Once before in isolated instances the cotton planter had done this, and once the farmers of the West, discouraged by low prices, had used corn for fuel. That, however, was done on a small scale. But to deliberately burn one hundred million dollars worth of property was almost beyond the scope of the imagination.
The result was a cotton panic, and Hawkins succeeded in closing out his futures at an average price of fifteen cents, thereby netting twenty-five dollars a bale, and making for himself and fellow buccaneers one hundred and fifty million dollars.
After amazement came indignation at such frightful abuse of concentrated wealth. Those of Wall Street that were not caught, were open in their expressions of admiration for Hawkins, for of such material are their heroes made.
Chapter XXXVIII
Universal Suffrage
At the end of the first quarter of the present century, twenty of the forty-eight States had Woman Suffrage, and Administrator Dru decided to give it to the Nation. In those twenty States, as far as he had observed, there had been no change for the better in the general laws, nor did the officials seem to have higher standards of efficiency than in those States that still denied to women the right to vote, but he noticed that there were more special laws bearing on the moral and social side of life, and that police regulation was better. Upon the whole, Dru thought the result warranted universal franchise without distinction of race, color or sex.
He believed that, up to the present time, a general franchise had been a mistake and that there should have been restrictions and qualifications, but education had become so general, and the condition of the people had advanced to such an extent, that it was now warranted.
It had long seemed to Dru absurd that the ignorant, and, as a rule, more immoral male, should have such an advantage over the educated, refined and intelligent female. Where laws discriminated at all, it was almost always against rather than in favor of women; and this was true to a much greater extent in Europe and elsewhere than in the United States. Dru had a profound sympathy for the effort women were making to get upon an equality with men in the race for life: and he believed that with the franchise would come equal opportunity and equal pay for the same work.
America, he hoped, might again lead in the uplift of the sex, and the example would be a distinct gain to women in those less forward countries where they were still largely considered as inferior to and somewhat as chattels to man.