"My fears were soon justified.
"The Trust advanced the price of its goods to the retailer, and compelled the trade to sell at the same retail figures.
"When this system of extortion was successfully launched the Trust determined to reward its patrons, as a means of pacifying them for reduced profits.
"The reward came in the shape of discriminating against the store-keepers who still handled the goods made by the fast vanishing opposition concerns.
"I was informed that unless I signed an agreement to use only the Trust brands of cigarettes and tobacco no more goods would be sold to me. As the Trust embraced all of the leading brands, that meant that I must go out of business.
"My puritan blood boiled at the thought that I must submit to the tyranny of a band of robbers. I determined to fight to the last. Four years of business at a net loss, drove me into insolvency; then a mortgage was placed upon my freehold, to be followed by foreclosure. I still struggled on, under the delusion that I was in a free land and that the Trust iniquities would not be permitted to crush the individual citizen forever. The decision of the courts of the several states where the Tobacco Trust was arraigned, upholding the Trust, disillusioned me. But it was too late, I was a ruined man.
"My sons were forced to work in the cigar factory of the local branch of the Trust; and I was obliged to apply for a patrimony from the Government, as a veteran of the war for the emancipation of man from slavery. On this slender pension I now live.
"Can anyone blame me for being a volunteer in the crusade against the most insidious and dangerous foe that has ever assailed a land; a foe that seeks to entrench itself by emasculating the citizens and degrading them to a position of servants of mighty and intolerant masters?"
There is a pause. The aged speaker trembles with emotion.
"I am an old man, over seventy years of age, yet whatever vigor remains in me will be expended in my last battle with the destroyers of free government.