CHAPTER XII.
TAKING THE SECRET OATH.
Eternal vigilance is the policy of the Magnates in keeping their sleuths ever on the alert for the unearthing of the plans of the anti-trust advocates. In every city detectives are untiring in their efforts to discover the work of the Committee of Forty. It is suspected that the committee is to obtain damaging evidence against some of the most oppressive of the monopolies and bring the full story of the wholesale robbery of the people out as a climax in the coming campaign.
By diligent investigation the detectives learn the names of the thirty-seven men who have been added to the committee by the appointive power of the chairman. It is also ascertained that the forty men are still in the city of Chicago.
This fact is open to several interpretations. It may indicate that the committee has determined to work from a central office; or that the committee is a blind, intended to mislead the detectives into watching it while another agency is at work. The importance of discovering the true mission of the committee is therefore most urgent.
To inspire the detectives to solve the question, the Plutocratic National Committee secretly offers a reward of $5000 to the man who will obtain the desired information.
In holding their daily meetings the Forty observe the greatest caution. Each member goes to the appointed place alone, avoiding as much as possible attracting the attention of the detectives whom they know are on the lookout. It is not their intention to have any mystery connected with their existence, yet they wish to work unhampered by the servants of the Magnates.
For its semi-monthly conference the committee meets at Drover's hall. The deliberations are not open to the public; still, no attempt is made to conceal the fact that there is a meeting.
Nevins and the other leading members decide that the secret meeting at which he is to develop his plan shall be held in a place where there will be no possible way for a spy to creep in.
They select a deserted rolling mill on the edge of the river in North Chicago. This mill was one of the most prosperous in the city prior to the consolidation of the iron industries. Immediately following the combine the mill had been closed and the work that should have gone to it was transferred to the Trust's great plant in Pittsburg.
For eight years the fires in the furnaces have been extinguished; the incompleted iron work that lies about the ground has been given over to the ravages of rust; desolation is the master of the mill.
The spot is an ideal one for a secret meeting place. The police never enter the grounds except at long intervals, when the inspector of the precinct is on his rounds. This official makes a perfunctory survey of the mausoleum of dead industry. In his report the entry, "Iron works vacant," sufficiently describes the place.
On the night of the secret meeting the members arrive at the mill by various routes. There are three entrances on land and a wharf extends along the eastern limit of the enclosure. Five of the delegates cross the river in a skiff.
At nine o'clock all the men are present. They gather on the second floor of the storage shed, a brick structure one hundred by one hundred and fifty feet in area, and three stories high. There are no windows in its bleak walls. On each floor in the wall that faces the interior court of the mill enclosure are two corrugated iron doors. These doors are closed, and effectually exclude the light from without, as well as any light that might be made within. On the floor where the committee meet there is a rough plank table that was used by the machinists of the mill.
At this improvised tribunal the Forty meet to discuss the regeneration of the nation.
Two candles at either end of the ten foot table serve to reveal the dense darkness rather than to dispel it. The flickering-lights fall on the faces of the men as they sit on the floor in a semi-circle. Their eyes are alone perceptible, and the several members are unable to distinguish one another.
The voice of one speaker after another issues from the darkness, producing a supernatural effect upon the assemblage. The nerves of even the most intrepid are at a high tension.
A gust of wind rattling the iron doors causes the men to start; the lowest whisper is intensified to what seems a sonorous shout. In this strange theatre, the actors in what is to be the greatest world-drama, wait to be assigned their parts and to play the first act.
Nevins is the stage manager; he has chosen the settings; has assembled the caste. Now it is his duty to give the signal for the curtain to rise. As with the dramatists of old, he decides to introduce his production with a prologue.
Advancing to the centre of the semi-circle he begins the explanation of his plan of salvation.
Is it destined to end as many thousands have done, in miserable failure?
"What I propose will strike you as the ravings of a man who has lost his last grain of sense," he begins. "Yet I am prepared to demonstrate that the plan is not only feasible, but that it is the only one which can be put into execution and carried through to a successful issue. The greed and the power of the Trust Magnates is insatiable. They will not make the least concession to the people. The day for arbitration is at an end; the time for the people to act is at hand.
"Every means of defence against the Trusts has been absorbed by them.
What are we to do, surrender meekly, or fight?
"History shows us how terrible a thing war is—especially revolutionary war. Now, I have thought out a plan by which war and its attendant calamity can be averted and the people be reinstated in their power.
"There is not a man here who would not enlist to-day at the call for troops. Many of you have already proven yourselves patriots by your service in the field and on the ships of the United States.
"Now, it is not always necessary to be on a battlefield in order to show courage. Men can be heroes in the humble walks of life.
"What I want of you is a pledge that you will stand by me to put out of existence the deadly foes of this country. I want you to swear that you will not flinch when the moment comes for you to fight, even to the death.
"Are any of you unwilling to swear that you would fight the foes of our country to the bitter end?"
No one speaks. The excited condition of the speaker impresses the men strangely. They do not know just how to take him.
"I shall at the next meeting name forty men, each of whom has been an enemy of the United States; each of whom has seen the growth of his private fortune built upon the ruin of homes; each of whom has opposed every measure for the alleviation of the condition of the masses of the people.
"Many of them are known to you as offenders of national notoriety. You have mentioned them in your recital of grievances.
"You all know of the bloody history of the Czar of the Lakes, Anthony Marcus. The graves of the murdered sailors and longshoremen are a sufficient indictment against him.
"Need I tell you of the horrors that have been daily perpetrated by the ruthless oil magnate, Savage, in my own State of Pennsylvania?
"Is the right to check competition by the use of the torch to be conceded to him? Is murder for the sake of commercial advantage to be sanctioned as our national policy?
"The ancients were never so free or so powerful as when their citizens exercised the right to proscribe unworthy citizens.
"Let us constitute this meeting into a forum and issue our list of the proscribed. When the list is read I shall be glad to substitute others for the names I have selected.
"The people are too subservient to aid us in carrying out the edict; so I propose that we each select a man from this list of forty, and that we then see that the edict is enforced. We shall thus rid the earth of its chief transgressors.
"When the French revolution was brought on, the world knew nothing of the possibilities of combined wealth as an agency for the improvement of the condition of the human race. Now we are familiar with all of the wonders that can be accomplished by the combining of money into corporate form.
"We also know that at the present time all of the combined capital of the world is held in the hands of a mighty ring of magnates. The civilized world's billion of people slave for the benefit of a few thousands, who have usurped the prerogatives and the rights of the whole. Nowhere is this condition more aggravated than in this country. We were all born freemen and we find ourselves to-day at the mercy of a few thousand plutocrats. The advantage of improved production is being kept from the people. We are denied our heritage.
"We cannot fight the magnates in the open, for they have attained control of the army and the judicial forces of the government. We face the alternative of submission or revolution.
"What does it avail if we send Representatives to Congress who are tools of the magnates? What does it avail if Congress enacts laws which the executive refuses to enforce?
"The ballot has become a weapon to destroy those it should protect.
Elections ruled by coercion are a mockery.
"I am in favor of inaugurating a scientific revolution. There is no need to raise a guillotine in the city's square and drag to their death those who are living upon the life's blood of the many. This is the crude way to reach a desired end.
"The world is never lastingly horrified and deterred from evil by the mere letting of blood. Crime can be obliterated only by reformation of the criminal element of society. Condemnation of individuals who are caught is productive of little good.
"The destruction even of an army momentarily shocks; but in the one breath the people will cry, 'war is hell; let us have war, for peace sake.' And when war comes it never affects the cowards, the usurers, the rogues; they stay at a safe distance from the scenes of action, and, with the instinct of the hyena, they profit on the nation's calamity. Our trusts are the result of the jobbing that was started during the Civil War, and which has never lagged since.
"The fight that I would have you make is against forty cowards and scoundrels who are sucking the very life out of the country—the forty who represent the high council of the magnates. Let it be a personal fight, a tourney; you the Knights Errant who ride against the dragons.
"When the world awakens some morning and reads that at a given hour the forty Robbers of America were sent to their eternal resting place with their crimes on their heads, the shock will not pass away in a day. It will be far different from reading of a battle fought six thousand miles from Washington. Then will be the time for the men who have the good of the people at heart to reestablish them in their rights.
"Money is the god that the Nation is asked to worship. It makes fools of the majority and knaves of the rest.
"It will take some unprecedented occurrence to stir the masses. The firing on Fort Sumter shook the Nation more than the carnage of Gettysburg. The Nation has come to be apathetic on a vital question; even more so than in the ante-bellum days. The dry-rot of Commercialism is consuming us. We are governed by dividend worshipers. We must act, if our manifest destiny to be a lasting republic is to be fulfilled.
"If the taking off of the forty men would do the work that I wish to see done I would be glad; but it will require a sacrifice on our part of more than our prejudice against taking of life. We shall each have to kill our man, and then commit suicide."
"What!" ejaculate several.
"We shall be obliged to commit suicide. There is no other course open for us, for if, on the announcement that the forty men have been murdered, there is not the still more surprising statement that the murderer of each is found dead beside the slain, the effect will be common-place, and everyone will say it is a cowardly plot to kill forty of the 'best citizens.' There is no way out of it. You would all gladly fight with an enemy of the country to the death. To rescue the flag from the enemy you would face a hail of lead.
"This flag of Freedom is defiled to-day by the Magnates. You are asked to rescue it. It was snatched from my hands on the highway as I went to present a petition to my fellow citizens.
"When each of us has been allotted his man we will work to the accomplishment of the plan at the given time. On each there will be found a letter explaining what led to the killing of the public enemy. These forty letters will appear in the papers throughout the land; they will be compared and found to be counterparts; then the public mind will grasp the significance of the seeming murders. It will then be regarded as an act of deliverance. In place of being regarded as murderers we shall be recognized as men whose love of country impelled us to sacrifice our lives unhesitatingly.
"By the blotting out of forty of the chief despots, and the publication of the reasons; and by the announcement that the people are determined to regain their rights, the road to National Ownership and Control of Public Utilities, and the regulation of the finances and commerce by the government, will be materially cleared.
"In fact, I am confident that the next election after this object lesson will find the robbers ready to sell at a just price and the people eager to come into possession of their own?"
"We will time the execution of our design so that it shall occur on the 13th of October, four weeks before the National election. The Independence Party will have as its candidate a man who is known for his honesty and ability; who is an avowed opponent to force either by the magnates or the people. The people will be eager to entrust their safety in his hands.
"The dread of a repetition of the edict of Proscription will cause even the supporters of the Robber Barons to prefer the election of the people's candidates, than to face the results of the election of a Plutocrat."
The Chairman interrupts the speaker: "We will not take a vote on this question to-night, so I should suggest that the meeting be brought to a close. This will afford us all time to further consider the proposition."
The meeting closes in silence. There is a stern anxious look on the faces of many of the men; others look as if they are on the point of fainting. They reach the court-yard and seem relieved to get a breath of fresh air.
The two members who represent the Anarchistic element are the most depressed. They speak to several of the men from the socialistic orders and try to get at the reason why they shall have to commit suicide for doing what they believe to be the best thing for the world. No one is able to give any very good reason, so the two anarchists go to their homes in any thing but a serene frame of mind.
At the meeting held the following night, the members discuss the momentous proposition in all its details, the result being that they all agree to pledge themselves to the carrying out of the edict of annihilation.
Without unnecessary ceremony each member of the committee takes the preliminary oath that Nevins demands. The reading of the list of the proscribed is postponed for a week.
From the time the committee decides to take the serious step, there is a decided change in the attitude of many of them toward William Nevins. Some of the men have a vague notion that he is not sincere; that he is an agent of the Magnates.
Not that he has said a word that would lend color to this belief, for, on the contrary, it was he who expressed his views freely as originator of the drastic plan. It comes rather as the result of his being superior to his colleagues in many ways. His reserve of manner, his invariable good judgment and the exhibition of his erudition, instead of endearing him to the members, make them distrustful of him.
A free expression of the feeling that exists is not made, however, until the evening of the allotment. This is the occasion which the men who hold Nevins in disfavor have determined shall be made the moment for his dismissal from the council and for a change in his plan, if not a total rejection of it.
Before the appointed hour of the meeting, these skeptics meet in secret conclave.
"It will be our duty to-night to decide upon the means by which the plan we have been considering may be carried into execution, or abandoned," states the chairman of this impromptu meeting in a perfunctory tone. "If there is any preliminary matter to be discussed, I am ready to entertain it."
This brings three of the men to their feet.
Coleman, the delegate from California, is recognized.
"Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to allowing any man to take part in this work who is not in thorough sympathy with the rest of the committee. It would be a manifest impossibility for this very dangerous and unprecedented undertaking to be launched with the possible danger of there being a spy in our company.
"I am not prepared to say that there is such a spy here, yet until it is satisfactorily demonstrated that we are all of us true friends of the laboring men of the country, I shall be against proceeding to the further outlining of the plan.
"It is not enough that a man profess friendship. He must be able to show by his acts that he has done something for his fellow-men besides theorize."
These views are quickly seconded. Then follows a talk among the men as to what each of them has done to establish a record as a friend of the masses. From the statements and the corroborating testimony of dissenters, all of the members, with the exception of Nevins, pass satisfactorily. He has no acts to his credit. No one admits knowing of him outside of his work as a committeeman. Not one of those in attendance at this special meeting will speak a word in his behalf.
At this juncture, when it looks as though he is to be ruled out of the committee and his plan repudiated, Hendrick Stahl asks to be heard.
As Stahl is a member of high standing and the leader of a strong labor party in Minnesota, he is permitted to speak. In a few forceful words he denounces the men for their ungenerous suspicion; he tells them that he has known Nevins as a friend and co-worker for years.
Not without a visible degree of dissatisfaction the objecting members accept the situation and agree to attend the meeting to hear the reading of the list of proscribed. The men present do not know that Nevins had planned the seeming rebellion to test the sincerity of the men whom he is to take into his full confidence; that he has Professor Talbot and Hendrick Stahl working as his lieutenants.
Nothing now standing in the way of the plan, the men await the hour for the night session. They are eager to hear the reading of the list.