only claiming a fulfillment of their rights, ought to use. It is a language they ought to be taught to lisp from their cradles. f} — Andrew Jackson. We need the clear thinking and the fearless writing that Jefferson taught Jackson to employ. For in our day as in Jefferson’s day, and then again in Jackson’s day, we are face to face with identically the same forces of sordid greed and sinful corruption. The forces are the same; the methods are the same; the issues are the same; and the remedies are so familiar that they need only re-statement to find instant recognition — and prompt application! And just so surely as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln won before us, so we shall win now — so our chil¬ dren shall go on winning throughout all future time! The great Republic is, in truth, yet in the mak¬ ing— is hardly past the boyhood stage of rapid growth and development. Dewey’s immortal work at Manila first opened the eyes of living generations to our great future; and though the Trust bubble, like the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi bubble, has since puffed-up to menace and affright the few, it carries no terrors for the manhood of the new race which has stepped upon the world’s stage to proclaim anew that the fittest shall rule, and that the poor, RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 15 the lowly and the helpless shall not be enslaved to the service of the sordid few who are debased and debauched by money-worship. “ But hark! the bugle’s blowing on the peaks, , And hark! a murmur as of many feet. The cry of Captains, the divine alarm! Look, the last Son of Time comes hurrying on, The strong young Titan of Democracy ! ’ ’ I shall set down naught in malice; for I have no personal grievance to avenge, and I fain would leave unsaid much that must be written. But I have lived through two prolonged and desperate panics ; I have been eye witness to the awful dis¬ aster and wretchedness they entailed; and I re¬ member, as though it were yesterday, what hap¬ pened at Pittsburg in 1877, at Homestead in 1892, and at Chicago in 1894. I know the full portent and prophecy of that latest enormity of ‘ 4 man’s inhumanity to man” in the anthracite re¬ gion ; I clearly understand what free born Ameri¬ cans now feel, and think, and suffer ; and as a sol¬ dier Js son who well knows, from tried use, that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” I mean to make for peace , by laying bare in these pages the sordid motives, the political methods, and the social wrongs which steadily make for strife. The conspicuous leaders, the men who do the dangerous work, are Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. Pierpont Morgan. Many other “Captains of Industry” and “Captains of Finance” might be added to the list; but we are not concerned with the rank and file. I select to place responsibility where responsibility be- 16 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. longs— upon the influential and powerful lead¬ ers; the men who think, who plan, who act, and who have pocketed the lion’s share of all the Pro¬ tection spoil. “ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” I put Carnegie in the forefront of the offenders, because he is the personal embodiment of Protec¬ tion — the spectacular demonstration of the inevit¬ able result of legislation for the special benefit of a few, at the direct expense of the many. A free trader at heart, a confessed free trader in public print — as any man can plainly read between his shrewdly worded lines — he has yet devoted all his arts and cunning to confusing the minds of the American people and committing their represent¬ atives to precisely that political policy and Pro¬ tection legislation which would put most money into his own pocket. James G. Blaine, “Pig Iron” Kelley, and William McKinley loom large in popular fancy as the great apostles of Protec¬ tion ; but in naked truth from the hour the tariff question became a political issue- in 1880, Car¬ negie has been the active, scheming, and resource¬ ful leader of them all. The intimate and confiden¬ tial friend of Blaine, the watchful and designing counsellor of Kelley, McKinley, and all the lesser leaders of the party, Carnegie has inspired and directed every move that has been made. Fame lured the politicians, but it is insatiate greed for millions that has kept the wily little Scot steadily to his work ever since our burden of war taxes gave him his golden opportunity. FiConomists, free trade writers and college pro- RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 17 fessors are fond of boasting that Protection is without a literature — that all the great authorities upon political economy repudiate the theory, demonstrate its fallacy, and spurn to give it any extended treatment. This is true enough— so true that I never yet met a believer in Protection who does not in some form drop the familiar re¬ mark “ Oh, free trade is all right in theory; but it won’t work in practice. ’ ’ But Carnegie has filled the gap in Protection “literature.” I have been a newspaper man all my life, and I have studied the literature of free trade with absorbing interest. But in all my reading I never yet found any free trade writing which ap¬ proaches what Carnegie has voiced and penned in advocacy of Protection — in point of winning plausibility, shrewd qualification of definite pro¬ posals, generous praise of Cobden, Bright and Yilliers, artful recognition of the priceless public services of William L. Wilson, and positive power in appealing to the pocket interest and pa¬ triotism of intelligent men who are unfamiliar with European conditions and untrained in eco¬ nomic thought, but who influence the greatest possible number of votes. His work has taken every possible form; and for thirty years past the “ personal ” letter and the timely newspaper interview have been his chief dependence. But enough of his writing has now been collected in book form to clearly show his artfulness ; and if those who see through the man and his methods , will simply spend an hour at some library in read¬ ing “ The Empire of Business,”— particularly 18 JEFFEBSONIAN DEMOCKACY. the chapter on ‘ ‘ Steel Manufacture in the United States,” and the three closing chapters— they will understand, clearly enough, why millions of clear¬ headed men in America are deluded with the be¬ lief that Protection has built-up our great indus¬ tries. Everybody knows that Free Trade made Brit¬ ain the foremost manufacturing nation of the nineteenth century. We also know that Free Trade among the States is the inestimable boon which has assured us first place for the twentieth century — precisely as Free Trade among her numerous States has enriched Germany and given her the proud place she has won since 1871. Free Trade, in ultimate fact, is the only natural, logical, just— and hence profitable— policy for ev¬ ery nation under the sun. Carnegie knows this ; and in my tariff chapter 1 shall quote him in proof of it. But Carnegie has had a pocket inter¬ est in preaching Protection for America; and, with that central fact clearly in mind , any intelli¬ gent reader can now both understand and accu¬ rately estimate the cunning little Scot by simply studying his writings. “Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!” A great manufacturer and employer himself, and always assuming to speak disinterestedly for that important class, he has ever been in position to exert great influence ; and he has used that in¬ fluence with a dash and skill unparalleled in effec¬ tive results. By timely and strikingly worded newspaper interviews— often cabled from his es¬ tates in Britain to make them doubly impressive ; RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 19 by shrewdly written articles published in both British and American magazines— wherever they would have most telling effect; by hundreds of personal letters to members of the Cabinet and to leaders in Congress— always carefully marked ‘ ‘ confidential ’ ’ that he might not be betrayed as the moving force ; by frequent visits and impres¬ sive conferences at Washington; by quiet little dinner parties upon all opportune occasions ; and always by heavy contributions to the campaign funds— these have been the methods of a master¬ mind in managing the most formidable and most prodigiously profitable political machine in re¬ corded history. “Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of a self-control which protects them from the errors of a tem¬ porary excitement; and they form lasting designs which they mature with the assistance of favorable opportunities.” ' —M. de Tocqueville. “ Triumphant Democracy ” in book form em¬ bodies Mr. Carnegie’s patriotic professions; and libraries galore— to perpetuate his name forever at public expense— give the measure of his phil¬ anthropic concern for the poor, the lowly, and the helpless. But alien by birth, alien through inborn sympathy, alien in the choice of Skibo Castle as his favorite residence, alien in his Lord Rector¬ ship of St. Andrew’s University, Edinburgh, alien in his Presidency of the British Institute of Iron and Steel Manufactures, and alien in his hateful pretense of American citizenship,— he has simply used, abused, and tyrannously taxed the 20 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. American people to enrich himself beyond the dreams of his own avarice. “Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!” And fortunately for “ the plain people 99 for whom Lincoln lived and died; fortunately for the cause of equality before the law, this arch-enemy of Democracy has written several books ! But I fancy he will think twice before he writes any more about “ Democracy and when the histor¬ ians of the future study his books and contem¬ plate his liberality in libraries— erected to per¬ petuate his name forever by taxing the people — I think they will be prompted to go further and pry out the newspaper records of how he fled home to Scotland and made his managing part¬ ner, Mr. Frick, the catspaw and victim of that frightful Homestead strike — following closely upon the McKinley bill, which injured Carnegie’s pocket interest. And then I know they will study the court records of that famous suit in which he sought, desperately but vainly, to deprive that same managing partner, Mr. Frick, of millions of money. I am entirely sure, also, that the historians will have very much to say of the strategy and tactics Carnegie employed to prepare the way for the formation of the Steel Trust — first, by inspiring and badgering his partners with boasts of what he could do with the properties on the London Stock Exchange ; and then by threatening, alarm¬ ing, and bull-dozing his competitors into forming it. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 21 “It was the determination of the Carnegie Company to build extensive works at Conneaut, duplicating the existing works of other companies, and the certainty that these companies would be compelled to duplicate some of the Carnegie mills, that pre¬ cipitated the formation of the United States Steel Corporation.” ■ —New York Journal of Commerce. I am also sure that history’s eager eyes will pry out the masterful legal argument submitted to the Court by Mr. Edward B. Whitney, of New York, in the famously ineffectual injunction suit to stop the conversion of $200,000,000 of preferred stock into $250,000,000 of second mortgage bonds— with an incidental commission of $10,000,000 to J. P. Morgan & Co. ; and there they will find these statements : “We have, however, one item of valuation which is clear enough to settle this case, and that is the valuation of the properties of the Carnegie Steel Company. It is admitted that the gross assets of that company were valued upon its books on December 31, 1899, at about $98,000,000, and its net assets at $75,610,104.06. It is not claimed that the properties subse¬ quently acquired by that company and by its successor, the Carnegie Company, were worth more than $50,000,000. It is admitted that these assets were turned over by the Carnegie Company to the United States Steel Corporation at a valuation of $492,556,100. Here is an overvaluation of $344,000,000 on the single item of the Carnegie Company, and it will be remembered that the Carnegie Company got the best end of the transaction, since its share included the entire issue of first mortgage bonds. The brief goes on to say that “naturally, a determined effort was made by the defendants in this suit to show that the book values were not the full, fair and accurate values of the Carnegie assets on December 31, 1899. “What, then, were these book values? Were they fictitious undervaluations, mere statements of actual cost at a time when values bore no relation to the values of December 31, 1899, oi 22 JEFFERSON IAN DEMOCRACY. were they full, fair and accurate valuations at that date? We have the positive oath to the latter effect. They (Carnegie and others) join in testifying as follows: “ ‘We aver that the valuation of the assets as shown on said books and balance sheets is a full, fair and accurate valuation of the same, and that there has not been omitted from such books and balance sheets any assets which should properly find a place therein. ’ . . . ’ ’ Thus we see Carnegie the uncovered creator and chief beneficiary of the Steel Trust, — holding a first mortgage for hundreds of millions on all the property of his competitors, as well as his own property ! And this he has done while warn¬ ing investors and the public— before the event in the Century Magazine and after the event in his latest book, — in the following unmistakable words : “It is not long since trusts first made their appearance, and already many have disappeared. Many still existing are being assailed, the names of which will readily occur to our readers. Only a few survive to-day, and none have secured the coveted monopoly. Most of the metals and many of the staple articles have been formed into trusts, which, although yet living, are rapidly being attacked to their final destruction. The press used to tell every morning of the organization of some trust or other, and even to-day we will hear of proposed additions to the list of these attempted gigantic monopolies, which enjoy a brief ephemeral existence. “Already the ghosts of numerous departed trusts which aimed at monopolies have marched across the stage of human affairs, each pointing to its fatal wound, inflicted by that great cor¬ rective, competition. Like the ghosts of Macbeth’s victims, the line promises to stretch longer and longer, and also like those phantoms of the brain, they ‘come like shadows, so de¬ part. ’ 1 The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, And these are of them. ’ RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 23 “The only people who have reason to fear trusts are those who trust them . . . those foolish enough to go into them. ’ ’ One brave NO from Mr. Carnegie would have made the Steel Trust impossible— as other Trusts have been made impossible in both America and England. But he had schemed, early and late, long and tirelessly, to get his grip on surplus mil¬ lions wherewith to buy immortal 6 1 fame ’ ’ ; and, alas, he took the short cut —regardless of conse¬ quences to others! “O wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us. It wad frae mony a blunder free us And foolish notion. ” —Robert Burns . Mr. Carnegie is fond of quoting Shakespeare. But I think the evidence is clear that his greedy eyes have overlooked one vital penthrust from the immortal bard, which I now commend to his stu¬ dious consideration— while there is yet time, be¬ fore the final summons calls ! 1 1 The evil that men do lives after them ; The good, is oft interred with their bones. ’ ’ Yet another solemn injunction— from an Au¬ thor whom Carnegie never quotes, but from whom the wisest of men draw their noblest in¬ spiration : * ‘ When thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. ’ ’ Philanthropy is not alone admirable — it is im - 24 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. peratively necessary in these days of high Protec¬ tion, frequent panics, increasing pauperism, and dinner-pail politics. Free libraries, free univer¬ sities, free colleges, free hospitals, free summer homes, and free food, clothing, and fuel, in recur¬ ring seasons of industrial depression and dire distress— all these things afford Protection-fed and monopoly-made millionaires large opportu¬ nity to pose as princely givers and noble “ bene¬ factors ” of mankind. Precisely the same thing happened in Rome. Indeed, the patrician nobles of the Augustan era threw our moneyed “ aris¬ tocracy’ ’ quite into the shade. Mark Antony, so Mr. Marion Crawford tells us, squandered and gave away in his short life-time the equivalent of four billions ($4,000,000,000) of dollars! And what were the consequences in Rome? Let Dr. John Fiske, America’s foremost historian, give answer : Historians have been fond of showing how the vitality of the whole (Roman) system was impaired by wholesale slave- labor, by the false political economy which taxes all for the benefit of a few, by the debauching view of civil office which regards it as a private perquisite and not as public trust, and —worst of all, perhaps— by the communistic practice of feeding an idle proletariat out of the imperial treasury. The names of these deadly social evils are not unfamiliar to American ears. Your nation may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can devise ; but if it lose the spirit of per¬ sonal and local independence, it is doomed and deserves its doom. The gravest dangers are those which present themselves in new forms, against which people ’a minds have not yet been forti¬ fied with traditional sentiments and phrases. The inherited pre- RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 25 datory tendency of men to seize upon the fruits of other people *s labor is still very strong, and while we have nothing more to fear from kings, we may yet have trouble enough from commercial monopolies and favored industries, marching to the polls their hordes of bribed retainers. Well indeed has it been said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. ’ 1 We are not in Rome. We have no intention of permitting Roman history to repeat itself. And it is just about time for aspiring politicians, in office and out of it, to realize that millions of free men and free women in America, who spurn char¬ ity, who buy their own books, who do their own thinking, and who are quite able to take care of themselves, are now fully alive to the fact that the source of our ills is too much Protection, too much Paternalism, and far too much need for Philanthropy in 'wholesale chunks of ill-gotten millions which are absolutely useless to the givers. And after my readers have followed me through later chapters, I am very sure that many, and I trust all of them, will agree that a man who preaches the virtue of poverty for other people, while pocketing millions for himself through Pro¬ tection legislation, personifies that gangrene of blind greed which has poisoned American politi¬ cal life— precisely as it first poisoned and then destroyed heathen Rome. ‘ 1 Glory built On selfish principles, is shame and guilt. ’ * —Cowper. And of Carnegie, more anon ! I put Rockefeller second in rank, because the Trusts have followed Protection as darkness fol- 26 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. lows day — Because we have Havemeyer’s word for it that ‘ ‘ the Tariff is the Mother of Trusts ’ 1 —Because Bockefeller has taught, by precept and example, that combinations 4 hare a necessity ” —Because the Trust is the one needful device which has enabled the Protection promoters to stagger the world with the magnitude of their godless gain, to spread industrial depression and dread of the future throughout all Europe, and to make thoughtful men the world over stop and wonder whether our free institutions will be equal to the strain. And of all living men this silent, secretive, and masterful organizer of monopoly is the spectral genius of this Trust-threatened age. Witness here the pen-picture drawn by a daring young woman, now steadily at work:* * ‘ The ability with which he made the smallest bargain fur¬ nishes topics to Cleveland story-tellers to-day. Low-voiced, soft- footed, humble, knowing every point in every man’s business, he never tired until he got his wares at the lowest possible figure. 1 J ohn always got the best of the bargain, ’ old men tell you in Cleveland to-day, and they wince though they laugh in telling it. 1 Smooth, ; ‘ a savy fellow, ’ is their description of him. To drive a good bargain was the joy of his life. ‘The only time I ever saw John Rockefeller enthusiastic,’ a man told the writer once, ‘was when a report came in from the Creek that his buyer had secured a cargo of oil at a figure much below the market price. He bounded from his chair with a shout of joy, danced up and down, hugged me, threw up his hat, acted so like a madman that I have never forgotten it. ’ ” The fruitful parent of all the Trusts that have ever yet been formed, and are still forming — is the Standard Oil Company. That is not only the •Ida M. Tarbell, in McClure’s Magazine. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 27 oldest of them all, but it is the most powerful ag¬ gregation of capital and business capacity ever drawn together in any line of industry outside railway operations. Marvellous in the perfection of its organization, invincible in its strength, as¬ tonishing in its boasted economies of production, and more astonishing in the pretended low prices at which its products are marketed— it is the one model from which every argument in support of the Trust idea has been drawn. And so often and so furiously has it been attacked by press and pul¬ pit, by Congress, by State legislatures, and by re¬ formers of every kind and degree, that many very able men have come to look upon it as a thing which must endure because of the essential sound¬ ness of the principles upon which it is builded. But the secrets of its strength are perfectly ob¬ vious to men trained in economic thought; its astonishing success carries fascination only for minds “more intent upon private gain than pub¬ lic policy ; ’ ’ and now we shall see, gaunt and bare, the very bone structure of the wonder-working monopoly. In the first place, crude petroleum is a natural product. The supply is limited rigidly by the flow from known oil fields — while the demand is ivithout limit , if the price be made low enough to induce consumption. The simple problem with which Rockefeller and his associates have to deal, therefore, is to get control in each new oil field as it develops— To get hold of the supply at any cost ; and then compensate themselves by arbi¬ trarily fixing the prices that the public must pay. In other words, “to corner oil”— which is pre- 28 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. cisely what they have been doing systematically, and by devious and shameless methods, for near¬ ly thirty years. Beyond this, both crude and refined oil are large in bulk, and their conveyance from the oil fields to various points of manufacture, and then again to consumers in every part of the world, makes the item of transportation enormously im¬ portant— so important in fact, that, having com¬ mand of this enormous volume of freight, they were for many years in position to actually dic¬ tate terms to competing railway lines. The sums thus saved through secret 1 ‘ rebates’ ’ and “draw¬ backs” on their own shipments — and the ship¬ ments of their competitors in business as well — mount into millions of dollars, and furnish one of the most scandalous chapters in American rail¬ way history. But murder will out. The sensation caused a few years ago by the public disclosure of this re¬ bate system, forced them to abandon it as a means of crushing “the oil producer — the man to whom the world owes the business,” as old Tom Scott graphically and truthfully described the heroic characters, past and present, who have faced every hardship, have assumed every risk, and have actually done, and are still doing , the pio¬ neer work necessary to increase this supply of Nature’s generous bounty. And now let judges, legislators, prosecuting attorneys, preachers, teachers, newspaper edi¬ tors, and reformers, one and all, take due note of this speaking piece of testimony from Rockefeller RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 29 himself — at last in cold print! — before the Indus¬ trial Commission, in defense of “industrial com¬ binations. 7 1 “We soon discovered as the business grew that the primary method of transporting oil in barrels could not last. The pack¬ age often cost more than the contents, and the forests of the country were not sufficient to supply the material for an extended length of time. Hence we devoted attention to other methods of transportation, adopted the pipe line system, and found capital for pipe line construction equal to the necessities of the business. To operate pipe lines required franchises from States in which they were located, and consequently corporations in those States, just as railroads running through different States are forced to operate under separate charters. To perfect the pipe line system of transportation required in the neighborhood of $50,000 000 of capital. This could not be obtained or maintained without in¬ dustrial combination. ‘ 1 The entire oil business is dependent upon this pipe line sys¬ tem. Without it every well would be shut down, every foreign market would be closed to us. The pipe line system required other improvements, such as tank cars upon railways, and finally the tank steamer. Capital had to be furnished for them, and corporations created to own and operate them. Every step taken was necessary in the business if it was to be properly developed. 1 ’ There we have the secret, clearly exposed ! The people have granted these franchises. The people have authorized the building of these pipe lines over private property. The people have permit¬ ted these men to monopolize, to their exclusive use, this marvellous means of cheap transporta¬ tion. In short, it is the representatives of the people in State legislatures (especially in Penn¬ sylvania, where Quay presides) who have placed the oil producers and the oil consumers at the mercy of these multi-millionaires ! Americans are fond of boasting our many 30 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. thousands of miles of railroads, which we have builded since the Civil War; and public-spirited citizens, for a generation past, have been active and eager in demanding that the people shall en¬ joy the benefits of fair and equal rates for rail¬ road transportation. As a result, we created the Inter-State Commerce Commission many years ago ; and we are wide-awake to the necessity for regulating freight rates. But how many men are awake to the significance, the extent, and the priceless value of this newer means of cheap transportation for petroleum oill So few are awake, that the Standard Oil Company has en¬ riched its beneficiaries beyond their wildest dreams. And they have become so rich that al¬ ready they are reaching out, in ignorant greed, to control nothing less than our national govern¬ ment through the United States Senate. But for this insufferable and idle scheme, let us await the next chapter. The many thousands of miles of pipe line trans¬ portation already in existence, and now planned and building, may be inferred from the following item which I clip from the New York Herald as I write : It is learned that the Standard Oil Company has made plans for the construction of eight hundred miles of new pipe lines for the transmission of oil. Part of this great construction work has been completed; some in West Virginia, Ohio, and in California. The work is being done by subsidiary companies. According to the Chronicle several of these pipe lines are of unusual import¬ ance. The Cumberland Pipe Line Company has completed a pipe line of six-inch pipe from Parkersburg, W. Va., to Manchester, London, and Somerset in eastern Kentucky, and branch lines RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 31 leading into nearby oil fields. The plans include the construc¬ tion of three hundred and fifteen miles of pipe in Kentucky, to cost $1,000,000. “ Under tHe charter of the East Ohio Gas Company, a pipe line extending from the West Virginia oil fields to Cleveland, about two hundred miles long, has been constructed. In Cali¬ fornia, the Pacific Coast Oil Company, another subsidiary, is now finishing 278 miles of eight inch pipe, which will carry oil from the great Kern fields to San Francisco. “ The Chronicle also says that the Standard Oil Company now controls more than one-half of the fine burning oil output of the country. ’ ’ Some measure of the enormous profits that the beneficiaries of the monopoly are drawing from the consumers of oil, may be gathered from the following statement of dividends paid, which I also clip from the Neiv York Herald as I write — while the people of the Atlantic seaboard cities are suffering for lack of coal, while it is selling at retail for double and treble the normal price, while the Salvation Army is distributing asbestos bricks saturated with oil, and while platoons of policemen are needed at the coal yards to keep long lines of men, women, and children, in order as they struggle and wait for an opportunity to buy, and themselves carry off, a scuttle, a bag, a pail, or a baby carriage filled with coal : STANDARD OIL ’S GREAT DIVIDENDS. 1897 . $33,000,000 1898 . 30,000,000 1899 . 33,000,000 1900 . 48,000,000 32 JEFFERSONIAlN DEMOCRACY. 1901 . 1902 — 1st quarter 2d quarter 3d quarter 4th quarter . $48,000,000 $20,000,000 10,000,000 5,000,000 10,000,000 45,000,000 Total for last six years . $237,000,000 On a capital stock of . $100,000,000 Oil has gone up a cent or more a gallon. The scarcity of coal drove the people to using gas stoves in increasing quantities. Similarly the sale of oil stoves increased tremendously last fall and this winter. Then the manufacturers were unable to deliver gas stoves in sufficient quantity to meet the fast growing demand, and simultaneously the Standard Oil Company came forward with a new wickless burner and disposed of thousands of addi¬ tional oil stoves and heaters. Then the experiment of burning oil for fuel on locomotives and steamships turned out successfully. The Southern Pacific Rail¬ way, the Hawaiian Steamship Company and a company running steamers from Texas to New York followed suit, and other cus¬ tomers heretofore not reached made a new market. Two weeks ago the Standard Oil Company advanced the price to jobbers a cent a gallon. This means an increase in income of $8,000,000 annually on sales in the United States alone, as the Oil Trust controls 80 per cent, of all the petroleum produced in this country. The Standard Oil Company dividends for this year amount to $45,000,000, or 45 per cent., on a capital of $100,000,000. The quarterly dividends have been 20, 10, 5 and 10 per cent, respec¬ tively. On December 15 the dividends for the last quarter will be paid. Last year, and in 1900 also, the dividends amounted to 48 per cent., but this year an enormous sum has been expended in “betterments, ” that is, buying new properties in Texas and else¬ where and in building new vessels for the carrying trade. Thus the latest increase in cost to local consumers may be un¬ derstood as tending to equalize the returns to the stockholders to the normal figures of 1901 and 1900. To the average householder it means that a gallon of kerosene oil will cost from twelve to thirteen and a half cents a gallon hereafter, unless the oil mag¬ nates should decide upon another squeeze. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 33 At one of the largest department stores, where two thousand oil stoves were sold last month it was said yesterday that they were paying thirteen and a half cents a gallon for oil by the bar¬ rel. In Harlem grocers were selling a gallon at twelve cents in some places and twelve and a half cents in other places. — New York Herald , Dec. 13, 1902. Two weeks later yet another advance of one cent per gallon was exacted, making a total ad¬ vance of four cents. Thus we see the realism of that philosophy of modern business management which enables our first and greatest combination to ‘ 6 reduce prices to the consumer.” And just how they captured the Texas oil field is graphi¬ cally indicated by these clippings from the New York American— whose young editor, though be¬ fogged by the theory of “government owner¬ ship,’ ? is yet splendidly fearless in publishing the facts : ROCKEFELLER GETS TEXAS OIL FIELDS. Bought up all of the wharves and shipping facilities of Port Arthur, the nearest deep-water port to the famous fields. Purchased ninety thousand acres of land, surrounding Port Arthur. Bought all the railroads leading from the Beaumont fields to Port Arthur. Cut off the Beaumont fields from the oil market, and placed it in a position to make terms with Standard Oil. Bought ninety per cent, of the interests in the Beaumont Oil Fields, besides acquiring a vast amount of territory around Beau¬ mont, including the Sour Lake oil wells. Another feeler is reaching toward the Bakersfield oil fields in California. Fuel oil forced up $1 a barrel. Standard Oil forced up 4c. a gallon. Standard stock sent up $36 a share. THE ROCKEFELLER METHOD. “You take the risk; we do the rest,” is Rockefeller’s motto, 34 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. and he has never departed from it since the first day of the Standard Oil business. He has stood by while others expended millions developing oil fields. Naturally, most of the money thus expended has been lost in unprofitable ventures. Rockefeller has always ignored the companies thac failed, and seized the successes. John M. Wright, president of the Peerless, expressed the ut¬ most satisfaction at the result of the negotiations with the Standard Oil people. Mr. Wright was asked if the Standard Oil Company intends to control the oil product of California. “I have no doubt/’ he answered, “that the Standard intends to control not only the oil product of California, but the oil business of the United States. That they can accomplish this purpose is unquestionable. They have no competition and they can have no opposition. Owners of oil wells had to sell, and the Standard Oil Company was the only market available. ’ ’ — New York American, Dec. 29, 1902. What of the dividends from the subsidiary companies, and the outside investments sprung' from the parent monopoly? That will make a most interesting subject of inquiry for a Congres¬ sional committee of investigation ; and I fancy the newspapers will give us some racy reading when the good work begins. And what is the remedy? Open their books, as we long ago learned the necessity for opening the books of the banks and insurance companies — Open their books, as we have been vainly trying for twenty years past to make the railway monop¬ olists open their books— Open their books, that the courageous and inde¬ pendent oil producers may make sure of enjoying RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 35 precisely the same rates of pipe-line transporta¬ tion that the monopolists have long enjoyed ex¬ clusively— Open their books, that expert oil refiners, with ample capital and eager readiness for the busi¬ ness, may prove that oil for lighting and heating the homes of the people can be sold at a profit for probably half the price the monopolists have al¬ ways exacted — Open their books, that the world may learn that crude petroleum is so rich a bounty — is composed of so many valuable elements — that its by-prod¬ ucts alone (naphtha, gasoline, paraffine, vaseline, benzine, etc., etc.) have been yielding handsome dividends on the entire cash capital of the com¬ pany for years past — have in fact becoirib so im¬ portant and profitable that oil refining would still be profitable if lamp oil were given away. Open their books, that men of business may plainly see that such unheard-of profits are un¬ known to legitimate manufacturing industry, sub¬ ject to free competition— Open their books, that deluded converts to the ‘ ‘ combination ’ ’ idea may now have proof that the baneful teaching of these wily monopolists is di¬ rectly responsible for the whole brood of stock- jobbing schemes and ‘‘blind pools” which have disgraced Wall Street in recent years ; which have deceived honest investors; which have brought discredit upon American banking interests ; and which are now crowding the courts with injunc¬ tion suits, damage suits, receiverships and bank¬ ruptcy proceedings — Open their books, that patriots and freemen 36 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. may now fully realize tlie danger of permitting this formidable group of multi-millionaires to go on with their work of monopolizing copper mines, iron mines, lead mines, coal fields, steamship lines, railway systems, and banking facilities. F or monopolize them all they surely will ; and the millions they already command, with the combin¬ ations they have formed and are still forming, are the effective instruments with which their daring ends will be compassed. But enough. I have laid bare the very bone structure of this sin-breeding monopoly. I have pointed straight to the corrective remedy which will rob it of all its power, render it subservient to the public need— and in the process, not give its managers the shadow of an excuse for shutting down even one of its factories for a single hour. And if there be those who see the pressing need for a closer study of the subject, let me pay a de¬ served tribute to courageous womanhood by ear¬ nestly recommending a careful reading of the fas¬ cinating, authentic, and heroically-written history of the Standard Oil Company, by Miss Ida M. Tarbell, lately published serially in McClure's Magazine. I place Morgan third in rank, because it is only in recent years that he has loomed large in the public eye ; and, obviously, his function as finan¬ cier of “industrial combinations,” is simply the logical outcome of the teaching and preparatory work of the other men. In other words, Carnegie needed and used his high credit and great daring to reap from the investing public a har- EULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 37 vest of hundreds of millions in first mort¬ gage gold fionds; and in like manner Rocke¬ feller still needs him for the steady work of combining railway systems and steamship lines with our great stores of natural wealth in coal mines, iron mines, copper mines, and lead mines — Nature’s bounty to mankind! Vain of his power and influence, eager for supreme lead¬ ership, and still more eager for the hundreds of millions which the work of promotion yields him¬ self and his partners, Morgan has plunged into “ industrials” with a reckless daring which stag¬ gers the level-headed and conservative financiers of both America and Europe. In his personality we plainly see the boldness and daring of Hamilton, the financier ; the aristo¬ cratic pride of Biddle, the hanker; the ages-old arrogance of wealth and power ; and blended with these, a dashing faculty for organization and co¬ ercion which he renders potent and quickly effec¬ tive, through a transparent policy of wholesale liberality to both victors and vanquished in the allotment of millions of heavily watered stock— which he straightway markets to the investing public ! And it is because he is straightforward, blunt, and bold ; it is because his word is as good as his bond among Wall Street bankers and promoters; it is because his followers are loyal and his rivals ever ready to treat with him; and especially be¬ cause he lends himself and his high credit to deep schemers like Carnegie and Rockefeller, that he is to-day one of the most demoralizing forces in American public life. 38 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. For we must not forget that Wall Street now sits supreme over the management and market value of every great franchise that the people have granted for public utilities— railroads, street railways, gas and electric light companies, water works, telegraph and telephone rights, min¬ ing charters for coal, iron, copper, lead and other necessities of the people ; and in these latter days, even the stocks and bonds of “infant industries” which since the war have been so tenderly fos¬ tered by the Morrill bill, the McKinley bill, and the Dingley bill. We must not forget that “community of inter¬ est” is the magic wand, the new-found device, wherewith these mighty millionaires, these prince¬ ly patrons of libraries, churches, universities, and hospitals, are to harmonize all competing inter¬ ests in the conduct of these vast enterprises — to the end, as we are told, that America may be su¬ preme on land and sea, and that “the plain peo¬ ple” may buy cheaper, live better, and earn high¬ er wages than any other people under the sun ! But I, for one at least, can not forget that in the early days of Republican misrule, when Cred¬ it Mobilier, the Star Route frauds, and the Whis¬ key Ring were the sensations of the day, the polite term “community of interest” was then phrased in rough and ready fashion as “the cohesive pow¬ er of public plunder.” I can not forget that it was Jim Blaine of Maine — Carnegie’s intimate friend — who “cast an anchor to windward” and barely saved Protec¬ tion from defeat in 1880, by introducing the now- familiar program of loudly proclaiming Prosper- RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 39 ity, of savagely threatening the people with an¬ other panic, and of trickily foisting upon the pub¬ lic that serviceable subterfuge, that Blaine-like mockery of tariff reform— Reciprocity ! I freely maintain that Protection is the very basis and beginning of these 11 industrial combina¬ tions”— That Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and their imitators on a lesser scale, have simply cap¬ italized into billions of interest-bearing bonds and dividend-carrying shares the fabulous profits which Protection makes possible — And that all these profits are drawn straight from the pockets of the American people, in the form of extortion¬ ate prices for all the materials of home manufac¬ ture, and burdensome prices for all the necessa¬ ries of living in the home. In proof of this, I cite the enormous advances in the prices of iron and steel, of tin plate and wire nails, of lead and copper, of chemicals and drugs, of hides and leather, of coal and coal oil, of beef and mutton, of woolens and dress-goods _ the prices of every material that enters into home manufacture, as well as household con¬ sumption— the prices of each and every article controlled by a Trust ! And outrage of all others assuredly the worst, 1 cite the sworn testimony before the Industrial Commission as to the low prices at which these same combinations sell their products to foreign manufacturers and foreign consumers ! I refuse to forget that sworn testimony in the courts avers that a fair valuation of all the prop¬ erties merged into the Steel Trust would be $300,- 000,000. If that be true, then its stupendous 40 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. capitalization of One Billion Four Hundred Mil¬ lions of Dollars ($1,400,000,000) gives the meas- ure of the ‘‘watered-stock” upon which American consumers of iron and steel are expected to pay interest and dividends. And its widely heralded net profits, now averaging One Hundred and For¬ ty Million Dollars per annum ($140,000,000), give the measure of the extortionate prices that Americans have been forced to pay through Pro¬ tection legislation, which shuts out foreign pro¬ ducers; and through “restricted production,” which enabled Morgan to boast that in forming the Steel Trust he had “saved” $150,000,000 then about to be expended for building new furnaces, new mills, and new factories to supply the in’- creased demand. I refuse to forget that when this stupendous volume of watered-stock was about to be offered to the investing public, the effective criticism and the startling facts published daily in the New Yoik papers gravely endangered the success of the mammoth flotation. Then suddenly a flaming prospectus appeared as an advertisement in all the critical New York newspapers. It occupied column after column of space; it was inserted at lull card rates with no discounts or rebates asked ; and day after day, for weeks of time, it ran on until forbid” orders from J. P. Morgan & Co. bmall wonder that the criticism ceased! Small wonder that the business managers of these news¬ papers were able to persuade the editors that in¬ vestors in Wall Street “industrials” are, or ought to be, quite able to take care of themselves. Again, when the recent coal strike was at its RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 41 crisis ; when the people of the Eastern cities were in imminent peril of a coal famine in winter; when even the Chief Magistrate of the Nation had appealed vainly to the coal barons to grant some slight concession — then it was that Morgan once more made Barnum-like use of the newspapers and associated press despatches, to brazenly an¬ nounce that he had placed an order for 50,000 tons of coal in England, and that every fleet vessel in the new shipping combine would at once be em¬ ployed for transporting that English coal to New York. Thus, by a master-stroke of “ combina¬ tion’ ’ finance, the shares of the Shipping Trust were to be popularized, while the sturdy miners were to be starved into submission 1 It is indeed well worthy of careful note by thinking Americans that this daring promoter of combinations has a very substantial appreciation of the power of the press in shaping public opin¬ ion— as shown by his ownership of a great pub¬ lishing house issuing numerous and very influen¬ tial weekly and monthly periodicals ; as shown by his financial control of at least two of the leading New York daily papers; and as shown by the rumor that himself and 4 ‘ community-of ■ -interest” associates are the real purchasers of the two great newspaper properties which recently changed hands in Philadelphia. And now, reader, take careful note ! For here is where I want thinking men, with the money-making faculty and the rare gift of foresight,* to stop short in the mad rush for mil¬ lions, that they may do a little thinking for their 42 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. children; for their grandchildren; and for the generations of American freemen who are to come after ns. It must not be supposed that this spectacular work of recent years represents the central pur¬ pose, and the moving ambition, of the man who has been aptly described as our Napoleon of Fi¬ nance. No, no; Mr. Morgan is facile princeps a railroad financier. It was in the reorganization of bankrupted railroad properties that he won his spurs and garnered his first millions. The work which now engages his best energies, his highest powers, and all the influence of the millions massed behind his leadership, is that of combin¬ ing, consolidating, and tightly controlling the great railroad systems of the country ! The Steel Trust, the Coal Trust, and the Shipping Trust are mere feeders and outlets for the main scheme of monopoly. The clear purpose, the definite aim, and the ceaseless effort of himself and all his fol¬ lowers, is to get a tight grip on the very arteries of the Nation’s commerce and industry — to use THE RAILROADS FOR CONTROLLING OUR PRINCIPAL MINING, MANUFACTURING AND SHIPPING INDUS¬ TRIES, PRECISELY AS THE STANDARD OlL CROWD USE THE PIPE LINES. 1 1 1901 I heard the details of a plan by capitalists to bring the soft coal and the anthracite together into one common or¬ ganization. I asked how it was possible to control the thousand loosely scattered bituminous mines. He (an operator) answered, “ Simply because we have got the railroads. Through railroad control we have got the anthracite where no independent operator can trouble us a bit. To control the soft coal is of course far more difficult, but it is not difficult if we have, as we shall have, proper control of transportation.” —John Graham BrooTcs. RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 43 Witness the Northern Securities combine— which was squarely balked by the initiative of plucky and puissant Minnesota ! Witness the re¬ cent sensational absorption of the Louisville and Nashville into Morgan’s net-work of Southern roads. Witness the compact organization, in fla¬ grant violation of both State and national laws, of all the anthracite coal roads. Observe, also, that the Baltimore and Ohio, the Norfolk and West¬ ern, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Long Is¬ land railroads, have all very lately been merged into the Pennsylvania system. Group with these the Vanderbilt, the Gould, and the Harriman sys¬ tems— and we plainly see that through 4 4 commun¬ ity of interest,” and through Morgan’s effective methods of persuasion and coercion, it is already possible for a small group of men to meet in se¬ cret conclave in a Wall Street parlor, and there decide, for good or ill, questions of supremest importance to the industry, the commerce, the banking facilities, and the political policies of the whole American people — Actually decide for peace or war, should an occupant of the White House be a man of war-like temper and bold am¬ bition! For bold men are alike the world over; and we have lately been witnesses to the frightful fact that a small group of diamond mining mag¬ nates and gold mining millionaires in South Afri¬ ca, first aroused the patriotism of the British people, and then led them headlong into a death¬ dealing and awful war ! As I write our danger point is Venezuela. Probably a little later it will be Brazil; and we have Cuba, Manila, and Pekin as magazines of 44 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. political dynamite, ever ready for the explosive spark. Naval battles, also, are picturesque, in¬ spiring, and inexpensive in point of men and money as compared with war on land. To divert attention from home affairs ; to check-mate an up¬ rising of working men; or to carry a doubtful presidential election, — there will be no lack of op¬ portunity for a stirring appeal to patriotism to rise in defense of 4 ‘ home industries’ ’ and our na¬ tional pride. RHODES ’S REASONS FOR THE RAID. London, March 27 (1902). — Cecil Rhodes never publicly avowed the reasons why he organized the Jameson raid. They are now set forth in his own words by one of his biographers, who quotes Mr. Rhodes as saying: “There were three reasons. In the first place, I found that old Kruger was an insuperable obstacle to the union of South Africa, even for commercial purposes and for the development of the country. I tried him in every way I could on what you may call Afrikander principles, but it was of no use, and so long as he ruled the Iransvaal the brake was put on all progress in South Africa. The second reason was that there was an English-speaking minority opposed to Kruger, but at least as much opposed to see¬ ing South Africa under the British flag. That was then a small minority, but a growing one, and if left to develop it would have become a majority. When the hour came to get rid of Kruger, that would have balked the policy for which I had struggled all my life— to make South Africa an integral part of the British Empire. ‘ * The third reason was : You cannot make revolutions in these days without money, and 1 had at my command at that time a combination of millionaires ready to support me whom I might never be able to get together again.” —New Yorlc Sun. Our situation, in naked reality, is the net result of the British system of finance and the discarded RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 45 British system of Protection, to which Alexander Hamilton, a native-born British subject, made us heir. For we have no less an authority than Gou- verneur Morris, the life-long and chosen friend who preached the funeral sermon over Hamil¬ ton’s dead body, for this statement: “General Hamilton had little share in forming the Constitu¬ tion. He disliked it, believing all republican government to be radically defective. He heartily assented, nevertheless, to the Constitution; because he considered it a band which might hold us together for some time, and he knew that national sentiment is the offspring of national existence. He trusted, moreover, that in the changes and chances of time, we should be involved in some war which might strengthen our union and nerve the ex¬ ecutive. ’ ’ And since Hamilton, the British statesman, gave us Protection ; and since Carnegie, the Brit¬ ish pretender, has made ns pay Protection’s pen¬ alties, let us now turn to a British aristocrat for an estimate of the possibilities of onr system of railroad finance. The late Duke of Marlborough, a very able man, was an interested student of American in¬ dustrial development. He visited ns often; and he found here so much of feminine loveliness to lure him, that he took a handsome American heir¬ ess as his wife. Profiting by precept and exam¬ ple the young Duke followed in the father’s foot¬ steps. He came, he saw, and he was conquered— the newspaper reporting his marriage settlement at $10,000,000. And thus the House of Vander¬ bilt was allied to the House of Marlborough. The late Duke visited us in the winter of 1890- 91, and writing home to the F ortnightly Review , 46 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. for April, 1891, he had this to say of the possibili¬ ties of our system of railroad management : 1 1 There is nothing to control the amount of share capital a group of promoters may print. They print what they please, and they issue it as the public will buy it in the market on the speculation that it is going to receive a dividend, or that the vot¬ ing value of the stock is worth so much for the purpose of obtain¬ ing a control of the system. ‘ ‘ There is, in fact, no limit to the power of a small ring in the United States who have succeeded in obtaining a control of one of the big through systems of communication; and the control once obtained, it is a simple question of time when they will be able to swallow up everything within their reach. ( 1 The people who are really to be wondered at, however, are the citizens of the United States, who continue to permit such a gigantic political abuse as this American railway monopoly to grow up as it is doing in the hands of a group of gigantic capi¬ talists in New York and other great towns of America . . . . that the American public, which prides itself on its democratic institutions, should have allowed this aristocracy to grow up in in its midst, which is daily becoming infinitely more powerful and infinitely more dangerous than all the feudal aristocracies of Europe put together. It was easy to get rid of the European dif¬ ficulty with the guillotine, as the Freuch did, without tearing up the foundations of all social life in the country itself. In Amer¬ ica this financial and railway aristocracy is slowly building itself into the very bone and sinew of the people, and it will be a very difficult twentieth-century problem to know how Congress Is going to deal with the matter. “No one who has been to America can fail to be struck with the vastness of the railway interest of that country. It repre¬ sents the very life and lungs of trade, and at the same time is the predominant factor in preserving political unity of interests between States separated by thousands of miles of intervening plains, rivers, and mountains. The management as w'ell as the mismanagement of these vast systems is one of the marvels of that great continent. “These systems must continue to grow to meet the wants of increasing population and the large centres of permanent indus- 47 RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. t try and manufacture that exist everywhere. It must be noted, however, that the great main arteries of these systems are now permanently marked out. It will be practically impossible to make new main routes, except at fabulous cost, with approaches to the coast. The strategical positions are seized and occupied, and whoever can possess himself to-day of a controlling interest in a main through route and allied feeders across the great cen¬ tral basin of the Northern States cannot be deprived of a gigan¬ tic monopoly in the present and in the future. ,} It was a Triumvirate of very able men who rose above the chaos and civil strife of the Roman Re¬ public, and who gave it what they called order, what they called Prosperity. Then it was that the golden age of Augustus was ushered in ; and then it was that the wealth of Rome became fabulous beyond compare— when vast temples, magnificent palaces, and superb public gardens adorned the great city of two mil¬ lion inhabitants; when exquisite villas and ter¬ raced gardens of surpassing beauty lined either bank of the Tiber ; when rich men vied with each other in drawing about them the poets, the philos¬ ophers, the teachers, and the art treasures of once-glorious Greece; and when Rome, mistress of the world, boasted herself the chief patron of learning, of literature, of science, of patriotism, of all that makes for the fullness and sweetness of life. But it all ended in utter ruin and desolation ! And it ended so — because the people lost their liberties ; because men were enslaved to the serv¬ ice of their rulers ; and because the patrician fam¬ ilies neither knew nor worshipped any other god than mammon ! I am not in the least afraid that our money-mad 48 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY millionaires can do the American people any last¬ ing injury. I do not share any one of the grave apprehensions which the Duke voices for timid men who take no time to study the forces which move society. I know that publicity has already shown us a complete and permanent solution of our financial problem— the most vital of all our problems! I know that publicity will light the way for the easy and lasting solution of every difficulty that confronts us in railway manage¬ ment and corporation finance. And this firm faith I feel because it was my rare good fortune as a little boy, in the tented camps of the heroes of our Union’s cause, to catch the spell of moving tales that told of the virtue, the valor, and the glory of an appeal to manly Courage. Small won¬ der that I early learned to scout the Scare game. Less wonder still that long ago I learned to place abiding* trust in our millions of fighting freemen, bred of soldier fathers and born of patriot moth¬ ers, who stand ever watchful and ready “at the call of the laws to fly to the standard of the law” — in defence of that equality before the law, that precious heritage of free citizenship, for which our fathers, in successive generations through three long and bloody centuries, have freely given their lives, their fortunes, their all! “Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been de¬ ceived; but as long as the press can be protected, we trust them for light.77 “In a government bottomed on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all. 7 7 RULE OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 49 ‘ ‘ I have no fear but that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a mas¬ ter. ’ ’ “I ever fondly cherished the interests of the West, relying on it as a barrier against the degeneracy of public opinion from our original and free principles. ’ 7 1 ‘ The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. We ought, for so dear a state, to sacrifice every attachment, every enmity.” — Thomas Jefferson. If now a few thinking Americans will recall a little of Roman history, and a great deal of Amer¬ ican history, as our Revolutionary fathers re¬ called them in their day ; I think they will quickly see that the first duty of this hour is to learn just what should be done, just how it can be done— and then straightway get about the doing ! THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. But hark ! the bugles blowing on the peaks And hark ! a murmur as of many feet. The cry of captains, the divine alarm ! Look, the last Son of Time comes hurrying on The strong young Titan of Democracy ! With swinging step he takes the open road In love with the winds that beat his hairy’ breast Baring his sunburnt strength to all the world He casts his eye around with Jovian glance : tracks of old Tradition ; scans With rebel heart the books of Pedigree ; in *ace Privilege, and cries, Why are you halting in the path of man? is it your shoulder bears the human load? Do you draw down the rains of heaven. And keep the green things growing? Back to hell ! ” — Edwin Markham. 1 e\ UflhaVe faitk that ri£ht makes might; and in that faith et us; to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. ’ 1 —Abraham Lincoln . “I believe that in the twentieth century, which is now near it* dawn the spirit of commercialism will steadily grow less strom? and the spirit of altruism stronger. I believe^that the rule do unto others as you would have others do unto you, will more ien- er^f PTrevai1 thfn m al] the centuries which have gone beforeg o-rPPfl ™ fm mis,taken m thls~lf the spirit of commercialism and greed continues to grow stronger-then the twentieth century will witness a social cataclysm unparalleled m history. It is only bv the discountenancing of commercialism and the spreading of al¬ truism that we can safeguard justice, property and liberty. ” —Abram S. Hewitt. Chapter II. We know the men who rule. Now let us lay bare the transparent motives of the politicians who shout Protection, who threat¬ en panic, who insist that we “let well enough THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 51 V',7 i alone”— but who, all the while, are voting the people’s money straight into the pockets of the Trust-promoting millionaires. It is quite the fashion nowadays to exhaust the vocabulary of invective in furious abuse of our political buccaneers — the modern free-booters who make a business of corrupt politics— the men who manage the party machinery, control the pri¬ maries, dispense the little offices, and handle the corruption funds in popular elections. Notorious by name and scandalous in methods, they are standing targets for newspaper attack— conven¬ ient scapegoats for the rich men by whom they are employed ! But obviously they are an effect, not a cause. They exist because millionaires pay fabulous prices to install their servants in the Senate. They are needed to lobby Protection legislation through both houses of Congress. They are steadily employed to control and cor¬ rupt State legislatures in the interest of great cor¬ porations. They are richly rewarded for bribing City Councils and manipulating city franchises. And seeing how men of wealth and power and po¬ sition enrich themselves by corruption and spe¬ cial legislation— they simply scoff at public opin¬ ion, bottle conscience, and neither know nor pro¬ fess any other gospel than to “look out for my own pocket all the time.” No, no; I shall waste very little ammunition upon the scape-goats— For I know, and all the world is fast finding out, that the millionaires are the men who dictate the party policy, who write the platforms, and who freely dispense great honors, high offices, and priceless Wall Street in- 52 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. formation to able and ambitions men — provided always that they pledge themselves to unswerving support of “Protection to home industries. ’ ’ And among the politicians as among the million¬ aires, I select to place responsibility where re¬ sponsibility belongs— Upon the able men of high standing, great influence, and great opportuni¬ ties, who, to hold office and win political “hon¬ ors,” openly lend themselves to the party mana¬ gers and the party policy which the Trust pro^ moters dictate. First and foremost among these is the strenu¬ ous gentleman in the White House— the cour¬ ageous reformer who deals in so many fine phrases of civic virtue, but who in action, and es¬ pecially in halted action , obediently does the bid¬ ding of his scheming party managers. Fond of posing as a broncho-buster and a rough-rider— to corral the Western vote ; fond of entertaining ne¬ groes in the White House — to capture Southern and Hew England delegations to the next national convention; and amusingly fond of dramatic at¬ titudes upon all possible occasions — he speaks like a hero when he talks of Cuba, when he prom¬ ises publicity, and when he threatens the Trusts. But finally driven into the open, finally forced to declare himself upon the tariff question as related to Trusts, he staggers brave men who were tempt¬ ed to admire and trust him, by shamelessly avow¬ ing from the public platform that “the question of regulating the Trusts with a view to minimiz¬ ing and abolishing the evils existent in them is separate and apart from the question of tariff re¬ vision.” THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 53 And this from a man who began his career as an ardent free trader, an active member of the Cobden Clnb ! Small wonder that Carnegie comes back from his Skibo estates to give the newspaper reporters this message for the public : ‘ ‘ I think the President is exactly right on the trusts. He goes neither to one extreme nor the other. ‘ The golden mean is the path of wisdom, ’ said Confucius. Trusts cannot entail any per¬ manent injury upon the country. America is in a transitional period. Great aggregations of capital are necessary now. They are the creations of the nation. The Government can regulate them— spank the bad ones, and pat the good ones on the back. “All trusts are not bad. All trusts are not good. We must discriminate. 1 1 Note the quotation from the heathen philoso¬ pher. Recall the Chinese wall of tariff duties which the Republican party has builded to ‘ ‘ pro¬ tect” Mr. Carnegie’s American domains. Then read this indictment of our heroic reform Presi¬ dent from the pen of the dean of the New York press— the venerable but ever-ready and courage¬ ous editor of The Journal of Commerce and Com¬ mercial Bulletin : 1 ‘ The trial of the Trust issue before public opinion can hardly be said to be progressing satisfactorily. True, the great body of public complainants are no less resolute than they have been, but certainly more so. ' The defenders, however, are assuming a craftiness of attitude which is anything but assuring. The open¬ ing of Congress leaves no doubt that the party in power stands committed to the monopolistic cause. “Much more serious in its significance is the attitude of the President ’s Message. For the first time, Mr. Roosevelt has shown himself capable of yielding his will to the behests of party lead¬ ers. His itinerant addresses had been enthusiastically welcomed 54 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. as evidence that the party of capital has fallen under the chal¬ lenge of a statesman who has the courage and the prudence to impose restraints upon the threatening ambitions of his party. This attitude had won for him a position of strength in both parties which made him the strongest man in the country and placed his re-election within easy reach. Strange to say, his late Message casts to the winds the ascendancy he had so marvelously won and, by yielding to the remonstrances of party leaders, he has surrendered his political ascendancy, sacrificed his reputation for courage, subjected himseli to the dictation of partisans of iow morale and disappointed the rising hope of the country that at last it had found a savior on whom it might depend for avert¬ ing the dangerous drifts of the times. The President ’s new al¬ lusions to the Trusts are so gingerly, so evasive and so inexplicit as to leave it quite uncertain how much or how little he means, and it is no longer safe to count upon him as an effective factor in the settlement of this question. This is far from being an assuring situation. It implies one of two things, either that the Republican leaders are ignorant of the growing anger of the public against the monopolies, or that, whilst well aware of this popular hostility, they are resolved to stand by the infinitesimal millionaire minority and disregard the will of the overwhelming middle and lower classes. In either case, the party is demonstrating its incompetence to deal with this question to the public satisfaction; and the outcome of its action can only be expected to be, first, failure, then the prolon¬ gation of the struggle under conditions of public exasperation, and then forms of public disturbance from which the imagina¬ tion shrinks. The public have shown great patience and self-con¬ trol as this stupendous issue has developed, hoping that some wholesome solution may be finally reached, but resolved to accept nothing short of a sound and safe settlement. They now begin to foresee the near approach of a fierce political struggle and are asking seriously what may be the outcome of such a conflict. Is this a record which commends itself to men of prudence and foresight? Is this a record which makes the Republican party a safe and sure reliance in these days of angry unrest and grave uncertainty ? THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 55 And what of the Republican leader — the man who won for himself by winning the West! Are the American people still ready to believe that this life-long politician is straightforward and honest in declaring himself on the Trust question! I think not. I fancy that Mr. Roosevelt will spend the remainder of his public career in strenuous work and strenuous writing to induce the people to forgive —but never forget! For it was Jeffer¬ son who taught us that ‘ 4 The whole art of govern¬ ment consists in being honest ;” and it was Lin¬ coln who taught us that "You can fool all the peo¬ ple some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all the peo¬ ple all the time. 9 1 Next in order of importance we have Senator Marcus A. Hanna— a Warwick to McKinley, and hence Major General of field forces, High Priest of the gospel of "a full dinner pail.” Also neigh¬ bor, intimate, and beneficiary of the Rockefeller interests; cheek by jowl with the Steel Trust, the shipping combine, and the soft coal combination —and just now an anxious pleader for harmony and co-operation with the forces of organized labor, grown angry, restless, and irresistible at the ballot box. And precisely how Mr. Hanna goes about the business of "manufacturing” a needful show of public sentiment in favor of his candidates and legislative measures, is clearly re¬ vealed in the following authorized interview pub¬ lished in the New York Herald at the time he was putting the Ship Subsidy grab through the Senate machine : Methods are being employed in behalf of this measure that 56 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. have never been known before in the national capital. Senator. Hanna is methodical in everything. He applies the same efforts to politics that he applies to business, and he is now applying the same rules to legislation that he applies to politics. In behalf of the Subsidy bill a campaign of instruction has been extended to every State in the Union. In Washington a press bureau has been organized to supply newspaper correspond¬ ents with information bearing on the progress of the bill. This is run exactly on the lines of a press bureau of a national political committee, and the men managing it are the same who managed the press bureau for Senator Hanna in the last campaign at No. 1 Madison avenue, New York. In addition to this a literary bureau has been organized. This is engaged in sending to all parts of the country copies of speeches made in support of the Subsidy bill, together with com¬ mittee reports in favor of the measure and arguments gathered from various sources. The speeches of Senators Frye and Hanna have been sent out literally by the million. Indiana, where the opposition to the Subsidy bill began, just as did the opposition to the Puerto Rican tariff, has been flooded with literature. Arguments in favor of the bill have also been sent to Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and one or two other States where the press has been very active in opposing the bill. Still another bureau has been directly in correspondence with leading members of business, commercial and financial exchanges, boards of trade and similar organizations, with a view of impress¬ ing upon them the advantages of the Subsidy bill and asking them to have their organizations take action. As a result these bodies all over the country are meeting and passing resolutions in favor of the bill. Senator Frye has received resolutions of this sort from organizations in almost every State, and they are now com- ing at the rate of six or eight a day, showing that the campaign of education is bearing fruit. Senator Hanna was asked to-day what the result of his efforts to create public sentiment had been. “The result has been,” he replied, “a tremendous change in sentiment. We started out with the original assumption that this bill was understood thoroughly. We discovered that it wras not understood. Since then it has had wide discussion. We want it discussed more widely. THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 57 “We have sent literature wherever it has been asked for. There has been a great demand for it. The entire public is taking an interest in the matter and wants information. At this mo¬ ment I have on my desk invitations from four bodies in Greater New York alone inviting me to go over and make speeches. These are the Brooklyn Merchants 1 Association, the Tariff League, the Sound Money League and the Republican Club. “I believe that the bill will be passed, because it ought to be passed, and I believe that the public sentiment now being created will pass it.” Then we have Henry Cabot Lodge, professional Protectionist, biographer and eulogist of Alexan¬ der Hamilton, Administration leader in the Sen¬ ate and the President’s “dearest, best friend”— A sleek and artful manipulator of phrases who is relied upon to stem the tide of angry discontent among New England manufacturers, now paying heavy tribute to the Trusts through scandulous prices for all the materials of productive industry, prices so high that home trade is restricted, and export trade is being strangled. Next after him we have the warlike Mr. Hoot— watchful, skilled and scheming New York corpor¬ ation attorney; ever-busy messenger between Morgan and the White House. Working in har¬ ness beside him is Attorney General Knox, Cabi¬ net representative of the Pittsburgh steel inter¬ ests, lugubrious legal prosecutor of the Trusts, and author of what Carnegie assures us is “a literary gem” in exposition of a sound system of Publicity— for the corporations ! “Philander C. Knox was yesterday sworn in as Attorney-Gen¬ eral and took his seat as a member of the Cabinet. “Now that the matter is fully consummated, will the chief Republican newspapers of this city and of the country lind their i 58 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. voice to speak of it? Is it not so unusual as to be extraordinary that a President can till this important office without evoking a word of approval from the leading organs of his party? Did such a thing ever happen before? “It would really be interesting to have the opinion of these journals as to the wisdom and policy of appointing a chief coun¬ sel of the billion-dollar Steel Trust to administer the anti-trust laws. Do they think it prudent— to put it on no higher ground — to permit Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan to designate the official charged with the enforcement of the anti-trust and interstate com¬ merce laws? Do they think the appointment of a second Cabinet officer from the strong Republican State of Pennsylvania ordinar¬ ily good politics ? Do they think President McKinley would have ventured to make this appointment before the last Presidential election ? ‘ i The silence of the organs is growing oppressive. Perhaps they are waiting to speak in chorus? — The New York World. “The retiring Attorney-General is to form a partnership with the counsel for the billion-dollar Steel Trust, and the incoming Attorney-General is an attorney for the largest constituent cor¬ poration in the trust. As The World’s Washington correspond¬ ent observes, the trust catches the Attorney-Generalship of the United States both a-coming and a-going. — The Springfield Republican. Senator Chauncey M. Depew, millionaire ora¬ tor par excellence, and always busy with oily tongue ; but in the Senate solely because he is the richly paid attorney of the Vanderbilt estates! Through Tom Platt the Vanderbilts absolutely control a majority vote in the legislature of New York; and thus the freemen of the great Empire State, and the citizens of the imperial city of the Nation, are subjected to the ignominy of repre¬ sentation in the United States Senate by a paid railroad attorney and a notorious political cor¬ ruptionist. At first Senator Platt’s attitude towards reelection was lan- THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 59 guidly indifferent. He might consent to it, or he might not. Next we have him loftily consenting to “accept 7 ' a reelection. Finally, he admitted that he was an active and even an eager and somewhat anxious ‘ ‘ candidate. ’ ’ How he would run if the party could get a fair chance to vote upon him is shown by the fol¬ lowing summary of the opinions of leading Republicans of the State : For Against Platt. Platt. Clergymen . 5 41 College professors . 3 37 Editors and authors . 9 42 Prominent citizens . 20 33 Presidents of railroads, banks and trusts . 13 0 Office holders and ex-office holders . 59 0 109 153 — New Yorlc Evening Post. Matthew Stanley Quay, the master-mind of cor¬ ruption politics— the man who granted the Stand¬ ard Oil Company its priceless pipe-line fran¬ chises ; the man who levies unfailing tribute upon the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the anthra¬ cite coal barons, and the Pittsburg steel Protec¬ tionists; the man who dares, defies, and defeats the outraged public sentiment of the great Key¬ stone State ; the man who does more than any liv¬ ing man to obstruct, manipulate, and defeat every move in Congress in the people’s interest. Senator William B. Allison, wheel-horse of the Republican party, chairman of the Senate Com¬ mittee on Appropriations, and patriarch of Pro¬ tection teaching— a man who has devoted a life¬ time to the work of taxing millions out of the pockets of Iowa farmers that a few Pennsylvania and New England manufacturers might he en- 60 JEFFERSON I AIM DEMOCRACY. riclied. Surely if there be a patriotic duty that the yeomen of Iowa now owe to themselves and their children, it is to retire this gray-bearded of¬ fender to the repentance of seclusion and private life. Stephen B. Elkins, the adventurous speculator who made a fortune in New Mexico, built a little railroad in West Virginia, and then, almost be¬ fore he acquired the pretense of citizenship, be¬ gan the systematic work of secretly pledging and quietly electing a majority of the Legislature which sends him to the Senate— in place of John¬ son N. Camden, the “Democrat, ” who represent¬ ed the Standard Oil Company in the same seat during twelve years of steady monopoly building. I spent my boyhood in West Virginia; I learned my first lessons in newspaper work on her daily and weekly press ; and I know the rich little com¬ monwealth. from mountain peak to valley and from the Pan Handle to Greenbrier. “All moun¬ taineers are Freemen;” and if the freemen of proud little WTest Virginia could get at Elkins by direct vote of the people, and get at Scott, the nobody who sits with him, not a corporal’s guard of unpaid voters could be mustered in favor of either man. This all W7est Virginia knows — and blushes in knowing it ! But wait— wait ! The pa¬ triot Wilson is dead, but Wilson’s priceless teach¬ ing and example still live ! We shall hear from West Virginia again— as surely as we heard from her in war time ! Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Chairman of the Committee on Finance— the most important of the Senate committees. Mr. Aldrich is supposed THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 61 to represent the free people of Rhode Island ; but in naked truth he is the Senate leader of the Standard Oil interests, and father-in-law of young John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The New York Evening Post has lately rendered a notable public service by publishing a series of startling disclo¬ sures of the utter corruption of political life in proud little Rhode Island. I trust that some hero with both patriotism and a pocket book will make a business of republishing the series in pamphlet form, and then mailing a copy to the personal ad¬ dress of every voter throughout the entire State. At one fell swoop “that will do the business for the gang. ’ ’ And meanwhile, this brief extract is enough for our present purpose : “Providence, R. I., March 14.— Open shame is on this State, with its honorable history and splendid traditions. Bribery and corruption are the sores that affect the body politic. Public opinion is apathetic. Votes and men are bought and sold, and decent men in the community hold their hands. Stories of bribe-giving and taking are current on the streets and in the clubs, and no one is found so skeptical as to disbelieve them. The political infamy of the State has been spread abroad through the newspapers and other public journals. A boss — blind, like justice — sits in his office in the State House and tells the Legisla¬ ture what it may and may not do. “Probably the most depressing feature of the situation is that the men who constantly accept bribes are often men of substance, owning their homes, and sometimes other property. They don ’t need the money. Long years of bribe-taking have deadened their consciences. They take the bribe as their natural right, and ex¬ pect it just as they expect payment when they do a day’s work for some one. That is a thing that must be overcome. These men must be educated in their duty to themselves and the State, and made to see the heinousness of their crime. ‘ ‘ Some money is used for bribery in every State election. A prodigious amount was expended in 1892. Aldrich was up for 62 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. re-election to the United States Senate, and of course that meant that the Republican workers had money. “Against these conditions there has been a long, hard, and hitherto unavailing tight. The Republican boss, Charles R. Brayton, has kept an unshaken grip upon his rotten boroughs ; street railways and other corporations that depend upon legisla¬ tive favor have helped to throttle the commonwealth; and men like Senator Aldrich have risen to eminence through this degra¬ dation of their constituencies. 7 7 Senator Eugene Hale — hailing naturally from Blaine ’s State, and naturally, too, another of Car¬ negie^ intimate friends. Mr. Hale is the un¬ blushing Prophet of Prosperity whose business it is to teach that : 1 1 The Dingley act has given the people of the United States more revenue, more business, more trade and more prosperity than any bill ever before enacted. 7 7 And then, alas, in the House of Representa¬ tives, and on the stump in every Presidential elec¬ tion, we see grizzled, battle-scarred and forceful old soldiers, bravely avowing honest faith in Pro¬ tection, and doubtless striving to do their duty as they dimly see it; but who, in naked truth, are bending the backs of their old comrades to the service of a shameless oligarchy of men who en¬ rich themselves through legislation thus pitifully promoted. I might go on indefinitely multiplying names of men prominent in both Senate and House, in gubernatorial chairs and State legislatures — but again, 1 say, we are not concerned with the rank and file. I have designated the resourceful and responsible leaders. I have uncovered the sordid motives and the pocket-interest connections of THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 63 those who look to Wall Street for every move in the great game of promotion politics for personal profit. Fame lures the politicians, but ignoble gain is the master motive which moves the men who do the dangerous work. Now let us see the machine at work. Mr. Henry Loomis Nelson has contributed to the Century Magazine for February, 1903, a pa¬ per entitled “The Over-Shadowing Senate,” which I should like to publish here entire. That being impracticable, I strongly recommend that my readers, and especially newspaper editors, make a business of reading it at the libraries. For in this one article Mr. Nelson clearly reveals the fact that, through irresponsibility to the peo¬ ple, and through “courtesy of the Senate,” that body has become “the most perfectly developed trust, or trade-union, in the country ; and there is hardly any existing combination which is more inimical to the general welfare than the Senate union has sometimes been, and may easily be again ! ’ ’ Towards the close of his paper Mr. Nelson gives us this illuminating insight into just how the Senate leaders do their work : “For days the conferees had been wrestling over a Senate amendment to the tariff bill. The representatives had the better of the argument, and pushed their advantage until the senators were on the point of yielding. The item of the tariff bill in¬ volved concerned an article made by a powerful combination in which the most potent figure of the National Committee of the time was interested. The Senate amendments provided for in¬ creased protection for this article; the House bill had placed it on the free list. As the House conferees thought that they were on the point of gaining the victory, a telegram was handed in at 64 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. the door. It was directed to one of the senators. He read it, and passed it to his colleagues. There was an earnest discussion between the three, and then the despatch was shown to the con¬ ferees from the House. It read as follows: “The - schedule will stand as amended by the Senate, or the bill must fall. * ’ The signature was that of the political and industrial potentate. The majority of the House conferees stormed at what they called this impudent dictation, and urged their associates to withstand the corrupt pressure ; but their associates did not dare, and the schedule as amended remained in the bill in order to save the measure. Thus we see the Senate sitting at the gates of power and levy¬ ing tribute upon all comers. Even the judiciary is not free from its control. The Senate passes on judges as on other appointees, while, as master of legislation, the time may come when it will compel the enactment of a law increasing or diminishing the number of judges on the Supreme bench for its own purposes. This preliminary being arranged, the senators will doubtless se¬ cure the appointment of men of their own views. The overshadowing power of the Senate is unquestioned, and it is exerted every day of the political year. The Senate, indeed, possesses many virtues which are conspicuously absent from the popular branch. It considers measures, and debates them freely. Its minority has often been guilty of wilful and injurious ob¬ struction, but loquacious obstruction is not so hurtful to the public interests as silent obedience. There is nothing more hos¬ tile to the general welfare than concealment of the reasons for and against the enactment of laws; nor are there many things more desirable in a modern democracy than the suppression of legislation by obstruction or otherwise. Buckle’s view is truer than ever : the chief value of legislation to-day lies in the oppor¬ tunity and power to remedy mistakes of the past: “Repeal is more blessed than enactment. 7 7 The Senate contains industrious and intelligent men who work for the public interests, but its power over the President tends to the corruption of the public service, while its domination over the House of Representatives, coupled with the rules and the practices of the hierarchy, makes that body a silent assemblage without the power which the law intended it to exercise. Even appropriation bills, which, under THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 65 the Constitution, must originate in the House, receive their final form in the Senate or iu conference. One result of the immense growth of a senator’s power and influence is the temptation thereby offered to masterful men of wealth. To such men there is no pleasure comparable to that of exercising power. The joy of the ruler is dear to them, and there is no position in this country like a senatorship for breeding that ecstasy. An indictment against wealth in politics, per se, is folly ; but wealth in public life, unguided and uninformed, untempered by a patriotic and statesmanlike regard for the general welfare, is hostile to the country’s best interests * * * * Their first tendency is to consider the effect of proposed legislation on special interests. It is unquestionably an evil that men who have no talent for public life should attain to its highest honors merely because they are rich. In the present Senate there are more than a score of men who would not be there but for their possession of wealth. * * * * When to this we add the domination which the Senate has gained over the President and the popular branch of Congress, and over the party organizations, we readily understand that it is a menace to the health of the body politic. We need not inquire as to the corruption of the Senate; but we know that it is corrupting. It is corrupting even if it only stim¬ ulates the cynical belief in its lack of virtue which is embodied in a doubtless untruthful story not long ago current in Washington. This tale of fiction runs to the effect that a senator, on hearing that an aspirant for election to the Chamber had refused to re¬ spond to the last demand made upon him for money, said: “How foolish! Doesn’t he know that a senatorship is worth sixty thousand dollars a year?” The sad thing is that, absurd as the fiction is upon its face, its narration was never known to be received with any expres¬ sion of surprise, with any expression whatever except that smile which indicates that such a tale told of such a subject is to be expected. When men are known to secure seats in the Senate because they are rich, and, being in the Senate, thereby become dominant powers in the government and in party politics ; and when the legislation which secures most attention from Congress affects private commercial and financial interests, suspicions of corruption are, to say the least, not astonishing. The Senate is not only powerful : it is exacting and arbitrary ; while the char- 66 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. acter of its constituent elements makes it self-assertive, tyranni¬ cal, and prone to prefer the material to the moral advantage of the republic. Its overshadowing influence and the manner in which it is exerted, inevitably recall the saying of our ancient enemy, Lord Bute: ‘ ‘ The forms of a free and the ends of an arbitrary government are things not altogether incompatible. 7 ’ Simultaneously with the publication of this not¬ able paper by the Century Magazine , we had the battle royal in the Senate over the Littlefield pub¬ licity measure ; and it was the strategy and high play of that struggle between the President and the Senate leaders that affords us instructive demonstration of the dangerous nower of the Senate as now constituted. It will be remembered that the Littlefield bill was emasculated in the House committee, by the addition of a clause making it apply only to cor¬ porations “hereafter to he organized”— in other words, as the New York Herald observed, “any one bold enough to compete with the existing mighty combinations is to he pilloried for their benefit! After that, it is scarcely worth while to discuss the rest of the bill, but it lodges danger¬ ous private inquisitorial powers in the commis¬ sion to harass the possible competitors , not at all for the information of the public— all the publi¬ city enjoined is the yearly issue of 4 a list ^ of cor¬ porations, with ‘an abstract’ of their formal re¬ turns. ’ 9 In this emasculated form the bill was passed by the Republican House— obviously to give a sem¬ blance of obedience to the overwhelming popular demand. So soon as it reached the Senate, the THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 67 serviceable Elkins came forward with his shifty substitute to prohibit railroad ‘ 4 rebates” — which the Standard Oil Company long ago abandoned in favor of Quay’s pipe-line franchises. Then straightway the lugubrious Knox, representing “the Administration,” check-mated Elkins by throwing Littlefield overboard and revising the Nelson amendment to the Department of Com¬ merce bill so that “discretion is lodged in the President as to the publication of facts useful to be known publicly.” The outcome of the whole performance is neither more nor less than a temporary personal triumph for Mr. Roosevelt. Instead of providing for Publicity, Congress has simply armed the President with power to demand his nomination upon penalty of publicly attempting disclosures of Trust finance that would put a short stop to the profitable business of marketing watered stocks to the investing public. And before the bills are signed by the President, the plain purpose of the move is revealed in this news which comes to us through the associated press dispatches : J. P. MORGAN, HANNA AND ALDRICH IN WHITE HOUSE. “"Washington, Feb. 15.— Callers at the White House to-night included Senators Hanna and Aldrich, who remained with the President until nearly 11 o ’clock. ’ ’ “J. Pierpont Morgan, who returned to the city from Rich¬ mond, Va., shortly before 10 o ’clock, also called during the even¬ ing. He left the house with Senators Hanna and Aldrich, going as far as their hotel with them, when he returned to his car at the railroad station, later leaving for New York City. ’ ’ Then immediately following the conference be¬ tween Morgan, Hanna, Aldrich and Roosevelt, 68 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. this is the carefully prepared announcement which was given to the public through the associ¬ ated press dispatches. I take it from the New York Herald , of February 16, 1903, after verify¬ ing it by comparison with the same dispatch ap¬ pearing in other New York papers : Washington, D. C., Sunday, Feb. 15.— Attorney-General Knox who is known to have prepared the important features of the anti-trust bills now enacted into laws, on being asked as to how they were regarded by the Administration, said: 1 1 The legislation affecting the trusts passed at this session of Congress is satisfactory to the Administration, and the prompt re¬ sponse to the President ’s requests is highly gratifying. A very long stride in advance has been accomplished, and the promises of last fall have been made good. REBATE LAW EFFECTIVE. ‘‘The giving and taking of railroad rebates is now prohibited by a law capable of effective enforcement against corporations as well as individuals, and the courts of the United States are clothed with jurisdiction to restrain and punish violations. “The act creating the Department of Commerce vests in that department complete authority to investigate the organization and business methods of corporations engaged in Interstate and foreign commerce, and to that end to compel the testimony of persons having the desired knowledge. “ Discretion is lodged m the President as to the publication of facts useful to be publicly known , and a wise administration of the law promises much that is helpful and nothing that is harm¬ ful. SITUATION SATISFACTORY. “The law to expedite the hearing of cases and giving an ap¬ peal directly to the Supreme Court from the court of first in¬ stance assures within a reasonable time authoritative decisions upon important pending questions, in the knowledge of which future legislation, if necessary , can be confidently framed. ’ ’ Thus we see that, in addition to being com¬ mander in chief of the Army and Navy, Mr. THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 69 Roosevelt is now armed with despotic power over every big and little corporation in the entire coun¬ try that may be engaged in inter-state commerce. He can exercise the power in accordance with his individual pleasure; he can put on the pressure when and where he chooses ; and he can treat with his victims under threat of withholding or pub¬ lishing information of vital importance to the whole people. Obviously, the first use he hopes and plans to make of this power is to persuade the millionaires that it is the part of wisdom to grant bim a nomination for the Presidency. He is tired of having Hanna bid against him for the labor vote and the negro vote; he means to have done with the necessity for bickering and bargain¬ ing with Platt and Quay for the machine delegates from New York and Pennsylvania; and he knows —as some of the rest of us do— that the true way to manage the machine is to hold the whip handle over the men who make the machine possible and profitable. But is this government of the people by the peo¬ ple— as Lincoln taught us ? Is it not, rather, gov¬ ernment of the people by Roosevelt — for the spe¬ cific purpose of advancing Mr. Roosevelt’s per¬ sonal and political ambition? Will the people be content with just the kind and quantity of Pub¬ licity that Mr. Roosevelt, and his conferees, deem proper to publish? I fancy not. I imagine that on the opening day of the next Congress— Repub¬ lican though it will be — we shall see Publicity measures introduced in the lower House which will clearly reflect the people’s fixed determina¬ tion to have corporation Publicity over which Mr. 70 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. Roosevelt will never have the slightest occasion for conference with Mr. Morgan, Mr. Hanna, and Mr. Aldrich. For even among Republicans I im¬ agine there are many men who have chanced to read this solemn warning, penned by Thomas Jefferson far back in 1789 : “It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our .rights. Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free Government is founded on jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited Constitu¬ tions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go ; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition acts and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the gov¬ ernment it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. ’ ’ In the light of this plain teaching, in the light of experience and plain common sense, we can now see how far we have drifted towards one man rule— towards the tyranny of an oligarchy of rich men who rule the Senate with money, and who rule able and ambitious politicians through the political machine which money supports. For to overcome the machine Mr. Roosevelt has deliber¬ ately loaned himself to the usurpation of despotic power over the people — a power which is without precedent in the annals of American history; a power which would scarcely be attempted, much less tolerated, in Royal Britain or even Imperial Germany ; a power which is the sheerest travesty upon popular government. THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 71 Mr. Roosevelt’s life long experience in practi¬ cal politics has simply enabled him to trick the tricksters in the game of machine management. He doubtless reasons that the nomination is now easily within his grasp ; that Prosperity, the gos¬ pel of “a full dinner pail,” and the certain blun¬ ders of the disorganized Democracy will elect him for what he deems a first term ; and then a second term— giving him the unexampled glory of over eleven years in the Whit© House — can be easily won. And this program is now entirely agreeable to Mr. Morgan, Mr. Hanna and Mr. Aldrich, as the evidence clearly shows. “Are the gentlemen who assemble daily in the Capitol at Washington fools? Or do they think the American people are fools? “To one question or the other an affirmative reply must be made by every citizen who notes the course that is pursued with respect to “ anti trust ’ ’ legislation. « * What a performance ! Claptrap and stage thunder from first to last. We don't really believe that the men In Congress are imbeciles. Neither are the people ! ’ ’ — New Yorh Herald, Feh. 18, 1903. I am quite sure that my brethren of the press will find the means for making an amusing mess of all these pretty plans. And thinking men of influence in this generation are now in position to adequately appreciate the wisdom of the fathers in providing for a Presidential election every four years. Both the President and the Trust promoting millionaires know exactly what the people want and need in the matter of corporation Publicity ; and we shall not have to wait beyond the next 72 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. election to secure an adequate and lasting solution of the problem— for in the national bank act the genius of Salmon P. Chase has plainly shown the way. But let us suppose that the Constitutional convention had adopted the plan of a single seven years’ term — as it came near doing, and as many able men still insist it should have done. Under that system, Mr. Roosevelt could now go on for full five years in the exercise of his despotic power; the Wall Street promoters could quietly proceed, through full five years of time, in the busy work of distributing watered stocks to in¬ vestors, who know next to nothing about them ; at the end of that term " " community-of-interest, ’ ’ political and financial, would enable the ruling millionaires to select another ‘"popular” candi¬ date, probably more manageable than Mr. Roose¬ velt; and the end of that would be— Just about what happened in France in 1789 and again in 1871. "" History but repeats itself;” and as Lin¬ coln wisely observed, ""the people always mean right, and in the end they will have the right”— through blood and sacrifice should occasion call, as it has often called before! It was wise old George Mason, of Bill of Rights fame, who declared that he would chop off his right hand rather than sign the Constitution as originally adopted; and he kept on declaring it, kept on with the grim, determined work he had in hand until in 1791 ten amendments were added — chief among which was the first one : “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 73 the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo¬ ple peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ’ ’ So, too, it was Thomas Jefferson who declared: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a gov¬ ernment without newspapers, or newspapers without a govern¬ ment, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter ! ’ ’ 1 1 Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been deceived; but as long as the press can be protected we trust them for light. ’ ’ ‘ ‘ I am not one of those who fear the people. ’ ’ < < The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe, as they are the sole, depository of our religious and po¬ litical freedom ! ’ ’ A free press is the precise form of Publicity with which Mr. ftoosevelt, and the mighty mil¬ lionaires he is leading, must now reckon ; and it is to the fearlessly free press of the New York American that we are indebted for the public dis¬ closure of this speaking telegram, which explains everything : New York, February 6th, 1903. Hon. M. S. Quay, Senate Chamber, Washington, H. C. Yesterday’s letter received. We are unalterably opposed to all proposed so-called Trust Bills, except the Elkins Bill already passed by the Senate, preventing railroad discrimination; every¬ thing else is utterly futile and will result only in vexatious in¬ terference with the industrial interests of the country. The Nelson Bill, as all others of like character, will be only an engine for vexatious attacks against a few large corporations. It gives the right of Federal interference with business of State Corpora¬ tions, without giving any Federal protection whatever. There is no popular demand for such a measure. If any bill is passed it should apply to all individual partnerships and corporations 74 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. engaged in interstate business, and it should be made mandatory on all as to making reports of their business to the commerce department. Am going to Washington this afternoon. Please send word to the Arlington where I can see you this evening. John D. Archbold. And this is the story of that telegram which the staff correspondent of the American sent on from Washington: Washington, Feb. 31. — I have forwarded this morning by mail to the American the telegram sent by the Standard Oil Com¬ pany in an effort to prevent the passage of all so-called anti-trust measures with the exception of the Elkins bill. The telegram was sent with the knowledge, consent and ap¬ proval of John D. Rockefeller, president of the Standard Oil Company. When John D. Archbold signed the message he was acting for the Standard Oil Trust through the advice and direction of Mr. Rockefeller. It has been denied that the telegram was sent, but the denial has not been made by Mr. Archbold or Mr. Rockefeller. Conservative men could not believe that even Standard Oil officials would have the brazen effrontery to issue fiats even to such men as Matthew Stanley Quay, or use a telegram as a means of communicating the order, but the American will show them that this very thing has been done. The telegram obtained for the American tells the story of its own infamy. Its parallel is not in the history of all the corrupt lobbying that has been the rule since the Republicans came into power seven years ago. Politicians, office holders, and all those familiar with the ma¬ chinery of legislation in Washington, scouted the idea that men like Mr. Rockefeller and his associates would resort to telegrams to issue orders to those whom they could command. Such an act, they urged, was entirely foreign to the calm, cunning and calculating mind of John D. Rockefeller, who has THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 75 made no blunders in business, and for that reason would make no mistakes in attempting to stifle the passage of the nation’s laws. They will be startled to-morrow morning when they read the telegram that Mr. Archbold wrote and Mr. Rockefeller ordered to be sent. There is no further question as to what has been done. The American will make known to-morrow to the nation that the time is here when the controllers of trusts feel that they are sufficiently strong to give orders to men elected by the people to make laws as to what they shall or shall not do. John D. Archbold is one of the powers of the Standard Oil Company. He is close to John D. Rockefeller. In all the schem¬ ing that made the Standard Oil Company rich beyond the dreams of Croesus, Messrs, Archbold and Rockefeller have kept their heads close together. In this last movement they have been cheek by jowl. Mr. Archbold telegraphed to Senator Quay that he would meet him in Washington on the day following the date of his telegram. He arrived here on February 6, at 9.05 p. m. He registered at the Arlington Hotel, as he said he would in the telegram the American makes public. He remained in this city until 7 o ’clock on the following day, when he left for New York. Several Republican Senators live in this hotel. Senators Al¬ drich, O. H. Platt, T. C. Platt and Hanna reside in the Arlington. When Mr. Archbold comes to Washington those lawmakers whom the Standard Oil controls or desires to control gather at the Arlington. The Standard Oil people do not desire publicity. Standard Oil stock is not listed on the New York Stock Ex¬ change because all stock bought and sold must be accompanied by full statements of the business of the issuing corporation. No man except the officers of the Standard Oil knows its busi¬ ness, its earnings or its methods. The Nelson amendment to the Elkins bill provides for a cer¬ tain degree of publicity for trusts. Under this amendment the Government can finally get at the books of all corporations doing an interstate business. 76 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. The Elkins bill, to which the Standard Oil did NOT object, merely provides against freight rebates by railroad and other common carriers. The Elkins bill had no features that would trouble any combin¬ ation. Its chief purpose was to throw a sop to those insisting on trust legislation. The Nelson amendment puts a section in the bill that the Re¬ publicans did not desire. The amended Elkins bill, with a trust-sympathizing party in control of the Government, will be a dead letter, but with Demo¬ crats in charge to put it in force the measure might make trouble for just such monopolies as the Standard Oil Trust. It provides for publicity. The Standard Oil people work in the dark and never permit others than themselves to know of the transactions of the company. The Littlefield bill is the most drastic of all the Republican anti-Trust measures offered, but it will never get through the Senate. While its author did not seek to go to the point of seriously interfering with their privileges, yet there were certain features that were objectionable to Mr. Rockefeller and his confederates. Therefore, it will fail of final passage. The net result of to-day’s anti-Trust legislation is the amended Department of Commerce bill, including the Nelson amendment which is introduced to force publicity. And it is publicity that John D. Rockefeller, master of the Standard Oil Trust, fought against when he ordered the tele¬ gram sent which the American will print to-morrow morning ex¬ clusively. In contemplation of the situation thus clearly revealed, we can now measure the importance of the coming Presidential election; and I think it will be some years before we hear any more grum¬ bling from “ business interests’ ’ upon the subject of our “too-frequent elections.” But if experience has vindicated the wisdom of the fathers in the matter of a four-years term THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 77 for the President, experience has also shown that the plan they gave us of electing Senators by vote of the State legislatures, instead of by direct vote of the people, has now become the most dangerous feature of our governmental system. F or legisla¬ tive corruption is the basis of all the grave trou¬ bles that menace our present and future, and the Senate has now become the stronghold--the key¬ stone in the arch— of “ community-of -interest’ ’ between politicians and promoters, between rail¬ road officials and combination financiers, and, es¬ pecially, between State legislatures, where valu¬ able franchises are granted, and United States Senators, who control and manipulate the local political machines. In other words, the State leg¬ islatures grant the valuable franchises , and the same State legislatures elect the Senators. That the one should represent the other— that Senators should be deliberately pledged to protect and pro¬ mote the interests of the corporations— is as in¬ evitable as that water flows down hill. The theory of the fathers was that the Presi¬ dent and the members of the House — elected by direct vote of the people— should represent the Federal government, the Nation, while the Sena¬ tors should represent the State governments. And having good reason to fear a tyrannous cen¬ tralized government, they gave the Senate a pre¬ ponderance of power over both the President and the House, to make absolutely sure of preserving to us the inestimable liberty of local self-govern¬ ment in our State, county, township, and munici¬ pal affairs. The system worked smoothly enough until the 78 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. advent of the modern era of the railroads, the telegraph, the telephone, and the great industrial combinations now engaged in inter-state com¬ merce. These are all created loy the States — by franchises granted by State legislatures. And they have become so numerous, so powerful, and so enormously rich, that in self-defense, and often with corrupt ends deliberately in view, they have found it necessary to make a business of quietly electing a majority of every State legislature that has power over their charters . Thus, a committee of the hew York Board of Trade and Transporta¬ tion, appointed to investigate railway freight dis¬ criminations, reported not long ago as follows : “The railroads control absolutely the Legislatures of a ma¬ jority of the States of the Union. They make and unmake gov¬ ernors, United States Senators and Congressmen, and under the forms of popular government, they dictate the governmental policy of the United States.” I could fill pages with testimony like this. But testimony is needless. The fact is common knowl¬ edge. Since the creation of the Inter-State Commerce Commission and the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, the railroads and the industrial combinations have suffered some inconvenience at the hands of Congressional committees; and, naturally, they have taken the shortest route and most effective means of thwarting every effort at interference from the national government — that is to say, through their control of the State legis¬ latures, they now absolutely control a majority of THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WOKK. 79 the United States Senate . How true this is we can now see by a rapid sketch of the Senate or¬ ganization. In the first place, Protection is the basis and battle-cry of the party organization — the one rea¬ son for the party’s present existence. Protection is, therefore, the party lash which enables the leaders to whip every Republican Senator into line— upon penalty of ostracism and certain de¬ feat at the next election of his State legislature. Aldrich, the father-in-law of young John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is chairman of the Finance Com¬ mittee— which is the equivalent of the AVays and Means committee in the House. Allison is chairman of the committee on Ap¬ propriations, and every man in the Senate is un¬ der the daily and hourly necessity of courting his favor. Elkins is chairman of the committee on Inter- State Commerce, and thus every step towards Publicity is squarely halted by this servant of the Standard Oil monopoly. Frye, of Ship Subsidy fame, is chairman of the committee on Commerce, and every favor that every manufacturer in the country desires to ask through his Senators must have this man’s ap¬ proval. Hale is chairman of the Naval Committee, and thus each and every move in the interest of the most popular branch of the public service is sub¬ ject to the domination of the most brazen advo¬ cate of the Dingley bill. Cullom, the man who sits in the Senate from 80 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. Abraham Lincoln’s State, is chairman of the com¬ mittee on Foreign Relations— and the record of the Reciprocity treaties is the result ! • “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this Nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth. 1 1 —Abraham Lincoln. I shall not waste time with enumerating the lesser committees. We need only mention Hanna from Ohio and Lodge from Massachusetts, Platt and Depew from New York, Quay and Penrose from Pennsylvania Elkins and Scott from West Virginia, and, lastly, Kean and Dryden from New Jersey, the home of the Trusts. The names are enough. The pocket-interest connections of the men explain every move that they make and every vote that they cast. All the Nation knows that these leaders rule the Senate majority with the precision of clock-work. The Democratic minori¬ ty is helpless in face of their power. Not a Sena¬ tor on the Republican side but risks certain ban¬ ishment should he dare to challenge the ring rule of those in control. And the vast corporations, created by State legislatures, commanding bil¬ lions of capital, employing millions of men, and wielding a power which dares everything but pub¬ lic opinion — these are the individual companies which have built up the Senate machine, and which now rule it as with a rod of iron : The Standard Oil Company, The United States Steel Corporation, The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 81 The New York Central and Hudson River Rail¬ road Company, The Northern Securities Company, The Union Pacific Railroad Company, The Southern Pacific Railroad Company, . The Illinois Central Railroad Company, The Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, The Southern Railroad Company, The Western Union Telegraph Company, The American Sugar Refining Company, The American Tobacco Company, The American Smelting and Refining Com¬ pany, The Amalgamated Copper Company, The National City Bank of New York. A score of other great corporations might be added to the list, but it is needless to name the lesser groups. The great companies I have listed are the ones which make a business of closely watching the majority vote in every State legisla¬ ture in the Nation that may be necessary to con¬ trol of the Senate. “Community-of-interest” is the magic wand which marshalls every board of Directors to the prompt aid of tiie leaders ; Car¬ negie is the splurging ‘ ‘ benefactor ’ ’ who feeds the people with Protection logic and literature which economists spurn to write; Rockefeller is the silent, masterful and unmatched organizer of legislative privilege and monopoly; and Morgan is the Napoleon of Finance who holds the invest¬ ing public in awe-stricken wonder at his astonish¬ ing achievements. What is the remedy, do you ask ? The remedy is simple enough. Session after 82 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. session, for years past, the House of Representa¬ tives has passed a resolution calling for the elec¬ tion of Senators by direct vote of the people ; and regularly, session after session, the monopoly- serving Senate has taken care to pigeon-hole each resolution in committee. They never even permit them to be publicly discussed in the Senate. Twenty-nine State legislatures have passed the same resolution in recent years; but they have always voted independently of each other— and hence to no purpose. If now, in concert of action, thirty State legislatures will pass a resolution calling for a Constitutional Convention, the sim¬ ple change can be submitted to the people— and we can easily foretell the result ! For it requires little acumen to understand that if Senators were elected by the people, instead of by State legisla¬ tures in control of the political machine and the corporations— instantly these great offices would become high prizes for the noblest characters in the Nation. Not a man could or would aspire to so distinguished an honor unless his great abili¬ ties and the solid worth of his work in the public interest could command popular approval at the polls. To be identified with corporations, or even to be suspected of such a connection, would be po¬ litical doom. And to see how true this is, we can picture what would happen if Aldrich presented himself in Rhode Island, if Lodge came before the people of Samuel Adams’ great State, if the gray-bearded offenders Allison and Cullom should challenge the liberty-loving yeomanry of Iowa and Illinois, or if that even dozen of mere creatures of the machine— Quay and Penrose, THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 83 Platt and Depew, Hanna and Foraker, Frye and Hale, Elkins and Scott, and, finally, Kean and Dry den— should presume to present themselves at the ballot box of the millions of American free¬ men in the six great commonwealths which they so shamelessly misrepresent. ‘ ‘Scarcely an individual is to be perceived in it (the Senate) who does not recall the idea of an active and illustrious career. The Senate is composed of eloquent advocates, distinguished gen¬ erals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose language would at all times do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe. ' ’ — M. de Tocqueville in 1835. We marvel nowadays at the utter corruption of American political life ; and as old men revive in memory and young men recall in history the past glory of the United States Senate, in contrast with the degenerate body of today, we stand be¬ wildered at the change and seem hopeless of a remedy. But love of money is the root of this evil— as it is the tap-root of every evil in our pub¬ lic life ; and if voting freemen will simply use the common sense they are born with, the problem is stripped of all mystery and the remedy becomes plain as day. In framing the Constitution the aim of the fathers was to make the Senate the enlightened and conservative force in our government; to have it composed exclusively of our most eminent men, two only to be chosen from a whole State, and each to be elected for a long term of six years —half again as long as the President, and three times as long as the members of the House. Thus constituted, the body was armed with vast powers 84 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. — power in plenty to hold in check a President who might plot to make himself a dictator, or a numerous House which might plunge us into radi¬ cal and ill-considered legislation through tempor¬ ary anger and excitement of the people. With these ends in view, they provided (1) that the Representatives should be elected by the people, (2) that the Senators should be elected by the State legislatures, and (3) that the President should be chosen by the members of the Electoral College. Within a few years the latter feature proved itself entirely impracticable; and ever since Jef¬ ferson’s time, the President has practically been elected by direct vote of the people, for while we still preserve the form of voting for Presidential electors, everybody understands that, in reality, our ballots are cast for the candidates named for President and Vice President. And just as expe¬ rience demonstrated the need for that change, so experience has now clearly shown the imperative need for separating the poiver to elect Senators from the power to grant corporation franchises in State legislatures . The one controls the other inevitably. Therein we have the complete explan¬ ation of why, instead of a Senate to represent the people, we have the grim reality of a Senate which rules over us in the interest of the great and small millionaires who have enriched themselves through public franchises and Protection legisla¬ tion. Of all the reforms for which we are now suf¬ fering sorely, this is the one which would do most to destroy the political machine, do most to purify THE POLITICAL MACHINE AT WORK. 85 our public life, and do most to deprive the cor¬ porations and Trusts of their dangerous power over the people. The needful change would come so gradually that it could not involve us in the slightest disturbance; the Senate would still be the conservative force that the fathers wisely planned and we certainly desire to have it remain ; and instantly the foremost men in the Nation would present themselves for the high honors now monopolized by men who are low enough to lend themselves to the ignoble service of the stock¬ jobbers. For while the rich are indeed money mad, the people are very far from being so ; and if we simply strip the machine of power in its stronghold, we shall speedily see the manhood and intellect of America teaching, and proving, that life’s sweetest rewards and ambition’s most en¬ during honors, lie far beyond the reach of godless millions of money. “I feel a well-grounded conviction that the best principles of our great and glorious ancestors are inherited by a large poition of the American people. And if the talents, the policy, the address, the power, the bigotry and tyranny of Archbishop Laud and the court of Charles the First were not able to destroy or discredit them in 1630 or 1635, there is little cause of apprehen¬ sion for them from the feeble effort of the frivolous libertines who are combining, conspiring, and intriguing against them in 1802. * ‘ j find very honest men, who, thinking the possession of some property necessary to give due independence of mind, are for re¬ straining the elective franchise to property. I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes by making the num¬ ber of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that 1 have not observed men’s honesty to increase with their -jrfipe ” —Thomas Jefferson. 86 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. We are rich in patriotism as we are rich in wealth— and invincible in power ! We have thou¬ sands of able men whose heads are 4 ‘ equal to true and solid calculations of glory.” And the one thing which, more than any other, stands in the way of the priceless public service they are ready and eager to render, is the formidable and utterly corrupt combination now pivoted upon the power to secretly control State legislatures— and thus capture seats in the Senate and invaluable fran¬ chises for public utilities. OUTLINES OF THE PROBLEMS NOW CONFRONTING US. But what avail, ye builders of the world, Unless ye build a safety for the soul. Man has put harness on Leviathan, And hooks in his incorrigible jaws ; And yet the perils of the street remain. Out of the whirlwind of the cities rise Lean hunger and the worm of The heartbreak and the cry of mortal J^ars* 71/T n'Y'lcn.n.'YYi, . “I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corpora¬ tions, which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Jeferson, “By the Eternal, the money-power shall not Jackson. “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died m vain-that this Nation under God shall have a new birth of Free¬ dom— and that Government of the people by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. _ Lincoln. Chapter III. We live in an age of astonishing progress. We are passing through an era which is wholly new in evolutionary science, in revolutionary in¬ vention, and in the astounding increase of indi¬ vidual wealth— an era which, for us, is momentous in its problems of industrial strife at home, and ever-present danger of trouble in South America and the far East. . As the result of amazing progress m all . the mechanic arts, the accumulated wealth of civil- 88 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. ized nations has doubled, trebled, and quad¬ rupled in the past fifty years ; the great body of mankind now enjoy comforts and luxuries which only kings and princes could afford three gener¬ ations ago; the general average of wages, for skilled workers regularly employed , has ad¬ vanced twofold or more; and the purchasing power of the gold dollar has enhanced 50 to 75 per cent., and more than double for a long list of articles now deemed necessaries of the home. But while all Europe has been passing through a steady ferment of political agitation, and while there great gains have been made in abating the evils of aristocratic rule and in advancing the share of the people in the business of governing themselves, in the United States we have had no change in our political status, and happily no thought or need of fundamental change, for over a century of time— the Civil War having been fought simply to preserve our institutions and free the slaves. Thus, while physical science has been going forward by leaps and bounds, with us, political science has stood still! It can stand still no longer! The Trust issue, the war with Spain, the ac¬ quisition of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Porto Rico, the Cuban experiment, and the grim reality of the Monroe Doctrine — these are all new and momentous problems in the political, industrial and commercial development of America. They mean simply that we are now in world politics— and in to stay! That fact affrights the timid ones; but it kindles the courage, it fires OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 89 the enthusiasm, and it ennobles the ambition of millions of American freemen who know instinct¬ ively— as a race inheritance— that we have now fairly begun the grand work which our fathers planned that we should do. “It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the de¬ gree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to have its individual members. 11 “I know that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also , and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual changes of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruin¬ ous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of it¬ self, and of ordering its own affairs. ” —Thomas Jeferson. It is necessary to realize, in the first place, that for full three generations past, instead of reading history and studying political science, we have been deeply absorbed in the great work of rearing a Nation upon the secure foundations which our fathers laid for us. Within one cen- 90 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. tury of time, also, we have outstripped all rec¬ ords in nation-building since the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, full fourteen centuries ago. For it is simple truth to say that not a nation in Europe can now compare with the United States in power, in wealth, and in advantages. That fact is evidence in plenty that we have been profitably employed. But absorbed in the vast work, and intent upon individual interests, we have forgotten the past; we have become con¬ fused as to the essential difference between the democratic institutions of America and the aris¬ tocratic institutions of Europe; and since the Civil War loaded us with debt and taxes, we have heedlessly permitted the promoters of legislative privilege to confuse the minds of the people, to poison and corrupt our political life, and then to enrich themselves beyond the earthly dreams of kings and princes— And they have done it by sedulously teaching political doctrines which are distinctly European and dangerously un-American ; doctrines which our fathers flatly repudiated, first in Jefferson’s time, next in Jackson’s time, and then again in Lincoln’s time. The Revolutionary patriots did indeed free us from the curse of a legalized and titled aristoc¬ racy, resting securely upon the feudal system of primogeniture and entailed estates in land. But they entrusted to our keeping unlimited power to create a moneyed aristocracy through special legislation— and that is precisely what we have done ! Through Protection legislation we have ere- OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 91 ated moneyed princes of the manufacturing world, with power to lay tribute upon practically every article that enters into factory production and home consumption. Through pipe-line franchises we have created moneyed marquises of the petroleum industry, who enjoy a monopoly of our oil wells, and lay tribute upon every lamp that lights the homes of the poor. Through railroad franchises we have created moneyed lords of the transportation world, with power to lay tribute upon every ton of freight that is moved and every passenger who travels. Through coal mining charters we have created moneyed barons, with power to restrict the out¬ put, to regulate miners’ wages, and to lay heavy tribute upon every ton of anthracite that is con¬ sumed. Through telegraph, telephone, street railway, and other municipal franchises, we have created a numerous order of moneyed Sir Knights, who do nimble and daring work with city councils in laying tribute upon every urban dweller. And finally, through land grants and tricky titles, we have temporarily deeded away the Na¬ tion’s richest heritage— our vast Public Domain, which is now fenced in and tightly “held for a rise,” contrary to the very letter and spirit of all our laws providing specifically for homestead settlement and actual occupancy and use. Instantly the practical man of business will be prompted to observe! “But it was fi6C6Ssciyy to grant these franchises. People may differ about the necessity for Protection; but certainly there 92 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. can be no difference about tbe necessity for granting franchises to railroads, street railways, and all other public utilities. Without the fran¬ chises we could have no transportation facilities. So, too, without franchises for great corpora¬ tions, we could not possibly have built-up the vast mining and manufacturing industries which now give our people profitable employment.” Precisely so. Now let us clear up some essential points. The people, in their sovereign power, have granted these franchises; and hence the people have an ethical, legal, and absolute right to regu¬ late the conduct of these enterprises. Eecent ad¬ vances in civilization have made it evident that we now require public servants— corporations— to administer public utilities, much the same as we require public servants to collect taxes, to administer justice, and to preserve order. It is this fact— the obvious need of govern¬ mental control— which forms the basis of that dreamy philosophy of “government ownership,” oi German socialism, which Henry George and Edward Bellamy did so much to popularize in liberty-loving America. But George and Bel- lamy were simply behind the age — full twenty centuries behind the constructive statesmen who framed American institutions, as we shall soon see. In feudal times the collection of taxes and the administration of government was so vitally im¬ portant, so highly honorable, and so extremely profitable as a pursuit, that the strong men of those times monopolized the business exclusively OUTLINES OF PKESENT-DAY PKOBLEMS. 93 for themselves and their families. They made the offices hereditary ; they affixed a distinguished title to each office; they entailed their great landed estates; they hired armies of retainers who were well-paid to defend their possessions ; and then to the people they said in effect : ‘ 4 This is our business — All of this is our property We are managing it on a community-of -interest plan — Which means simply that when men own prop¬ erty they can do what they like with it ‘The public be damned.’ ” 4 ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly; But they grind exceeding small. ” The political history of all Europe is neither more nor less than a bloody record of the age¬ long strife which the people have had to wage in order to amend that system, and to secure at least some share in the important business of taxing and governing themselves. But the history of America is quite another story. We are bred of a race of freemen who grimly determined three centuries ago that they would not tolerate the tyranny of any such system. And from the day the first-comers landed in Virginia in 1607, down to this hour, the business of learning just how to govern ourselves has been going steadily for¬ ward. The Revolution gave the strong men of our race the opportunity for which they had been planning and waiting. Then it was that they wiped from our constitutions and our statute books every trace of feudal aristocracy. Then it was that they made majority rule the one 94 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. supreme law of the land. And then it was that they made public officers neither more nor less than public servants. One other thing they did, of supremest moment and importance to themselves— and to us! To make absolutely sure that public servants might not betray public trust, and thereby enrich them¬ selves at the people’s expense, it was prescribed with scrupulous care that accurate accounts should be kept of all cash receipts and all cash expenditures ; and further, that at frequent inter¬ vals detailed and sworn statements of these re¬ ceipts and expenditures should be printed and published for the information of the whole peo¬ ple. Beyond this, to make doubly sure that the people might not be betrayed by able men intent upon winning political power as a means of per¬ sonal profit, they wisely provided that public officers should be elected for short terms only; and at the end of each term should be called to strict account at the people’s ballot box. Now for some illuminating history! The new system, thus established, was no sooner under way than the feudal aristocrats, still among us and brilliantly led by Alexander Hamilton, began at once to plot and scheme to fasten themselves upon the people once more. And to get control of the banking facilities and money of the people was the immediate object of their attack. They promptly secured from Con¬ gress a charter for the famous Bank of the United States— a great central corporation, with such exclusive privileges and large powers, that it dominated both public and private credit and OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 95 of course controlled the volume of legalized pa¬ per money. In the succeeding chapter I shall show how Jefferson foresaw and overcame the immediate dangers of this perilous monopoly; but owing to the grave troubles growing out of the war of 1812, the Bank secured a renewal of its charter under Madison’s administration; and by the time Jackson came to the Presidency in 1828, it had become so powerful in politics, as well as in business, that, in Jackson’s striking phrase, the issue was simply: “Shall the Bank, or the people rule?” That contest was settled as it should have been _ by refusing to renew the Bank charter. But in accomplishing the necessary work of break¬ ing up so perilous a monopoly, our finances were thrown into confusion; numerous small State banks were chartered in all parts of the country ; no effective steps were taken to provide national supervision of bank-note issues ; and thus we were plunged into our first great panic— that of 1837. The leading State banks, however, prompt¬ ly resumed specie payments; and profiting by the lessons of the panic they gave the country a safe and adequate volume of bank notes, which aided greatly in making the wonderful era of prosperity and development that the country en¬ joyed from 1840 to 1857. But men will forget. Young men rarely profit by the experience of old men. State banks multiplied, and bank notes of uncertain and speculative value increased stead¬ ily. Thus we were led straight on to the ‘ ‘ wild¬ cat” and “red dog” issues of paper money, 96 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. which, with the mad speculation of the early era of railroad building, plunged us into our second great panic of 1857. It was the lessons of this second financial disas¬ ter, and the utter chaos of our national finances during the Civil War, that gave Salmon P. Chase his golden opportunity. And it was the genius of Chase— everlasting honor to his patriot name! — that gave us the longest forward stride in constructive statesmanship since Jefferson’s time. In a later chapter I shall show why and how our national banking system now offers an easy and lasting solution of our entire problem of money and finance. But here, we are con¬ cerned only with the similarity— the precise identity — of banking charters to franchises for railroads and all industrial corporations engaged in interstate commerce. Chase saw clearly that money is the very life¬ blood of the nation’s commerce and industry, and hence that it must be controlled and regulated by the national government. He also saw that bank¬ ing was not a legitimate function of government ; that a great central Bank had proved dangerous to our free institutions ; that the government must be kept out of the banking business ; and that those who issue the people’s money must be held to strict accountability in the public prints — precisely as we hold tax collectors , public of¬ ficials, and all other public servants to strict ac¬ countability. Genius and great statesman that he was, Chase solved the knotty problem by securing the pas¬ sage of a law which grants to groups of individu- OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 97 als— corporations— charters to engage in the banking business, and to issue paper money, under these conditions: (1) that every bank note shall be secured by bonds deposited in the na¬ tional Treasury; (2) that at all times the books of these national banks shall be open to the in¬ spection of “bank examiners” employed by the people; and (3) that whenever the Comptroller of the Currency sees fit to order it, statements of the condition of these banks shall be published in the newspapers. Publicity ! Publicity ! ! Publicity ! ! ! Since Chase’s day, new problems in govern¬ ment have presented themselves. The advance in science, the evolution of industrial methods, and the complete revolution in all means of quick communication and rapid transit, have made it perfectly evident that the public welfare demands the creation and service of corporations of im¬ mense capital and vast power. Seeing these needs, the people have, from time to time, freely granted to industrial and commercial enterprises, and public-service corporations, valuable fran¬ chises, carrying with them all the powers neces¬ sary to insure the free play of individual initia¬ tive in meeting the demands of the people. Under these franchises, numerous great corpora¬ tions, really in the service of the people, have been created. But up to this time, no effective provisions have been made for calling the offi¬ cials of these corporations to account ! The men who have captured control, the “in¬ siders,” conduct these corporations precisely as individuals conduct private business. They 98 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. resent, and resist to the utmost, every effort at public inquiry into their abuses of administra¬ tion. They refuse stockholders and investors— proprietors— the information needful to forming an intelligent estimate of the value of the shares. They pay dividends when and in whatever amount they choose. They manipulate the share capital absolutely without restriction. Within the past five years they have issued watered stock mounting into billions of dollars, upon which the public is now expected to pay interest and divi¬ dends. Through secret, often unlawful, conspira¬ cies they freely exercise arbitrary power in granting rebates to favorite interests, and in fix¬ ing freight rates, passenger rates, street railway fares, the cost of telephone, telegraph, electric light and other public service. By reason of their personal, irresponsible, and despotic power, even railway officials and employees do not dare to disclose overwhelming evidence of shameless and criminal abuses in the manipulation and con¬ duct of corporations chartered solely for the service of the people. And inside our tariff wall, for years past they have absolutely controlled the price of practically every staple of produc¬ tive industry, and hundreds of articles of home consumption. In short, through public fran¬ chises granted by the people, we have permitted small groups of men to exercise tyrannous and despotic power over the fortunes, the happiness, and the peaceful pursuits of millions of American freemen; and since history but repeats itself, OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 99 these same men, before our very eyes, have acted squarely upon the principle and precept of the barons of the middle ages : ‘ ‘ The good old rule, the simple plan : That they shall take, who have the power, And they shall keep who can. 7 1 By reason of vast wealth thus accumulated, and by reason of the despotic power which they wield with silent, secret, and deadly precision, we now see press and pulpit treating them with trembling deference and respect; we see Presi¬ dents, legislators, judges, and all aspiring poli¬ ticians openly fawning for their favor; we see our ablest men in professional and business life struggling in eager rivalry to win the rich prizes of recognition and profit which they have to dis¬ pense; and we see kings and courts of Europe conferring upon them the most distinguished at¬ tentions. Little wonder that monstrosities of money greed should regard themselves as the elect of our kind; and no wonder at all that they account their millions won in Wall Street as the reward which society rightfully bestows upon its “master minds”— its wonder-working Captains of Finance ! But as the result of this system— or lack of system; as the natural, logical, and inevitable outcome of legislation for the exclusive benefit of a few at the direct expense of the many, we are now confronted by the most appalling contrasts in social conditions ever known in American his¬ tory-contrasts which simply amaze and con¬ found intelligent Europeans who come to study 100 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. our achievements and who are familiar with our past history. Upon the one hand, we have a few men in pos¬ session of wealth and power which staggers the imagination and spreads the gravest alarm; we have a fashionable society of the vulgar rich who live in regal splendor, “competing with each other in contests of ostentation’ ’ and aping the worst forms of degenerate European aristocracy; we have heads of families whose highest hope is to buy impoverished foreign titles, with Ameri¬ can maidens as the sorry victims; we have a “smart set” who till the newspapers with sensa¬ tional tales of intrigue, divorce, and scandal — “a more contemptible crew never played their pranks before high heaven;” we have shoals of silly rich people in Boston, in New York, and in Washington, who are now thinking, and saying, that our institutions are insecure and we shall have to go back to some form of monarchy or “strong government”; and we have one insuffer¬ able millionaire who literally outdoes Barnum in spectacular self-advertisement— a man who brazenly preaches poverty for other people while living in lordly splendor in his Scottish castle; who lectures fashionable society on the evils of vain show, and then “flabbergasts” the Four Hundred by exchanging hospitalities with his King ; who makes a business of benevolence while he shames the face of sweet charity with sensa¬ tional giving; who “cultivates his soul” in widely-heralded and solemn public services to dedicate millions in godless money or monuments of masonry boldly branded with his name; and OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 101 who, all the while, leads the van of political cor¬ ruption by adroitly preaching Protection for America, where he makes his money, and preach¬ ing Free Trade for Britain, where he makes his home. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep ’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 1 ’ Upon the other hand— heaven forgive our sel¬ fish negligence !— we have millions of free-born American men, women, and helpless little chil¬ dren who spend their lives in dire struggle for bare necessities, with grim want ever haunting the future; we have tens of thousands who are annually plunged into the gulf of pauperism itself; we have thousands of noble men and women whose sympathies have impelled them to become trained experts in the systematic and steady work of administering needed charity ; we have a sinful and awful record of increasing pauperism, insanity, crime, and suicide, which has been rising by leaps and bounds , while aristo¬ cratic and monarchical Europe has checked the increase and faced the need for better conditions ; and worst of all, as a Nation of eighty million freemen, in secure possession of the richest and proudest heritage ever left to mankind, we have been so scourged by panic and long periods of depression, that most of our leaders shiver with cowardly fear before the brutal and senseless threats of the brazen millionaires who tell us that another panic is inevitable if we touch the tariff or fail to renew their lease of power! 102 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. Whole libraries have been written about the appalling increase of pauperism which has come upon us since the Civil War, and the ghastly story parades itself so continually in the news¬ papers that we have become hardened to it— have come to feel that the curse is chronic and inevi¬ table. But the strong men who framed American institutions entertained no such stupid and in¬ sufferable ideas. Their plain purpose was none other than to free us, as they freed themselves, from precisely those conditions which now so afflict the poor and so affright the timid. Witness this from the inspiring Introduction which George Bancroft wrote for his great His¬ tory of the United States when he published it in 1834: 11 While the nations of Europe aspire for change, our con¬ stitution engages the fond admiration of the people, by which it has been established. Prosperity follows the execution of even justice; invention is quickened by the freedom of com¬ petition; and labor rewarded with sure and unexampled re¬ turns. ... A gallant navy protects our commerce, which spreads its banners on every sea, and extends its enterprise to every clime. . . . Every man may enjoy the fruits of his industry; every mind is free to publish its convictions. . . . New States are forming in the wilderness; canals, intersect¬ ing our plains and crossing our highlands, open numerous channels to internal commerce ; manufacturers prosper along our water courses; the use of steam on our rivers and railroads annihilates distance by the acceleration of speed. Our wealth and population, already giving us a place in the first rank of nations, are so rapidly cumulative that the former is increased four-fold, and the latter is doubled, in every period of twenty- two or twenty-three years. There is no national debt, the gov¬ ernment is economical, and the public treasury full. . . . There are more daily journals in the United States than in the world beside. . . . Other governments are convulsed by the OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 103 innovations and reforms of neighboring states; our constitu¬ tion, fixed in the affections of the people, from whose choice it has sprung, neutralizes the influence of foreign principles, and fearlessly opens an asylum to the virtuous, the unfortunate, and the oppressed of every nation. 7 7 And witness this unequivocal testimony by the great French philosopher, M. de Tocqueville, who made a prolonged stay for study and obser¬ vation among us while Andrew Jackson was mak¬ ing immortal history in the White House ; and who then went home to write a book — “Democ¬ racy in America”— which every thinking Ameri¬ can now needs to study closely : ‘‘In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords. ‘ ‘ Almost all the Americans are in easy circumstances, and can therefore obtain the first elements of human knowledge .... there are comparatively few who are rich enough to live without a profession. 7 ; ‘ ‘ In the United States I never heard of a man spending his wealth to corrupt the populace.77 “In America, those complaints against property in general, which are so frequent in Europe, are never heard; because in America there arc no paupers; and as every one has property of his own to defend, every one recognizes the principle upon which he holds it. 7 7 “I never met in America with any citizen so poor as not to cast a glance of hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich, or whose imagination did not possess itself by anticipation of those good things which fate still obstinately withheld from him. —iff. de Tocqueville in 1835. So many men and women still living, and in full possession of all their faculties, can give 104 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. verbal testimony to the astonishing1 change which has come over American society since the Civil War, that it will not be necessary for me to go into lengthy details to prove the contrast. In one brief chapter, following this, I shall present evidence which onght to be enough to silence the loud-mouthed and shameless demagogues who go about boasting that the American people are more prosperous than ever before in their history. That is untrue! And because it is untrue, be¬ cause millions of free men, free women, and little children who ought to be free, have suffered, and still suffer, oppression and injustice which their fathers never knew— for full thirty years past the political and industrial atmosphere of the United States has been a storm-center of angry, impas¬ sioned, and desperate conflict over the' wildest theories of reform that have ever been presented for the consideration of an intelligent, thinking people. First we had the greenback craze, raging at its height in 18 7 4, and in obedience to which a Re¬ publican Congress passed a bill which would have plunged us into an abyss of paper money in¬ flation, had not President Grant — brave soldier and great General that he was!— vetoed the bill. In a latei chapter I shall show that the green¬ backs gave us the panic of 1873, and the resump¬ tion of specie payments gave us the great boom of 1880-90. But the fiat-money fallacy was far from dead ; and seeing this, the silver miners of the West promptly began their propaganda. Being strongly represented in both Senate and House, OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 105 they simply traded favors with the Protection schemers of the East. The Republican Congress of 1878 passed the Bland- Allison act; and the Republican Congress of 1890 passed the Sherman Silver Coinage law— the latter being the price deliberately paid to the silver miners for votes enough to pass the McKinley bill. Thus, the panic of 1893, and the free-silver craze which fol¬ lowed it, were the direct, obvious, and inevitable outcome of Congressional favors granted to spe¬ cial interests — at the people’s incalculable cost! Hand in hand with the greenback craze, we had the rise of the Granger movement, which thanks to ex-Senator Reagan and the farmers of the great Middle West, happily resulted in the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commis¬ sion— the wisest, most far-reaching, and most fundamental measure of reform that has been enacted since the genius of Salmon P. Chase gave us our National Banking System. 1 1 Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigor¬ ous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interest by the most lasting bonds. ” — Thomas Jefferson. In 1877 we had the awful railroad riots, in¬ augurating the movement for local, state and national organization among skilled working- men, and marking the beginning of a distinctly new era of desperate, dangerous, and costly labor strikes— the end of which can never come unless both employers and labor leaders squarely rec¬ ognize that fair play, and frank and friendly arbi- 106 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. tration of differences, are the only means to in¬ dustrial peace while we are passing through this era of formidable and aggressive combinations of capital and labor. We shall be rid of it all in good time; but meanwhile, patience, politeness, and manly self-control, should be the watchwords of thinking freemen who are on the fighting line. Every appeal to coercion and force is a mistake —a deplorable calamity— because it serves only to tighten the grip of the scheming millionaires. We must preserve order at any cost or conse¬ quence. Our fathers did the fighting. Now let us be brave enough to do the thinking— be strong enough to hold ourselves until monopoly shall be unhorsed at the ballot box. For obvi¬ ously the common enemy of working employers and all working men, is now the Wall Street crowd, whose minions in our “combination” Senate— notably Aldrich and Lodge, Platt and Depew, Quay and Penrose, Hanna and Foraker, Frye and Hale, Elkins and Scott— deliberately block and manipulate every move in our national legislation and national politics. The Henry George movement began about 1883, shortly after he published his books, and it culminated in 1886 when he was nominated for Mayor of New York City. During the progress of that movement Socialism, or the theory of government ownership, began to assume promi¬ nence ; and its impracticable theories are the ones which to-day, do most to confuse the minds of earnest, honest, and public-spirited Americans. The Anarchists began to make themselves heard about 1885, and their teaching entailed the fright- OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 107 ful tragedies enacted in Chicago, and at Home¬ stead, finally culminating in the cold-blooded and awful assassination of a President. Biblical history, Greek and Homan history, European history, and all the libraries of politi¬ cal and economic history, ancient and modern, have been heavily drawn upon to supply inspira¬ tion and literature for this astonishing propa¬ ganda of pure theory. But nowhere have I been able to find among the reformers even one thinker, writer, or active worker, who seems to appreciate the perfectly obvious fact that our Revolutionary fathers wrought into our Consti¬ tution and wrote into our statute laws, the most fundamental, radical, and far-reaching reforms that have ever been achieved at a given time in the world’s history of political science. ‘ ‘ The Constitution of the United States is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. ’ ’ — Gladstone. In consequence of this neglect of American his¬ tory, and in consequence of the utter confusion of thought now current, we have Mr. Jerome, the courageous and honest reformer, bravely telling us that: ‘‘The great fakir Jefferson said men were born equal. I say that many are not born equal; and God forbid the time when there are not better, purer, wiser people than we are, to go to for inspiration and courage.” Dr. Felix Adler, founder and leader of the 108 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. Ethical Culture Society, immediately responds by telling us that: i 1 There is a false and a true Democracy. The false declares that all men are equal. This is untrue, and neither a government nor a so¬ ciety can be built upon its fiction. ” These two gentlemen will doubtless be sur¬ prised upon learning that the Continental Con¬ gress was a legal body ; that the Declaration of Independence was a legal document; and that the equality which it proclaimed was equality before the LAW. .For in. that day Royalty maintained among us institutions giving a monarch and a titled aristocracy legal privileges denied to other men— precisely as in this day our ruling million¬ aires enjoy princely legal privileges which have fabulously enriched the few, at the burdensome expense of the many. Dr. Lyman Abbott, the gifted, eloquent, and altruistic successor to Henry Ward Beecher in the Plymouth pulpit, seeing no other hope, tells the students at Yale that: Socialism in this country I believe to be irresistible, and I believe that it ought not to be resisted. Herbert Spencer wrote fifty years ago that Socialism could be prevented by nothing but civil war, bloodshed and despotism. I *do not agree with this. I believe that this, like every great ques¬ tion, will be debated by the American public and settled with¬ out bloodshed. ” ‘The peril to America is not in the greatness of the organi¬ zation, but in the direction which it shall take. Believe me, this movement toward organization is not alone irresistible • it is beneficial. ’ ’ You are both right and wrong, Dr. Abbott: OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 109 We shall debate the question, and we shall settle it without bloodshed. But instead of turning back to Plato, who lived before Christ was born, and who thought and wrote for a civilization which wrecked itself upon the rocks and shoals of his theories, we shall simply turn back to see how Samuel Adams, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lin¬ coln met and mastered grave troubles in their time; and we shall fearlessly follow the broad highway which they cleared for us. For here were the great apostles of “government of the people by the people and for the people ; ’ ’ here were the bold thinkers and the dauntless leaders whose genius burned with determination to dem¬ onstrate the principle of equality before the law; and in all the written records of political history, ancient and modern, no nobler literature was ever penned, and no grander work was ever done in the cause of liberty, opportunity, and hu¬ man happiness. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, the brilliant young divine who has succeeded Dr. Abbott in Beecher’s pulpit, gives comfort to the monopolists— gives Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan all they want —by teaching that there are “combinations of wealth that have lessened the cost of produc¬ tion;” and then proceeds “to make a plea for the non-union man’s right to be a non-union man” —telling us that 80 per cent, of our workingmen are outside the unions. Does it occur to Dr. Hillis that the men composing this 80 per cent, are not only independent of trades unions, but would spurn sympathetic pleas in their behalf? Is he 110 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. aware that the coal barons make a business of importing “scab” labor into the coal regions, for the specific purpose of forcing wages down 9 1 1 In that unhappy anthracite country the employers will tell you openly and with unconscious bravado, that they must get in cheaper and cheaper labor to keep wages down, else they could make no money. ’ ; “An absurd surplus of some thirty thousand men hangs about the mines, and every attempt that they have made to secure the real advantages of organization among themselves has been fought with obstinate ill will by the masters. ’ ’ “It is true that the presence of sixteen nationalities, many of them with the lowest standard of living, is an extremely annoying fact, but the employing class has its definite re¬ sponsibilities for the present quality of miners. Such as they are, they have been expressly encouraged to come , in order to keep wages low.” — John Graham Brooks. Clearly Dr. Hillis has been deceived into mak¬ ing a plea for men, women, and little children who would gladly flee to the standard of their brave brothers, but who are so downtrodden, so poverty-stricken, that dread starvation drives them to accept work at any wages or upon any terms that may be offered! For although Dr. Hillis has been confused by false testimony, he is yet true to the faith which inspires him with the high courage needful to uttering these blistering truths : 1 ‘ During the past year we have made history rapidly. From combinations of wealth that have lessened the cost of produc¬ tion, we have gone swiftly to combinations for plunder, that represent stock, watered indefinitely, and foisted upon the public by greedy and unscrupulous stock jugglers. “If the corporate capitalists could honestly say in the sight of men and God, there is not one dollar of watered stock in OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. Ill these mines or in our railway stocks— the dividend is paid on the absolute cost— they would have the sympathy of all the public. “The time has come for selfish capitalists, growing fat through their gains, their withholding the wage of the poor, and their watering of stock, to stop going to horse shows on Sunday, to give up their wines and their women, and their deviltry in general, and go to church, fall on their knees and make restitu¬ tion of their ill-gotten gains, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ 11 Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Trib¬ une, national organ of the Protection party, late candidate for Vice-President, late Special Envoy to the Coronation of King Edward, and many times a millionaire himself— Mr. Reid scores President Roosevelt for his action in settling the coal strike, in this threatening and suggestive language : “Not until 1865 was it even established throughout the United States that every man has the right to sell his own labor; and in 1902, in your State and in mine, there were still found a great many men, including a pitiful number of exceptionally ignorant or emotional clergymen, and some people called statesmen, who considered such a right so doubtful that they were not ashamed to urge, for the sake of peace, and coal, that it should be submitted to arbitration. ’ ’ “If our form of government is the best, it cannot be so be¬ cause it is the cheapest. On the contrary, it is one of the most expensive in the world. “Our form of government cannot be the best because it is the most efficient. On the contrary, it is one of the slowest in the world; the most complicated, cumbrous and limited. “We are the oldest republic in the world (save those so small as to be negligible), but our years do not cover the span the Psalmist assigned to two human lives, while those of the mon¬ archies and despotisms count by thousands. Other republics, long since passed away, have lasted as long as we, and borne for their time as great a sway in the world. ’ ’ 112 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. If this poor boy from Ohio, whose man’s mind is so pitifully mystified by the millions he now enjoys, will simply look up the record of what Samuel Adams did in Town-meeting for our Tor¬ ies, our titled aristocrats, and the British armies and navies in Revolutionary times; and then if he will calculate the number of townships and Town-meetings in the United States to-day, I fancy his ominous fears for our future will give place to a conclusion that, come what may, we can probably muster enough “embattled farm¬ ers” to take care of ourselves— in spite of his teaching ! “There are two subjects which I shall claim a right to further as long as I have breath: the public education and the subdivi¬ sion of the counties into wards (townships). I consider the con¬ tinuance of Republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks. ” “Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward republic or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an elec¬ tion one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or Bonaparte. ’* — Thomas Jefferson. Young John D. Rockefeller, Jr., reveals some¬ thing of the canker of conscience now steadily at work in his family circle by telling his Sunday- school scholars: “There is a general opinion that wealth produces happiness. Wealth alone cannot produce complete happiness. I do not care who the man is— or how much worldly success he has achieved— if he has secured his success along selfish lines he OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 113 is not entirely happy. To secure genuine success one must make his life a useful one to others as well as to himself. “True success, and every man should appreciate it, is not wealth, but the influence one extends over others. You all pos¬ sess a degree of influence over others — let it be for good. The man who passes away leaving a good influence, has won far greater success than the rich man who lives only in himself. ” Senator Hoar, who has devoted a long lifetime to the advocacy of Protection for the special benefit of his Massachusetts constituents, tells us •hi that : “The whipping post, the branding on the forehead, the crop¬ ping of the ears, the scourging at the cart’s tail, are light punishment for the rich man who would debauch a state, whether it be an old state with an honorable history, or a young and pure state in the beginning of its history.” And so I might go on indefinitely, multiplying extracts from public addresses reported in the newspapers, to show the astonishing lack of in¬ formation, the utter confusion of thought, and the widespread misconception of American insti¬ tutions now current. But enough of this welter of confusion. The awful extremes of wealth and pauperism which now confront us were unknown to Ameri¬ can experience previous to the Civil War— though they are as old as Kings, aristocracies, and legal privileges in Europe. They represent the identical condition of European society which our fathers fought and planned that we might es¬ cape. And every evil that oppresses us, every menace that affrights us, is traceable directly to an abuse of our inheritance, to a departure from 114 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. the American system of equality before the law. What, then, are the remedies? I shall later devote several chapters to a full discussion of the remedies which well-tried ex¬ perience and plain common sense will clearly sug¬ gest— remedies which a new President and a new Congress will surely make effective, when the people so will. But to anticipate, a few para¬ graphs will here suffice to indicate briefly the needful steps: (1) We require the immediate passage of a currency reform measure which will make an end of our confused and senseless issues of all kinds of money, and give us instead a simple, elastic, and adequate volume of national bank currency — every dollar of it redeemable in gold by the banks of issue! This is imperatively necessary as a means of safely increasing the volume of our money, in proportion to the enormous increase in the volume of business ; and only by this means can we render it impossible for Wall Street “fin¬ anciers” to corner the money market, and peri¬ odically alarm the nation with threats of panic when it suits their interest to carry an election, to grab a railroad or to put stocks up and then put stocks down. (2) We require the immediate passage of a tariff reform measure which will remove the trust-protecting duties from beef and coal, iron and steel, hides and leather, copper, tin, lead, drugs, chemicals — in short, every article that en¬ ters into home manufacture, and the necessary consumption of farmers and wage earners. The immediate effect of this would be to lower the OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 115 cost of all the materials of manufacture, and to cheapen a long list of articles which enter into home consumption. Every factory in the country and every consumer in the land would be im¬ mediately benefited by such an act ; and it would have the further health-giving and salutary ef¬ fect of squeezing the water out of the industrial stocks which, during the past few years, have been enormously overcapitalized upon the theory that American manufacturers and consumers will be content to go on paying dividends on paper capital which has never had any real existence. (3) To meet the deficiency in revenue thus cre¬ ated, a graduated income tax should be immedi¬ ately enacted, which would entirely exempt the vast body of our farmers, wage earners, and people who work for small salaries, as well as those who depend upon small incomes from hon¬ est savings for old age. On all incomes above a minimum figure, the tax should rise in geometrical measure, so that a very considerable portion of the income from great millionaire estates could be applied each year to the rapid discharge of the nation’s obligations. The British income tax, with its heavy inheritance assessments, is an admirable working model. The bill should be entitled, and should be in fact, a measure for dis¬ charging our war obligations— thus making it strictly Constitutional; and every dollar of the just taxation thus assessed, should be applied to the war debt, which is still with us, and to the payment of pensions to the brave soldiers who 116 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. fought to save our institutions, and to the widows and orphans of the heroes who died in that noble cause. (4) As a preliminary step to the intelligent preparation of a complete and thoroughly effec¬ tive law providing for publicity of the accounts of corporations, a measure should be im¬ mediately passed, authorizing the Interstate Commerce Commission to employ a staff of accountants, armed with authority to make a thorough examination of the books, accounts, and records of every large corporation known to be engaged in interstate commerce. The informa¬ tion thus secured will enable Congress to quickly frame a national statute chartering and govern¬ ing national corporations — to be modeled closely after the well-tried system originated by Salmon P. Chase, which has effected a permanent solu¬ tion of our national banking problem. (5) The act of the last Congress, creating a new Department of Commerce, with a cabinet officer and a horde of office-holders under him — should be instantly repealed, as an insult to American intelligence. Its sole object was to mislead the people as to the Republican party’s hypocritical professions of a desire for Public¬ ity; to hamper and obstruct the legitimate work of the Interstate Commerce Commission; and to create a lot of new offices for hungry politicians. Every move under this new, untried, and sense¬ less piece of legislation would be contested in the Courts— as those who passed it well knew; and hence the promoters of combinations and Trusts OUTLINES OF PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. 117 would simply get an extension of time for their steady work of marketing watered stocks to un¬ suspecting investors. (6) A commission should be immediately cre¬ ated by Congress to take in hand the fundamen¬ tally important work of rigorously investigating the fraudulent methods whereby the Public Do¬ main has been deeded away, contrary to the very letter of all our laws providing for homestead settlement and actual occupancy and use. The inevitable effect of this will be to throw open to actual settlement and cultivation, millions upon millions of acres of arable land in every part of our vast Public Domain, which is now fenced in and held out of use for speculative purposes, by great corporations, by native and foreign mil¬ lionaires, and by big and little 4 ‘ investors’ ’ who have evaded the law— who have literally locked- up natural opportunities and thus overcrowded the labor markets in all manufacturing centers. THE SEAMY SIDE OF OUR PROSPERITY. I see a land before me, where manhood in its pride „ ~orgot fke solemn sentence, the wage of toil denied : To wealth and lofty station some royal road must be * Our brother, bound and plundered, shall earn us luxury.” — Julia Ward Howe. “I never yet saw a native American begging in the streets or highways. ’ ’ “I think our people will remain virtuous for many cen¬ turies, as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there are vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. ' ’ Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God if he ever had chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might es¬ cape from the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of culti¬ vators is a phenomenon of which no age or nation has furnished an example. Generally speaking, the proportion which the ag- gregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that ox its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound and healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. ’ ’ — Thomas Jefferson. Chapter IV. The astounding increase in pauperism, insan¬ ity, crime, and child-slavery, in the United States during the past thirty years— since the panic of 1873 — makes the blackest chapter in all American history. Hundreds of books have been written upon the subject; thousands of charitable work¬ ers have given testimony to the facts ; billions of THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 119 taxes have been wisely appropriated by state, county, township and municipal governments, for housing and feeding millions of native-born Americans made helpless or desperate victims of environment; and wholesale philanthropy has become a fashionable fad with rich men who have millions of ill-gotten money for which they can find no other profitable use. All of these things, in aggravated form, have come upon us within my personal observation— within the recollection of millions of American men and women who are yet in the prime of life. And this is FREE America ! It would be the folly of fanaticism to charge any one man, or any single group of men, with entire responsibility for the awful legacy of evil we have suffered; and I have no such intention. I see clearly that the responsibility rests upon many hundreds of men who have been, and are, natural leaders of our people. But I also see, with equal clearness, that these same leaders— those now in power and in office, like those who preceded them— have made a despicable surren¬ der to selfish personal interest; and, not under¬ standing, often not caring to understand, the cause of our troubles, they have simply deter¬ mined to “look out for No. 1”— at the public crib ! “Not only mean and sordid, but extremely shortsighted and foolish, is that species of self-interest which, in political ques¬ tions, opposeth itself to the public good; for a little cool re¬ flection must convince a wise man that he can in no other way so effectually consult the permanent Interest of his own Family and posterity, as by securing the just rights and privileges of that society to which he belongs.’ 1 —George Mason. 120 JEFFEESONIAN DEMOCEACY. To capture an office, to monopolize a fran¬ chise, or to “fix” a duty in the Dingley bill — this is the “statesmanship” of these times. That it should have corrupted our politics, discredited our system of government, and entailed unutter¬ able misery upon millions of the poor and lowly— is as inevitable as that selfishness begets hate and sorrow waits upon sin. And that our present rulers may see the inhuman enormities of the system they uphold and defend — that every man of them may be presented with opportunity to repent his mistakes and give honest aid in right¬ ing the wrongs that exist ; let us now review, in measured terms of simple truth, the seamy side of that Prosperity which we all boast so proudly. “The true prosperity and greatness of a na¬ tion is to be found in the elevation and educa¬ tion of its laborers.” —Ulysses S. Grant. The poverty which haunts the lives and tries the souls of America’s patient and willing work¬ ers, is practically hidden from sight. But those who seek it can easily find it everywhere; and I fancy that many “prosperous” Americans will be startled with this awful picture of child slav¬ ery in “God’s own country,” the Protection stronghold of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Divine- Eight Baer acts as Morgan’s right-hand man in the management of the anthracite coal monopoly. It will be recalled that at the beginning of the recent strike Mr. Baer gave us this message of reassurance : “The rights and interests of the laboring men will be pro¬ tected and cared for — not by the labor agitators, but by the THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 121 Christian men to whom God, in Sis infinite wisdom , has given the control of the property interests of the country; and upon the successful management of which so much depends. It has been aptly observed that “the same rea¬ soning wonld enable some people to say that God, in bis infinite wisdom, once pnt Devery in charge of the New York police force. ’ ’ Bnt as the result of such reasoning, we shall now see bow these “Christian men” have been administering their God-given trust. As early as June 3, 1902, the New York Board of Trade and Transportation held a notable meet¬ ing and passed a series of resolutions calling upon the President to take steps to end the strike. In these resolutions is the written record of the common sense, the simple justice, the plain duty, and the statute law, which finally forced the Pres¬ ident to take action. The resolutions were of¬ fered by Mr. Darwin R. James, and they were ably seconded by Mr. John D. Kernan, who had been a member of the Commission appointed by President Cleveland to settle the Pullman strike in 1894. Here are the documents in full: “ Whereas, Differences have arisen between the anthracite coal roads and their employees in the mines and a strike has been ordered calling out more than one hundred thousand miners and laborers and the production and transportation of anchra- cite coal has ceased; and, “Whereas, Anthracite coal, as a fuel, has become a prime necessity of life and industry, and the threatened scarcity caused by the controversy has resulted in a large advance in the price and great hardship and injury to all consumers and a large advance in the price is imminent and will follow if the differences between the railroads and their employees in the mines are not speedily adjusted; and 122 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. Whereas, The interests of the public are paramount to those of the parties to the controversy j Resolved, That the attention of the President of the United States be respectfully directed to Chapter 1063 of the laws of the United States passed Oct. 1, 1888, so that he may take such action as therein provided either through the tender of arbitra¬ tion by a commission, or, if such arbitration is not accepted, then by an investigation by such commission, to the end that the public may be relieved from the increasing loss and injury that threaten to result from a continuation of the conditions at present existing between the railroads and their employees in the anthracite regions. ” .Five months later, after public sentiment had frightened Mr. Roosevelt into taking the action which he should have taken long before ; after the presence of the Pennsylvania National Guard, ten thousand strong, had proved that the miners could not be driven back to work upon terms they deemed unfair; after the monopoly price of coal had been forced to over twenty dollars per ton; after the coal barons had been exposed and balked in their deliberate plan of starving and freezing the sturdy miners into submission— as they had frequently done before — then it was that John Mitchell’s long-standing, oft-repeated, and thoroughly patriotic proposal of arbitration was finally accepted. Immediately thereafter McClure’s Magazine commissioned Mr. Francis E. Nichols to go into the coal regions to get the facts to describe only what he saw and knew to be true, and thereby afford the public an oppor¬ tunity to judge the evidence before vivid recol¬ lection of the enormities of the strike had faded from view. Mr. Nichols ’ record of his work, with speaking illustrations, appears in McClure’s THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 123 Magazine for February, 1903, under the title, “Children of the Coal Shadow.” In the same number, Miss Tarbell gives a thrilling chapter in her revelations of Standard Oil methods. These are some of the facts that Mr. Nichols reports— with the sledge-hammer deliberation of a judge delivering a sentence upon the guilty : “ According to the mining laws of Pennsylvania, ‘no boy under the age of fourteen shall be employed in a mine, nor shall a boy under the age of twelve be employed in or about the outside structures or workings of a colliery ’ (i. e., in a breaker). Yet no one who stands by the side of a breaker boss and looks up at the tiers of benches that rise from the floor to the coal-begrimed roof can believe for a minute that the law is complied with in the case of one in ten of the tiny figures in blue jumpers and overalls bending over the chutes. The mine inspector and the breaker boss will explain that ‘these boys look younger than their ages is, ' and that a sworn certifi¬ cate setting forth the age of every boy is on file in the office. “Children's age certificates are a criminal institution. When a father wishes to place his son in a breaker, he obtains an ‘age blank' from a mine inspector, and in its spaces he has inserted some age at which it is legal for a boy to work. He carries the certificate to a notary public or justice of the peace, who, in consideration of a fee of twenty-five cents, administers oath to the parent and affixes a notarial seal to the certifi¬ cate. “According to the ethics of the coal fields, it is not wrong for a miner or his family to lie or to practice any form of de¬ ceit in dealing with coal-mine operators or owners. A parent is justified in perjuring himself as to his son’s age on a certifi¬ cate that will be filed with the mine superintendent, but any statement made to a representative of a union must be absolutely truthful. For this reason my inquiries of mine boys as to their work and wages were always conducted under the sacred aus¬ pices of the union. “The interrogative colloquy was invariably something like this: “ ‘How old are you?' '? 124 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. “ Boy: ‘ Thirteen; going on fourteen. ’ ” “Secretary of the Local: 'On the level now. this is union business. You can speak free, understand. ’ ’ ’ “Boy: ‘Oh, dat ’s a diffurnt t’ing altogether. I’m nine years old. I’ve been working since me f adder got hurted in th? explosion in No. 17 a year ago last October. ’ ” “All day long their little fingers dip into the unending grimy stream that rolls past them in the breakers. The coal so closely resembles slate that it can be detected only by the closest scrutiny, and the childish faces are compelled to bend so low over the chutes that prematurely round shoulders and narrow chests are the inevitable result. In front of the chutes is an open space reserved for the ‘breaker boss/ who watches the boys as intently as they watch the coal. The boss is armed with a stick, with which he occasionally raps on the head and shoulders a boy who betrays lack of zeal. The breakers are supposed to be heated in winter, and a steam pipe winds up the wall; but in cold weather every pound of steam is needed in the mines, so that the amount of heat that radiates from the steam pipe is not sufficient to be taken seri¬ ously by any of the breakers’ toilers. From November until May a breaker boy always wears a cap and tippet, and overcoat if he possesses one, but because he has to rely largely upon the sense of touch, he cannot cover his finger-tips with mittens or gloves; from the chafing of the coal his fingers sometimes bleed, and his nails are worn down to the quick. The hours of toil for slate-pickers are supposed to be from seven in the morning until noon, and from one to six in the afternoon; but when the colliery is running on ‘full capacity orders,’ the noon re¬ cess is reduced to half an hour, and the good-night whistle does not blow until half-past six. For this eleven hours work the breaker boy gets no more pay than for ten. The wages of breaker boys are about the same all over the coal regions. When he begins to work at slate-picking a boy receives forty cents a day, and as he becomes more expert the amount is increased until at the end of, say, his fourth year in the breaker, his daily wage may have reached ninety cents. This is the maximum for an especially industrious and skillful boy. The average is about seventy cents a day. From the ranks THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 125 of the older breaker boys are chosen door-boys and runners, who work in the mines below ground. 1 ‘ While the miner ’s son is working in the breaker or mine it is probable that his daughter is employed in a mill or fac¬ tory. Sometimes in a mining town, sometimes in a remote part of the coal fields, one comes upon a large, substantial building of wood or brick. When the six o ’clock whistle blows, its front door is opened, and out streams a procession of girls. Some of them are apparently seventeen or eighteen years old, the major¬ ity are from thirteen to sixteen, but quite a number would seem to be considerably less than thirteen. Such a building is one of the knitting mills or silk factories that during the last ten years have come into Anthracite. “Anthracite is away from the main lines of railroad) it is at an unnecessarily long distance from the markets where the product of the mill is sold; the raw material used on the spindles and looms must be transported from afar. * t The factory inspector will tell you, ‘ The mills locate in An¬ thracite because they all employ girls, and girl labor is cheaper here than anywhere else. ’ A glance at a ‘ textile ’ map of Penn¬ sylvania will show that wherever there are miners, there cluster mills that employ ‘ cheap girl labor. ’ “The perjury certificate prevails for the girls, as well as the boys, and I estimate that 90 per cent, of the 11,216 females (so employed) are girls who have not yet reached womanhood. They work ten hours a day, and the majority stand all of that time, having a chance to sit only in the noon hour. This brings on a characteristic lameness in the girls during their first year at the mill. The report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the state places the ‘average daily wage of children between the ages of thirteen and sixteen’ employed in the manufacturing of underwear at forty-seven cents, in hosiery mills at forty-six cents. ‘ ‘ Through a district organizer I was enabled to interview under union auspices a number of little girls who were em¬ ployed in a knitting mill. One girl of fifteen said that she was the oldest of seven children. She had worked in the mill since she was nine years old. Her father was a miner. As pay- for ‘ raveling ’ she received an amount between $2.50 and $3 every two weeks. Another thirteen-year-old raveler had worked 126 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. since the death of her father, two years before, from miner’s asthma; her brother had been killed in the mine. The $3 she received every two weeks in her pay envelope supported her mother and her ten-year-old sister. A girl of fourteen had looked over’ stockings for two years. She was able to make about $4 every two weeks. A Hooper’ of fifteen received $6 every fortnight. She had worked for four years. Her father was a confirmed invalid. Yet all these children seemed to take great pride in assuring me that their ‘papers was all right and sworn to when we started to work. ’ The breaker boss finds at the mill or factory a counterpart in the ‘ forelady. ’ This personage holds a prominent place in the civilization of Anthracite. It is taken for granted that the forelady must be habitually hateful, and in all controversies side with the proprietor against the rest of the girls. It is her duty to crush incipient strikes, and to do all in her power to break’ the union. She enjoys being hated by every one, and leads an isolated life of conscious rectitude for about $5 a week. How many pairs of socks can a girl make in a day ? ’ I asked a forelady. ‘ They can easy do forty dozen pair if they is good workers, but none of them is good. They all is kickers. That ’s what ’s the matter with them, ’ was her reply. “And they do ‘kick,’ both boys and girls. They are or¬ ganized to ‘kick.’ The children have their unions as well as the grown folk. Almost as soon as the breaker boy’s certifi¬ cate is accepted and placed on file in the colliery office he makes application to become a member of the ‘Junior Local,’ the members of which are all boys under sixteen. Their weekly meetings take place at night, and are conducted with the utmost secrecy, the members being admitted only by password. The monthly dues range from ten to twenty-five cents, in accordance with the wages received by the members. “Every Junior Local has its full quota of officers, from president to corresponding secretary, elected semi-annually by the boys. To the weekly meetings of the Junior Local the regu¬ lar Miners’ Union of the district sends a representative, but he is not an officer of the Juniors; he acts only as referee and in¬ structor. “Painfully ludicrous and pitiful as it all is, it is perfectly understandable. The children of the Coal Shadow have no THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 127 child life. The little tots are sullen, the older children fight; they rarely play, and almost their only amusement is, as we have seen, the union and the strike that is the logical result of the conditions of their existence. They have no friends. Their parents, driven by what they think is necessity, forswear them into bondage. Their employers, compelled by what they regard as economic forces, grind them to hatred. The State, ruled by influences, either refrains from amalgamating laws or cor¬ rective enforcement. The rest of the world doesn’t care. So the shadow of the coal heap lies dark upon these ‘unionized’ little ones as they grow up to be men and women. Within a few years the breaker boy will be a miner. It is the only trade with which he is familiar, and his lack of education will make a commercial or professional career for him almost impossible. He will have to live in Anthracite, because it is the only country where a hard-coal miner can follow his trade. The mill girl will marry early in life; her husband will be a miner. They will both be American citizens. They will remain in the Coal Shadow. ’ ’ Now witness this parallel picture of heart¬ rending and helpless ” white slavery in the South”— a literal slaughter of little children that the cost of production may be kept down and that ten per cent, dividends may be declared upon Northern capital: “Next to Massachusetts, South Carolina manufactures more cotton cloth than any other State in the Union. The cotton mills of South Carolina are mostly owned and operated by New England capital. ‘ ‘ In many instances the machinery of the cotton mills has been moved entire from Massachusetts to South Carolina. The move was made for the ostensible purpose of being near the raw product; but the actual reason is, that in South Carolina there is no law regulating child-labor. Heartless cupidity has joined hands with brutal ignorance, and the result is child-labor of so terrible a type that African slavery was a paradise com¬ pared with it. “Many of the black slaves lived to a good old age, and they 128 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. got a hearty enjoyment from life. The infant factory slaves of South Carolina can never develop into men and women. There are no mortality statistics; the mill owners baffle all attempts of the outside public to get at the facts, but my opinion is, that in many mills death sets the little prisoner free inside of four years. Beyond that he cannot hope to live, and this opinion is derived from careful observation, and interviews with several skilled and experienced physicians who practice in the vicinity of the mills. Boys and girls from the age of six years and upwards are employed. They usually work from six o'clock in the morning until seven at night. For four months of the year they go to work before daylight and they work until after dark. At noon I saw them squat on the floor and devour their food, which consisted mostly of corn bread and bacon. These weazened pigmies munched in silence, and then toppled over in sleep on the floor in all the abandon of babyhood. Very few wore shoes and stockings; dozens of little girls of, say, seven years of age wore only one garment, a linsey-woolsey dress. When it came time to go to work the foreman marched through the groups, shaking the sleepers, shouting in their ears, lifting them to their feet and in a few instances kicking the de¬ linquents into wakefulness. The long afternoon had begun — from a quarter to one until seven o 'clock they worked without respite or rest. These toddlers, I saw, for the most part did but one thing —they watched the flying spindles on a frame twenty feet long, and tied the broken threads. They could not sit at their tasks; back and forward they paced, watching with inanimate, dull look, the flying spindles. The roar of the machinery drowned every other sound-back and forth paced the baby toilers in their bare feet, and mended the broken threads. Two, three or four threads would break before they could patrol the twenty feet— the threads were always breaking! “The noise and the constant looking at the flying wheels reduce nervous sensation in a few months to the minimum. The child does not think, he ceases to suffer — memory is as dead as hope: no more does he long for the green fields, the running streams, the freedom of the woods, and the companionship of all the wild, free things that run, climb, fly, swim or burrow. He THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 129 does his work like an automaton: he is a part of the roaring machinery : memory is seared, physical vitality is at such low ebb that he ceases to suffer. Nature puts a short limit on torture by sending it insensibility. If you suffer, thank God! — it is a sure sign you are alive. “I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his weight. Straightway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bones there ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a silver dime. He looked at me dumbly, from a face that might have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn and full of pain it was. He did not reach for the money — he did not know what it was. I tried to stroke his head and caress his cheek. My smile of friendship meant nothing to him— he shrank from my touch, as though he ex¬ pected punishment. A caress was unknown to this child, sym¬ pathy had never been his portion, and the love of a mother who only a short time before held him in her arms, had all been forgotten in the whir of wheels and the awful silence of a din that knows no respite. “ There were dozens of just such children in this particular mill. A physician who was with me said that they would all be dead, probably in two years, and their places filled with others— there were plenty more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe for disease, and when it comes, there is no rebound— no response. Medicine simply does not act- nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged, and the child sinks into a stupor, and dies. “For these things let Massachusetts answer. “South Carolina weaves cotton that Massachusetts may wear silk. “South Carolina cannot abolish child-labor because the mill owners, who live in New England, oppose it. They have in¬ vested their millions in South Carolina, with the tacit under¬ standing with Legislature and Governor that there shall be no state inspection of mills, nor interference in any way with their management of employees. Each succeeding election the candidates for the Legislature secretly make promises that they will not pass a law forbidding child-labor. They cannot hope 130 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. for election otherwise— the capitalists combine with the “crack¬ ers,” and any man who favors the restriction of child-labor is marked. “I learned from a reliable source that a cotton mill having a pay-roll of six thousand dollars a week in New England, can be run in the South for four thousand dollars a week. This means a saving of just one hundred thousand dollars a year: and the mill having a capital of one million dollars thus gets a cle^r gain of ten per cent, per annum. i 1 One mill at Columbia, S. C., has a capital of two million dollars. Th half a dozen other cities there are mills with a capital of a million or more. These mills all have * company de¬ partment stores, ’ where the employees trade. A certain credit is given, and the employe who has a dollar coming to him in cold cash is very, very rare. The cashier of one mill told me that nineteen families out of twenty never see any cash, and probably never will. The account is kept with the head of the house. Against him are charged house-rent, insurance, fuel — three things the man never thought of. Next, the orders drawn on the company must be met. Then come groceries, clothing and gew-gaws that the young women are tempted into buying, pro¬ viding the account is not too much overdrawn. Sometimes it happens that the account is so much overdrawn by the last of the month that the storekeeper will dole out only corn-meal and bacon— just these two things to prevent starvation and keep the family at work. 1 * The ingenuity displayed in securing the laborers reveals the ‘ instincts of Connecticut, 7 to use the phrase of Ralph Waldo Emerson. There are men called 1 Employing Agents ’ who drive through the country and make the acquaintance of the poor whites — the ‘ white trash. f “The Employing Agent drops in on this poor white family and there is much friendly conversation — for time is no object to the cracker. Gradually the scheme is unfolded. There is a nice man who owns a mill — he will not employ negroes — they are not sufficiently intelligent. The visitor can get work for all the women and the children of the household with this nice man. There will be no work for the man of the house, but he can get THE SEAMY SIDE OE PROSPERITY. 131 odd jobs in the town. This suits the cracker — he does not want to work. A house will be supplied gratis for them to live in. A photograph of the house is shown — it is a veritable palace compared with the place they now call home. The visitor goes away, promising to call again the next week. He comes back and reports that he has seen his friend, the house is ready, work is waiting, wages in cash will be paid every Saturday night. “A printed agreement is produced and signed. “If the cracker hasn’t quite energy enough to move, the Employing Agent packs up his scanty effects and advances money for car fare. The family land in the mill town, are quartered in one of the company ’s cottages and go to work the mother and all the children over five. The head of the house stays at home to do the housework, and being a man, of course, does not do it. He goes to the grocery or some other loafing place where there are other men in the same happy condition as himself. Idle men in the South, as elsewhere, do not feel very well — they need a little stimulant, and take it. The cracker dis¬ covers he can get whiskey and pay for it with an order on the company. “He is very happy, and needless to say, is quite opposed to any fanatic who would like to interfere in his family relations. He is not aware of it, but he has sold his wife and children into a five years’ slavery. The company threatens and has the right to discharge them all if one quits— even the mother is not free. But the cracker knows his rights — he is the head of his family, the labor of his children is his until the girls are eighteen and the boys twenty-one. He knows these things and he starts them off to their work while it is yet night. And at the mill the over¬ seers look after them. These overseers are Northern men — sent down by the capitalists. In war time the best slave-drivers were Northerners — they have the true spirit and get the work done. If necessary they do not hesitate to r reprove ’ their charges. “But the cracker wants to be kind; he wants to accumulate enough money to buy a home in the country— it will take only a few years! The overseers do not wish to be brutal, but they have to report to the superintendents,— there must be so much cloth made every day. The superintendent is not a bad man— but he has to make a daily report to the president of the com¬ pany; and the president has to report to the stockholders. 132 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. “The stockholders live in Boston, and all they want is their dividends. When they go South they go to Pinehurst, Ashe¬ ville or St. Augustine. Details of the mills are not pleasant; they simply leave matters to the good men who operate the mills— it is against their policy to dictate. “ Capital i3 King, not cotton. But capital is blind and deaf to all that is not to its interest: it will not act while child- labor means ten per cent, dividends on industrial stocks. “Instead of abolishing child-labor, capital gives a lot, near the mill property, to any preacher who will build a church, and another lot for a parsonage, and then agrees to double the amount any denomination will raise for a church edifice. “Within a quarter of a mile from one cotton mill, at Colum¬ bia, S. C., I counted seven churches, completed or in process of erection. “And that is the way the mill owners capture the clergy. “We have heard much about the danger that follows an alli¬ ance between church and state; but what think you of a partner¬ ship between grasping greed and religion — the professed relig¬ ion of the suffering, bleeding Christ, the Christ who had not where to lay his head! “If the child workers of South Carolina could be marshalled by bugle call, headed with fife and drum, and marched through Commonwealth avenue, out past that statue of William Lloyd Garrison, erected by the sons of the men who dragged him through the streets at a rope’s end, the sight would appall the heart and drive conviction home. Imagine an army of twenty thousand pigmy bondsmen, half naked, half starved, yellow, weazened, deformed in body, with drawn faces that show spirits too dead to weep, too hopeless to laugh, too pained to feel! Would not aristocratic Boston lock her doors, bar the shutters and turn in shame from such a sight? “I know the sweat shops of Hester street, New York; I am familiar with the vice, depravity and degradation of the White¬ chapel District; I have visited the Ghetto of Venice; I know the lot of the coal miners of Pennsylvania; and I know somewhat of Siberian atrocities; but for misery, woe and hopeless suffer- THE SEAMY SIDE OP PROSPERITY. 133 in g, I have never seen anything to equal the cotton mill slavery of South Carolina — this in my own America — the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! 1 ‘The iniquity of this New Slavery in the New South has grown up out of conditions for which no one man, or class of men, it seems is amenable. The interests of the cracker, the preacher, the overseer, the superintendent, the president, and the stockholders, are so involved that they cannot see the truth — their feet are ensnared, and they sink into the quicksands of hypocrisy, deceiving themselves with specious reasons. They must be educated, and the people must be educated. “So it remains for that small, yet valiant band of men and women in the South, who are fighting this iniquity, to hold fast and not leave off in their work until the little captives are made free. Right will surely win. And to these earnest men and women who are braving ostracism, and who are often scorned in their own homes, who have nothing to gain but the consciousness of having done right, we reach friendly hands across the miles, and out of the silence we send them blessings and bid them be strong and of good cheer. Seemingly they fight alone, but they are not alone, for the great, throbbing, melting mother-heart of the world, has but to know of their existence to be one with them. ” — Elbert Hubbard. Following Mr. Hubbard’s lead, the New York Herald , and many other trustworthy newspapers, have since given ns graphic portrayals of the horrors of child-labor in numerous industries throughout the North— have indeed shown that child slavery exists in every State in the Union, without a single exception; and that everywhere parents plead poverty and necessity as the reason for putting the little ones to work at a time when they should all be in school and at play. As the immediate result of this splendid news¬ paper work, South Carolina has already done herself high credit by passing a law intended to abate the evil. But it is hopeless to rely upon 134 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. mere statute law— as Pennsylvania experience clearly proves. The trouble lies deeper. Mother love would protect the little ones, just as mother love is the secure basis of all society. But the love of parents for children is rendered helpless in the face of pauperism or submission to the service of a moneyed master ; and ere this book is written out, 1 think we shall see both the causes and certain remedies for the hideous industrial slavery which makes little children its helpless victims. Turning now from child slavery, let us take a look at adult slavery. In his new book, “The Social Unrest,’7 published in January, 1903, Prof. John Graham Brooks gives us this searching in¬ sight into every-day adult life the country over : “In my own city (Boston) the conductors and motormen upon the trolley cars are carefully selected and well paid, but the question put to more than forty of them, ‘Is there any chance in your position of getting on very much?’ elicits usually only good-natured surprise that such a question can be asked. There is rather the dogged feeling that it must be made the best of. One said to me, ‘I am thankful to get this; if I dropped out, a hundred men would jump at my chance before supper. All I hope for is to keep this job twelve years at most, at the end of which I shall have what I am getting to-day, two dollars and a quarter. ’ I asked him if he were married. ‘ Yes, and I have three children, but I have no business to have them. With city rents and market prices about Boston, I can just keep even. The best luck I expect is to stick here till I am forty, then they will want a younger man. I left my country town because farming only keeps you alive. Down here I just keep alive, too, but it ain’t a graveyard, as it is up there in the hills.’ Some millions of men in the United States are at the present moment in the situation of that motorman, so far as expectations are concerned. For commonplace and average THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 135 abilities, in mill and factory, the cheering promise of getting free from an ‘ existence wage ’ scarcely exists. For special gifts, the prizes never were so high as now. For ordinary capacity in the common industries the old hopes are lessened. “We know personally, or by observation among the well-to- do citizens, that any serious lowering of income— -as, for ex¬ ample, from $5,000 to $3,000 — is looked upon as a disaster. Do people of ampler income lack imagination that they fail to see the bearings of this fact upon the threatened income of the wage earners? “A study has been made of an eastern town in which more than four thousand American workmen receive a wage that does not average $1.85. What must it mean for a family of five persons to have this sum cut even 25 cents a day? The worst— as it is the commonest cut of all— is the large average of days in the year when there is no work, and pay stops alto¬ gether. The simplest addition of cost for the invariable necessi¬ ties— food, rent, clothing— makes clear how narrow a margin is left. I choose the employees in this town because they rank distinctly above unskilled labor, and have won a standard of life from which every loss is dreaded, because the expenditure of respectability in their group is endangerd. Every little sign of respectability which the higher wage makes possible — the par¬ lor organ, the cheap lace curtains, the beribboned furniture, the gaudily framed family crayon— soon becomes the basis of a sen¬ timent as powerful as it is salutary. Do we imagine that their symbols of respectability mean less to them than to the fops of the fashionable quarter? I have known a man grow gray with trouble in five years because his income shrank just enough to force him to move into a less distinguished part of the town. He still had every possible comfort, but could not have the private school, the doctor and the dentist of the elite in his former neighborhood. “In 1902, I saw in Georgia and Alabama troops of children, many under twelve, working the entire night. I had previously heard every detail of this ugly story, in which northern capital is implicated as much as southern, yet nothing but personal observation would have made me believe the extent to which this blunder goes on in our midst. Whether one finds this evil in New Jersey industries, among Illinois glass-blowers, on 136 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. the Chicago streets at night, or in the merciless sweating of the clothing trade, it is an excuseless wrong for which no extenuating word can be uttered. It is a source of disease, crime, and social weakness. That it is not a purposed cruelty, does not change the fatality of the result. A kindly employer in Alabama tells me, ‘Yes, it is bad, but the parents of these children will have it.’ Every argument reproduces to the letter the excuses of employers two generations ago, when Shaftesbury began his great struggle against child-labor in Eugland. “This stunting use of the child in industry is but a part of what is perhaps the most threatening fact of the new century, the wider and more relentless use of every known agency to keep wages (and therefore the standard of life) as low as possible. Women, children, negroes, the inhabitants of our new dependen¬ cies and every shade of immigrant, will one and all be used like pawns in the great game of immediate business advantage in the markets of the world. “If this purpose should succeed, it has but one issue— the im¬ mense strengthening of a plutocratic administration at the top, served by an army of high-salaried helpers, with an elite of skilled and well-paid workmen, but all resting on what would be essentially a serf class of low-paid labor and this mass kept in order by an increased use of military force. ” Very recently the newspapers have been regal¬ ing ns daily with sensational headlines setting forth the alarming increase of divorce in the United States; and a lengthy discussion of the problem by leading divines, eminent lawyers and distinguished men and women, is immediately followed by a symposium of signed articles dis¬ cussing 4 ‘ race-suicide ’ ’ — or the disappearance of large families, and the surprising increase in the number of childless couples, old maids, and con¬ firmed bachelors in the United States. No less a personage than President Roosevelt himself joins in deploring the latter significant tendency of the times. But, to my thinking, Dr. Francis L. Pat- THE SEAMY SIDE OF PROSPERITY. 137 ton, the venerable ex-president of Princeton University, has explained the situation in a few sentences. In his notable address upon the “ Place of Conscience in the National Life,” de¬ livered before the Presbyterian Social Union not long ago, he said : ‘‘I believe that the time is not far distant when there will not be a thing that we eat, drink, or wear that will not be made by a Trust. “If such is the case, it will not be long until it will be a financial impossibility for the average young man to get mar¬ ried. ’ 1 Dr. Patton, the reporter says, was not enthusiastic over the statement of one of the nation’s wealthiest citizens that he found more pleasure in Shakespeare and Bach than in his wealth. “It was kind to us, who are not wealthy, for him to say that; but I believe,” said Dr. Patton, “ that a certain amount of wealth is necessary to enjoy Shakespeare and Bach.” The divorce problem, also, is thus summarized by a talented writer in the New York American who does not disclose his identity, but who is evidently a close student of history and a watch¬ ful observer of the signs of the times through which we are passing. Says he : “The total number of divorces in the United States for any given year since 1870 exceeds the figure for all the rest of the world ! “It is America against the world, with America gaining on the world at every jump! “In 1870, 3 1-2 per cent of all marriages in this country ended in divorce. In 1881, the percentage had risen to 4.8; in 1890, it was 6.2; while in 1900 it was 8 per cent. “In other words, the percentage of divorces in this country has more than doubled since 1870. “Since 1890 it has more than trebled— and the tide is still rising. 138 JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY. “It is no unusual thing these days for a judge or justice to clean up a divorce docket of a hundred cases or more in a few hours. “Not long ago a St. Louis judge granted sixty-two divorces in half a day, and a New York court separated seventy-three couples in exactly 450 minutes, being a little over six minutes for each case! “In many localities the court statistics show that full 20 per cent, of the marriages are failures. “The rapid transit idea has been reduced to its greatest efficiency in this line of separating husbands and wives and breaking up homes. “The 1 divorce mills 1 are working over hours. “It is no wonder we are forced to hear from the mouth of a distinguished Western judge words like these: “