These lawyer-sharks packed caucuses, stuffed ballot-boxes, and thereby elected themselves to legislatures where they enacted unjust laws to subserve their own iniquitous depredations.
But this nefarious pillaging was not confined to the courts alone: armies of patientless doctors must be fed at the expense of the long-suffering public, and as all the people were not naturally sick all the time for the benefit of the quacks, these so-called doctors prevailed upon their legislative college-chums to pass laws compelling all to be innoculated with virus, ostensibly to render them immune to various contagions, but really to furnish unlimited plunder to their "family physicians."
Even the women caught the craze for "higher education" to fit themselves for "kid-glove" professional emoluments; they, too, tore each other's hair, scratched each other's faces in frantic football rushes, tumbling over each other in the wild scrimmage for fees, leaving the kitchens to the ignorant foreigners, who ruined digestions with preposterous cookery, which would have killed a nation of ostriches.
The great Republic might have survived even such horrors as these had it not been for the out-breaking of another craze more terrible far than an army with gattling guns, I refer to the most destructive of all scourges, the mania for stock-gambling. The crafty, unscrupulous managers of bucket-shops, stock-exchanges, and brokerages filled the columns of the press with manufactured accounts of vast fortunes made in an hour by imaginary investors of small sums, and at once multitudes of farmers, mechanics, and even teachers abandoned their honest pursuits to squander their hard earnings in the vain attempts to "buck the tiger," and "beard the lion in his den."
The inevitable result followed: the lion and the lamb lay down together, with the lamb inside the lion, thousands of formerly well-to-do people were pauperized. Thousands of farms were abandoned, hundreds of factories were deserted, while the fiendish, cheating boss-gambler sharks were gorged to repletion with their infamous plunder; then followed a frenzy of hatred on the part of the masses against the classes: city treasuries were depleted to feed the starving with free soup, the cities were crowded with the desperate, hungry multitudes who had lost their all, and bloody riots capped the climax of a hell on earth.
From the cupola of the State House in Boston, a little group of citizens gazed upon a scene which would daunt the stoutest heart; these five men standing motionless and speechless under the gilded dome are of widely differing stations in life, as far apart as the poles in culture, education, and creed, but their faces wore the same expressions of profound sadness mingled with stern determination.
The tall man on the right is the Governor of the State of Massachusetts, a millionaire, a classic face showing his aristocratic lineage in every feature, a scholarly, furrowed brow, dressed with scrupulous care, and looking at the frightful scenes with the dauntless eye of an eagle. He is the chosen leader of the Republican party which for many years has controlled the destinies of the "Old Bay State." Next stands a man in every way in strong contrast to his refined companion, a short, stout, ruddy-faced son of Ireland, but now Mayor of the city of Boston, a Democrat of Democrats, carelessly dressed, a political boss, who under ordinary circumstances would never have affiliated with his lordly neighbor.
Next in the line is a smooth-faced portly man, clad in fine broadcloth, unmistakably a Catholic Priest; next is a man of soldierly bearing whose uniform and shoulder-straps proclaim him to be the commander of the national guard of the State; close beside the guardsman is the stalwart superintendent of the city police. For a few minutes only, these men were spell-bound by the terrible scenes before them. A mob of ragged wild-eyed men and women are straggling along the street, some wearing the red caps of Anarchy, firing revolvers at the windows of the houses and at every well-dressed person in sight, some waved strange banners labelled "Bread or blood," "Down with the rich," "Shoot the soldiers"; many blood-red flags are waved with demoniacal yells.
Directly in front of this howling mob is massed the First Corps of Cadets, and the 9th Regiment of Irish militia; soldiers are seen falling in the ranks, and blood crimsoned the snow, alarm bells are clanging, flames are bursting from the elegant buildings, tremendous explosions are heard which seemed to shake the foundations of the city. Ferocious men and women are seen looting the stores, drinking plundered liquors; the off-scouring of all nations are pillaging, burning, murdering; the spirit of hell seems in full control on this natal day of the Prince of Peace. Still the national guard did not fire.
"Father," cried the Governor, "will the 9th Regiment kill their own brothers if ordered to shoot?"