The Transgressors Part 40

"Should you destroy the breakers and furnaces, and these homes of your oppressors, your own losses would outweigh those of the millionaires.

"Yet your acts would be justifiable.

"Do not move till I have delivered the message I bear.

"I come to you with tidings that will make the blood in your veins flow faster in a delirium of joy.

"I come to tell you that your fellow workmen in every state in this Republic are to-day emanc.i.p.ated, even as you yourselves have been. The sword has been wrested from the hands of tyrants, and has been placed in the hands of the people.

"The centuries that have come and gone since Christianity was first preached have seen the sword turned upon the humble, the meek, the worthy. Now it is to be turned upon the craven few who have fattened at the expense of the many.

"At the very hour when Melz sent Gorman Purdy to his doom, avenging angels, disguised as men, were abroad in our land weeding out the seed of iniquity.

"In San Diego, California, Senator Warwick was killed by the hand of a man who, when he had rid the earth of the most avaricious man who ever worked a mine, completed the chapter by taking his own life.

"Henceforth men will not slave in the mines of California or elsewhere for the sole benefit of misers. The miner will enjoy the fruits of his labor. He will make significant the words 'The laborer is worthy of his hire.'

"In St. Louis at the same hour, the owner of the grain elevators, in which is stored the crops of the great plains, there to be kept until the needs of the people shall place an exorbitant price upon every bushel, was smothered to death in the hold of one of his own ships. With him died the martyr who had succeeded in bringing a just retribution upon the head of an insatiate oppressor.

"Henceforth bread shall not be made a product of speculation. The hungry mouths of women and children shall not go unfed that the stock broker and the grain speculator may ama.s.s fortunes.

"The Cotton King of Ma.s.sachusetts, who has kept men and women out of employment, and in their stead has worked children in his mills, was killed in his office as he refused the fifth appeal for an advance of three cents a day in the pay of the six thousand half-grown children, most of them girls, who tended his looms and spindles for pauper wages.

"The man who thus abolished for all time the further slaughter of innocents, went to eternity with the dragon he had slain. The mill owner went to expiate his sins; the martyr to receive his reward.

"And in New York, the city which I have just left, the ruler of the Nation's money, the President of the Consolidated Banker's Exchange, died in a pot of molten lead which he had been brought to hope would be turned into gold under the touch of an alchemist. The l.u.s.t of gold that in life had been his only incentive, proved the means of his undoing.

"Bond syndicates will no longer be formed to corner the people's money, that millions may be squeezed from the public treasury.

"My fellow-countrymen, this is indeed a great day.

"The full story cannot be told you at a single meeting.

"Know that you are once again free men, not in name only, but in reality; that your children will never suffer the degradation through which you have pa.s.sed.

"The story of your deliverance you will soon know in its entirety.

To-night I can only give you a summary."

"Tell us all! Tell us everything!" thunder the astonished ma.s.ses. They forget Metz and Purdy in the presence of this greater news.

"I have only just learned the true facts of this remarkable movement.

The representatives of the people who met in Chicago six months ago to formulate plans for the protection of labor, found that little could be accomplished against the combined wealth of the Trusts.

"A permanent committee of forty was elected to carry out the purposes of the convention. For several weeks the committee occupied itself in routine work. Its sub-committees reported that they could make no headway.

"Then at one of the meetings a committeeman named Nevins proposed that inasmuch as the committee had to deal with a wily and unscrupulous foe, it const.i.tute itself into a secret body.

"At the first secret meeting he submitted the plan which was carried into effect to-day.

"It required that every one of the forty men should pledge himself to rid the world of one of its chief tyrants. He proved to the satisfaction of the men that by so doing they would be securing the blessings of liberty and happiness to mankind.

"He counselled them to strip their acts of any semblance of selfishness by sacrificing themselves with their vanquished enemies.

"At this moment the news is being flashed around the world that the forty tyrants and the forty martyrs have been gathered to their Maker in a single day.

"Again is the message that was first uttered in the Garden of Eden sent to the world: 'Labor is the G.o.d-given heritage of man.' Nor shall anyone keep man from his inheritance.

"To you, men and women of this Trust-ridden community, is given the opportunity to reap the full benefit of to-day's atonement.

"That you should waste your efforts on the mere gratification of revenge, was but natural when you did but know of the result of one deed in the plan of emanc.i.p.ation. Then it might have been enough that you should destroy the breakers and tear down these palaces.

"But now that you have heard of the National blow that has been struck for you, all thoughts of violence must be swept from your minds. Now you must realize that a greater triumph awaits you than to watch the flames lick up the property of your tormentors.

"That property is now yours!

"These breakers, furnaces, factories; these houses, the mines beneath the earth's surface, the lands above them, all, all, are yours. It needs but for you to take possession of your own; for you to enjoy the full measure of the profit of your labor.

"Return to your homes, filled with rejoicing that you have not been called upon to stain your hands with blood; that your rights have been restored through the sacrifice of forty men to whom you and your posterity shall give immortal fame.

"You will have to work as hirelings only until you yourselves place your government in the hands of trusted men of your own selection.

"Fraud will no longer seek for public office; avarice will no longer scheme to gain possession of the world's wealth for the satisfaction of inordinate desires; inhumanity will no longer vaunt itself in our mills, our mines, our fields, for to-day the edict has been sent to the world that death awaits those who shall again seek to enslave labor. There will be forty martyrs ready for another sacrifice. Who will dare to be their foe?

"Choose your leaders with care; see that they are sincere in their determination to work your will.

"When this is done the hovels you now live in will be supplanted by decent homes; the poor food you now eat will be kept for your swine; your children will grow up to manhood and womanhood without having had their minds and bodies stunted by premature toil.

"A Republic of universal happiness and comfort will be yours.

"Such a Republic will be a monument to endure for all time to the memory of Carl Metz and his thirty-nine co-workers, to the honor of yourselves and to the security to future generations of the liberty that this Republic will afford all men.

"Pick up the body of Metz, and I shall help you bury it. I leave the body of Purdy for whomsoever may be inclined to care for it.

"Men of Wilkes-Barre, again I tell you, to-day you have been delivered from serfdom. Act as men, not as brutes.

"Choose some one to be your leader and let him direct you until to each of you is given the opportunity to vote for the laws that you may desire.

"With blare of trumpet and with tap of drum Barbaric nations pay to Mars his due, When victory crowns their arms. To him they sue For privilege to war, though Mercy's thumb Bids them as victors, rather to be mum, And show a n.o.ble spirit to the foe; To vaunt not at their fellow-creature's woe: O'er victory only doth the savage thrum!

They conquer twice who from excess abstain; The gentle nation that is forced to war, In triumph seeks to hide, and put afar All vestiges of carnage, and restore Peace in the land, that men may turn again To worthy toil, as they were wont before.

"Labour is your heritage; return to it."

He ends in a tumult of enthusiasm.

The mult.i.tude has been led from one emotion to another with such rapidity that they are fairly bewildered.

Two things only are clear in all minds. Trueman, the man who has become their most faithful champion, a.s.sures them that now they are to be free; that they are to be made the sharers in the wealth they create; he also tells them to select a leader.

By a spontaneous decision Trueman is the name that comes to every lip.