But we lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost to the railroads during the eleven years that Sam Spencer has been one of their most relentless and unscrupulous lieutenants.
He and his allies in plunder and crime killed and wounded, last year, the staggering total of 92,000 human beings.
The ghastly record grows bloodier every year.
Human life is nothing; dividends are everything.
Five hundred and twenty-five per cent!
And Sam Spencer’s bosses pat him on the back and congratulate him.
Ah, yes; they were feeling good. They expanded. They bubbled over.
As who should say: “Sam, you are a trump. When we bought you, we believed we had bought a good thing; now we know it. You have been tried, and you have proven true. We set you to the task of plundering your own people, and you have not flinched from the job. You have skinned them to the queen’s taste. You have doubled our estate, trebled the earnings, and so squeezed the train-crews, the section hands, the roadbed, the shipper and the passenger, that you have swelled our profits more than 525 per cent. We congratulate you—and, we pocket the money.”
The Ungrateful Negro
From a Newspaper