The Transgressors Part 12

"Owing to my well being centrally located I was able to hold out longer than many others.

"John D. Savage, the Oil King, realized that some more potent means had to be devised to crush me. This means was found in the expedient of 'Sacrifice' sales. At every depot where I sold, the agents of the Trust offered to sell oil at figures lower than I could possibly sell it. I lost my trade. In an effort to retrench, my fortune was consumed, and from a position of affluence I descended to beggary, and had to join the ranks as an employee. So bitter was the animosity of the Trust that it sought to rob me even of the opportunity to earn a living. I have been hounded from post to pillar; my life has been made miserable. I have seen my family want for bread.

"And all because I withstood the a.s.sault of the Oil King.

"As an American I protest against the existence of a corporation that can set at naught the mandates of the law; a corporation that can, with utter impunity, resort to arson as a final means of gaining its illegal end, as the oil Trust has done, again and again.

"I thank G.o.d that I still possess my fore-fathers' spirit of resistance against oppression. There are few men who are in want, or in actual dread of being thrown out of employment, however unremunerative, who will a.s.sert their right. A nation composed of such men is not free, no matter what its form of government may be.

"I am ready to do anything that will restore the right to the individual citizen to engage in business; I am ready to make a stand against the few plutocrats who now usurp the avenues of human activity; and I believe that we will be able to enlist men in support of the idea that the rights of the majority transcend the aggressions of the oligarchy of American capitalists."

As Chadwick concludes his statement, Hiram Goodel, a delegate from New Hampshire, obtains the floor.

"Coercion is the word that epitomizes my grievance against the Trusts,"

he begins. "It was by the exercise of coercion that I was driven out of business. I conducted a retail tobacco store in Concord, in my native state. My business sufficed to insure me a decent living, and a comfortable margin to be husbanded as a safeguard for my declining years. I had a wife and three sons. My sons were all under age, and I kept them at school to provide them with good educations.

"There was compet.i.tion in my business; such natural compet.i.tion as is met with in all pursuits. It did not, however, prevent my making a success of my business.

"Then came the Tobacco Trust. It set out to control the retail trade.

This was to be effected by the inauguration of a system of "consigning"

goods to the retail stores with strict provisos that the retailer would not handle the product of any concern out of the Tobacco Combine. In order to ingratiate themselves with the store-keepers, the Trust managers at first offered terms that were so far below the current prices that a majority of the stores bound themselves to handle the Trust goods exclusively.

"Three years pa.s.sed, in which the independent tobacco manufacturers strove to hold out against the ring. Then came a crash.

"I had opposed the innovation of binding myself to buy from one concern; for I felt intuitively that as soon as the Trust was all-powerful it would begin to exercise dictatorial sway over the retailer.

"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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 a.s.sailed 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.

"What right has Amos Tweed, the Tobacco King, to tax me?

"I was born a free man; I fought to free an inferior race. Alas, I have lived to see the shackles placed upon the wrists of my own sons. So help me G.o.d, I shall strike a blow to make them free once more."

Overcome with the exertion of delivering his fervent speech, Hiram Goodel totters. He would fall, did not the strong arms of Carl Metz support him.

"Where is the man who can view this picture of patriarchal devotion, and hesitate to give significance to the prayer that freedom may again be the inheritance of the youth of America," demands Nevins in thrilling tones.

It is apparent that the recital of the grievances of the members of the committee is making a deep impression on every man.

Horace Turner, a farmer from Wisconsin, who had migrated to that state when it was in its infancy, preferring its fertile plains to the rocky hillside homestead in Vermont, is the next to speak. He is sixty years of age, well preserved, temperate and fairly well educated.

"I can quote no higher authority than the Holy Bible," are his opening words. "If in that book we can find authority for complaining against tyrants; if we can find a prayer that has come down from age to age, shall we not be justified in uttering it?

"Are these words from the Psalms meaningless? 'Deliver me from the oppression of Man; so will I keep thy precepts.'

"There is vitality in this cry from the oppressed; because the oppressor exists. You and I are both victims of oppression.

"I am a producer of wheat, the great staple of this country. You are all consumers of my product. When I cannot make a living by producing wheat, and you cannot purchase it without paying tribute to a band of speculators, there must be in operation a d.a.m.nable system of oppression to bring about this condition, for it is not natural.

"The Wheat Trust determines what price I shall receive for my wheat; it sets the price at which you shall buy it in the form of bread.

"Whether there is a bounteous crop or a short one, the Trust still controls the wheat and flour and arbitrarily fixes their price.

"When the newspapers a.s.sert that the farmers enjoy the advance of the price of a season's crop, they state an absolute falsehood.

"By the system that prevails in this country to-day, as a result of the Wheat Trust, crops are sold a year in advance. There are never two years of exceptionally large crops; so the benefit of the advance of one year does not go over to the next.

"The farmers of this country are compelled, by the present system, to pledge their next year's crop to the local wheat factors who control the elevators. The purchase price is determined by the factor. The farmer receives a certain number of bushels of 'seed' wheat from the factor, agreeing to repay him with two or two and a half bushels of the coming crop; a large percentage of the remainder of the crop is pledged to the local store-keeper for the goods that the farmer must have to do his work and to live upon.

"Wheat is the medium of exchange. The Trust's price is the measure of value. Why? Because the farmer cannot sell to any one except to an agent of the Trusts, as the Trust has arranged traffic rates with every railroad; and the wheat, if bought by any one outside of the Trust, could not be transported to a market and sold at a profit. This statement is indisputable.

"The Wheat King, David Leach, depresses the market when the crop is to be sold, and so gives a semblance of reason for the inadequate price he allows the farmer.

"It is the farmer who does the planting; he has to run the risk of the loss of the crop by drought, or excessive rain; he has to do the harvesting. Yet he does not share in the just profits of the sale of his product.

"And the consumer is made to pay exorbitantly for the bread that keeps life in his body.

"If there were no Wheat Trust, no speculation in wheat and no discriminating traffic rates, bread could be sold at a fair profit for three cents a loaf, and the farmer would still be able to get a higher price than he averages now.

"I have toiled as a farmer for two score years, and all I have in this world is a farm of two hundred acres, valued at thirty-six hundred dollars, on which there is a two thousand dollar mortgage at six per cent. When the interest is paid and my yearly expenses are defrayed, I am lucky to have one hundred dollars to my credit in the bank. For the past six years I have been obliged to send whatever I had remaining to my son, who has married and who is struggling to live in Milwaukee. He is engaged as a brakeman on the railroad that exacts thirty per cent. of the value of every bushel of wheat I raise.

"I am not one of the discontented, homeless vagabonds who the Plutocrats declare are alone demanding the destruction of Monopoly. I am a citizen who can foresee the inevitable result that will come from a perpetuation of Commercial Despotism. I am not afraid to a.s.sert my opinions, nor will I fear to act on any suggestion, that will insure independence to the farmer and to all the citizens of the Republic."

Donald Harrington, a delegate accredited to Maryland, now begins his arraignment:

"It will not be necessary for me to take the story of my ruin back to the beginning; you are interested only in that part which has to do with the effect of the Trusts upon me.

"I could say that they were the sole cause of my downfall, but in this statement I should be doing the Trusts an injustice. I felt the first downward impulse given me when I was a lad of sixteen. I had entered the employ of a banking house and was a clerk in their counting room. It was my especial duty to see that the books of the company were put in the safes at night. This duty I faithfully performed for more than three years.

"One day I was tempted to steal.