The Rivers of the Nameless Dead
BY THEODORE DREISER
Author of “Sister Carrie”
The body of a man was found yesterday in the North River at Twenty-fifth street. A brass check, No. 21,600, of the New York Registry Company was found on the body.—N. Y. Daily Paper.
THERE is an island surrounded by rivers, and about it the tide scurries fast and deep. It is a beautiful island, long, narrow, magnificently populated, and with such a wealth of life and interest as no island in the world has ever before possessed. Long lines of vessels of every description nose its banks. Enormous buildings and many splendid mansions line its streets.
It is filled with a vast population, millions coming and going, and is the scene of so much life and enthusiasm and ambition that its fame is, as the sound of a bell, heard afar.
And the interest which this island has for the world is that it is seemingly a place of opportunity and happiness. If you were to listen to the tales of its glory carried the land over and see the picture which it presents to the incoming eye, you would assume that it was all that it seemed. Glory for those who enter its walls seeking glory. Happiness for those who come seeking happiness. A world of comfort and satisfaction for all who take up their abode within it—the island of beauty and delight.
The sad part of it is, however, that the island and its beauty are, to a certain extent, a snare. Its seeming loveliness, which promises so much to the innocent eye, is not always easy of realization. Thousands come, it is true; thousands venture to reconnoiter its mysterious shores. From the villages and hamlets of the land is streaming a constant procession of pilgrims, the feeling of whom is that here is the place where their dreams are to be realized; here is the spot where they are to be at peace. That their hopes are not, in so many cases, to be realized, is the thing which gives a poignant sadness to their coming. The beautiful island is not possessed of happiness for all.
And the exceptional tragedy of it is that the waters which surround the beautiful island are forever giving evidence of the futility of the dreams of so many. If you were to stand upon its shore, where the tide scurries past in its never-ending hurry, or were to idle for a time upon its many docks and piers, which reach far out into the water and give lovely views of the sky and the gulls and the boats, you might see drifting past upon the bosom of the current some member of all the ambitious throng who, in time past, has set his face toward the city, and who entered only to find that there was more of sorrow than of joy. Sad, white-faced maidens; grim, bearded, time-worn men; strange, strife-worn, grief-stricken women, and, saddest of all, children—soft, wan, tender children, floating in the waters which wash the shores of the island city.
And such waters! How green they look; how graceful, how mysterious! From far seas they come—strange, errant, peculiar waters—prying along the shores of the magnificent island; sucking and sipping at the rocks which form its walls; whispering and gurgling about the docks and piers and flowing, flowing, flowing. Such waters seem to be kind, and yet they are not so. They seem to be cruel, and yet they are not so; merely indifferent these waters are—dark, strong, deep, indifferent.
And curiously the children of men who come to seek the joys of the city realize the indifference and the impartiality of the waters. When the vast and beautiful island has been reconnoitered, when its palaces have been viewed, its streets disentangled, its joys and its difficulties discovered, then the waters, which are neither for nor against, seem inviting. Here, when the great struggle has been ended, when the years have slipped by and the hopes of youth have not been realized; when the dreams of fortune, the delights of tenderness, the bliss of love and the hopes of peace have all been abandoned—the weary heart may come and find surcease. Peace in the waters, rest in the depths and the silence of the hurrying tide; surcease and an end in the chalice of the waters which wash the shores of the beautiful island.
And they do come, these defeated ones, not one, nor a dozen, nor a score every year, but hundreds and hundreds. Scarcely a day passes but one, and sometimes many, go down from the light and the show and the merriment of the island to the shores of the waters where peace may be found. They stop on its banks; they reflect, perhaps, on the joys which they somehow have missed; they give a last, despairing glance at the wonderful scene which once seemed so joyous and full of promise, and then yield themselves unresistingly to the arms of the powerful current and are borne away. Out past the docks and the piers of the wonderful city. Out past its streets, its palaces, its great institutions. Out past its lights, its colors, the sound of its merriment and its seeking, and then the sea has them and they are no more. They have accomplished their journey, the island its tragedy. They have come down to the rivers of the nameless dead. They have yielded themselves as a sacrifice to the variety of life. They have proved the uncharitableness of the island of beauty.
Wouldn’t Admit It
MARJORIE—At the meeting of the Spinsters’ Club the members told why they had never married.
Madge—What reason did they give?
Marjorie—All kinds, except that they had never got the chance.
Satiated
WASHINGTONIAN—Wouldn’t you like to visit the Senate some day while you’re here?
Guest—No, I guess not. You see, I’m a member of the Board of Visitors for the Old Woman’s Home up where I live.
Invaluable
CRAWFORD—Is he a good lawyer?
Crabshaw—Sure. He knows how every law on the statute books can be evaded.
Another View of the Simple Life
BY ZENOBIA COX
FOR the past few months we have had a deluge of optimism. From various sources we are told that man ought to be happy. “Whatever is, is good,” is the handwriting on the wall. Content is preached from what George Eliot called “that Goshen of Mediocrity,” the pulpit; and politicians publish their elastic statistics, proving prosperity and content. This proselyting Optimism reached its height in the advent of Charles Wagner to our hospitable shores and in the thrusting of his little book, “The Simple Life,” under the nose of the public.
The book was published here several years ago, but has lain unnoticed until today. Our sudden torridity of welcome makes one reflect upon a dog who tramples on the grass beneath his feet and feeds on offal; suddenly he begins to eat the grass and then we cry, “The dog is sick!” Humanity has a canine instinct for its needs. Its tastes must ripen. We can neither hasten nor retard them.
As it takes the fever of intoxication to appreciate the purity of water; as the quiet of repose must follow the stress of effort, so man now turns to the sweet nothingness of a dream, amid the warring clash of realities.
That Wagner’s idyl of simplicity is but a dream, a sigh of the imagination, only idealists can deny. Civilization and Simplicity! Bedlam and Elysium! Nirvana on the Tower of Babel! All these alliances are equally possible.
The very fact of his dream arousing such a storm of approval awakens suspicion. Insistence is always a confession of doubt. Man never talks so much of his happiness as when he is unhappy. This is demonstrated in marriage.
Wagner’s arrival in America was singularly opportune. Certainly it was fortunate that his little olive branch was given to the public just when it was clamoring for something. Its palms were itching for some of the sugar-plums the Privileged Few had wrested from it, and it was beginning to get noisy. Yes, that hydrocephalic infant, the Proletariat, was beginning to sob for the golden spoon in the mouth of Special Privilege, when, lo and behold! the powers behind the throne go to Paris and bring back the soothing syrup of Wagner and his philosophy. The infant lets the Pharisee dope him, and he drops the unintelligible complexities of Franchises, Trusts, Labor Problems and Wrongs to grab the little woolly lamb of Content.
Surely the importers of Wagner are altruists, to try thus to make the public so happy. And that Wagner has had importers as well as indorsers, the Initiated know. Nevertheless, Wagner is a remarkable man. He is remarkable in resembling two historical characters and also in possessing the aptitudes for several vocations.
He resembles Rousseau. Rousseau sang the same little Psalm of Simplicity in the most artificial and febrile period of France. The Philistines shrieked the same applause, and even tried to eat the prescribed grass. He resembles Mme. de Pompadour. When no longer she could charm the palled fancy of Louis XV as Circe, coquette, dancer or grande dame, she assumed the garb of a peasant girl.
That was one of the early triumphs of simplicity. Art is always a surprise. Its sole function is to astonish. Therein Wagner is an artist.
He is also a civil engineer, for he has mastered the cosmic momentum. The world is a seesaw. It exists by the eternal balance of contrasts. Wagner, seeing the excess, has given us the weight to restore our equipoise. He has led us back like refractory children to drink of milk after we have eaten marrons glacés and liked them. Of course they have given us indigestion, and that is where Wagner fills the role of physician; he diagnoses our disease, he places his finger upon the very “Malady of the Century,” and he prescribes—sugar pills. This shows his great wisdom, for sugar pills and the dissecting-knife should form the sole equipment of every physician.
Wagner is also a philanthropist. His aim is to make us happy, and his method is to make us believe that a gridiron is a lyre and that cobblestones may be Apples of the Hesperides. He tells us that as things now are, each child is “born into a joyless world; that the complexities of our lives have led us into the Slough of Despond; that Civilization has been futile, for it has left us miserable.” And for all our ills he gives us the panacea of content, simplicity and repose. He summons us to be “merely human, to have the courage to be men and leave the rest to Him who numbered the stars. Each life should wish to be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anything else.”
This is the gospel of non-resistance, of quietism. The absurdity of it is attested by every step we take, for do they not say we could not walk were it not for the resistance of the ground? Eating, alone, is a triumph over opposition. He wishes to steep us in the dolce far niente of Content, and tells us in order to do so all that is needed is our confidence and trust.
“An imperturbable faith in the stability of the universe and its intelligent ordering sleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the trees, the beasts of the field live in calm strength, in entire security.”
We must remember that Wagner lives in Paris, and, therefore, make allowances for this last statement. He probably has never seen any beasts of the field except in the cages of the Zoo, else he could not have such exuberant faith in their confidence and security. He could never have studied the stealthy horrors of the forests—the furtive panther—the relentless viper—their trembling victims—and possess such a genial conviction of the mercy and goodness of this scheme of creation. No, he must look away from nature for his examples of harmony and peace.
His perpetual refrain is, “Be human and be simple.” Civilization’s answer is that the two are incompatible. Evolution tends to complexity as inevitably as growth leads to death. The beginnings of all things are simple—people, theories of government and vegetable seeds. But the laws of life will not leave them thus. Like American policemen, their continual order is “move on.”
We would have had no history had it not been for man’s love of novelty. It is the one enduring thing. The anthropology of the world is but the record of man’s taste for the strange. Yet Wagner says, “Novelty is ephemeral. Nothing endures but the commonplace, and if one departs from that, it is to run the most perilous risk. Happy he who is able to reclaim himself, who finds the way back to simplicity.”
After reading pages of hazy verbiage descriptive of this simplicity, one cannot but see that his ideal is a vapory creation, a fusing of the honest animality of the savage and the calloused quietism of the lotus-eater.
Simplicity! What prototypes have we for it in all humanity? Two possible types suggest themselves, the savage and the hermit. But Darwin shows us that we cannot find simplicity in the savage. Like civilized man, his instincts are toward exaggeration. He, too, in his limited way, tries to escape from the realities of life. His protest against truth is tattooing. His idea of beauty is distortion.
As the great anatomist, Bichat, long ago said, “If everyone were cast in the same mold, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should soon wish for a variety. We should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the existing common standard.”
All the philosophizing of the optimist won’t thwart this tendency of human nature, and it is as futile to bewail “the Vice of the Superlative,” the complexities and hyperboles of life, as it would be to bewail the inevitability of death. Thus we see we cannot find simplicity in man’s primitive form, the savage.
We must, then, look for it in one of his acquired forms—in the idealist who can make of himself a mental Robinson Crusoe, or in the hermit of the monastery or the desert. It must be in some isolated being that we seek simplicity, for certainly it can never be found amid “the madding crowd” and its “ignoble strife.” In solitude alone can one cultivate that contemplative apathy of the mind which Wagner calls peace, which Mahatmas call divinity, and wives call selfishness.
But solitude is not good for man. With it we punish our worst criminals and our old maids. Victor Hugo says, “It makes a god or a devil of man.” Neither of these superlative beings could exist in Wagner’s temperate zone. Wagner yearns for quiet and rest, and where can we find them? Scientists tell us nothing in the world is at rest. There are but two spots on the earth which don’t move with it—the poles. And God has made them uninhabitable—as a lesson.
If Wagner could reach them, he might build his Utopia there, warm it with a rainbow and fertilize it with the waters of Lethe.
Yet humanity must have these Arcadian dreams. The epochs are strewn with them. Periodically man grows tired of the spiced flavors of his repasts and would fain go out in the woods and gather manna from heaven. The effort has always been disastrous. We had the experiment of the Perfectionists, the Icarians, the Owenites, the Harmonists and Brook Farm. They were all founded on simplicity and were all dissolved because of the difference between theory and practice. This is unfortunate.
An ideal is like a schoolboy’s ruler—it is very good to measure by, but is very frail to build a habitation with. Optimism is a good thing, and so is Pessimism. But Optimism alone is popular; man does not like to be told the faults of the universe any more than to be told of his own faults. This accounts for his hospitality to all the myopic dogmas of Optimism, and his antipathy to the equally true tenets of Pessimism.
It is as if one faction believed only in the actuality of the day, and the other admitted only the existence of night. Their polemics suggest the law of gravitation run mad. What if there were only a law of attraction and none of repulsion? Certainly we would all be merged into one. But this union would be chaos and extinction. Our repulsions and suspicions save us. They make an individual where the Optimist with his one law of attraction would have an inert mass. The Lord’s Prayer should be changed to “Deliver us from evil—and good.”
Too great a bias toward a recognition of either is dangerous. The one inculcates content—the other discontent. But of the two, discontent is by far the safer. If content had been universal, our present degree of enlightenment and justice would have been impossible.
Content means egotism, inaction and stagnation. Discontent means reformation, revolution and progress. All our great men were discontented. All our imbecile kings were contented—and tried to make their serfs so. Whose mind was the most beneficial to the world—the fermenting, aggressive brain of Luther, or the tranquil cerebellum of the gorged Vitellius? Civilization has arisen from discontent. Discontent means upheaval, and upheaval is to a nation what plowing is to the corn. Sir Robert Peel defined agitation to be “the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.”
What we want at present is not peace, but agitation. There are too many wrongs to be righted—too many national dragons to be slain to respond yet awhile to Wagner’s call to disarmament! What we need are spears, not olive branches; the flag of battle, not the flag of truce.
Wagner wishes to give us happiness. But man’s effort for selfish, personal happiness has caused all the miseries of the world.
It is by persistently closing their eyes to the sorrows of man that our commercial pirates can so tranquilly exist. I believe that when man sees that he cannot make life enjoyable he will then turn his attention to making it endurable. At present our safest philosophy is the belief in progress by antagonism, and our duty is to unsheathe the sword of rebellion from the scabbard of ignorance, and do battle against all despots and oppressors!
Defined
“WHAT is domestic economy, Professor?”
“Buying your cigars with the money you save on your wife’s clothing.”
The Modern Table
FREDDIE—What is interest, dad?
Dad—Six per cent is legal rate, 25 is pawnbroking, 100 is usury, while 600 is high finance.
The Faddist
COBWIGGER—When did your home cease to be a happy one?
Dorcas—When my wife joined a lot of clubs that made a business of making other people’s homes happy.
A Family Secret
CRAWFORD—I hear he does nothing but talk about his money.
Crabshaw—Yes. He tells everything about it except how he made it.
Too Tempting
ENGLISH TOURIST—Your members of Congress pass bills, don’t they?
Lobbyist—Not the kind I offer them.
PROFITS of small comforts—the great ones are so hard to get.
The Corner in Change
BY WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON
“MUST be something doing,” said the night-clerk to the room-clerk, nodding in the direction of a middle-aged man who was being piloted toward the elevator by a bell-boy. “That’s Martin, the banker, going up to see the Senator. There’s three others ahead of him. The Senator was expecting them, too, for he told me when they came in to have them shown up to his sitting-room at once.”
“Who are the others?” asked the room-clerk, raising his eyes from his ledger to look after the departing form of the man who—next to Russell Sage—was reputed to have command of the largest amount of ready money of any man in the United States.
“Well,” replied the night-clerk, taking advantage of the dulness of a rainy night in the spring to engage in more extended conversation than the exigencies of his calling usually permitted, “the first one to arrive was Congressman Woods. He’s stopping over at the Waldorf. This is only his second term in the House, but they say he is practically leader of his party. Not ten minutes after him was Higgins, who used to be comptroller, or something of the sort. He’s made a pile of money in the Street in the last few years. They say that last corner in wheat netted him about two million. I wouldn’t care if I stood close enough to him to get a tip once in awhile on the way things were going. There would be more in it than following the horses, although that ain’t saying much, judging by the run of bad luck I have had lately. Just before Martin came in Tom Connors went upstairs.”
“Tom’s rather out of his latitude, ain’t he?” said the room-clerk. “It ain’t often he gets in with such big fellows, is it?”
“Don’t you fool yourself,” replied the night-clerk. “Maybe Tom Connors doesn’t get his name in the society news as often as the rest of them, but all the same he stands about as near next the Senator as anyone in town. Tom Connors has a big pull in Washington, and almost as big a one with the bankers here. With the chances he has the only reason Tom Connors ain’t a millionaire is because he’s such a spender. Tom is a working partner in a good many Senate deals or steals, whichever you want to call them, unless I’m much mistaken.”
The arrival of several guests put an end to the conversation. The room-clerk turned once more to his ledger and the night-clerk began reaching for keys and yelling, “Front!” An hour or two later the men behind the desk were at leisure again when “Ed” Wallace strolled up. To him the night-clerk imparted the information that the Senator was having some sort of a séance in his rooms, incidentally mentioning who were there.
Wallace hastened over to the corner where several members of that unorganized organization, “the political combination,” the brightest reporters of the big newspapers, were exchanging reminiscences. “The most news with the least work” is the motto of the “combination.” It means that whatever news one of them gets, all get—with considerably less labor than if each worked independently, and with the chance of a rival newspaper scoring a “beat” reduced to the minimum.
Various theories as to the meaning of the conference upstairs were suggested and rejected. The five men in the Senator’s rooms were not political allies—that the reporters well knew. That they were all, with the exception perhaps of the Western representative, warm personal friends, they knew equally well. But despite its knowledge of the men and its familiarity with the political situation, the “combination” was unable to deduce anything that could be printed.
“I’ll give it up,” said Stanley Titus. “The only thing I see is for Wallace to go upstairs and see what is going on. The Senator will talk to him if he’ll talk to anyone, and perhaps we can get a line on what’s doing.”
When Wallace, two minutes later, knocked on the door of the Senator’s sitting-room, it was the Senator himself who opened it—just about two inches—and peered impatiently into the hall.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Wallace?” he said. “Well, my boy, what can I do for you?”
“The combination would like to know if you have anything to say for publication about the conference that is going on in there,” replied Wallace.
The Senator put his head a little farther out the door. “I will tell you something, but you will understand that it is not for publication,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as Wallace leaned forward expectantly. “I’ve got all the blues.” And the door was shut in Wallace’s face.
But there were no chips or cards on the table to which the Senator returned after shutting the door. The five men, their wrinkled brows betokening hard thinking, were intently studying neatly tabulated statements—long rows of figures—that might mean much or little, depending entirely on the observer’s information as to their purpose.
“As I was saying,” the Senator began, taking up the conversation where he had dropped it to answer the knock, “I am fully convinced that $10,000,000 will see it through. Out of that the expenses of engineering the deal will amount to, say, a million. The actual expenses of collection should not exceed more than ten per cent., and I believe with Mr. Connors that a good part of it can be done with five per cent. That million is all we stand to lose, for the rest will be invested in goods worth their face value, whether the plan succeeds or fails. I believe that it will succeed and I am ready to guarantee one-fourth of the sum needed. If each of the others present, with the exception of Mr. Connors, will do the same, we will have the money. As Mr. Connors is the originator of the plan and will have to superintend the carrying out of the details, I think that without being expected to invest any money he should receive one-tenth of the net profits, and the residue can be divided equally among the rest of us.”
There were no dissenters to the Senator’s proposition, least of all Tom Connors. After some little discussion as to details, the date for carrying out the plan was fixed as the first Friday in October, or rather the first Friday and Saturday, as it was calculated that two days would be required to consummate the work.
When the conference adjourned an hour later Mr. Higgins, the former comptroller, Representative Woods and the Senator each had agreed to have by the first day of September $2,500,000 in available cash, which Mr. Martin, the banker, joining with $2,500,000 of his own, could utilize in carrying out the scheme proposed by Tom Connors, who in lieu of capital had pledged himself to an immense amount of hard work, in consideration of which he was to receive one-tenth of the profits.
There was no good reason for calling it the Fractional Currency Bill, for in reality it was an anti-fractional currency bill. It provided that after the fifteenth day of September the Government of the United States should not issue or cause to be issued, or coin or cause to be coined, any half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, two-cent pieces or pennies, and also that none of the fractional currency already in existence in the possession of the United States should be put into circulation for a period of five years after the date on which the law became operative.
The bill made its appearance in the House and Senate a few days after the opening of the special session called by the President to meet on the twelfth day of July. Strange to say, neither the Senator nor Representative Woods seemed to be much interested in it. Both voted for it after having made brief speeches in its support, but they were only two of many that did the same. The father of the bill in the House was Hicks, of California, and in his State the measure was known as the Hicks bill. The patron of the measure in the Senate was Gordon, of Maine. Neither of these men heretofore had been recognized as having much influence with their associates, but in this instance their pet bill at once found favor in the eyes of their colleagues.
It is a peculiar thing about the American law-maker—the real author of legislation—that he seldom, if ever, appears at the front. He is content that some of the small fry shall have the distinction of fathering the laws and be recorded in history as the men who did this or that for their country’s good. The real leaders of American political life and actions seem to think that post-mortem fame is more than outweighed by more substantial ante-mortem things.
Simple as the measure seemed to read, so equally simple were the strongest arguments used in its support. The actual metal in a penny was worth perhaps the tenth of a penny. There was a startling difference between the face value and the bullion value of the nickel. Even the silver coins if offered as metal in the open market would fetch less than half the amount that they called for. Eventually, if more and more of these “tokens of value” were issued, the people would refuse to accept them except far below par. The time to stop such depreciation was before it had begun, the supporters of the measure in both houses declared, and there was none to gainsay them. Those who had always opposed the greenback theory could not consistently oppose this line of reasoning. So the bill in its transition into law met little opposition.
Strange to say, the newspapers, not even the tragedy-shrieking, sensation-making, scandal-hunting ones, saw aught in the Fractional Currency Bill to make it worth more than a casual mention. What was said about it was good. One or two of the Far West publications who had viewed with dismay the gradually increasing number of pennies in their vicinity, welcomed it openly and gladly, for they felt that it would avert the possibility of reducing their prices to the one, two or three cent standard of the East. The Eastern newspapers that had been cutting each other’s throats by selling twelve and sixteen pages of printed matter at less than the cost of the white paper itself, saw in the measure, if as predicted it resulted in the gradual withdrawal of the penny from circulation, a chance to demand and receive a higher price for their issues without being hurt by the lower prices of rivals. Naturally, the newspapers did not oppose the measure.
As for the people—what do the American people, individually, know or care what is done in Washington? For the most part the knowledge of the community at large is confined to what it reads of the doings of Congress in the Washington letters and to the criticisms it sees in its pet editorial columns. If nothing is said about a particular bill, the public knows nothing. Merchants, bankers, shipping interests, railroads, labor unions, are aroused to action only when they see in a bill an attempt to work injury to themselves. In the case of the Fractional Currency Bill those who knew of it saw nothing in it likely to injure them, and so there was no opposition.
Thus it was that the bill prohibiting the issue of the fractional currency of the United States for a period of five years from the fifteenth day of September received the signature of the President and was duly recorded among the laws of the nation.
Seven o’clock in the morning of the first Friday in October found Tom Connors at his desk in his offices on the second floor of the Safe Deposit Building. He had rented a suite of rooms there several months before and had put on the door the simple sign, “Thomas E. Connors, Broker.” There was nothing unusual about the appearance of the office. In the anteroom there were a few chairs, a table and an office-boy. In another room a leased wire was run in and a telegraph operator was seated. In the office of the “broker” himself there were only such paraphernalia as might be found in any broker’s office.
Even in an inner room there was hardly anything to arouse suspicion. Some persons might have wondered a little if they had noticed that what was to all appearances a door of a coat-closet in reality opened on a secret staircase that led directly to the floor below and into one of the strong rooms of the Safe Deposit Company of which Mr. Martin, the banker, was president.
It was not very many minutes after the arrival of his employer that the office-boy realized to his regret that Friday was to be almost as busy a day for him as the day before had been. Ordinarily, he had had plenty of time to read his favorite literature, interrupted perhaps by a dozen callers and half a dozen errands to do, but on Thursday he had observed sorrowfully that Mr. Connors’s clients seemed to be increasing. If he had kept count he might have known that no less and no more than one hundred persons had called on Mr. Connors. Mr. Connors saw all of them. Some of them he saw alone. Others were admitted to his room by twos and threes. In one instance ten men entered the inner office and emerged from it twenty minutes later in a body. But what all those men were doing there was not of half so much interest to the office-boy as was the fate of Daredevil Mike, whom the end of the chapter had left facing the muzzles of seven rifles in the hands of seven desperate moonshiners.
Perhaps the office-boy’s respect for Mr. Connors’s callers would have been increased had he known that each of the men when he left the office had a package of one-dollar bills. There was not one of them that had not at least $100; others had as much as $500. There was not one of them that Mr. Connors did not know was to be trusted thoroughly. The men were carefully selected. Some of them on previous occasions during political campaigns had been supplied with money by Mr. Connors to be distributed in the places where it would do the most good. A few of them were not unknown in the records of crime, but as Mr. Connors had remarked to Martin, the banker, to whom he had shown the list, “There ain’t one of them that would throw down a friend.”
One of these men had arrived in the office shortly after Mr. Connors, and as soon as he was admitted to the private office and the door had been shut, he exclaimed:
“Say, Connors, that was a regular cinch. It did not take me more than an hour to clean up that market. No explanations had to be made, either.”
“Where’s the stuff?” asked Mr. Connors bruskly, and Mullins, his caller, began emptying on the desk from every pocket in his clothing a varied assortment of small change.
“You’ll find there’s ninety-five dollars there all right, as per agreement,” said Mullins. “I didn’t have to spend much over a dollar, either. It was a package of tobacco here and some potatoes for the old woman there, where some old codger wouldn’t give me change unless I bought something. But in most cases I would go to a stall and tell them a neighbor wanted five dollars in small change till the bank opened, and nearly every time I would get it. I don’t believe there’s a hundred pennies left in that market.”
While he had been talking a clerk from the Safe Deposit Company had entered Mr. Connors’s office by the private staircase. He carried to the room below the money Mullins had turned in, returning shortly with two receipt slips, one of which went to Mr. Connors and the other to his caller.
“Now, Mullins,” said Mr. Connors, “I want you to go up to the big cable-car barn where the conductors turn in their money. Here’s $500 more, and stay there until you are relieved. If you run out of money telephone me. Get in some inconspicuous corner and pass the word around among the conductors that ninety-five pennies or nineteen nickels are worth a dollar to you. If they want to know what is up tell them that it is a theatrical advertising dodge; tell them that you are writing a story for a Sunday newspaper—tell them anything.”
Hardly had Mullins been dismissed when another of the syndicate’s agents came in to report and was hurried off to some other part of the city. In some cases the men received an allowance of five per cent. on all the money they handled. In other cases it was a little more. So the work went on all that day and the next. Ten men were kept at work in ten sections of the city seeing that paper money replaced the silver, nickels and coppers in the tills of the small shops. Few, if any, of the shopkeepers realized that anything was amiss. The agents were all instructed to do their work without arousing any suspicion. They had orders every time they rode on a surface-car or patronized the Elevated roads to offer a dollar bill in payment of their fare. Wherever they saw an opportunity to get a bill changed they took it.
A clerk of the Safe Deposit Company reported at noon to Mr. Connors that 12,071,624 pennies, 437,589 nickels, 366,427 dimes, 444,886 quarters and 139,553 half-dollars had been turned in by the assiduous collectors. Telegrams received from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and various other cities showed that the efforts there had met with equal success. With the $3,000,000 in small change that Mr. Connors had succeeded in amassing in the preceding weeks through banks and money brokers, he was well satisfied.
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon there was not a bank in the city that had not had its store of small change much depleted by the raids of the dry-goods and department stores. Half an hour later an organized descent was made on all the big department stores by the agents of the syndicate. Ninety of the collectors—the others being still engaged elsewhere, according to orders previously issued, their movements being known only to Mr. Tom Connors—visited in succession the biggest stores in the shopping district, making in various departments a series of purchases of articles advertised at four cents or six cents, or some other small sum that meant at least ninety cents in change from a dollar bill. When Friday evening came the syndicate had succeeded in stripping the shopping district of all its small change.
The work of collecting on Saturday was necessarily much slower, but when Saturday evening came the syndicate had nearly $9,000,000 in fractional currency in its possession and everyone was wondering what made change so scarce. The grand coup was effected at midnight Saturday night. Agents of the syndicate were waiting with paper money at the headquarters of all the penny-in-the-slot machines. More than a million dollars, mostly of pennies, was hurried in guarded trucks to the Safe Deposit offices.
On Sunday afternoon there was another conference in the Senator’s rooms. Connors submitted his report. He told how the markets, the car-barns, the “L” stations, the department stores, the five-and-ten-cent shops had been skilfully but legally looted of all their small change. Not only in one city but in all cities of over ten thousand inhabitants had this been done successfully. There was triumph in his tones as he read the final figures: “Cost of collection, $482,621. Total small change in vaults, $9,464,867.63.”
The Senator smiled a satisfied smile.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I think we can safely say that our corner is complete. We have cornered the small change. The department stores, the street railways, business everywhere will be at a standstill tomorrow. Small change is essential to modern business. The business men must have it. They must come to us for it. If business stops for a single day, there is hardly a large establishment that can survive. We have them at our mercy! How merciful we are to be, Mr. Martin, I think we should leave to you.”
The others nodded assent.
Mr. Martin adjusted his glasses. He took Mr. Connors’s report and glanced at it with deliberation.
“As the Senator observed,” he began, “the retail business houses must have small change. They must have pennies. Even on Saturday afternoon they were trying to get them. They were offering premiums. As high as six dollars was offered for five dollars in pennies. By Monday noon, with disaster, with suspension, with failure before them, they will gladly pay any price for small change.”
“But, gentlemen”—the banker smiled a philanthropic smile—“we must be generous. We can offer the retailers liberal terms—we can offer them all the small change they want for immediate delivery by Monday noon. We can make the terms seven dollars for five dollars in small change. From what I know of the conditions, I am confident that all the small change we have amassed will be gladly taken at that price. We have on hand in round numbers nine and one-half millions. For this we will receive $13,300,000. Deducting our capital, and the half-million that it cost us for collection, this will still leave us $2,800,000, or something more than a half million apiece after Mr. Connors has had his tenth.”
Monday dawned bright and clear, and Mr. Martin was early in reaching his office at the Safe Deposit Company. So was Mr. Connors. The last thing on Saturday night circulars had been mailed to all the principal retailers and to the street railway companies announcing that the Safe Deposit Company was prepared to supply an unlimited amount of small change on short notice.
“The street-cars caught it hard this morning,” whispered Mr. Connors as he dropped downstairs for a moment to see how things were going. “How are things progressing? Any answers to the circulars yet?”
Mr. Martin shook his head, but he glanced at the clock.
“It’s too early,” he said. “It’ll take them an hour or two to realize what a bad situation they are in.”
“I suppose it will,” said Connors as he went upstairs to send out scouts.
An hour later he was back downstairs in Mr. Martin’s office. The Senator was there, too. Both he and Martin looked worried.
“Say,” said Connors, “something’s gone wrong somewhere. The department stores seem to be doing business the same as ever. And there’s pennies everywhere!”
“That’s just what the Senator was telling me,” said Mr. Martin, with a puzzled air.
“Well, where in blazes are all the pennies coming from?” demanded Connors angrily.
“That is just what Mr. Martin and I expected you to tell us!” said the Senator severely. “Did you clean out all the small change from the markets?”
“And from the department stores?” echoed the banker.
“And from the car-barns?”
“And from the five-and-ten-cent stores?”
“And from the slot machines?”
“And from the children’s banks?”
“Yes, and from a thousand places more!” said Connors.
“How about the churches?” asked the Senator slowly.
All three looked blank. They understood now why the corner had failed.
For everybody knows that, no matter what happens, there are always plenty of pennies in the church collection plates.
Car Straps as Disease Spreaders
BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.
THE leather straps in the street-cars of New York and all other cities, to which people have to hang when unable to get a seat, are not only unmentionably filthy, but they are a means of spreading disease. Each one of these straps is a focus of infection, a continual repository and source of supply of every kind of disease germ and about every kind of filth known to mankind. These car straps are made of leather. They are riveted around the pole from which they hang, when the car is built, and there they remain until they or the car are worn out. They are never removed to be cleaned or disinfected. And they are never renewed until the old one is rotten from age and use. Thousands upon thousands of all sorts and conditions of people, hailing from everywhere and with every imaginable variety of filth and infection befouling their hands and fingers, grasp these straps at all hours of the day and night.
Some idea of the conglomeration of materials which these thousands of hands deposit, remove and mix up on the car straps might safely be left to the imagination. Microscopic examination of scrapings taken from straps in use on cars in New York City has revealed infectious material and filth of all kinds. Cultures made from these scrapings and injected into guinea pigs caused their death in a few hours.
Car straps may readily be the means of conveying the virus of some of the most loathsome diseases, especially those attended with a discharge, or where there are open ulcers or eruption on the skin. In traveling about the city people hold on to the car straps from a few minutes to half an hour. The perspiration of the hand moistens the leather and whatever of filth or virus happens to be on the hand is literally soaked into the strap and there it remains until another hand comes along and carries some of it away or makes another deposit of similar character or both. It is true that the skin everywhere, and especially the thick skin on the hands, is an excellent protection against poisonous material brought into contact with it, otherwise man could not live at all. Here is a good example of what is meant: You might cover your entire arm with vaccine virus and it would not “take” if the entire skin was intact, but scratch it ever so little, making a small raw spot, and the virus enters the system and you have all the symptoms of a successful vaccination. So it is in handling straps which have been handled by others with virus of any kind on their hands; if there are no raw or sore places on your hand you are not in danger, but a slight abrasion, a cut or hang-nail may be sufficient to cause infection, as happened to a patient of mine only recently.
There is another danger: virus on the hand may be carried to the eyes by the fingers and cause mischief when there is no abrasion on the hand to admit it to the system.
Aside from the dangers pointed out, there is the esthetic side. It is far from pleasant to hold on to one of these straps if one stops to think what may be, and what certainly is, on the strap. You can put on gloves; but it is not even pleasant to think of wallowing one’s gloves in such material.
You cannot disinfect leather without destroying it; even if these leather straps could be removed from the poles. Here is the remedy: Use straps made of webbing instead of leather, and attach them to the poles with a device which would make it possible to remove the straps readily. Remove the straps at proper intervals, once a month or so, and thoroughly disinfect them with heat and formaldehyde. They will come out of this thoroughly cleaned and without injury to the strap itself. Webbing straps are stronger than leather. Tests made at Brown University of the comparative tensile strength of the two materials showed that, while leather straps of the regulation kind broke under 400 or 500 pounds, it took 600 and 700 pounds to break webbing straps. The webbing strap is also more pleasant to grasp in the hand than leather.
Every argument is in favor of substituting webbing for leather as material for car straps except the small item of expense to the companies of making the change. The cost of disinfecting them from time to time would be trifling. The president of the Board of Health of New York City has, in fact, expressed his willingness to disinfect the straps free of charge to the companies, if they will bring the straps to the department’s disinfecting plant at such intervals as he shall designate.
Spitting in cars is properly prohibited because there is some danger of spreading tuberculosis by this means. And it is also a practice revolting to well-bred people. As a means of conveying the germs of a number of loathsome diseases, the present car straps are more dangerous than is spitting on the floor. And it is certainly revolting to a man or woman of ordinary habits of cleanliness to be obliged to hang on to a piece of leather which is so filthy that one would not touch it under any other circumstances.
His Profanitaciturnity
“DEACON Timothy Tush is a man of few words,” said the landlord of the Pruntytown tavern, “but he makes ’em count.
“Of course, it was aggravating enough to have caused ’most anybody to indulge in any kind of language that came to hand, and plenty of it—to have the hired man cut up such a dido. To be sure, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a hired man; but Deacon Timothy’s hired man went further than the law allows when he attempted to smoke out a hornet’s nest up in the barn loft, with a skillet of live coals and two spoonfuls of sulphur; after, of course, having driven up with an ox-cart of hay and clumb up into the loft and found the nest. Being a hired man, he couldn’t possibly act any other way.
“He did exactly what might have been expected when a hornet stung him on the neck; he jumped backward, stuck his foot through a rotten board and flung the live coals in every direction. The Deacon was coming along with old Juckett, the horse doctor, just as the hired man tumbled out of the loft door, considerably afire and literally infested with hornets, and landed on the load of hay, setting fire to that, too. The oxen ran over the Deacon and old Juckett, scattered burning hay ’most everywhere, tore the cart to flinders, and would have burnt up the whole place if it hadn’t been for the neighbors.
“As it was, barn, cart and load of hay were totally destroyed, the oxen singed, the Deacon sadly battered, old Juckett’s left leg broken, and the hired man so unanimously stung and fried that the doctor said he really didn’t know where to begin on him. And—but, let’s see! Where was I? Oh, yes! All the Deacon said when it happened was ‘Suzz! suzz!’ but I can’t help thinking it was the most profane suzzing I ever had the pleasure of listening to.”
The Say of Reform Editors
THE Reform editor is a political waif on the tempestuous sea of strife.
It would have been money in his pocket if he had never been born.
He has a devil part of the time, and a devil of a time all the time.
The smallest thing about him is his pocketbook and the largest his delinquent list.
He says more kind things of other people and gets more “cussings” than any other man living.
When he first takes the job of reforming the world he thinks it can be finished in six months or a year.
Then he puts it off another year and borrows some money of his father-in-law.
Then he enlists for three years or more during the war and borrows some more money.
At this stage of the game he takes a new grip on the situation and starts in to finish up the job in the next campaign.
But a cog slips and the dadgummed thing slides merrily down the broad road to destruction.
The editor tears his hair and says some cuss words.
The devil grins and throws the shooting-stick at the office cat.
Every opposition paper trots out its rooster, and the editor waits for the world to come to an end or the moon to turn to blood.
At this point in the proceedings it is time to borrow some more money.
He would quit business, but he can’t.
When a man undertakes to reform the world he is never out of a job.
He always sees something that needs his attention.
But the Reform editor is made of the right kind of metal.
He is always out of money, but seldom out of heart.
He used to dream of the time when he could bathe his wearied feet in the rippling waters of success.
When every man would do unto his brother as he would have his brother to do unto him.
When in Utopia’s green fields and by the side of its babbling brooks he could end his days.
But he is over that now.
All he can do is to attract some attention and set the people to thinking.
Here’s to the Reform editor.
He may have chosen a rough and tempestuous road, but the lightning strokes of his gifted pen and thunder tones of his voice will purify the moral and political atmosphere.—Morgan’s Buzz Saw.
“A reader of The Commoner asks where he can secure a copy of a book entitled ‘Ten Men on Money Isle.’ If anyone who is able to give the information will send it to The Commoner on a postal card the information will be published for the benefit of the readers.”
And the foregoing from Bryan’s Commoner!
“Ten Men on Money Isle” is one of Colonel S. F. Norton’s best books, and one of the most popular on the money question. It is a book that made thousands of converts to Populism, the triumph of which gave Mr. Bryan two terms in Congress and placed him prominently before the American people. Every Populist newspaper advertised it, quoted it and praised it. Greenbackers, alliancers, union laborites, socialists, single taxers, students of political economy and sociology and everybody else with intelligence and energy enough to give attention to public questions, were familiar with the modest little book and its author. And yet W. J. Bryan, the child of Populism, never heard of it—doesn’t know his political father, as it were. Oh, pshaw! You can’t fool me! Bryan isn’t that ignorant.—The People’s Banner.
If the Populist vote was thrown out in all other counties as it was in Monroe, Tom Watson should have had about 5,000 votes in Iowa this election. One thing sure, the Republican papers admit that 75,000 legal voters in Iowa did not vote this year 1904; that means that over a hundred thousand did not vote. There was no choice between Parker and Roosevelt, and these men thought Watson could not win, so they did not vote.—Iowa Educator.
We look upon the battle of Waterloo as a tremendous catastrophe because 57,000 people were killed in that memorable conflict, but in ten years the railroads of the United States have killed 78,152 persons, and all for the sake of earning dividends on watered stock. How many Waterloos are comparatively soon forgotten!—Field and Farm.
On Christmas Eve a private conference of prominent Bryan Democrats was held in Lincoln, Neb., at which Mr. Bryan presided, having for its purpose the development of a scheme to re-Bryanize the Democratic party and put out another bait for the Populists. The details of the plan will, no doubt, be given out at an early day. The Pops have been gold-bricked by Democrats enough to learn that any plan, promise or pledge from that source has nothing good for them in it. Keep in the middle of the road! Don’t be caught by these political trimmers!—Southern Mercury.
Roosevelt wants Congress to provide work for the Indians on the reservations. The Indians won’t work. Nothing is said about the two million men who are out of work. To provide them with jobs would be to disband the great army of the unemployed, without which capitalism could not exist.—Iowa Educator.
President Roosevelt says there should be no rebates allowed on freight rates by the railroads. It is plain to be seen that if we had government ownership the President would not allow “rebates,” but it is safe to say nothing will be done, for these railway corporations have a way to interest members of Congress in these profits, so that no law to curb them can be got through Congress. If we had government ownership even a Republican President would give us relief, but as it is he is powerless.—The Forum, Denver, Col.
It is easy to see now that the St. Louis convention was the crowning event of damphoolishness.
Almost anyone can be fooled part of the time, but nobody but a fool can be fooled all the time.
The yellow-hammers that are now in control of the Democratic party insist that they are going to hold on.
The consensus of opinion among Populists seems to be that they won’t take any more of Dr. Bryan’s medicine.
The Democratic party may not be dead, but it is disfigured beyond recognition, crippled beyond recovery, and disgraced beyond redemption.
As principle has been abandoned, and there are not enough offices to go round, there is nothing to hold the pieces of the Democratic party together.
There is a man down in Texas who is so particular as to “what’s in a name” that he won’t kiss a “grass widow” for fear of catching the “hay fever.”
If the South will set its face forward instead of backward it will see the dawn of a new era, an era that will make her the mistress of the commerce of the world.
One of the most spectacular scenes ever exhibited in this old world of ours is presented by a lot of laboring men howling for what they want and voting for what they don’t want.
When the politicians of the South want to steal something, or do some other mean thing, they dig up the “nigger domination snake” in order to distract the attention of the people from their own meanness.—Morgan’s Buzz Saw.
Reformers make a mistake in thinking all the reform element is outside of the Republican party. The greatest obstruction today in the way of reform is the Democratic party. If it would gently sink to rest as the Whig party did, the forceful men in the Republican party would lead a movement that would give us quick and substantial relief. Seventy-five per cent. of the Republicans have advanced ideas and are anxious for reform. To be sure, the party is in the strong clutch of greed, as much so as the Democratic party was in 1850, but the Whig party had the good sense to die in 1854, and the Free Soil Democrats, the strong men of the then dominant party, came out and formed the Republican party, a party of the people, by the people and for the people. And this party would have given us splendid service in economic reforms had not the great Civil War required its attention; while the nation was torn by this internecine struggle the vampires of greed, who have no politics, fastened themselves upon this grand new party, and long before peace came were so intrenched in power that such men as Lincoln, Morton, Wade, Stevens and a host of other great Republican leaders were compelled to bow in submission. They saw and comprehended the dire results that would follow the machination of these ghoulish hounds of hell, but they were powerless.
Wade and Stevens were moved to tears, Lincoln’s soul was torn by grief. “We submit,” said Stevens, “to save the life of a nation.”
Thus did grasping greed take advantage of our extremity and make the struggle for existence a strife more fierce than war.—The Forum, Denver, Col.
Back of all politics is the System. What the System is we now know fairly well from the exposures of Ida Tarbell, Steffens, Lawson and others. The System is not a political but an industrial form of control. Its rewards and punishments are economic. The greater part of the population of the United States lives under conditions of economic slavery of one kind or another. Political liberty does not in any way mean or guarantee industrial liberty. Hence the impending revolution in this country is not to be political but industrial.—Tomorrow.
A hundred thinkers grow gray a-thinking; a hundred discoverers grow old a-discovering; a financier comes along, grabs the theories and the finds, hires folks to straighten ’em out, and rides in his automobile while the poor fellows of ideas eat mush and water by the roadside. The men who do brain-work get the crust-crumbs which fall from the commercial sponge-cake. Brains are poor collaterals to raise money on.—The Scythe of Progress.
The Saturday Evening Post says that there is to be a new deal in politics. It predicts a realignment and declares that “there is a great body of Republicans who really belong on the Democratic side, and a smaller, but still large number of Democrats who ought to be Republicans.” Let the exchange take place—the sooner the better. Harmony in belief and in purpose is the only basis of co-operation in politics.—The Commoner.
There is no danger of Bryan stealing the Populist platform while Tom Watson is standing on it.—Morgan’s Buzz Saw.
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“TOM WATSON”
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NAPOLEON
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“There does not live a man who will not be enlarged in his thinking processes, there does not live a boy who will not be made more ambitious by honest study of Watson’s Napoleon * * *
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Antiquated spellings were preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected.