“To sum up the case: Congressman Baldwin’s railway takes a life worth fifteen hundred dollars a year to the victim’s family, and offers that family one hundred and five dollars a year in full settlement. And yet Congressman Baldwin says that human life is cheap,—in the South. Under Massachusetts law a railway company cannot be obliged to pay more than five thousand dollars for taking a human life, while under a just law, like that of New York, a railroad corporation has been compelled to pay one hundred thousand dollars for a human life, lost through its negligence. A jury awarded that sum against the New York Central for a victim of the Park Avenue tunnel disaster of 1902.
“Congressman Baldwin is the political boss of his state, and responsible for that law which says to all the world that Massachusetts has no man whose life is worth more than five thousand dollars. Yet South Carolina once had slaves whose masters would not part with them for that sum. The explanation is simple. Baldwin has millions in railroads.
“One more item and we are done. Baldwin and other Massachusetts statesmen declaim loudly against negro disfranchisement in the South: ‘Consistency is a jewel.’ Baldwin’s own mill-hands cannot vote on town-appropriations. Under the Massachusetts law they must stay in the mills and add to the Baldwin millions, while he ‘runs the town.’ Southerners say the black man is not fit to run the State. Baldwin of Massachusetts says his white mill-hands are not fit to run the Town. And he has Massachusetts law with him. ‘People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.’�
For weeks David Baldwin was the recipient of more unfriendly criticism than any other public man in Washington. The humble cause of all this trouble rolled his one gray eye, saying:—
“Blacklist me again for telling the truth, will you? Shut your eyes again, while your workmen’s votes are stolen, Dave Baldwin!�
Long before the battle was over the Congressman became very weary of it, and sent the following directions to his brother, Zechariah:—
“Pay Wells Boardman’s daughter twenty thousand dollars. Charge five thousand dollars to Papyrus Electric Railway, and balance to me.�
The news of this generous payment was spread throughout the country, and took the edge off the criticism of Baldwin.
“Is that you, Lena?� asked Mrs. Wycliff, one evening.
“I think it is,� was the answer. “Here’s a check for a thousand dollars, for your husband. Tell him he has earned it. I have said all along that John could make the Baldwins toe the mark. He is almost the only one about here who is not afraid of them, and he is the only one who hits them in the only place where they feel it,—in the newspapers. They don’t care anything about right and wrong, God, man or the devil, but they don’t like to have their injustice shown up in the newspapers, or in the courts. They don’t fear God, or His Word, or the Judgment Day, but they are afraid of newspapers and courts. I don’t care for the twenty thousand dollars myself, but with the income from it I can give my boys a good education. Tell John I hear that Zack Baldwin will give a thousand dollars to get him out of town. This thousand is for him to stay.�