CHAPTER XIII.
THE LIST OF TRANSGRESSORS.
At length the hour arrives in which the men are to be given the names of the transgressors. It would be disastrous to have any knowledge of the affair fall into the possession of the sleuths of the Trusts; so every precaution for secrecy is observed. The loft of the deserted mill is again chosen as the place of meeting. A thorough search of the storehouse is made, and then the committee assembles in the narrow semi-circle.
After the meeting is called to order, there is an apparent apathy on the part of a number of the Eastern members. When questioned they freely admit that they do not believe their constituents would sanction the drastic measure.
Nevins is absent on his visit to Trueman. He has arranged with Professor Talbot and Stahl to delay the meeting and put the members through another test.
The proposition is argued anew.
It is explained that each man is called upon to make an equal sacrifice; that there is no difference in declaring one's patriotism by enlisting in the army or navy to fight a common foe, or in being one of a numerically small and intrinsically strong army of forty. The Trusts and Monopolies have proven a menace to the people, and can consequently be looked upon as a foe to the government, to be dealt with accordingly.
A unanimous decision to carry out the plan is reached.
At this juncture Nevins appears.
He asks permission to proceed with the reading of the list of the proscribed. He is recognized and begins his startling speech.
"In the lapse of years one is apt to forget the springs from which the wells of human action are fed; it is commonly the lot of man to sink into a state of mind that is at once unreceptive and unretentive. The result is that at the age of thirty he finds himself incapable of grasping new and difficult conceptions. This is the reason why so many injustices are permitted to exist in the world. Men in their youth are thoughtless; in their mature and old age they are neglectful or willingly negligent.
"A degree of success or a degree of failure has a like tendency to blunt the finer qualities of the mind. A man with a competency will not take the troubles of his fellow man to heart. The unfortunate man who has not the wherewithal to support his family is in no position to take the initiative in a labor movement or in a political revolution.
"So the work devolves upon the few men who have the means and the inclination to strive for the betterment of humanity.
"Yet even these men are not always capable of judging events by their true proportions and relations.
"Advancement is the one thing that reformers fear. The ends they would attain are almost always reconstructive; they are never creative." Nevins utters these words with impressive emphasis.
"These remarks I have made by way of prelude to the matter I shall now proceed to discuss directly and earnestly.
"We are each and all convinced that the pernicious system of fostering monopolies that has been instituted in this country can have but one result, the undermining of our popular institutions, and in their place the substitution of moneyed Plutocracy. This result is abhorrent to every true American.
"Now, there is no way to put an end to monopolies except by the people rising in their might and reassuming their own.
"The hypocritical advice of the leaders of the great universities, that the people ostracize the Magnates, has now ceased to satisfy the exigencies of the case. What sort of ostracism would the President of a University endowed by the millions of a Magnate, propose to have enforced against his master?
"Another of the proposals emanating from the hireling counsels of the Trusts, is that the methods of the Trusts be placed under the searchlight of publicity. A pretty programme, indeed, were it not for the fact that the very men who propose this method of dealing with monopolies would be engaged by the Magnates to defend them from exposure.
"To invoke the aid of the courts is to be brought face to face with the servants of the Trusts. Where is the Attorney-General who can successfully prosecute a Trust? The only one who was ever sincere in his attempt met an insurmountable barrier in the courts before which he arraigned the guilty.
"And the votes of the people, do they avail?
"The executives and legislators whom they elect are false to their pledges.
"The great sin of this country is the worship of gold. Human life is held as secondary to the dollar.
"Who then shall deliver the people from the bondage that has come upon them?
"Unguided, they are as a flock of sheep without a shepherd. False prophets, mercenary leaders, are an abomination. They have been and are to this day, the clogs in the wheels of progress.
"The work of rejuvenation must be done by an intrepid few. It cannot be entrusted to visionary men, to fanatics, to men who detest government of any form or to men who are willing to suffer present ills rather than face temporary discomfiture.
"To carry on a crusade one must surrender self.
"If our plan did not embrace more than the annihilation of forty of the Transgressors it would not be raised to a higher plane than wholesale homicide.
"But we are to follow the course which the Plutocrats have traversed. They have destroyed individual liberty; they have entrenched themselves in our halls of legislature by bribery; our executives are their puppets; our courts are their final buttress. To reclaim the rights of the people we must reach the powers in control; the actual men who engineer the scheme of public loot. These men have sacrificed human lives to attain their ascendency. We must demand, we must enforce an atonement.
"Because we are to deal with the chief transgressors, who represent a small number, our deed will be regarded in the light of murder.
"Were the magnates in the field as an open foe our assault upon them would be hailed as an act of heroism. Shall we be deterred by consideration of a difference in mere words?
"I propose to vindicate these so-called murders, which we are to commit. The atonement will be frightful. Will it be more so than the conditions which necessitate it?
"Are the lives of forty soulless men to be compared with those of thousands who are yearly sacrificed to sordid commercialism?
"Are we to extend our commerce at the price of a life for every dollar of foreign trade?
"Men prospered in this country before the reign of the Trust Magnates; men grew rich through ordinate profits, and the prosperity of the country was the prosperity of all. To-day men seek to enrich themselves by preying on the necessities of their fellowmen.
"Can the cry of tyrants and sycophants drown the wail of the innocent children and women who have been chained to the wildcat car of Modern Commercialism?
"In compiling the list of Transgressors, I have selected no man merely because he is possessed of great wealth. There are many millionaires who have earned their fortunes by honest endeavor and in strict conformity with the laws of the land. I have discriminated against those who have prostituted the laws of God and man; not a man whom I shall declare proscribed but he is known to all men as stained with the blood of innocents.
"'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' This voice cries to us from four million mothers' mouths for deliverance from tyrants who compel them to work for a living even in the hours of their pregnancy. The child laborers of this land of freedom raise a piteous plea.
"Do you wait for an actual rain of hell-fire as a sign that God's will is not being done?
"It is our duty to strike a blow at Plutocracy that shall destroy it for all time. We will act as sovereigns of the land. In us resides the supreme rights of mankind. Our edict cannot be enforced by the courts, so we will act for ourselves.
"The names I read are not given in any fixed order; each man is equally guilty."
Here Nevins takes a slip of paper from his pocket and begins to read:
"By reason of his treasonable act in furnishing the Nation's defenders poisonous food while they were engaged in actual war, and for continued vending of deleterious food to the citizens at large; for his conspicuous participation in the formation of the monopoly of the meat products of the country, for the purpose of extorting tribute from the masses, I name Tingwell Fang as one of the transgressors. This man has a fortune of $200,000,000; more than the life earnings of 2,000 men engaged in ordinary pursuits for a period of thirty years each.
"Judge if God ordained that one man should be possessed of such fabulous wealth when His Son gave as our prayer, 'Give us this day our daily bread.'
"As the controller of the Wheat Trust, by which the grim hand of famine is laid on the nation, and a tax levied on our subsistence, I name David Leach as another of the transgressors. He has collected $100,000,000, in sums of one and two cents from the millions of men, women and children of this country. He stands between us and our daily bread.
"I need not portray the sufferings that are inflicted on the nation by the presence of the Coal Trust. From the miners to the consumers the tale is one of ever-increasing awfulness. Man to-day, who must live in the northern and temperate regions of our country, cannot endure the cold of winter without artificial heat. He cannot go to the virgin forests, for the land is owned by private individuals; he cannot go to the mines, for they are the property of the coal barons. He must purchase the coal that is needed to heat his home.
"This makes coal not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.
"In the hands of the Trust the price is raised to the highest possible point. The monopoly is complete; the demand perpetual.
"Every home where coal is consumed is a witness to the rapacity of the Coal Trust. I therefore name as one of the transgressors, Gorman Purdy, President of the Coal Trust, the man who ordered the massacre of the miners at Hazleton; who has driven widows and orphans from the mining towns to let them starve on the highways. He is the possessor of $160,000,000, the equivalent of the earnings of 10,000 miners for forty-five years.
"I name as a transgressor, Ebenezer J. Sloat, President of the Leather Combine. His single fortune is $80,000,000. This man succeeded in effecting a consolidation of all of the leather producers; now the nation pays the Trust a royalty on every pair of shoes that is sold.
"He has driven the cobbler out of existence and has set children and women at the machines which turn out completed shoes, on which not a single part has to be made by skilled labor.
"It is not in the trades alone that the Transgressors are to be found.
They have developed in high places.
"I name as one of the proscribed, ex-Supreme Court Justice Elias M. Turner, who, at the demand of the Magnates, recanted his judgment on the question of constitutional taxation, and left the humble citizens to bear the burden of taxes while the Trusts and Monopolies go practically exempt. This act of betrayal to the public weal is the more atrocious as it was done by a man who had been invested with the highest honor that the nation could bestow upon the ermine.
"If the wearer of the robe of justice outrages his garment is it to remain an invulnerable shield against our righteous condemnation? He who doles justice, must himself be its chief exemplar.
"Another of the high servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax. It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several states to curb them.
"Entering the office as a man of moderate means he left it possessed of a fabulous fortune—the bribe money of the Magnates. And not content to retire from office, and cease his nefarious trade, he is to-day the counsel for the Money Trust. It is his mind that conceives the interminable means for forcing the Government to issue bonds for the benefit of the Banking Syndicate?"
"It was Herbert Lax who made me a bankrupt," exclaims one of the committee. "He caused my brother to commit suicide. If ever there was a cold-blooded villain, Lax is the man."
"His acts were those of charity compared to some of the Transgressors," observes Nevins, before he continues to announce the list. "Is the bankrupting of men to be compared with the heinous crime of enslaving children?
"The Cotton King, Herod Butcher of Fall River, who thrives on the life's blood of ten thousand minors—pitiable slaves of his looms, is one of the transgressors who must atone for a life-long career as a merciless infanticide.
"No man is so base that he would stand by and see a child ruthlessly slain. Yet the nation stands supinely in the presence of a system of factory labor which tolerates the inhuman employment of children. The hazy halo of legality is between the transgressor and the people; and men remain unmoved.
"It was for humanity's sake that our countrymen gave their life ungrudgingly on the battle-fields of Cuba. But what of the inhumanity at home? A word spoken against an American manufacturer is a crime in the eyes of the Magnates, and the offender is chastised accordingly."
"I have three sons who grew to manhood, stunted and untutored, who had to work for their daily bread in the mills of Herod Butcher," declares Martin Stark, the Rhode Island committeeman.
"Judas D. Savage is another of the transgressors. A hundred flaming oil wells lit by the torch of the incendiary, hired by his gold, wrote his proscription on the scroll of high heaven.
"And Roger Q. Alger, of the defaulting Savings Bank dynasty comes to you recommended by the cries of anguish that have been uttered by thousands of widows, orphans, struggling husbands and provident wives, who have awakened to find their savings distributed as booty to the Barons.
"But what need have I to recount the misdeeds of this list of men. If the first man or woman whom you meet on the street cannot give you a description of them that will stand as an indictment, then consider the men I name innocent!"
He then completes the reading of the list. There is a painful silence when he ceases to speak. The Forty seem absorbed in deep thought. The chairman finally speaks:
"You have heard the reading of the list," he says. "If it is your desire to substitute names for those mentioned, now is the time to propose the change."
"I move that the list be adopted as read," Carl Metz suggests.
"I second the motion," says Professor Talbot.
Every committeeman votes for the adoption of the list.
The names are written on slips of paper and placed in a hat. As each committeeman passes the table he draws a slip.
"You have all signified your willingness to carry out the terms of the edict of annihilation," the chairman explains. "It now remains for you to redeem your pledges. If there is one of you who regrets the step he has taken it is not too late to withdraw."
There is profound silence, and the men stand immovable.
"Two months from to-day then, October 13th, our Syndicate of Annihilation will declare its dividend; this will require the summary taking off of the Forty Transgressors and our self-immolation." Chadwick pronounces these words slowly, impressively:
"We will separate to-night never to meet again in this life.
"If we are true to our purpose we will not have died in vain." Without formal partings the men leave the store-house.
Nevins is the last to depart; he draws the remaining slip. It bears the name of "James Golding, Bond King; capital, $400,000,000; occupation, United States Treasury Looter."