“THE MAGNATE.”
“Magnate Pullman is still missing. His whereabouts seem to give no concern to his immediate attendants, but Judge Grosscup of the United States Court is showing some anxiety to learn where he is and why it is that he has not been served with a process calling him into court. An examination of Magnate Pullman’s colored doorkeeper made by the Judge personally disclosed that he saw the magnate enter his office Monday at 10:30 o’clock, an hour after a deputy marshal called, but he has since mysteriously disappeared, and the marshal has been unable to locate him.
“Why this assumption of right to inquire into the personal movements of so great a man as Mr. Pullman? Ought we not, rather, anxiously unite in efforts to ascertain whether he is entirely safe, for if Magnate Pullman were to disappear into thin air, it is doubtful if the world would continue to revolve upon its axis and make its usual diurnal revolution. Human laws are made for the mass of mankind. Why should Magnate Pullman, who does not belong to the mass, but is a being apart, constructed of superior clay, be subjected to any such belittling regulation? Magnate Pullman keeps more bar-rooms in more states in the Union than any grog shop seller and employs more male chamber-maids than any other magnate in the bed-house business.
“The Tribune finds excuses for the magnate. It says: ‘It is not strange that he should be unwilling to go on the stand and be questioned by Mr. Darrow, Mr. Geeting and the other lawyers for the defense. It is not pleasant for a person who is at the head of a great corporation, who has many subordinates and no superiors, and who is in the habit of giving orders instead of answering questions, to be interrogated by persons who are unfriendly to him, and who may put disagreeable inquiries which he has to reply to civilly.’
“That’s it. Mr. Pullman is superior to the law. Like the king, he can do no wrong, and no processes can lie against him. The Tribune, however, we are bound to say, weakens a little, for it adds: ‘Nevertheless, it is the duty of all men to appear in court when they are wanted there. The subpœna does not discriminate between persons. Furthermore, those who need the defense of the law the most, should be the promptest and the most willing to submit themselves to the occasional unpleasantness of the law, and should try to show that they believe all men are equal before the law.’
“How presumptuous to suggest such a thing to Magnate Pullman, who does not believe that all men are equal before the law. The Tribune further ventures to say that Mr. Pullman ‘should have faced the music like a man.’
“There was some music here last June and July. It was music that never should have been played if Magnate Pullman had been like the ordinary run of human beings, but, being altogether an extraordinary creature, he waved his baton and the band began to play, but, far from facing the music which he himself had set in motion, he retired with a lawyer bodyguard to the East and viewed the concert from a distance of a thousand miles. Really, he had nothing to fear, for, as it turned out, not a single pane of glass in his marvelous town was broken by what he regarded as a fearful mob.
“The outcome of the present matter will be, of course, a demonstration that Magnate Pullman is a bigger man than the United States Court.”—Editorial, Chicago Times, February 8, 1895.
“SHALL DEBS BE TRIED AGAIN?”
“Owing to the illness of one juror the conspiracy cases against Eugene V. Debs and his associates of the American Railway Union have come to a sudden stop. The propositions of the defense to continue the hearing of the case with eleven jurors, or to swear in a twelfth juror and proceed after the evidence already in had been read to him, were both opposed by counsel for the government and the railroads. As the matter now stands, a new jury will have to be impaneled and the whole thing gone over again, unless the Government decides to abandon the prosecution.