Tom Watson's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 3, May 1905

by Various

CHAPTER VI

Refreshments had been served, the last ear of corn was husked and thrown into the barn, and they had all risen to depart, when Hillhouse came down the path from the cottage. He was panting audibly, and had evidently been walking fast. He shook hands hurriedly with Pole and his wife, and then turned to Cynthia.

“I’m just from your house,” he said, “and I promised your mother to come over after you. I was afraid I’d be late. The distance never seemed so long before.”

“I’m afraid you are too late,” said Floyd, with a cold smile. “I was lucky enough to find the first red ear of corn, and the reward was that I might take home anyone I asked. I assure you I’ll see that Miss Cynthia is well taken care of.”

“Oh! I—I see.” The preacher seemed stunned by the disappointment. “I didn’t know; I thought——”

“Yes, Floyd has won fast enough,” said Pole, “an’ he’s acted the part of the gentleman all through.” Pole explained what Floyd had done in excusing Cynthia from the principal forfeit he had won.

Hillhouse seemed unable to reply. The young people were moving toward the house, and he fell behind Floyd and his partner, walking along with the others and saying nothing.

It was a lonely, shaded road which Floyd and Cynthia traversed to reach her house.

“My luck turned just in the nick of time,” Floyd said exultantly. “I went there, little girl, especially to talk with you, and I was mad enough to fight when I saw how Pole had arranged everything. Then by good fortune and cheating I found that red ear; and—well, here we are. I never wanted to see anyone so badly in my life. Really, I——”

“Stop, don’t begin that!” Cynthia suddenly commanded, and she turned her eyes upon him steadily.

“Stop? Why do you say that?”

“Because,” retorted she, “you talk that way to all the girls, and I don’t want to hear it.”

Floyd laughed. “You know I mean what I say,” he replied. “You know it; you are just talking to hear your sweet, musical voice. Keep on; I could listen all night.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t like you when you speak that way,” the girl said seriously. “It sounds insincere—it makes me doubt you more than anything else.”

“Then some things about me don’t make you doubt me,” he said, with tentative eagerness.

She was silent for a moment, then she nodded her head. “I’ll admit that some things I hear of you make me admire you—that is, in a way.”

“Please tell me what they are,” he said, with a laugh.

“I’ve heard, for one thing, of your being very good and kind to poor people—people that Mr. Mayhew would have turned out of their homes for debt if you hadn’t interfered.”

“Oh, that was only business, little girl,” Floyd laughed. “I can simply see farther than the old man can. He thought they never would be able to pay, but I knew they would some day, and, also, that they would come up with the back interest.”

“I don’t believe it!” the girl said firmly. “Those things make me rather like you, while the others make me—they make me—afraid.”

“Afraid? Oh, how absurd—how very absurd!” They had reached a spring which flowed from a great bed of rocks in the side of a rugged hill. He pointed to a flat stone quite near it. “Do you remember the first time I ever had a talk with you? It was while we were seated on this rock.”

She recalled it, but only nodded her head.

“It was a year ago,” he went on. “You had on a pink dress and wore your hair like a little girl, in a plait down your back. Cynthia, you were the prettiest creature I had ever seen. I could hardly talk to you for wondering over your dazzling beauty. You are even more beautiful now; you have ripened physically and mentally—grown to be a wonderful woman.”

He sat down on the stone, still holding to her hand, and drawing her toward him.

She hesitated, looking back toward Baker’s cottage.

“Sit down, little girl,” he entreated her. “I’m tired. I’ve worked hard all day at the store, and that corn-shucking wasn’t the best thing to taper off on.”

She hesitated an instant longer, and then allowed him to draw her down beside him.

“There, now,” he said, “that’s more like it.” He still held her hand; it lay warm, pulsating and helpless in his strong grasp.

“Do you know why I did not kiss you back there?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know why you didn’t, but it was good of you,” she answered.

“No, it wasn’t,” he laughed. “I don’t want credit for what I don’t deserve. I simply put it off, little girl—I put it off. I knew we would be alone on our way home, and that you would not refuse me.”

“But I shall!” she said. “I’m not going to let you kiss me here in—in—this way.”

“Then you’ll not be keeping your part of the contract,” he said, tightening his grasp on her hand. “I’ve always considered you so fair in everything; and, Cynthia, you don’t know how much I want to kiss you. No, you won’t refuse me—you can’t!” His left arm was behind her, and it encircled her waist. She made an effort to draw herself erect, but he drew her closer to him. Her head sank upon his shoulder and lay there while he pressed his lips to hers.

Then she sat up, and firmly pushed his arm down from her waist.

“I’m sorry I let you do it,” she said, under her breath.

“But why, darling?”

“Because I’ve said a thousand times that I would not; but I have—I have, and I shall hate myself always.”

“When you have made me the happiest fellow in the state?” Floyd said. “Don’t go!” he urged.

She had risen and turned toward her home. He walked beside her, suiting his step to hers.

“Do you remember the night we sat and talked in the grape-arbor at your house?” he asked. “Well, you never knew it, but I’ve been there three nights within the last month, hoping that I’d get to see you by some chance or other. I always work late on my accounts, and when I am through and the weather is fine, I walk to your house, climb over the fence, slip through the orchard, and sit in that arbor, trying to imagine you are there with me. I often see a light in your room, and the last time I became so desperate that I actually whistled for you. This way.” He put his thumb and little finger between his lips and made an imitation of a whippoorwill’s call. “You see, no one could tell that from the real thing. If you ever hear that sound from the grape-arbor, you’ll know I need you, little girl, and you must not disappoint me.”

“I’d never respond to it,” Cynthia said firmly. “The idea of such a thing!”

“But you know I can’t go to your house often, with your mother opposing my visits as she does, and when I’m there she never leaves us alone. No, I must have you to myself once in awhile, little woman, and you must help me. Remember, if I call you, I’ll want you badly.”

He whistled again, and the echo came back on the still air from a nearby hillside. They were passing a log cabin which stood a few yards from the roadside.

“Budd Crow moved there today,” Cynthia said, as if desirous of changing the subject. “He rented twenty acres from my father. The White Caps whipped him a week ago, for being lazy and not working for his family. His wife came over and told me all about it. She said it really had brought him to his senses, but that it had broken her heart. She cried while she was talking to me. Why does God afflict some women with men of that kind, and make others the wives of governors and Presidents?”

“Ah, there you are beyond my philosophic depth, Cynthia! You mustn’t bother your pretty head about those things. I sometimes rail against my fate for giving me the ambition of a king, while I do not even know who—But I think you know what I mean!”

“Yes, I think I do,” said the girl sympathetically, “and some day I believe all that will be cleared up. Some coarse natures wouldn’t care a straw about it, but you do care, and it is the things we want and can’t get that count.”

“It is strange,” he said thoughtfully, “but of late I always think of my mother as being young and beautiful. I think of her, too, as being well-bred and educated. I think all those things without any proof even as to what her maiden name was or where she came from—Are you still unhappy at home, Cynthia?”

“Nearly all the time,” the girl sighed. “As she grows older my mother seems more faultfinding and suspicious than ever. Then she has set her mind on my marrying Mr. Hillhouse. They seem to be working together to that end, and it is very tiresome to me.”

“I’m glad you don’t love him,” Floyd said. “I don’t think he could make anyone of your nature happy.”

The girl stared into his eyes. They had reached the gate of the farmhouse, and he opened it for her.

“Now, good night,” he said, pressing her hand. “Remember, if you ever hear a lonely whippoorwill calling, that he is longing for companionship.”

She leaned over the gate, drawing it toward her till the latch clicked in its catch. She was thinking of the hot kiss he had pressed upon her lips, and what he might later think about it.

“I’ll never meet you there at night,” she said firmly. “My mother does not treat me right, but I shall not do that when she is asleep. You may come to see me here once in awhile if you wish.”

“Well, I shall sit alone in the arbor,” he returned, with a low laugh, “and I hope your hard heart will keep you awake.”

She opened the front door, which was never locked, and went into her room on the right of the little hall. The night was very still, and down the road she heard Floyd’s whippoorwill call growing fainter and fainter as he strode away. She found a match and lighted the lamp on her bureau, and looked at her reflection in the little oval-shaped mirror. Instinctively she shuddered and brushed her lips with her hand as she remembered his embrace.

“He’ll despise me,” she muttered. “He’ll think I am weak like all the rest, but I am not. I am not! I’ll show him that he can’t—and yet”—her head sank to her hands, which were folded on the top of the bureau—“I couldn’t help it. My God, I couldn’t help it! I must have wanted—no, I didn’t. I didn’t!”

There was a soft step in the hall. The door of her room creaked like the low scream of a cat. A figure in white stood on the threshold. It was Mrs. Porter in her nightdress, her feet bare, her iron-gray half-twisted hair hanging upon her shoulders.

“I couldn’t go to sleep, Cynthia,” she said, “till I knew you were safe at home.”

“Well, I’m here all right, mother; so go back to bed, and don’t catch your death of cold.”

The old woman moved across the room to Cynthia’s bed and sat down on it. “I heard you coming down the road and went to the front window. I had sent Brother Hillhouse for you, but it was Nelson Floyd who brought you home. Didn’t Brother Hillhouse get there before you left?”

“Yes, but I had already promised Mr. Floyd.”

The old woman met her daughter’s glance steadily. “I suppose all I’ll do or say won’t amount to anything. Cynthia, you know what I’m afraid of.”

Cynthia stood straight, her face set and white, her great dreamy eyes flashing.

“Yes, and that’s the insult of it, mother. I tell you, you will drive me too far. A girl at a certain time of her life wants a mother’s love and sympathy; she doesn’t want threats, fears and disgraceful suspicions.”

Mrs. Porter covered her face with her bony hands and groaned aloud.

“You are confessing,” she said, “that you are tied an’ bound to him by the heart, and that there isn’t anything left for you but the crumbs he lets fall from his profligate table.”

“Stop!” Cynthia sprang to her mother and laid her small hand heavily on the thin shoulder. “Stop! You know you are telling a deliberate—” She paused, turned and went slowly back to the bureau. “God forgive me! God help me remember my duty to you as my mother. You’re old; you’re out of your head!”

“There, you said something.” The old woman had drawn herself erect and sat staring at her daughter, her hands on her sharp knees. “You know my sister Martha got to worryin’ when she was along about my age over her lawsuit matters, and kept it up till her brain gave way. Folks always said she and I were alike. Dr. Strong has told me time after time to guard against worry, or I’d go out and kill myself as she did. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I will now. I can’t keep down my fears and suspicions while the very air is full of that man’s doings. He’s a devil. Your pretty face has caught his fancy, and your holding him off, so far, has made him determined to crush you like a plucked flower. Why don’t he go to the Duncans, and the Prices, and lay his plans? Because the men of those families shoot at the drop of the hat. He knows your pa is not of that stamp, and that you haven’t any men kin to defend our honor. He hasn’t any of his own; nobody knows who or what he is.”

“Mother!” Cynthia’s tone had softened. Her face was filling with sudden pity for the quivering creature on the bed. “Mother, will you not have confidence in me? If I promise you faithfully to take care of myself with him, and make him understand what and who I am, won’t that satisfy you? Even men with bad reputations have a good side to their natures, and they often reach a point at which they reform. I well know there are strong women and weak women. Mother, I’m not a weak woman. As God is my judge, I’m able to take care of myself. It pains me to say this, for you ought to know it; you ought to feel it, see it in my eye and hear it in my voice. Now, go to bed and sleep. I’m really afraid you may lose your mind, since you told me about Aunt Martha.”

The face of the old woman changed; it lighted up with hope.

“Somehow, I believe what you say,” she said, with a faint smile. “Anyway, I’ll try not to worry any more.” She rose and went to the door. “Yes, I’ll try not to worry any more,” she repeated. “It may all come out right.”

When she found herself alone Cynthia turned and looked at her reflection in the glass.

“He didn’t once tell me in so many words that he loved me,” she said. “He has never used that word. He has never said that he wanted to mar—” She broke off, staring into the depths of her own great, troubled eyes. “And yet I let him kiss me—me!” A hot flush filled her neck and face and spread to the roots of her hair. Then suddenly she blew out the light and crept to her bed.

(To be continued.)

The Conservative of Today

BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.

EVER since we have had a record of the human race it has been divided into two parties, the conservative and the radical. These two parties have ever battled with each other for possession of the world. Strictly speaking, all history—sacred and profane—is nothing else than a record of this world-old struggle.

“That which is, was made by God,” cries the conservative.

“God is leaving that and is entering this other,” replies the radical.

These have been the battle-cries of mankind all down the ages. The conservative has always been the stand-patter. He has been always on the defensive, explaining, apologizing, opposing and pleading that change would result in deterioration. The conservative must bear the vice, the sins and crimes of the society of his time, and, bending under the load, piteously pleads for delay, for compromise. He preaches the pusillanimous doctrine of “let us bear the evils we already have rather than fly to those we know not of.” Conservatism never made an invention, wrote a poem, painted a picture nor breathed a prayer that rose above the roof.

Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was a conservative. He stood pat on keeping the Hebrew nation in slavery, against the radicalism of Moses. The Roman empire was conservative. It stood pat on its pagan worship, against the radicalism of the new religion. The scientific world stood pat on the then accepted doctrine that the “sun do move,” against the radicalism of Galileo that it is the earth that does the moving. King George was a conservative. He stood pat on America’s remaining a British colony, against the radicalism of Washington and the Continental Congress. The French King, Louis XVI, was a conservative, and stood pat against the radicalism of the people of France when they demanded liberty and bread. The Czar of Russia and his titled aristocracy are conservatives. They are standing pat against progress, enlightenment and justice among the masses of the people of that unhappy country. But it is about the conservatives of our own country that I want to write. I want to say a word about our own stand-patters.

Webster’s Dictionary says that a conservative is, “One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs.” A conservative in the United States today, then, is a man who wants the Beef Trust to continue to force the farmer to accept its price for his cattle, and the consumer to pay its price for dressed beef. A conservative is a man who wants the railroads to continue giving rebates to favored shippers, and to hold them from unfavored shippers. A conservative is a man who wants the United States Senate to continue to be composed of men who do not represent the masses of the people of their respective states, but who represent the corporations. For instance, a conservative in New York State is a man who wants Chauncey M. Depew and Thomas C. Platt to continue in the United States Senate.

Depew represents the Vanderbilt system of railroads, while Platt represents the United States Express Company. The two will oppose any legislation which interferes with the income of their corporations, never mind what the people of the state or nation want. The people have for years wanted a parcels post in this country. England and other countries have it, but we cannot. Why? Because Platt is in the Senate, and also in the parcel-carrying business. You, Mr. Conservative, put him in the Senate and you keep him there.

We have what is called a protective tariff in this country. It is a law which, in the name of protecting the workingman, robs him and every other consumer. If you are a conservative, you are in favor of maintaining this law.

The tariff schedule was drawn up by a committee of Congress behind closed doors. That is, the doors were closed on those who have to pay the tariff, but open to those who were to be benefited by it. The committee sent for the manufacturers of the various necessary articles which people use, and asked them how much of a tax they wanted on similar articles made abroad. And the manufacturers wrote these schedules for the committee, and they were adopted. Notice, the consumers, the people who have to pay the tariff, were not invited to appear before this committee. Only the manufacturers, who are the beneficiaries, were taken into counsel.

If you are a conservative—that is, if you are a stand-patter, you are in favor of continuing and “maintaining” this “mother of trusts.”

Sometimes laboring-men become dissatisfied with their wages, or the number of hours they are made to work, and they exercise their God-given right to cease work, or go on strike. Then the corporations rush to the courts and secure injunctions, restraining the strikers from doing all sorts of things. In some instances these injunctions are obtained and served on the strikers before any of the acts from which the injunctions restrain them have been committed or attempted. Special deputy sheriffs and Pinkerton men are hurried to the scene of the strike. The state militia is ordered out, and in one instance Federal troops were sent to Chicago. At Homestead the hired deputy-sheriff-Cossacks shot down peaceable workmen, just as real Cossacks shot down the peaceable workmen who marched with Father Gapon in the streets of St. Petersburg recently—and for no better reason. Martial law has been declared, court-martial has been substituted for trial by jury. The right of habeas corpus has been suspended. Members of labor unions have been thrown into prison without trial; others have been torn from their homes and deported to other states without process of law, and bull pens established for guarding prisoners. These things have been happening in the United States for years. In each instance it was claimed that such arbitrary measures were necessary to preserve order, keep the peace, protect the property of the corporations, and to enforce the injunctions issued by the courts—when these injunctions were directed against the laboring or producing class. Now see how differently things work when a corporation is at the dangerous end of an injunction gun.

The United States Federal Court, through Judge Grosscup, of Chicago, issued on February 18, 1903, an injunction restraining the Beef Trust from continuing to do certain things. The Beef Trust paid no attention to this injunction. It went right on doing these same things, just as if Judge Grosscup had not issued his injunction. It went right on despoiling the bank accounts of the consumers of beef and the raisers of cattle. No special deputy sheriffs were sworn in, no state militia was ordered out, no Federal troops were sent to Chicago or anywhere else to enforce obedience to this injunction. Armour, Swift and Morris, the men said to be at the head of the Beef Trust, were not arrested. No bull pen was established. Nobody was deported.

This is the existing custom of enforcing and not enforcing Federal Court injunctions. Now if you are a conservative, you are, according to Webster, one who desires to “maintain” this custom.

At the present time the lighting corporation, the railroad corporation, the telephone corporation and the city or municipal corporation are all exploiting the people of New York City as they have never been exploited before.

Never in the history of New York have its public servants been so absolutely and completely owned by so-called public service corporations as at present. These corporations have literally taken over the people’s municipal corporation, merged it with their own and impressed their management upon it. For instance, Dr. Darlington, President of the Health Department, goes to Washington to urge Congress to pass a law to destroy dirty money, because it is a means of conveying disease germs. But he does not destroy or clean the filthy disease-bearing car straps in New York. Why? Because August Belmont and H. H. Vreeland won’t let him. Darlington is in the position of the Irishman who would free Ireland but for the police. The people want the signs, slot machines, etc., put out of their Subway stations, but they can’t get it done. Why? Because the Interborough Corporation is stronger than the municipal corporation. The people’s public servants in New York City have become the servants of the public service corporations.

It does seem that even men who call themselves conservatives in New York would rise up next fall and stamp the life out of this condition.

Casus Belli

“NOW, the trusts—” began the patent-churn man, addressing the washing-machine agent. “The trusts, let me tell you, are——”

“Here, now, gentlemen!” remonstrated the landlord of the tavern at Polkville, Ark. “That’s what the fight here yesterday started about; and it’s goin’ to cost me three or four dollars for new window glass, alone!”

A Character Study of Byron and Burns

BY ELIZABETH BAILEY TRAYLOR

THESE names are live wires in the lands of the Scotch heather and the English rose, and equally so here by the red hearts of the watermelons and the snow showers of the cotton-fields of the Southern States. One often hears it said of those devoted brotherhoods—the Burns Clubs and the Scotch Societies—“Their Bible is Robbie Burns.” Frank Stanton has a large hearing when he sings:

We’ll slip away from our today Of wonder and of worry, To where, in meadows of the may, He whistled “Annie Laurie.” To meet him in some gabled inn, And pass the rare decanter, Or in some ingle nook begin A race with “Tam o’Shanter.”

To a large coterie of kindred spirits the name of Byron evokes a pageant of ideas pulsating with life’s strongest emotions. It is told of a pleasure club that they recently abandoned the books of the day and read the poet exhaustively and with great enthusiasm—no slight tribute to his genius in a time of unremitting demand for that which is palpitant with the breath of today’s life. A learned minister from his pulpit says: “‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ is a marvel of diction and technique, and no divine has approached the narrative in its exact correspondence to Holy Writ.”

A bare sketch of these two philosophers may suggest to book-lovers in general the particular period of the culture-epochs dominating each career, and discover some of the forces of heredity and environment which produced these characters, vibrant with full, fresh, free life, or reveal to readers equipped by psychical research for judgment how it was that these natures furnished the battleground for so fierce a conflict of good and evil forces.

According to Carlyle, the father of Burns was a “man of thoughtful, intense character, possessing some knowledge and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless; a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank of society.” Of his ancestry we know nothing. The father of Byron was an Englishman, from a line of illustrious ancestors reaching back to the days of William the Conqueror.

The mother of Burns, devout of heart and calm of mind, brightened the lives of her children with the ballads of her beloved Scotland. The mother of Byron would smother him with kisses one moment, and the next call him a lame brat.

Both poets spent their early youth in Scotland, where the record of their school days is still preserved in their respective parishes. Burns read with equal avidity Taylor’s devotional works, Locke, Pope, Milton, Thomson and Young. He never minded work, if knowledge was the reward. Byron was devoted to the reading of history and poetry, and was at the head of many college rows. When, in conformity to the custom of the school, the order was so inverted as to make the boy of highest rank change places with the lowest, the teacher would call out to Byron: “Now, George, let us see how quick you will be foot again.”

Each had a favorite family servant. Byron wrote often to his old nurse of his triumphs in London. Burns says many of his songs were inspired by an old servant, Jenny Wilson, as she repeated her endless collection of songs and stories of devils, ghosts, fairies, witches, warlocks, kelpies, elf-candles and enchanted dragons.

Lady Blessington wrote of Byron’s appearance: “He is not tall, as I had fancied him. His appearance is, however, highly prepossessing; his head is finely shaped and the forehead open, high and noble, his eyes are gray and full of expression, his mouth is the most remarkable feature, the upper lip of Grecian shortness and the corners descending, the lips full and finely cut. In speaking, he shows his teeth very much, and they are white and even, but I observed that even in his smile—he smiles frequently—there is something of a scornful expression that is evidently natural. His countenance is full of expression and changes with the subject of conversation; it gains on the beholder the more it is seen, and leaves an agreeable impression. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable, clear, harmonious and so distinct that, though his general tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost.”

Burns, tall, well formed and graceful, was always a charming presence. The beautiful and all-accomplished Duchess of Gordon said that Burns was the most fascinating guest she ever saw entertained.

Speaking of the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Walter Scott says: “This is the best likeness of Burns, but his features, as I remember them, were still more massive and imposing than they are represented in this picture. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments, the eyes alone indicating the poetic character and temperament. They were large and dark and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such eyes in any other head.”

Attired always in the tip of the fashion, Byron was a drawing-room dude in the smart set of London. The dress of Burns was coarse and homely, made from his own sheep, carded by his own fire. His plaid was red and white, woven with great pride by his mother and sister. His home and the homes of his friends, were low-thatched cottages, consisting of kitchen and bedrooms, with floors of kneaded clay.

If the former set a fashion for collars which lasts to this good day, the latter has left us the Tam-o’-Shanter hat.

Burns was essentially musical, having begun his career by setting music to the verses of another.

Byron, in a luxurious salon, wooed and won a woman of fashion. Burns gives this account of his courtship with Highland Mary,

Who was snatched away in beauty’s bloom:

“We plighted our troth on the Sabbath to make it more sacred, seated by a running brook, that Nature might be a witness, over an open Bible, to show we remembered God in the compact.”

After a second edition of “Poems by an Ayrshire Plowman,” Burns spent the winter in Edinburgh, where he was the lion of the elegant coteries of the city.

Lords, ladies, men of letters, all with manners highly polished by attrition, found in him a barbarian who was not barbarous. As the poet met in at least one lord feelings as natural as those of a plowman, so they met in a plowman manners worthy of a lord.

Dugald Stewart writes: “His manner was easy and unperplexed; his address was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither eclipsed by the titled nor embarrassed before the learned and eloquent, but took his station with the ease of one born to it.”

Each poet had a brief political career. As exciseman for several years it was necessary for Burns to ride over two hundred miles per week, thus coming constantly in contact with the people. In this public service he made a record for being thorough, correct and at the same time humane.

Byron made as serious an effort in politics as was possible to his impetuous and headlong nature. After many hindrances he was granted a seat in the House of Lords. He traveled awhile, and, returning, made two or three speeches before the House. Between times he would correct the proof-sheets of “Childe Harold.” The publication of this poem put an end to his parliamentary ambitions. “When ‘Childe Harold’ was published,” he says, “no one ever afterward thought of my prose, nor indeed did I.” However, he also says, “I would not for the world be like my hero.”

Each spent much time alone with Nature, drinking from the exhaustless fountain of her varied life. Each loved her most in her wildest, fiercest moods. Power—they loved it, worshiped it; they felt it in them and all around them. It was the necessary food for their strenuous, tempest-tossed souls. Burns loved to walk on the sheltered side of a forest and listen to a storm rave among the trees. Better still, he loved to ascend some eminence and stride along its summit amid the flashes of the lightning and howls of the tempest: “Rapt in enthusiasm, I seemed to ascend to Him who walks on the wings of the wind.” Byron

Made him friends of mountains, stars; But the Quick Spirit of the universe

spoke to him best through Nature’s most stupendous form, the turbulent, merciless ocean.

Byron reveled in the glories of more climes; Burns saw the marvels of more kingdoms, for he understood the language of the daisy and the mouse. The self-negating love, the exultant pride the Peasant Poet felt for his own bonnie Scotland, the English Peer lavished upon a foreign land. Burns said if he ever reached heaven, he would ask nothing better than just a Highland welcome.

Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and heather.

Byron, in the desolation of his youth, in his extremes of laughter and tears, in his yearning for sympathy, in his broodings over the mysteries of life, played the character of Hamlet with the world for a stage, leaving a kindred problem for the wonder of mankind.

Many of Byron’s shorter poems are from Bible stories and characters, and it is wonderful how his brilliant genius caught and reproduced both spirit and story. Burns gives us his thought of a religious life in that sweetest pastoral poem in all literature, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.”

In the last few months of his life he did much to reproduce it in his own life, holding family prayer with such earnestness as to bring his hearers to tears over the penitence for sins and hope in the mercy of God.

In these poets the perceptive faculties roamed at will over a wide field of human activities, and voiced their impressions with a witchery of language which has hardly a parallel. The work of both men was revolutionizing in its effects. Burns found his countrymen in bondage to the fear of wraiths, hobgoblins and kindred spirits, and he was a mighty power in their deliverance. Taine estimates that he was as great a force in Scotland as the Revolution in France.

Byron is believed largely to have influenced the revolutionary movement in Germany. He gave a direct stimulus to the liberators of Italy, and ended his life in a heroic struggle for the liberties of Greece.

If Byron’s literary work is more resplendent and daring, Burns’s seems fresher from the varied living forces about us. If Byron’s is a circlet of sapphires, Burns’s is that same circlet transmuted by the alchemy of human sympathy to a wreath of never-fading violets.

When we remember that these colossal figures passed off the stage of life after thirty-seven short years, when we get a suggestion of the difficult circumstances and terrible temptations that encompassed their stormy young lives, we may well leave their failings to God, who alone is their moral Judge. It may be His compassion for them is commensurate with the powers with which He endowed them.

The Man With White Nails

BY CAPTAIN W. E. P. FRENCH, U.S.A.

MY wife brought me the case and the client, and, strict candor compels me to say, I was not particularly grateful for either. The case was a curiously involved combination of an over-indulgent, invalid mother; a shrewd, selfish and unscrupulous son; a trained nurse, rather worse than she should have been; a cleverly drawn but very unjust will; an exceedingly large estate mostly in investment securities; a husband-deserted daughter with two small children and “an annual income of nothing to keep ’em on”; a witness who would undoubtedly be “agin the government,” and one other person whose testimony might, or might not, be favorable to the prosecution, but who had apparently vanished bodily from the face of the earth. The client was a pretty, gentle little creature, crushed under a load of trouble much too big for her, quite pathetic in her helplessness, and shrinking and rather indifferent about her own claims, but with an almost fierce mother-instinct over the rights of her babies.

How the partner of my joys and sorrows discovered these wronged mites of humanity is immaterial—she has a keen scent for injustice or oppression of any kind—but she rounded them up, brought them to my office, and said I was to take the case. I never appeal from the decision of my supreme court, so I said, “Certainly.”

First she took me aside and gave me an ex parte and rather highly colored statement of the facts in the affair, explaining that her protégée was diffident and reticent, unless stirred up about the children, and perorating with the remark, “You will find, John, that my meek-looking lamb is quite a ferocious animal when roused.” Then she went over to the other woman, kissed her, gave the boy a pile of my cherished law-books to use as building-blocks, took the tiny girl on her lap, hitched her chair a bit closer to the mother and said, “Now, my dear, you tell John everything, just as you told it to me, and he will fix it all up for you.”

A tolerable portion of my fairly large practice has consisted, and, I fancy, will continue to consist, of charity cases brought to me by my wife. They have, of course, seldom or never been profitable; they have cost time, work, worry and money, have occasionally been paid in the base coin of ingratitude, and without them we should have had a much larger bank account. But the warmest-hearted and most generous woman I have ever known likes me to help those she thinks are wronged, and it is little enough for me to do for her dear sake.

My small, scared client attracted me from the first, and my dusty legal heart ached over her sad story. Her mother had never cared much for her and had lavished love and money on her brother. She had married unfortunately, while scarcely more than a child. The estrangement with her mother had increased, and her brother had craftily widened the breach. This last fact I had much trouble to elicit, and wormed it out of her piecemeal.

After three years of neglect and ill-treatment, her husband had deserted her and run away with another woman—incidentally, her best friend—leaving her almost destitute. When she recovered from an attack of brain fever she found a letter from her brother awaiting her, in which he announced the death of their mother, his marriage to the trained nurse who had taken care of the mother in her last illness, and their exodus to Europe. He inclosed a copy of the will, which left everything unreservedly to him, and said that his attorney would communicate with her. The man-of-the-law came in person, and stated that he was empowered to pay her a hundred dollars a month, so long as she did not attempt litigation.

The will was witnessed by the doctor and the trained nurse, and the doctor was, to all intents, beyond discovery.

It was, on its face, a probable case of undue influence and, perhaps, mental aberration. But how prove either, without the doubly expert testimony of the missing physician, who, it appeared, was the only person, except the son and the nurse, that had seen the invalid during the last year of her life?

It was a significant fact that the daughter’s name was not mentioned in the instrument; and I suspected collusion on the part of the medical gentleman with the beneficiary and the woman who would share the profits of the criminal enterprise. My poor little client had seen the doctor once only when she was vainly endeavoring to gain access to her mother, and described him as a very fine-looking man on the sunny slope of forty, with wavy blond hair and pointed beard, a suave and kindly manner, a charming voice and singularly handsome hands.

The bill of items would have fitted tolerably a dozen men of my acquaintance, and I said as much, asking her, as an afterthought, how she came to notice his hands. Someone has said that the gist of a woman’s letter is in the postscript, and the large majority of women that have employed me as counsel have invariably reserved the leading and important facts of their cases until the last. This client was no exception to the rule; but when the dramatic little body had finished personating the missing man, I would have known him as far as I could see him among ten thousand, unless he were asleep or quite still; for she had cleverly imitated a man whose restless hands were ever in motion as he talked, and who glanced at them with covert satisfaction every few seconds. This singular trick, the descriptive factors in his personal equation, and the name he had signed—which, she assured me, was undoubtedly his own—as witness to the signature of the testatrix were about all the additional information I could extract from her, except that she had refused her brother’s proposition and was ready to fight to the bitter end for her children’s rights, though she had to beg or steal the money to pay court and counsel.

I waived retainer and took the case on contingent fee, which, after the little grass widow had left, I told my wife, in gentle irony, I would divide with her; but that she must not squander it on yachts and four-in-hands, because these big paying cases are pretty rare—fortunately.

That good woman received my ironic suggestion with her usual placidity, and said: “Very well, my dear; I shall certainly hold you to your promise of division, and I have a premonition that we shall win the suit. Mark my words! I don’t want a yacht, but I shall buy that lovely Goldsborough place and spend my declining years looking at the river-view from that glorious, wide piazza.”

I had not the slightest hope of success, for even if the witness could be found, I had no doubt that he was a scamp and in the brother’s pay.

A letter to a friend and fellow-attorney in the city where the mother had died brought this reply: The man I wanted to find had been a general practitioner there for some years; he had had a very large practice and the liking and respect of the community; but both had fallen away from him from two very odd causes; one, that he had suddenly become exceedingly untrustworthy and unreliable, in fact, a phenomenal and outrageous liar; and the other, that he had unaccountably taken to the habitual wearing on every possible or impossible occasion, professional or social, of white kid gloves or long white gauntlets, bringing these ghostly hands to the bedside of patients, or hovering with them over the operating-table. It began to be noised abroad that Dr. Bently, which was his name, was unsound in his mind, was suffering from some dreadful, contagious disease which had broken out in his hands, and that the truth was not in him. My informant added that shortly after the death of Mrs. Johnstone, my small client’s mother, the doctor had taken himself, his gauntlets and his marvelous mendacity to New York, but that his present whereabouts were unknown to the writer.

The detective agency in New York, of which I next inquired, sent me word that there was no such name as Bernard Brice Bently in the directory or in any way on record as a physician or surgeon in that city. All this took time, and, meanwhile, I had advertised vainly in prominent papers all over the country and had had an agent interview many of the doctor’s old acquaintances. The man had disappeared, and within a very narrow limit of time the will would be admitted to probate.

Just at this time another legal matter required my presence in New York, and, when I reached there, the engrossing nature of my business drove most other matters out of my head. After several days of close and confining work, I finished taking the depositions I needed, and purposed to return home that evening. It occurred to me that a pleasant way of spending my remaining hours in town would be to take a stroll through Central Park, which I had not seen in years—not, in fact, since I had been a student in Columbia Law School.

I walked from the Fifty-ninth Street entrance as far as the Museum, which is about opposite Eighty-second Street, and had sat down to rest near the obelisk. It was a magnificent late spring day, and I was lazily enjoying the beauty of the place and watching the passing show, when a man on the next bench attracted my attention by springing to his feet and gazing eagerly and fiercely beyond me and up the drive. If ever ferocious desire and intent to kill were written on a human face it was on his.

Instinctively I glanced in the direction he was looking and saw a steam runabout, with one man in it, approaching smoothly and not very rapidly. I turned back instantly and sprang at the would-be assassin, whose pistol was out and pointed, but I was too late. There was a flash and a report, and I could see the hammer of the self-cocker rising for a second shot, when I struck him a left-hander. I do not often have occasion to hit a man, but when I do he usually falls. As he went down the weapon spoke again, but I knew that that bullet went wide. The fellow was game, though, and determined, for his back had scarcely touched the ground before he rolled on his side and fired twice at the man in the locomobile. The fifth chamber of the revolver he let me have, as I flung myself down on him, and the subsequent proceedings were blank, the ball having grazed my temple and stunned me.

When I came to I was lying on a leather couch in a very handsomely appointed doctor’s office. My head was bound up, and I was a bit sick and dizzy. I suppose I had half swooned again, when I was roused by a soft touch on my wrist, and looking down I saw the most beautiful and the whitest man’s hand I have ever seen. But, white as it was, the fine, filbert-shaped nails were whiter still. They were absolutely milky, and the half-moons had the ghostly whiteness and lustre of pearls. I was both startled and fascinated. Surely no living flesh was ever that color, and no human being with blood in him ever had such nails. Was it the hand of a corpse? No, it was warm, and, as I looked, the fingers bent and sought my pulse. A deep, musical voice broke the silence:

“Ah, we are all right now, thank God! How do you feel, friend? Drink this.” The speaker, holding a tumbler, came in front of me, and I saw a handsome man with clean-shaven face, black, wavy hair and beautiful but rather wild-looking eyes.

“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass and obediently drained it; “I feel somewhat as though I had been trifling with a steam-hammer. But I shall be all right presently.”

“Of course you will,” he assured me heartily. “You were struck a glancing blow on the head by the bullet of that poor, half-crazed Pole, who, the police say, thought I was a Russian duke. The only ill consequence of your noble act will be an honorable scar, to remind you how gallantly you risked your life to save a total stranger’s. My dear friend—if you will allow a friendless man to call you so”—here the charming voice grew as sweet and vibrant as an organ note—“it was the bravest and most generous act I ever knew. I cannot thank you adequately, but I hope it may be given me to serve you some time, and should you ever need a friend’s purse, his hand or his life, mine are yours.”

I endeavored to deprecate the value of my interference and to moderate his expressions of gratitude; but he would have none of it, and, leaping to his feet, began to pace to and fro, expatiating upon what he extravagantly termed my bravery and unselfishness, and insisting upon his tremendous obligation to me. He was manifestly in earnest; but all at once habit asserted itself, the ruling passion came to the fore, and a trifle “light as air” made “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ.” When he first began to move a memory flashed over me, but, as those beautiful, restless white hands added their evidence, assurance became doubly sure. I could see my demure, pretty little client impersonating this man, and I knew, despite the dyed hair and the shaven beard, that I had found the missing witness. But I had found something else. I had found a man suffering from a chronic dementia. Whether his derangement was general or merely monomania, I was at a loss to determine. If the former, he was not competent as a witness for either side. If the latter, the special form and degree of alienation might or might not militate against his testimony.

I was impelled to take him unawares, and so I said suddenly: “Dr. Bently, do you remember Mrs. Abbott, the daughter of your former patient, Mrs. Johnstone, of Laneville?”

If he started or showed surprise or annoyance, it was imperceptible; but he glanced with smiling complaisance at his nails as he came over to me, and, touching my forehead, remarked, with most irritating suavity: “My dear fellow, I fear you are feverish. My name is Charles Chester Chickering. I never was in Laneville, I never had a patient named Johnstone, and I have no recollection whatever of anyone by the name of Abbott.”

He looked straight at me as he uttered these falsehoods, and his tone was like velvet. There was the flicker of an amused smile on his mouth, but his eyes were hard and cold as blued steel, the contracted pupils shining like black pinheads. I stared back at him, and presently he shifted his gaze from my face to his own right hand, which he was holding out in front of him, and again that abominable, self-satisfied smirk appeared. I was filled with boundless contempt for this man I had almost begun to pity, and as I rose from the couch and began to speak I could fairly taste the bitterness of the words I flung at him:

“Dr. or Mr. Bernard Brice Bently, Charles Chester Chickering—or whatever your infernal, alliterative alias may be—I deeply regret that I should have saved you from the death I have no doubt you richly deserved, and I earnestly hope that you may be punished for your crime of helping to ruin a poor little woman and two innocent children. And, by the living God! I will do all in my power to bring you to——”

He interrupted me eagerly, wonderingly, protestingly. “What is that you say? Mrs. Abbott and her children living? Why, that scoundrel Johnstone and that she-devil of a nurse swore to Mrs. Johnstone and me that all three of them were dead and buried!”

Hope came to life again in my heart. It was a mistake, after all, and this man could and would rectify it. He had been deceived and had witnessed the document in good faith. I had commenced an apology when he uttered a violent exclamation, and, holding the backs of his hands in front of his face, scrutinized his nails with rapt intensity.

His very lips grew livid, the eyes he turned on me were those of a madman, and, snarling like a wolf, he screamed: “See what you have done! Look at my nails!” and thrust his pallid fingers forward for my inspection.

On the polished, snowy surface of every nail was a bright pink fleck or spot of about the bigness and shape of a ladybug; but I was barely conscious of these rosy marks on the intense whiteness of the uncanny things, for I suppose the smart rap of that pistol bullet and this man’s extraordinary sayings and doings had upset my fairly choleric temper, and I was literally beside myself with uncontrollable rage and indignation.

“Damn you and your dead nails!” I shouted back at him. “You cowardly liar and thief, you are Johnstone’s accomplice, and I will tear the truth out of you if I have to kill you to do it.”

We were glaring at each other like wild beasts, and, before the words were fairly out of my mouth, we sprang forward, our hands clutching hungrily at each other’s throats in the fierce desire to strangle which comes to men and the other brutes that slay when anger and hate have reached the last and deadly stage. An undercut would have driven him back, but I wanted his windpipe and he wanted mine, and each of us was sick to have the other at close quarters, so a blow would not have been fair play. We were well matched. I was sure of that as we grappled. We swayed and strained, and I could feel the blood running down my face when my wound reopened; but the end came quickly, and, as we crashed to the floor, he was underneath, and my hands flew up eagerly and clenched under his chin. Ah! the savage joy of it!

But why did he not struggle? What trick was this? Good God, had the fall killed him? How white he was! And he had been crimson a second ago. The revulsion of feeling turned me sick. Was I a murderer? I let go my hold, leaped to my feet and threw a pitcher of ice water on his head and face. He gasped, opened his eyes and regarded me calmly and quietly. Was it only a moment ago that those calm, sad eyes had been narrow rims of blue around intensely black, distended pupils that had in them the dull red glare of blood-lust? Now they were soft and human, and the light of sanity was in them.

“My friend,” he said gently—what a superb voice he had, and how the deep, rich, mellow tones brushed away anger, hatred and fear—“my friend, I owe you my life twice. First, you saved it; now, you spare it. And I owe you more than life. I owe you my restoration to reason, to perfect sanity. For I have been bitten by a mania so wild, so strange, so improbable that no man save you who have seen it would believe in its existence. ‘Like cures like.’ It came through a fall and a shock. It has been cured through a fall and a shock. You were right. I was a liar. The greatest on earth, I believe, and I gloried in it, and hated to tell a truth lest it should bring a pink spot on my nails. No, don’t lift me up.”

I had attempted to raise him and had blurted out a word or two of shame, sympathy and pity.

“I prefer to lie here while I tell you the story,” he went on. “You have no cause to be ashamed; it was simple self-defense on your part, for I should probably have killed you in my paroxysm. Besides, you do not realize what you have done for me. But I thank you for your kindly sympathy; it is not wasted, believe me. Now, if you will do me a favor, watch my nails, and, if they become normal, tell me. But, first, put one of those wet compresses on your wound and slip the bandage over it. You will forgive me by and bye for fighting with a guest to whom I owed so much. I was not responsible.”

I hastened to reassure him, and he resumed:

“Before I begin my own weird tale, let me relieve your mind about that poor, wronged, sensitive child, Mrs. Abbott. I will go back with you to Laneville, and we will break that will wide open. There will be no trouble about it. Johnstone is a whelp, his wife is a criminal, and I can put them both behind the bars. That little woman shall be righted, if it takes my entire fortune to do it. Now, listen. A trifle over a year ago, getting out of my phaeton, I fell, struck my head and was out of my mind for some weeks. When I regained health and strength I found that my injury had left me with the most unthinkable hallucination that ever crept into a human brain. Subconsciously, I knew it was a vicious delusion, but I took the same delight in it that a patient partly in the control of delirium sometimes takes in the absurdities he utters.

“You know the little white marks on the nails which, as children, we used to say came from telling lies? Well, my mania was that if I told nothing but lies, lied constantly and consistently, I could turn mine entirely white. I tried and I succeeded. The will, obeying a diseased mind, plays queer pranks. I was partly proud of the result of my experiment, partly ashamed of it. So I took to wearing gloves and gauntlets most of the time. I began to get a reputation as a phenomenal liar. Once I overheard a man say, ‘Dr. Bently says it is so? Then that settles it; it’s a lie that would turn Beelzebub green with envy. Why, I wouldn’t believe the doctor if he swore to anything on seventeen cubic miles of Bibles in the original Hebrew.’

“I could have hugged him with grateful delight. But friends and practice dropped away. People began to look at me askance, and before Mrs. Johnstone died she was about the only patient of our class I had left. The street urchins used to yell at me, ‘Hallo, Ananias! where’s Sapphira?’ and ‘Berny Bently; or, The Hidden Hand.’ So I came here and hid myself in this great city, where no one cares for anything but money and would make much of a rich man if he had claws, hoofs, horns and a tail all white as snow or black as ink.”

While he spoke I had watched his nails closely and curiously, and the pink spots had spread and spread, slowly but surely, until the normal, healthy color had come back to them. I told him, but he never looked at them. Instead, he got up, came over to me, took my two hands in his and said slowly and reverently: “Thank God and you, dear friend, I am cured!” His splendid eyes were filled with tears, and his exquisite voice was solemn and broken with emotion. My own eyes were rather misty, but then they were never much good; and, for a lawyer, I was quite moved. I gave him my friendship then and there, and I have never regretted it.

---

Two weeks later, starting from my own home, where Mrs. Abbott and Bently had been our most welcome guests, we all went to Laneville, where we met Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone, whom we had summoned back by cable. They made us but little trouble, being cowards as well as scoundrels. Mrs. Abbott, however—good, kindly, generous little soul—was so unfeignedly sorry for her unworthy brother that she wished to let him have the lion’s share of the big property; but we overruled the soft-hearted child-woman and made her take her full share. I had the pleasure, subsequently, of expressing to Mr. Johnstone exactly what I thought of him, and I had considerable difficulty in restraining the doctor from giving him a beating.

Not long after I began divorce proceedings for Mrs. Abbott, but her rascally husband saved her and me the annoyance of going into court by opportunely and thoughtfully dying.

My fee was the largest I have ever received from an individual client, and, in some extenuation for accepting such a small fortune, I would like to say that it was fairly forced on me by the grateful little creature I love as though she were my own child.

My wife promptly demanded, and got, her little commission of one-half, and said she was the best drummer of practice and big-paying clients that any lawyer ever had. She is, God bless her! And, by the way, we live in the Goldsborough house, and my dear lady spends a good part of her time on the piazza she bought with her half of my fee.

Oh, yes! I forgot to mention that Mrs. Abbott’s name is now Bently. They call her husband “the good physician” in our town, and his word is as good as any man’s bond. The doctor has lost interest in his hands, but his sweet and devoted little wife admires them extravagantly. They are still very handsome, but brown as berries, and his nails are as pink as yours or mine.

Organization and Education

BY WHARTON BARKER

THE cardinal tenets of the People’s Party were declared by the founders of the Republic, established by the War of the Revolution and guaranteed to our people by the Constitution of the United States. So, by proclaiming for rule of justice, liberty and equality of opportunity, not of greed, man was made the master and money the servant. Those who believe in government of, by and for the people, who believe that the people are fitted to govern themselves, capable of discerning that which is good for them and that which is not, must approve the contention the People’s Party makes; must oppose the aggression of concentrated capital; must see the need of immediate independent political action outside and apart from both Republican and Democratic Parties, both dominated by the money cliques.

The money oligarchy, now in control of all lines of finance, transportation, distribution and of most lines of production, works for the profit of the few to the great detriment of the many. These plutocrats control a slavish metropolitan press, in order that the masses of our people may be governed for the benefit of the few.

If this control is to stand, if millions of people are to slave for a few thousand, it is necessary that the many have no direct hand in their own government, that the many delegate to representatives their power, and that such representatives should be influenced so as to become the representatives of the few. The people must have only the semblance of power, the representatives the real power, in order that governing may be carried on for the advantage of the rulers, not of the ruled.

So we have nominating conventions run by political bosses, legislative bodies taking orders from agents of the money cliques, who purchase franchises for railway lines and for other public utilities; election laws that make independent voting almost impossible.

Until we have direct nominations the people will be the willing or unwilling tools of the men who dictate nominations, and they must make choice between the candidates set up for them. For years the Republican and Democratic politicians who run conventions have been the agents of the money oligarchy that deals in and fattens upon all kinds of public franchises. So the plutocrats make of our Government an instrument for the oppression of the many and the enrichment of the few. In order to promote the governing of our people by the few and for the few, promote legislation that will impoverish and weaken the many but aggrandize the few in riches and power, it is necessary that law-making should be intrusted to representatives; that these representatives should be put more and more out of touch with the people and more in touch with the few; that these representatives should be removed further and further from responsibility to the people; that their doings should be hidden and not subject to review.

So we have demands for extended terms of office; we have opposition to the election of President and senators by popular vote; we have opposition to the selection of Federal judges other than by appointment of the President and Senate; we have, above all, opposition to direct popular voting upon questions of public policy, upon granting public franchises.

The referendum is opposed because it would make all laws passed by legislative bodies subject to review and reversal by a high court, the court of the whole people entering verdict through the ballot-box. There is little outward opposition to the principle of direct legislation. There is much covert opposition from the money oligarchy and much plainer opposition born of ignorance from the body of the people.

Those who oppose direct legislation hold that the people are not fitted to govern themselves, that the few are fitted by divine law to rule, that the many are condemned to be ruled for the benefit of the few by a law equally divine. This is the law of kings; it is not the law of democracy. He who holds it is false to our theory of government, is no better than a monarchist.

Give us direct legislation, such as the initiative and referendum would establish, and there will be an end to sale of franchises by representatives and no laws will be enacted to rob the people of their rights and property. The place to begin with direct voting is in nomination of all candidates for public office—a People’s Party must abolish all delegate conventions for making nominations and platforms; must adopt direct voting for candidates and for declarations of principles; must have voting precinct clubs for party management. The district and subdivision plan of organization adopted by the Cincinnati convention of 1900 is the best plan of organization heretofore proposed, and it should be put into immediate operation unless a better plan can be proposed without delay, for it will insure rule of the people in party management and destroy the power of the political boss who goes into politics for profit.

If the People’s Party will at once declare for a rank-and-file plan of organization and management we will see a rush to arms in all states, for in all the rule of the boss, serving the money oligarchy, is most offensive. The time has come for such a People’s Party; there is no place for a People’s Party run on the lines of the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The day of the hero-led party has passed. The great majority Mr. Roosevelt received is no evidence to the contrary, for more than three million citizens out of seventeen million abstained from voting at the last election. Organization and education of the body of the people must come through voting precinct organizers and educators—of course the printed matter must for economy be prepared and sent out from central offices, from national headquarters, but no proper, no effective distribution of it can be made except by the precinct organizers.

If the people are to win a national victory there must be from three to five honest, able, aggressive, patriotic men in each of the one hundred thousand voting districts of the country working by day and by night. These men must awaken their immediate neighbors to a lively appreciation of the wrongs they suffer and point out the way to re-establishment of their rights, the way to restoration of justice, liberty and equality of opportunity. When such an army is in the field the people will defeat the money oligarchy, but not before.

At the election of 1904, I repeat, three million citizens refused to vote because they would not stultify themselves by voting for either Roosevelt or Parker, both candidates of the plutocrats. At least two million citizens voted for Roosevelt because they wished to destroy the Democratic Party, a party for years without fixed principles. These five million citizens, together with the eight hundred thousand citizens who voted for Debs, Watson and Swallow, represented the reform and dissatisfied vote of the country—five months since. The action of the Beef Trust, of the Railroad Combination and of allied interests, all in control of twenty men, and the now openly declared purpose of President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay to establish in foreign affairs an American-British alliance, alarm many millions of our citizens as they have not been alarmed before.

A new epoch in our country opens now, for people and plutocrats are in a death struggle. The principle the People’s Party stands for is that man is the master, money the servant. The question—is the People’s Party equal to the duty of the time?—must be answered at once. If it goes into the campaign immediately with a voting precinct organization such as was declared for by the Cincinnati convention of 1900, the answer will be affirmative.

The cardinal tenets of the party of the people are:

1. Brotherhood of man, love, justice, liberty and equality of opportunity.

2. Government by the people—the recognition of the right of the people to rule themselves by establishment of direct legislation, the initiative and the referendum.

3. Honest money—national money, not bank money—that will serve creditor and debtor alike; that will insure stability of prices, thus be an honest measure of value, and thereby encourage honest industry and discourage speculation.

4. Nationalization of railroads and other monopolies that must be public rather than private monopolies.

5. Prevention of overcapitalization of all corporations, of overcharge for services rendered the public by such corporations.

6. Abolition of industrial trusts, those that exist because of tariff protection and those that exist because of freight discriminations whether by rebates, special rates or otherwise.

7. Taxation that will tax every man according to his accumulated wealth—tax property, not man; collect state and municipal taxes by direct tax on the accumulated wealth of society assessed at actual cash value; collect national taxes by a direct tax on the earnings of accumulated wealth, whether large or small. Have only direct taxes, for indirect taxes cover injustice and extravagance.

8. Foreign policy that will keep our country out of all entangling alliances with European and Asiatic countries, and strengthen our economic relations with all American countries that have different soil, climate and products from those of the United States.

These are the demands of the People’s Party, the cardinal principles for which that party contends. They are all simple, easily understood, and must have approval of a great majority of the American people when brought to them for consideration by a party of the rank and file, controlled by the people themselves, not dictated to by the money oligarchy; by a party that stands for the interests of the many, not of the few. I close, as I began, by saying we need organization and education.

The Panic of 1893

BY W. S. MORGAN

Hon. Thomas E. Watson,
Thomson, Ga.

MY DEAR SIR—I have your letter containing communications from James R. Branch, Secretary of the American Bankers’ Association, New York City, and Jno. D. Reynolds, President of First National Bank, of Rome, Ga., in which they deny the authenticity of the Panic Bulletin published in my contribution to the March issue of your magazine.

I remember when the Bulletin was first made public I asked a friend, a president of the Citizens’ National Bank, of Fort Scott, Kan., a man with whom I was intimately connected in business for ten or twelve years, if such a circular had been issued. He replied that he had received a number of circulars covering the propositions therein contained, and that likely he had received that one. This incident, and the fact that the Bulletin had been published from time to time for years and I had not seen its authenticity questioned, and furthermore that its suggestions were in line with the events of that date, led me to believe that it was genuine.

However, the authenticity of the circular was not the subject matter of the article which provoked these denials. My indictment of the National Bankers was not merely for issuing the Bulletin, but for doing the things it suggested. Messrs. Branch and Reynolds have ignored the indictment and attacked the witness. But there are other witnesses that can’t be demolished.

After Mr. Cleveland had sent Henry Villard and Don M. Dickinson to Washington, in the winter of 1893, and failed to secure from the Fifty-second Congress the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law, the National Bankers began to show their hand.

It was seen that no ordinary pressure on Congress would secure the demonetization of silver. It was claimed that the Panic Bulletin was issued March 8, just four days after Cleveland’s second inauguration.

What was the program laid down in the Panic Bulletin?

1. The interests of the National Banks require immediate financial legislation.

2. Silver, silver certificates and Treasury notes must be retired and National Bank-notes, upon a gold basis, be made the only kind of paper money.

3. Bonds required to be issued as a basis for the bank-note circulation.

4. Pressure must be brought upon the people, especially in sections of the country where the free silver sentiment was strong. Circulation to be reduced, loans called in, credit refused and general distrust spread broadcast through the land.

5. Demand for an extra session of Congress to repeal the purchasing clause of the Sherman law.

This was the program laid down by the Bulletin. Did it agree with the action of the National Bankers? We shall see.

On the 11th of April, 1893, Grover Cleveland appointed Conrad C. Jordan to be Assistant Treasurer of the United States.

In this capacity Jordan had control of the Sub-Treasury at New York. The Sub-Treasury is the great business establishment of the Federal Government. It is one of the associated banks of New York City.

Jordan was a banker, the President of the Western National, of New York City, and was recommended for the position by the New York National Bank Presidents. He was the go-between—the link which connected the National Bankers with Cleveland and the Federal Government.

His nomination was confirmed on the 15th day of April, and on the 20th he was in Washington with his bond and conferring with Cleveland.

From that hour things moved with wonderful rapidity.

Jordan left Washington on the 21st, arrived in New York at 5.30 in the afternoon, went directly to the Chase National Bank, No. 15 Nassau Street, where he met Henry W. Cannon, President of the Chase National Bank, and J. Edward Simmons, President of the Fourth National, two of the most active and influential of those who controlled the associated banks and who constitute the “New York National Bank Ring.”

It must have been an important meeting, for that night Cannon left New York for Washington on a midnight train, arriving in Washington Saturday morning, April 22, and while there had interviews with Grover Cleveland. On the morning of April 22 Jordan was sworn into office, and his first act, official or semi-official, was to arrange for a meeting with certain National Bank Presidents in the afternoon.

I can give you the names of most of the National Bank Presidents who met Jordan that afternoon. The meeting was said to be informal, and its proceedings were carefully guarded. But it was of such importance that Jordan went to Washington on a late evening train to make a report of its proceedings.

It was generally believed at the time, and there is little doubt of its truth, that Jordan was simply given the office to mask his character as confidential agent between Grover Cleveland and the New York National Bank Presidents.

After a conference with Cleveland on Sunday morning, April 23, Jordan and Cannon returned to New York, arriving there late in the evening. Before leaving Washington Jordan wired certain National Bank Presidents to meet him at a private house uptown.

What happened at that meeting we can only surmise. I mention it to show the connection between the National Bank Presidents and Grover Cleveland.

The next morning, April 24, Jordan was at his desk. One of the first things he did was to notify the National Bank Presidents and officers of trusts and other companies to meet him that day at the Sub-Treasury. This also was a dark-lantern meeting, and no one would give out the proceedings. But what followed shortly afterward, and the action taken by those who attended that meeting, justifies the belief that that convention was called for the purpose of arranging a concerted attack upon the national industries, agriculture, commerce, property and social order of the American people—the assault to be directed by the New York National Bank Presidents—as the swiftest and surest means of forcing Congress to repeal the silver law—to give the country Cleveland’s “Object-Lesson.”

Nine National Bank Presidents met John G. Carlisle at the Williams House on April 27, presumably to complete the arrangements for the attack. No doubt Cleveland had approved the conclusions reached on the 24th, and sent Carlisle to sanction them.

Carlisle’s meeting with the Bank Presidents that day was, as you know, a subject of much newspaper comment. The meeting was said to have been one of “effusive cordiality,” and, in view of the events which quickly followed, there is little doubt but what it partook of the nature of “two hearts that beat as one.”

It was there that the National Bankers proposed an issue of bonds. But Carlisle, like a young girl, although keen to marry, intimated that it was “too sudden.”

This was the last of the series of meetings between the Government officials and the National Bank Presidents preceding the panic.

Everything was now ready to give the country the “Object-Lesson.”

Within the next forty-eight hours the worst financial calamity that ever befell the people was to break upon them.

At this time there was nothing in the industrial situation to precipitate a panic. Prices had been low for several years, and there was none of the spirit of speculation which usually precedes a panic.

Cleveland himself volunteered to say: “Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions relating to our natural resources, nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side.”

Thus the people and all those engaged in industrial and productive enterprises are exonerated.

Who are the guilty persons?

The men who did just what that Panic Bulletin describes.

The bankers who demanded the practical demonetization of silver; who demanded a special session of Congress to secure it; who called in their loans and reduced their circulation; who demanded and secured the issue of bonds, and who now demand the retirement of the greenbacks.

Messrs. Branch and Reynolds and other National Bank advocates may be able to repudiate the Panic Bulletin, but they cannot successfully deny that every feature of the program it contained was carried out in detail by the men who practically control the National Bank system.

Four days after the Williams House meeting at which Secretary Carlisle was present, the New York banks began to call in their loans with brutal vindictiveness.

We are not left to conjecture the effect of such a policy on the New York Exchange. By the 5th of May the strain had become intense. The New York Tribune of May 6, referring to the condition of the market, said: “The enormous losses of the last week, the utter demoralization of the buying power in the market and the practical paralysis of credit, promised a liquidation that, unless stayed, would have swept them all off their feet.”

On May 7 the same paper said: “The effort of the Administration to bring the South and West to a full realization of the inevitable consequences of compulsory purchases of silver bullion has brought distress and perhaps ruin to many innocent persons—but there is no reason to suppose that it will be relaxed.”

Within ten days from the time of the Williams House meeting between Cleveland’s Secretary of the Treasury and the National Bank Presidents the panic had spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and for forty days it continued with unabated fury. On the 9th of May several Western banks were forced to close their doors.

“There is no lack of pressure,” said the New York Tribune on the 22d of May.

On the 6th of June—six weeks after the Williams House meeting—the New York Sun, in its money article, said: “The Presidents of the New York National Banks think that the so-called “Object-Lesson” has been carried far enough. They see nothing to be gained by a further shrinkage of values and unsettling of credits.”

It is useless for me to detail the results of the panic.

From May 9 to 30, inclusive, sixty banks were forced to suspend, and fifty-eight of them were in the doomed section—the South, West and Northwest.

From the time of the Williams House meeting, April 27, to December 30, 1893, a period of eight months, more than fifteen thousand bankruptcies and suspensions had occurred. Over six hundred banks had been driven to the wall, and the loss to the country in round numbers was seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars.

But the National Bank Presidents had won their fight. They had carried out the program laid down in the Panic Bulletin, an extra session of Congress had been called and the purchasing clause repealed.

That the “Object-Lesson” was intended for the West and South is evidenced by the records. Out of 169 banks failing from March 5 to August 4, five only were in Eastern States, forty-eight in Southern and 151 in Western states—Dunn’s Report.

Dunn’s Report for July 21, 1893, says: “A large proportion of the suspended Colorado banks and mercantile institutions will pay in full and resume business, inability to borrow money on or sell ample collateral alone being the cause of the Denver banks closing their doors.”

No doubt the panic reached proportions not at first intended by the National Bank Presidents and threatened their own financial standing, as Mr. Branch suggests is the case in time of panics. But they had a remedy, no doubt decided upon beforehand. While they refused credit to the Southern and Western banks, they issued Clearing House certificates to the extent of $63,152,000 to themselves, an act which was in violation of the law.

There is so much evidence obtainable to the effect that the National Bankers are guilty of every count in the indictment contained in the Panic Bulletin that a book could be filled with it.

In a speech in the United States Senate August 25, 1893, Senator David B. Hill, referring to the bankers, said: “They inaugurated the policy of refusing loans to the people even upon the best security, and attempted in every way to spread disaster broadcast throughout the land. These disturbers—the promoters of public peril—represented largely the creditor class, the men who desire to appreciate the gold dollar in order to subserve their own selfish interests, men who revel in hard times, men who drive harsh bargains with their fellow-men regardless of financial distress. It is not strange that the present panic has been induced, intensified and protracted by reason of these malign influences. Having contributed much to bring about the present exigency, these men are now unable to control it. They have sown the wind, and we are now all reaping the whirlwind together” (Congressional Record, Vol. XXV, Part I, p. 865).

August 8, 1893, Senator Teller said, in a speech in the United States Senate:

“It is the height of folly that this is a panic caused by distrust of the currency.” On the 29th of the same month the Senator from Colorado, referring to the Williams House meeting of Secretary Carlisle with the New York National Bank Presidents, said: “It is a most remarkable interview; it will go far to support the charges which I am not going to make on my own authority, but which I am going to make upon the authority of others, that this panic is a bankers’ panic, brought by the action of the New York banks, and brought about for distinct purposes, which purposes were practically avowed on the 27th of April. The same things have been reiterated by the financial papers, and the policy is still continued up to the present hour. It had two objects in view. One was to secure from the United States a large issue of bonds, and the other to secure the repeal of the much-abused Sherman law.”

The records show that the bankers accomplished both of these objects. They secured the repeal of the purchasing clause, and afterward the issue of $262,000,000 in bonds.

In the same speech Senator Teller said: “There are many banks in the West, and some that I know of, which shut their doors because they could not draw the money that they had on deposit in New York” (Congressional Record, Vol. XXV, Part I, p. 1022).

In its issue of August 20, 1893, the Chicago Inter-Ocean said:

“When the future historian tells the world of the great financial panic of 1893, he will say: ‘In the winter and spring months of that year the New York bankers and financiers sowed the wind, and in the summer months reaped the whirlwind.’

“We know of no arrangement of words that can more graphically describe the action of the New York financiers and the results of that action. Colonel Ingersoll, early in the season of disturbance, properly called this a ‘bankers’ panic.’ Nor are the New York bankers alone to blame. Those of Boston and Philadelphia come in for their share.”

But it is useless for me to continue to pile up testimony to further sustain my contention. Whether the Panic Bulletin is a “canard” or not, its suggestions were carried into effect. The bankers opposed silver, and, for the purpose of having the law providing for its issue repealed, they precipitated the panic and used the methods described in the Bulletin to accomplish their ends. They are opposed to greenbacks, and if necessary will, I have no doubt, precipitate another panic in order to have them retired. And it all goes to show that the control of the currency should be taken out of their hands.

W. S. Morgan.

Hardy, Ark.

The Cradle of Tears

BY THEODORE DREISER
Author of “Sister Carrie”

THERE is a cradle within the door of one of the great institutions of New York before which a constantly recurring tragedy is being enacted. It is a plain cradle, quite simply draped in white, but with such a look of cozy comfort about it that one would scarcely suspect it to be a cradle of sorrow.

A little white bed with a neatly turned-back coverlet is made up within it. A long strip of white muslin, tied in a tasteful bow at the top, drapes its rounded sides. About it, but within the precincts of warmth and comfort, of which it is a fort, spreads a chamber of silence—a quiet, solemn, plainly furnished room, the appearance of which emphasizes the peculiarity of the cradle itself.

If the mind were not familiar with the details with which it is so startlingly associated, the question would naturally arise as to what it was doing there—why it should be standing there alone. No one seems to be watching it. It has not the slightest appearance of usefulness, and yet there it stands, day after day, and year after year—a ready prepared cradle and no infant to live in it.

And yet this cradle is the most useful and, in a way, the most inhabited cradle in the world. Day after day, and year after year, it is the recipient of more small wayfaring souls than any other cradle in the world. In it the real children of sorrow are placed, and over it more tears are shed than if it were an open grave.

It is the place where annually 1,200 foundlings are placed, many of them by mothers who are too helpless or too unfortunately environed to be further able to care for their child, and the misery which compels it makes of the little open crib a cradle of tears.

The interest of this particular cradle is, that it has been the silent witness of more truly heartbreaking scenes than any other cradle since the world began. For nearly thirty-five years it has stood where it does today, ready-draped, open, while as many thousand mothers have stolen shamefacedly in and, after looking hopelessly about, have laid their helpless offspring within its depths.

For thirty-five years, winter and summer, in the bitterest cold and the most stifling heat, it has seen them come—the poor, the rich; the humble, the proud; the beautiful, the homely—and one by one they have laid their children down and brooded over them, wondering whether it were possible for human love to make so great a sacrifice and yet not die.

And then when the child has been actually sacrificed, when by the simple act of releasing their hold upon it and turning away they have actually allowed it to pass out from their love and tenderness into the world unknown, this silent cradle has seen them smite their hands in anguish and yield to such voiceless tempests of grief as only those know who have loved much and lost all.

The circumstances under which this peculiar charity comes to be a part of the life of the great metropolis need not be rehearsed here. The heartlessness of men, the frailty of women, the brutality of all those who sit in judgment in spite of the fact that they do not wish to be judged themselves, is so old and so commonplace that its repetition is almost a weariness.

Still the tragedy repeats itself, and year after year, and day after day the unlocked door is opened and dethroned virtue enters—the victim of ignorance and passion and affection, and a child is robbed of an honorable home.

The Racing Trust

BY THOMAS B. FIELDERS

THE only Trust that has the sincere and earnest and unfaltering support of the daily press is the most audacious, the most grasping, the most immoral of all trusts. This is the Racing Trust. There are hundreds of trusts in this country. All corporations that have eliminated or lessened competition to a marked degree are called trusts. It is asserted, commonly, that such combinations are against the laws of the states that form the Union and are in opposition to the Federal Constitution. If the Beef Trust or the Sugar Trust or the Standard Oil Trust have advocates among the daily newspapers of the country, these advocates are not earning their salt, to say nothing of their salaries. The only support they have the courage to give is silence. Yet it has to be proven that these trusts have infringed the law.

In the case of the Racing Trust there is no doubt. There is none to deny that it is an absolute monopoly. It conducts business in open defiance of the law and the Constitution. It has the avarice of a miser, and the impudent shamelessness of a courtezan. All who will help to fill its maw are received with open arms. Lacking morals, it expects none of its patrons. Within its portals the scum of humanity is made as welcome as the cream. It has its rules, but these are without and beyond the law, though, curiously, they are enforced by so-called guardians of the law. The Beef Trust, by its rapacious methods, may make vegetarians; the Racing Trust makes outcasts, who, sometimes, rise to the dignity of convicts. The Beef Trust shuns advertisement; the Racing Trust welcomes it. Any reputable undertaking must pay heavily for the support of the press; the Racing Trust gets such support in columns per day for a ridiculously small subvention. The press poses as a teacher of morality. In the case of the Racing Trust it plays the part of a panderer without getting the price insisted upon by that unutterable in any other walk of life.

Americans believe that they possess a quality of humor that is far superior to that which bears the hall-mark of any other nationality. ’Tis a comfortable belief, for it enables them to live cheerfully under conditions which would not be tolerated elsewhere. There are several kinds of humorists among us, and of these the men who make inadequate laws, or laws which they know will be broken, and the men who break them and go unpunished are worthy of more and of a different sort of attention than they receive. People growl at the Beef Trust on account of the high prices of beef, though Mr. Garfield, who was instructed by the President to investigate that Trust, has said that its profits are only moderate.

What of the profits of the Racing Trust? Monte Carlo is described invariably as the most delectable gold mine in the world. In ordinary gold mines the vein may be “pinched out”; in Monte Carlo it runs on forever. Games made by gamblers for gamblers are called games of chance. There is little humor in your gambler, else he would recognize the absence of chance. Many thousands have tried to “break the bank” at Monte Carlo. Nobody has succeeded, for while play is conducted there honestly, the games are of the “sure thing” variety, as the percentage is always in favor of the bank. But the shareholders of the Casino at Monte Carlo are satisfied with twenty per cent. per annum on their investment and, sometimes, get less. And let it be remembered that in conducting their business they do not break the law.

The Racing Trust would scorn to accept anything so paltry as twenty per cent. on its investment, yet it is a law-breaker for seven months of the year, on six days of the week, and in the course of time, doubtless, will break it on the seventh day of the week also.

Laws against gambling have existed from time beyond count, just as they have existed against murder and other crimes against public welfare. The Constitution of the state of New York prohibited all kinds of gambling until 1887. In that year the Legislature passed the “Ives Pool bill.” Ives was a member of the Legislature from this city. Except that he piloted this particular bill through a legislature which was paid to adopt it, his name would have been forgotten. The bill called by his name suspended the provisions of the Penal Code relating to gambling at race-tracks. It limited racing between May 15 and October 15. It limited racing upon any track to thirty days. It permitted bookmaking upon the tracks. In return for enormous privileges the racing associations were to pay to the state five per cent. of their gross receipts. The law confined gambling to the tracks, and in order to take full advantage of it, and also, of course, to improve the breed of racing stock, philanthropists of the convict stripe opened tracks where racing was conducted at night as well as by day, in winter as well as in summer. The manner in which racing was conducted became a public scandal. The horse was the principal factor, and, generally, was used as a means to an end. There were, of course, owners and trainers and jockeys who were honest, even under the Ives Pool law, but these were very much in a minority. The “sport” reeked with dishonesty. Horses were “pulled,” trainers and jockeys were “stiffened.” Some of the racing officials not only winked at “crookedness,” but took part in it. Unless the starter of those days had a piece of every “good thing,” it did not “come off” if he could prevent it. None talked of the improvement “of the breed” except with tongue in cheek. “Jobs” were discussed, after the event, as if they had been meritorious performances. When these were the work of trainers and jockeys the bookmakers were derided; when they were planned and realized by bookmakers the latter were cursed. There was much cursing in those days, as there was much reason for it, but the profanity was not due to the failure of honest, but dishonest effort. Women as well as men were allowed to bet, and the race-tracks were hotbeds of debauchery. The great body of those who were interested in racing was beyond the pale. The refuse of the country camped in New York while the orgy lasted, and so obnoxious did these bandits make themselves that an organized effort was made to induce the constitutional convention which met in 1895 to cleanse the state of the filth which was bred by the Ives Pool law.

This convention appointed a committee, whose duty it was to prepare an address to the people of the state. The address dealt with the work of the convention. The committee called attention to the anti-gambling amendment adopted by the convention in the following language: “The passion for gambling to which the system of lotteries formerly ministered has found fresh opportunity under the so-called Ives Pool bill, and, under color and pretext of betting upon horse races, is working widespread demoralization and ruin among the young and weak throughout the community. We have extended the prohibition against lotteries so as to include pool-selling, bookmaking and other forms of gambling. It is claimed that this provision will array in opposition to the proposed Constitution a great and unscrupulous money power; but we appeal to the virtue and sound judgment of the people to sustain the position which we have taken.”

This address was signed by Messrs. Joseph H. Choate (Ambassador to England), Elihu Root, H. T. Cookinham, Elon R. Brown, Chester B. McLaughlin, Milo M. Acker, Daniel H. McMillan and M. H. Hirschberg.

The anti-gambling amendment, which was adopted by the convention with only four dissenting votes, was as follows:

“The delegates of the People of the state of New York, in convention assembled, do propose as follows:

“Section 10 of Article I of the Constitution is hereby amended so as to read: ‘No law shall be passed abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government or any department thereof; nor shall any divorce be granted otherwise than by judicial proceedings; nor shall any lottery or the sale of lottery tickets, pool-selling, bookmaking or any kind of gambling hereafter be authorized or allowed within this state, and the Legislature shall pass appropriate laws to prevent offenses against any of the provisions of this section.’”

The “great and unscrupulous money power” to which Mr. Choate and his associates alluded was that of the racing associations. Their power was felt in the convention, and some of those who discussed the amendment prior to its adoption claimed that it was offered at the suggestion of one set of gamblers (poolroom keepers) against another set of gamblers (the racing associations). This was true enough. The racing associations were as grasping then as they are now. Their members claimed that the poolroom was a nefarious and demoralizing influence. Why? Because it prevented the racing associations from having a monopoly of the petty as well as the big gamblers’ money—of the cash of those who had not time to go to the races as well as of those who were unable to go. The engines of the law were stoked up and run full tilt against the poolrooms at the behest of the racing associations; therefore, in self-defense, the poolroom keepers were anxious that all gamblers should be placed on the same level; hence the anti-gambling amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Telusky, who offered the amendment as a resolution, said that if any member of the convention “can name one man in the state of New York that is in the bookmaking business that is not a thief, a blackguard or an ex-convict, I will withdraw my resolution. I say, Mr. President, every bookmaker in the state of New York, no matter where he comes from, is nothing but an ex-convict, a cracksman, a pickpocket, a thief of the lowest character, and these men come here and desire to shut this (amendment) out because the Legislature of a few years ago legalized a certain kind of gambling, and they are trying to protect them.”

Mr. Edward Lauterbach paid his compliments to the racing associations in plain language. “Their nefarious establishments,” he said, “have been erected from Montauk Point to Niagara Falls, and the state treasury has received and distributed to the county fairs a few miserable shekels, which it has reserved as its share of the plunder. Why, for every dollar that the state has received, it has expended ten dollars to support those who have become inmates of its prisons by reason of the weak policy so pursued. You are all familiar with the terrible temptation of this alluring vice. The passion of gambling is pandered to in this fashion in the most insidious manner. Exaggerated accounts of great winnings are presented to the readers of every journal. Tens of thousands of young men and women have been hurled to their ruin through the instrumentality of the state that should have protected them. Gambling has already been made unlawful. If anyone desires to legalize any one branch of gambling by the suggestion of proposed amendment (to the anti-gambling amendment), let us say to him, Never. Let us pass this amendment, so that, once enacted into a law, it may carry out its beneficent purpose and not prove a sham and a deceit. Just as it was as reported let us have this amendment—no subterfuge, no change, no alterations; make no halfway work. Sweep the whole brood together—gamblers, pool-sellers, bookmakers, all the racing fraternity—into oblivion forever. Pass this amendment now, as it is, unaltered and unchanged. True horse fanciers—the Bonners, the Lorillards, the Belmonts, the Keenes and the rest—will thank you for the protection you thus afford to their legitimate pursuit. Only the gambler, who should be a pariah and an outcast, and not the state’s associate, will have cause for regret.”

It was said at the time that the racing associations and the bookmakers had collected a fund of $700,000, and intended to use it in buying enough votes in the convention to defeat the anti-gambling amendment. Who said it? The newspapers. True? Not at all likely. The racing associations were able to raise such a fund, but would have got little assistance from the bookmakers. The latter were an asset of the racing associations and knew it; they must be taken care of. ’Twas said, when Mr. Jerome was at Albany championing the Dowling bill, that the gamblers of New York had contributed $100,000 for the purchase of the Black Horse Cavalry in the Legislature. The press gave Troy as the headquarters of the gamblers’ committee. There was no such committee. The gamblers of New York, including Canfield, who had more at stake than any other gambler, did not contribute a dollar for the purpose of killing the Dowling bill. The latter was passed with surprising ease in Assembly and Senate, and had become a law before the “clever division” had begun to think of the possibility of such a result. This law, in the hands of Mr. Jerome, has proved rather embarrassing to the gambling fraternity, and may give him an opportunity of distinguishing himself in a manner after his own heart before many weeks have passed.

The anti-gambling amendment to the Constitution was ratified by a popular majority of nearly 90,000 votes. Some of the voters believed, doubtless, that it would eliminate betting on race-tracks. These forgot that the amendment was of little worth unless the Legislature made such gambling an offense and also made a punishment to fit the offense. The Legislature which followed the adoption of the Constitution was “open to reason.” How much money was required to salve its conscience I do not know, but the manner in which it replied to the demand of the popular vote shows that it was dishonest. By the anti-gambling clause of the Constitution it was ordered to “pass appropriate laws to prevent offenses against any of the provisions of this section.” Instead of obeying such mandate it adopted the Percy-Gray law, which makes gambling in poolrooms a felony and gambling on race-tracks a misdemeanor. In other words, if the keeper of a poolroom takes a bet on a horse race he commits a felony and can be sent to jail, for according to the law he has committed a penal offense, whereas if a bookmaker accepts your money on the same race he does not commit a felony and you are at liberty to publish yourself as a poor sort of creature by attempting to recover your money by civil action. Class legislation? It looks like it. But class legislation is unconstitutional. That is the general opinion, but in this particular case many thousands of dollars have been spent in an effort to discover whether or not the present racing law is unconstitutional, and the dollars have been thrown away.

The situation would be amusing did it not demonstrate the power of money. To the average mind it would seem as if the constitutional convention had barred all kinds of gambling, particularly gambling on race-tracks. Yet, under the fostering care of the Racing Trust, the volume of gambling at race-tracks is at least thrice as great today as it was in 1895. Before the convention met the Racing Trust was permitted to do business for five months in the year; now it does business for seven months. Under the Ives Pool law, which was wiped out as vicious, the tracks were limited to thirty days of racing; now the Jockey Club does as it pleases in the matter of dates. Under a law which is, upon its face, unconstitutional because it discriminates, the Racing Commission, a state institution, has the power to issue or refuse licenses. The Racing Commission is under the control of the Jockey Club, and the latter is the ruler of the racing associations. The Jockey Club, of which Mr. August Belmont is the head, is lord of all it surveys in the metropolitan circuit, to say nothing of the Bennings race-track, in which a majority of the stock is owned by Mr. Belmont. Racing began at Bennings on March 23, and its dates are not included in the seven months of racing in the metropolitan circuit.

In this circuit there are seven tracks, not counting the Buffalo track, which is controlled by the Racing Trust. The track at Morris Park, the most picturesque race-course in the United States, has been relegated to obscurity, as it was not owned by the Racing Trust, but was leased at an annual rental of $45,000. Belmont Park, which is owned by Mr. August Belmont, the head of the Racing Trust, has taken its place. The associations which are controlled by the Racing Trust are capitalized as follows:

Westchester Racing Association (Belmont Park)	$1,500,000
Queens County Jockey Club (Aqueduct)	700,000
Metropolitan jockey Club (Jamaica)	550,000
Coney Island Jockey Club (Sheepshead Bay)	525,000
Brooklyn Jockey Club (Gravesend)	500,000
Brighton Beach Racing Association	300,000
Buffalo Racing Association	200,000
Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses	50,000
Total	$4,325,000

These figures were obtained from the Secretary of State, the Hon. John F. O’Brien. In any calculations that may be made the capitalization of Belmont Park should be eliminated and the rental of Morris Park, $45,000, substituted for $1,500,000, in order to show how thriving a concern the Racing Trust is. It will be understood, of course, that the capitalization of these concerns may be a trifle, just a trifle, higher than the actual value of the said tracks and appurtenances, except in the case of the Saratoga track, which was built solely “for the improvement of the breed of horses.”

For the right to do business on these tracks the Racing Trust pays, or is supposed to pay, to the state five per cent. upon the gross earnings of said tracks. Among the duties of the Racing Commission is the supervision of these receipts. The commission consists of Messrs. August Belmont, John Sanford and E. D. Morgan. Mr. Belmont is the president of the Westchester Racing Association (Belmont Park), and the largest owner of stock in the Racing Trust. Mr. Sanford is the power at Saratoga, and does not race until the season opens at the Spa. Attached to the Racing Commission is a State Inspector of Races. Until he was appointed to a position in the Internal Revenue Department the place was filled by Charles W. Anderson, a colored man. Reports of gross receipts are made to the State Comptroller by the racing associations and by the State Inspector of Races. It is not impossible that the latter official takes such figures as are offered to him, and it is difficult to imagine that he ever objected to them on the score of inaccuracy or any other score.

The reports of gross receipts made by the members of the Racing Trust to the State Comptroller for the years 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1904 are as follows (the figures were obtained from the State Comptroller, the Hon. Otto Kelsey):

	1900.	1901.	1902.	1903.	1904.
Coney Island Jockey Club	$494,895.06	$640,327.97	$820,184.18	$903,128.84	$854,421.20
Brooklyn Jockey Club	474,887.88	593,472.72	761,394.65	790,054.07	731,559.26
Brighton Beach	307,311.30	407,611.75	502,940.25	559,348.00	626,837.10
Westchester	323,041.23	432,187.86	571,178.79	623,131.27	566,143.62
Saratoga	137,248.21	272,612.24	359,342.40	439,649.49	393,550.09
Metropolitan				355,270.70	307,396.03
Queens	164,555.14	225,417.69	324,177.82	282,900.88	218,729.16
Buffalo			62,519.80	60,857.63	106,489.05
Totals	$1,901,938.82	$2,571,630.23	$3,401,737.89	$4,014,340.88	$3,805,125.51

The reader will notice the exactness with which the racing associations make up their gross receipts—the “twenty cents” of the Coney Island Jockey Club, the “nine cents” of the Saratoga “Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses,” and so on. The reader will notice, also, that the gross receipts for last year were $209,215.37 less than those of 1903, though the press was unanimous in declaring that last year’s racing was the greatest, which means the most profitable of all years. The five per cent. paid to the state last year by the Racing Trust amounted to $190,256.27. This five per cent. is “the penny in the dollar” alluded to by Mr. Edward Lauterbach in his address to the constitutional convention. But ridiculously small as it is, why does the Racing Trust give it to the state? Simply as a sop to the rural legislator and his constituents. The dweller in cities may lack some or many of the virtues, but when it is necessary to find the highest plane of parsimonious hypocrisy one must needs pay a visit to the rural districts. This five per cent., which smacks so much of Iscariot’s thirty pieces of silver, is divided among such agricultural societies as give annual fairs, and to farmers’ institutes. Ostensibly it is intended for the improvement of agriculture; in reality much of it is given as purses for trotting races at the said county fairs. Without the support of the rural element the Racing Trust would not have succeeded in getting the adoption of the Percy-Gray racing law.

The profits of the Racing Trust are enormous. Take the Coney Island Jockey Club, for instance. Mr. Leonard Jerome, who was a sportsman who never made money out of sport, built the Sheepshead Bay track at a cost of $125,000. The grounds of the Coney Island Jockey Club belong to the people and were filched from them by an act of the Legislature. Improvements were made since the track was built, but the actual legal belongings of the Coney Island Jockey Club are worth far less than the amount of the capital stock, which is $525,000. The gross receipts of the club for last year, as reported to the State Comptroller, were $854,421.20. Of what did these consist? It was said that the attendance on “big days” last year numbered from 40,000 to 50,000. Put it at 35,000, and the money taken in for admission, boxes and clubhouse seats and boxes and for “field” admissions would amount to about $80,000. Then there are the bookmakers. On more than one day last year there were 120 members of the Metropolitan Turf Association in the ring. They paid $57 each for the privilege of “laying the odds.” Back of them were a hundred layers who paid $37 each. There were fifty others who paid $27, and as many more who paid $17 each. Programs to the number of 40,000 at ten cents each make $400. Then there are the bar and restaurant privileges, the commissioners and many other means of income, so that the income of one such day could not be less than $100,000.

There were thirty days of racing at Sheepshead Bay last year. The attendance, according to the daily press, was “enormous,” “record-breaking,” “large” or “highly satisfactory.” The “highly satisfactory” days were the smallest of the season, which shows the difference between English as it is understood by “sporting” writers in the daily press and those who are able to distinguish the difference between fact and fancy. If the average daily attendance were not more than 12,500, it and the other sources of revenue would mean about $35,000 per day.

Thirty days’ racing at $35,000 per day	$1,050,000
Expenses of all kinds at $10,000 per day	300,000
Balance in favor of the club	$750,000

The sum of $10,000 per day will cover all the expenses, including added money, at Sheepshead Bay. According to such calculation and taking the club’s figures of gross receipts as correct, the result would be like this:

Receipts for thirty days’ racing	$854,421.20
Expenses for thirty days’ racing at $10,000 per day	300,000.00
Balance in favor of the club	$554,421.20

These figures show that the profits of the Coney Island Jockey Club for thirty days of racing are more than the full amount of its capital stock. Some years ago, when racing was conducted on a smaller scale, this stock paid 56 per cent. per annum. Unless a lot of money is packed away in a reserve fund, the stock should pay dollar for dollar now, and the state still gets the “penny in the dollar.”

Much of the income was contributed by the chief factors at a race-course—the men who own and race horses; and one of the most interesting features of a race meeting, to members of the Racing Trust, is the fact that the men who own the horses are racing for money contributed, in great part, by themselves. The money added by the racing associations is often less than the amounts furnished by owners of horses that have been entered for a race. Much stress is laid upon the fact that $2,601,160 was won in purses last year on the tracks of the metropolitan circuit and Bennings. This amount, large as it may seem, was so distributed that very few owners paid much more than expenses, while a far larger number lost much money. Four hundred and thirty-eight stables or owners were among the winners, and a glance at the following table will show that the losers were in a large majority.

OWNERS AND WINNINGS

Herman B. Duryea	$200,043
James R. Keene	164,940
E. R. Thomas	151,210
Sydney Paget	133,441
Newton Bennington	104,210
John A. Drake	99,480
S. S. Brown	82,472
R. T. Wilson, Jr.	69,115
John E. Madden	55,830
Goughacres Stable	50,084
Thomas Hitchcock, Jr.	44,540
W. B. Jennings	34,605
M. L. Hayman	34,330
John Sanford	33,435
W. B. Leeds	32,320
L. V. Bell	31,520
J. W. Colt	23,130
Waldeck Stable	23,050
M. Corbett	22,445
J. L. McGinnis	21,400
Andrew Miller	20,155
Frank Farrell	19,980
W. C. Daly	18,495
“Mr. Cotton”	18,135
“Mr. Chamblet”	17,605
P. Lorillard	17,290
J. E. Widener	16,970
C. F. Fox	16,810
A. L. Aste	16,705
S. Deimel	16,605
J. McLaughlin	16,490
E. W. Jewett	16,165
August Belmont	15,745
Columbia Stable	15,317
W. Lakeland	15,220
Boston Stable	14,765
H. T. Griffin	14,555
F. R. Hitchcock	14,405
J. G. Greener	14,200
Albemarle Stable	12,895
T. L. Watt	12,755
E. E. Smathers	12,695
N. Dyment	11,900
U. Z. De Arman	11,080
Oneck Stable	10,600
John J. Ryan	10,515
W. M. Sheftel	10,515
W. L. Oliver	10,425
P. J. Dwyer	10,382
Joseph E. Seagram	9,305
Mrs. J. Blute	9,305
David Gideon (9 horses)	9,230
H. C. Schulz	8,910
W. F. Fanshawe	8,775
J. L. Holland	8,765
C. E. Rowe	8,475
F. R. Docter	8,440
J. W. Schorr	8,295
R. H. McCarter Potter	8,060
National Stable	7,805
J. C. Yeager	7,720
H. J. Morris	7,600
Fairview	7,405
T. D. Sullivan	7,335
Frederick Johnson	7,260
Chelsea Stable	7,090

In addition to the foregoing, 155 stables won between $1,000 and $7,000 each. Some of these stables had as many as a dozen starters who “figured in the money.” Stables or owners to the number of 217 won between $100 and $1,000 each. Of this number fifty-four were in the $100 class. The average winnings for the 438 stables were $5,938, which sum tells a doleful tale for a majority of them, as the expenses of one thoroughbred and its owner for a year cannot well be squeezed into $5,938, unless the horse’s diet is restricted to hay and the owner lives at a Mills hotel. Mr. Keene’s winnings were $164,940. That amount about paid his racing expenses for the year.

All of which, I think, goes to prove that the Racing Trust is more anxious to make and increase enormous profits than to improve the breed of horses. And everybody is aware that such enormous profits are made only by violation of the Constitution of the state, and that, while gambling in poolrooms and elsewhere has been made difficult and dangerous, no effort has been made by the authorities to interfere with it on the tracks of the Racing Trust.

Dependence

NOT that there are not “other eyes In Spain” as bright as yours can be, But that no eyes in all the world Can ever seem as bright to me.

Not that there are not lips as sweet Kissed daily by each separate wind, But that no other lips to me Can seem so sweet, can be so kind.

Sweetheart, I own myself your slave Because you own yourself my thrall; I—with so little, dear, to give; You—who so gladly give me all.

Reginald Wright Kauffman.

What Buzz-Saw Morgan Thinks

BY W. S. MORGAN

PATERNALISM is preferable to infernalism.

When the gentleman with the cloven hoof collects what is coming to him there won’t be many bag barons left.

The Beef Trust does business on a sliding scale; the price they pay slides down, and the price they sell at slides up.

A pauper lives off the public, and so do those who make their money through special privileges granted them by law.

As Bryan is losing prestige with the people he is becoming more popular with the plutocrats.

The United States Senate should be rechristened and called the Corporations’ Cuckoo’s nest.

The way to make the cuss-toady-ans of public interests more amenable to our will is to have ready an Imperative Mandate lariat.

Yes, the trusts are in the people’s pasture, and they got in over Republican and Democratic fences.

It is better that a whole lot of business shall be “hurted” than that the trusts should continue to rob the people and be a standing menace to free government.

The Governor of Kansas is right; building a state refinery is not Socialism; it is competition, just what the Populists stand for.

The trusts also have “big sticks.”

The Standard Oil Company has outlawed itself and ought to be “swatted” off the face of the earth.

The bandit bag barons are going to have some hard sledding from now on.

If the concentration of wealth means the destruction of the republic, then the people have a right to stop the concentration of wealth.

The fact that the trusts are now in control of the railroads is another reason why the Government should own them.

An economic principle that does not rest upon a moral basis should receive no support from honest men.

Every applicant for a special legalized privilege is an enemy to good government.

It is the men who are always hammering at the doors of legislation for special privileges that want “something for nothing.”

The greatest power in the world is that which controls the volume of money, and the Republicans are talking about turning that power over to a few private buccaneers.

When the very rich men are called by their right names there will not be such a scramble to get rich.

It is to be hoped that in this fight with the trusts and railroad corporations that “big stick” of Teddy’s will not prove to be a stuffed club.

If Uncle Sam wants to mix his credit with anybody’s let him mix it with that of the farmers. Their security is better than bonds.

More that half of the men in the United States Senate wear corporation collars.

If all the big thieves were sentenced to jail we should have to turn the little thieves out in order to make room for them.

I challenge anyone to point out a single instance in this country where the national bankers have made a recommendation in the interests of the people. It is always a jug-handled proposition in their favor.

One of the biggest pieces of foolishness in this old world of ours is for Uncle Sam to make free money for the bankers to loan, and then borrow that same money for his own use.

Unless there is some change made in the manner of selecting United States senators, that body of corporation attorneys would better be abolished.

So insignificant was the last Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party that a great many voters have already forgotten his name.

The country is now ready for the election of United States senators by the people instead of the corporations, but that body of august lawmakers will block every effort in that direction.

If there is no other way to prevent corporations from violating the law they should be denied its protection, just like other outlaws. A dose of that kind of medicine would soon bring them to their milk.

The decision of the North Sea Commission seems to be based upon the principle (if it has a principle) that a naval commander has a right to fire at anything that frightens him.

If the packers didn’t steal their immense fortunes from the people, whom did they steal them from?

A “reasonable rate,” as interpreted by the railroad companies, is all the honey except barely enough to keep the bees from starving to death.

There has already been a good deal of water squeezed out of Standard Oil stock; now, if some process can be brought forward that will squeeze the water out of the oil the company sells, it will be better yet.

The great trusts have shown that they have no regard for “vested rights.” They have “frozen out” the smaller concerns without mercy. Why, then, should they object to a little of the “freezing” process, if the Government or states decide to go into the oil business on their own account?

If the Socialists insist on turning the world over at one flip, like turning a pancake, before they can start the show, they are following a mighty cold trail. If they are willing to go by the usual road of evolution there is no reason why they and the Populists should not work together, for awhile at least.

The man who is wholly controlled by sentiment is not fit to vote. Voting is a business proposition and demands both intelligence and good judgment.

It seems to be the policy of lawmakers in this country to grant special privileges to the rich and powerful, and to permit them to impose upon the weak, and this condition will remain just so long as men will submit to being robbed.

The men who prate most about “vested rights” and “law and order” are the ones who violate them most.

When the Government thought the express companies were charging the people too much for the transmission of money it went into the money-order business itself. What was the result? Why, the express companies had to come to the rate established by the Government or get none of the business. It was purely a matter of business, and that’s the way to do it.

It was the “battle-scared” bag barons that discredited government paper money during the Civil War between the states. Yet it is from these men that we hear most about “national honor” and “public credit.” They are the same class of men of whom honest old Abe Lincoln said: “They ought to be hanged”; and the country would have fared better ever since if they had been.

Nearly every civilized nation in the world owns all or a part of its system of railroad and telegraph lines, and they have no disposition to turn them over to private corporations. The United States alone permits a few wealthy buccaneers to levy taxes on the people which no government would dare do. An increase of three cents per bushel on corn alone means a tax of fifty millions of dollars to the men who produce that cereal.

Until recently the national bankers paid the Government one per cent. on the money the Government loaned them. Then they claimed that it was too much to pay for the use of the money and the credit of the Government, and Congress reduced the rate to one-half of one per cent. But the banker has no conscientious scruples about loaning this money to the people at eight and ten per cent.

The railroad companies admit that they violate the law by granting rebates, but set up the claim that if they did not do it they would lose their share of the traffic. It is a very singular plea. It is not half as just as the one that a man steals because he is hungry, or because his wife and children are suffering for the necessaries of life. “We violate the law because somebody else does,” say the railroad companies. Suppose that every criminal would set up the same excuse for the commission of crime. And ordinary criminals have a better right to make that plea in palliation for their crime than the trusts and corporations have. If, as they admit, the railroad managers are so dishonest that one must violate the law because another does, if there is no way to restrain them except to turn the whole matter over to them, and permit them to pool their earnings so that one thief can watch the other thieves, it is about time to abolish the whole system of private ownership and for the Government to take charge of the lines of transportation. The railroad companies make out the worst kind of a case against themselves. They admit that there are enough law-breakers among them to demoralize the whole system.

The public has heard a good deal about legislation that would discourage capital from being invested in the state enacting the legislation. It has been said that the passage of laws calculated to regulate the business of large corporations would have the effect of driving them away. Kansas just now is giving us an object-lesson along this line. The laws recently passed by the Legislature in that state are perhaps the most drastic in their nature ever passed by any state for the control and regulation of corporations, yet the prospect is that more capital will go to that state than ever before. Although the state is now engaged in building an oil refinery, there are several other independent refineries projected, with a good prospect for more to come. It is evident that capital has not as much to fear from the people, when it is legitimately invested and operated, as it has from the arrogant aggressions of such enormous concerns as the Standard Oil Company that will brook no competition. If capital will be satisfied with a fair profit it has nothing to fear from the people, while, on the other hand, independent concerns that operate legitimately in any line of business have much to fear from the great trusts that have been built up through favors granted them by railroads and municipalities.

Flying the Kite

HUDSON—Do you think they will be able to get along on $10,000 a year?

Budson—They ought to. With that much money they should manage to run in debt for another ten thousand.

---

The rich man may defy the laws of the land and keep out of prison, but when he gets dyspepsia from eating things out of season he realizes that he can’t defy the laws of nature.

The Heritage of Maxwell Fair

BY VINCENT HARPER
Author of “A Mortgage on the Brain”