Mf /TOl? XT 'WJ? KTfU 
 
 Of trfiAl WMLm
 
 THE TARIFF QUESTION FROM a NEW POINT of VIEW 
 
 IIVJDEIX 
 
 SPECIAL SUBJECTS 
 The Worm at the Root of American Prosperity : 
 
 24-46; 270-27i: 279-282: 309: 310-311: 312-315: 319; 332-335: 344-346; 358-382: 
 368-374; 425-426: 431-433; 450-453; 456-457. 
 
 Gresham's Law Applied to Capital (A Brand New Idea): 
 
 54-58; 98-103: 105-108: 12S-125; 126: 134: 138; 141; 142-145; 176-179; 183-191; 
 22#; 272: 316-368. 
 
 Nations Flourish or Decay in Accordance with the Above Law, 
 Unless the Law is Neutralized by Protective Tariffs. For it is 
 the Law of Economic Gravitation, as Shown by the Following 
 Examples : 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN 52: 120-128: 239: 245; 285-292; 335-341: 348; 358-362; 87; 
 
 369-370: 433-434. 
 
 GERMAN v:- 34; 38-39: 45: 120-142; 173-174: SOI; 358- S62; 366; 367; 381-383. 
 IRKIAND: 286-287: 338-341. INDIA: -335-338. 
 
 To Collect Brokerage on Capital Moving in Accordance with Gres- 
 ham's Law Applied to Capital, Unneutralized by Protective 
 Tariffs, is a Temptation which Turns Patriots into Industrial 
 Judases, as in the Following Examples : 
 
 No. 1 37-40: 117: 131-142: 141: 147: 169: 389-S90: 440-441. No. 2-36; S8; 
 
 380; 381: 381; 386; 469-1; 462. No. 3 -216-224. No. 4 304-310; 452. 
 
 No. 5-40-43; 103-4; 222-223; 282-284; 317; 331-332; 372. 
 
 The Holy Gospel of Work. 
 
 70-79; 243-252; 263-270; 292-295; 317-319; 331-345; 431-437; 456-457; 460-461. 
 
 Brazil : 
 
 330-342: 349; 454. 
 
 China: 
 
 350-354. 
 
 Colonies : 
 
 332-346: 454-455. 
 Consecrated Advertising: 
 
 416-120 
 
 Conspiracy Against the Stand- 
 ard Oil Co. 
 
 1-9: 163-167: 236: 408-409: 410. 
 
 Cotton : 
 
 99; 136-137: 179: 206; 207; 209-210: 
 3*8-339. 
 
 Cuba: 
 
 36-40: 391-394: i.54. 
 
 Divine Afflatus : 
 
 420-422. 
 
 Effacement of Congress : 
 
 391-394: 440. 
 
 Famines in Ireland and India: 
 
 335-341. 
 
 Hawaii : 
 
 330-342: 349: 15 t. 
 
 Japan : 
 
 100-101: 183: 257. 
 
 Magna Charter: 
 
 422- 4, 'I. 
 
 Massachusetts : 
 
 283-284. 
 
 Mexico : 
 
 330-342; 349: 454. 
 
 Political Persecution of Stand- 
 ard Oil Co. : 
 
 1-9: 163-167: 236; 408-409; 410. 
 Porto Rico: 
 
 330-342: 349; 454. 
 
 Philippines : 
 
 36-40; 330-368: 454. 
 
 Tropics : 
 
 56-58; 99: 320-332: 348-350. 
 
 Reciprocity : 
 
 282-284. 
 
 R oosevelt : 
 
 145-169: 374-404: 409-124. 
 
 Standard Oil Co.: 
 
 1-9: 163-167: 236: 408-409: 410. 
 Sugar: 
 
 442. 
 Sunny South : 
 
 34-35: 99; 179: 206: 207; 209-210: 
 
 326-327: 329-331. 
 GENERAL SUBJECTS: 
 FORKIC.N TRADE: 24 16: 64-70: 94-105: 112: 1R3-199; 203-211; 292-299: 332-348; 368-374' 
 
 445-153: 456-457. 
 HUMAN MOTIVKS; -15-21. 
 
 LAW: 9-15: 149-151: 401-102: 40H09: 122-124. 
 
 PoLiTirAl ECONOMY 46-6S; 79-94: 105-108: 191-203; 223-228; 238-240: 301-304- 310-332" 
 346-368: 425-461. 
 
 PRESS: 108-118: 170-176: 299-301: 394*404. 
 SoClOLOGY:-75-79; 243-252: 263-272: 292-299: 425-461. 
 TARiFK:-24-46: 108-145: 176-182: 282-284: 304-310. 
 
 5: 1-3-211 ! 7:1-232.
 
 MALEFACTORS 
 
 of 
 
 GREAT WEALTH ! 
 
 By 
 
 Roswell A. Benedict, A. M. 
 
 Of the New York Bar 
 
 AMERICAN BUSINESS BUREAU 
 
 Room 58, 29 Broadway 
 New York
 
 Copyright 1907 by 
 ROSWELL A. BENEDICT.
 
 A CASE ON APPEAL 
 
 FROM 
 
 JUDGE LYNCH 
 
 TO 
 
 THE COURT OF FAIR PLAY 
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 R. A. BENEDICT 
 
 OF COUNSEL FOR DEFENDANT 
 
 1561173
 
 May it please your Honors, the Judges of the 
 Court of Business Common Sense in the District 
 of the United States of America: 
 
 In arising to reply to the lurid rhetoric of the 
 learned counsel, we cannot but express our deep 
 pain at the course taken by the avalanche of molten 
 words poured forth by our learned brothers upon 
 the other side. Where two great forces are op- 
 posed to each other, such as are involved in this 
 titanic legal struggle, great heat follows their head- 
 on collision; and yet, your Honors, we cannot im- 
 agine any ground creditable to counsel upon which 
 to explain the explosion of so much dynamite at 
 our devoted client. In your presence we have 
 heard our client assaulted with such terrific epi- 
 thets as "Malefactor of Great Wealth" and "The 
 Wickedest Trust in the World;" but, your Hon- 
 ors, denunciations are not facts, and rhetoric is 
 not necessarily argument. 
 
 "BUT WHO PRETENDER IS AND WHO IS KING, GOD BLESS 
 US ALL ! IS QUITE ANOTHER THING." 
 
 Your Honors, while walking on the west side of 
 Lower Broadway a few days ago, we were met face 
 to face by a wild-looking man, dressed in the cos- 
 tume of a Kough Kider, his hair floating in the 
 wind, his eyes red with a fierce light, his sombrero 
 waving aloft in his left hand, and his right hand
 
 pointing across to No. 26 Broadway. As his eye 
 met ours and he saw he had our attention, he hissed 
 and sissed, and squealed and yelled, as he shook 
 the out-stretched hand in a paroxysm of alcoholic 
 fury, "Down with the trusts! Down with 26 
 Broadway! Down with the malefactors of great 
 wealth! Down with the wickedest trust in the 
 world! 'Rah for Teddy! 'Rah three times and a 
 tiger for Teddy! 'Rah for the champeen trust-bus- 
 ter, Mr. Roosedore Theovelt Trustbuster! 'Rah 
 for " but a policeman seized him and and took 
 him to the alcoholic ward. Your Honors, this is 
 a type of the frenzy which is just now passing over 
 this otherwise sensible country. It is a sort of de- 
 lirium tremens of the judgment, a wavering of the 
 eye that should be able to see things in a calm 
 light, unmiraged by hate, envy, jealousy, and covet- 
 ousness. For the time, the line between "mine and 
 thine" has quite disappeared. We get title to prop- 
 erty now in a different way from what we once 
 did. We used to think a man who paid the market 
 price for things owned them. We did not know 
 that it made any difference how large a heap of 
 things he got in this way. If he paid for them, 
 they were his. But that is all changed now. Now, 
 if you want what another man has bought and paid 
 for, and spent his time and money upon and im- 
 proved and made more valuable than when he got 
 it, all you have to do is to call him a "monopoliser" 
 a "malefactor of great wealth," a "cormorant 
 trust," or even simply a "trust" or a "very rich 
 wrong-doer." That settles the matter. No judge, 
 jury, or anything of that sort is at all necessary. 
 The old title goes up in the air and the new title 
 settles on you, and the goods are yours. And if 
 anything more is wanted to make you quite sure
 
 of yourself, just haul the old owner into Court and 
 tell him if he don't bring in his books and show up 
 his profits, you will cut him off from business by 
 the inter-state commerce clause route. Then when 
 his 1 books are in your hands, just thumb them over a 
 while until you have found his profit and loss ac- 
 count. And if you find that he has sometimes 
 netted a loss, don't say anything about it. But 
 wherever you find a profit, print it in red letters 
 in all the yellow newspapers and let the public yell, 
 "What a robber F ' That will surely fix the title in 
 you so it wont budge a hair. If you and the pub- 
 lic say the man's profits are too large, that sweeps 
 away his last right, not only to his property, but 
 to his good name and his access to the courts. 
 Profits, your Honor, are outlawed, since the great 
 Standard Oil hold-up in Indiana, Nobody makes 
 profits any more but thieves. 
 
 But soberly, your Honors, since when and by 
 what word of our Constitution, our laws, or our 
 common usage, has the public had the right to in- 
 spect private books and thereupon to fix the profits 
 of business men, corporations, or "trusts," if you 
 please, in this country? Since when have we be- 
 come a socialistic colony and, on the ground that 
 his profits were too large, have divested of his title 
 to property whomsoever we have pleased? To what 
 state of anarchy are we drifting? Who of us" will 
 be safe in his property, if we once admit the prin- 
 ciple that the public can fix our profits, whenever 
 in its judgment our profits are too large? In the 
 name of the God of Justice, your Honors, if this is 
 to be the vogue, if any one at all is to be compelled 
 to show up his profits in order that the public may 
 judge as to their proper size and mulct him ac- 
 cordingly, let us resolve ourselves into a socialist
 
 country at once and fix the exact size of profits in 
 a rule which shall bind all alike, and appoint a 
 responsible bench of judges to determine the facts 
 and apply the rule, taking away from him whose 
 profits are larger and adding to him whose profits 
 are smaller than lawful, until the profits of every- 
 body are the same as everybody else's. But it is 
 surely to court anarchy and property-chaos to drift 
 on in this way, your Honors; to have a Bureau of 
 Corporations, on one side, with an interstate-com- 
 merce-clause club in one hand and a rope in the 
 other, strangling from private citizens of one of 
 our States accounts of their earnings and profits, 
 to be published to the country, for the express pur- 
 pose of inflaming the envious, the covetous, the 
 lazy, and thriftless into contempt for sacred prop- 
 erty rights; and on the other side an untried ex- 
 politician judge, for trumped-up breaches of the 
 Sherman law fixing penalties, not according to 
 transgression, but according to profits and ability 
 to pay the fine. This frenzy has become so deep 
 and so furious, the devil of the itching palm has be- 
 come so rampant, your Honors, that such passages 
 as this are common in our daily papers : 
 
 "Multitudes will compare the enormous profits upon 
 moderate capital with the price of oil, and no allegation 
 of reasonableness of price will prevent pressure for still 
 .further cheapening. If the disclosure, assuming it to be 
 authentic, should drive Standard Oil into increasing its 
 capital stock four or five times, the measure of self- 
 defense will have been taken too late." 
 
 And this : 
 
 "Blue Monday will acquire a special terror for the 
 Standard Oil Company if every wash-day is to bring a 
 fresh report against it by the Commissioner of Corpora- 
 tions. This morning's is chiefly taken up with the dis- 
 covery that the Standard sells cheaper abroad than at 
 home. Commissioner Smith's eagerness in announcing 
 this is very like the anxiety of the small boy to run and
 
 tell his mother the great news, when he heard that a 
 baby sister had arrived. The American people had sus- 
 pected as much. When Mr. Rockefeller told them how 
 foolish it would be to interfere with his efforts to "con- 
 quer the market of the world," they had a pretty shrewd 
 notion that he wished to bleed them in order to do it. 
 But what a powerful tariff-revision argument Commis- 
 sioner Smith unwittingly supplies! All that he alleges 
 of the nefarious Standard practice in exacting the utter- 
 most farthing from the helpless American consumer, in 
 order to give the foreigner cheap goods, is as true of 
 many protected manufacturers. It has been proved nay, 
 admitted of the Steel Corporation. Now, the extortions 
 of the Standard could probably be little checked by re- 
 vising the tariff; but those protected industries which 
 hide behind high duties, while they skin their countrymen 
 but sell cheap abroad, could be got at by a Congress or 
 an Administration that dared lay a hand upon the tariff. 
 Yet the President is standing as pat as mum; and Lodge 
 declares, tearfully but firmly, that the tariff cannot be 
 revised. ' ' 
 
 Could anything be more monstrous, your Hon- 
 ors, more in contempt of constitutional rights than 
 these suggestions that it is the public's business 
 what are the profits of the Standard Oil Companj* 
 or when, where, or at what price it sells its prop- 
 erty! Oh, your Honors, where is the rule and the 
 square ! Where the "equal protection of the laws !" 
 For, outside of the pressure from supply outstrip- 
 ping demand, the only "pressure for still further 
 cheapening" which can be applied to this com- 
 pany's products, is the pressure of mob law, which 
 it would be the duty of our government, under the 
 constitution, to relieve with fixed bayonets, in the 
 process of giving this company the "equal -protec- 
 tion of the laws." That fact should stamp as in- 
 citements to mob madness all such newspaper 
 effusions as those we have just read. 
 
 What does all this mean, your Honors? What 
 devil is possessing our land! What brainstorm of 
 folly? Why, even our President is daft with the 
 same afflatus! He also fumes and gesticulates 
 against "rich wrong-doers/' "malefactors of great
 
 G 
 
 wealth" and "very rich men," and exactly to whom 
 he points when applying these epithets is only too 
 well known. Does this President of ours know 
 what he is doing? Does he know to what chaos in 
 jurisprudence his teachings tend? Does he know 
 that he is maddening the masses to Lynch proceed- 
 ings? Does he realize that he himself, in the eyes 
 of the mob, has accused, tried, condemned, and 
 branded these men who are now but awaiting ex- 
 ecution at the hands of the mob? 
 
 Let such teachings continue, your Honors, and, 
 when our mobs sack and burn the homes and the 
 business plants of our "malefactors of great 
 wealth," who shall say that they are not Roose- 
 velt understudies in logical action? The wrongs 
 he sees are such as no law we have ever saw. 
 Why, then should the victims of such wrongs show 
 greater temperance and forbearance than their 
 great teacher. Why should they await the amend- 
 ment to the constitution and the making of laws 
 thereunder to fit the crime of having "great 
 wealth," before exemplifying in fiery deeds their 
 abhorrence of that wickedness which Mr. Roosevelt 
 objurgates with such fiery words? Mr. Roosevelt 
 does not wait. Why should his disciples who hear 
 his fervid gospel? 
 
 Ah your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt doesn't seem to 
 know that we have laws to cover crimes and that 
 our property and other rights are as fixed as if 
 cast in brass. If those he denounces have not of- 
 fended by these century-old standards they have of- 
 fended by none; and his denunciation is itself a 
 violation of law. But, on the other hand, if they 
 have thus offended, the courts are there to pass 
 upon the facts and fix the penalty; so that in any 
 event the President himself is a "wrong-doer." In
 
 our statute laws and in our constitution we have 
 our written law, governed by the principle that 
 they must be construed liberally in favor of the 
 accused and strictly against the curtailment of im- 
 memorable rights, such as our rights of property; 
 and in our common law we have long lines of de- 
 cisions, no less fixed and definite in that regard 
 than our lex scripta. There is no latitude left for 
 the "construction" which Mr. Roosevelt would have 
 inject full of India rubber every fibre of our legal 
 rights when they offend "my policies." The old 
 maxim, stare decisis, applied century after century, 
 has made hard and fast those very rights which 
 Mr. Roosevelt by his "post-road" clauses and his 
 "interstate commerce" latitudinizings would re- 
 mold to his own notion. And still our President 
 furies and fulminates against great fortunes; still 
 ho utters the hope that the courts may yet take his 
 view of constitutional construction, extra-legal and 
 extra-constitutional though it is. What then your 
 Honors? Suppose, without changing our consti- 
 tution we Rooseveltutionized our rules of construc- 
 tion? Who is Mr. Roosevelt; whence has he such 
 an infallible scent for the right that no after-comer 
 miii'ht aspire to his oracular rank? If Mr. Roose- 
 velt may construe our written laws according to 
 liis judgment, defy the maxim, stare decisis, change 
 the meaning of the English language to suit his 
 ideas, and remake our whole conception of prop- 
 erty rights, what later prophet may not do the 
 same? If Mr. Roosevelt may point the finger of 
 condemnation at a man who is worth $100,000,000, 
 as a "malefactor of great wealth;" or, if when they 
 have exceeded a certain limit he can hold up the 
 profits of a corporation to excite the rabble, who 
 shall sav that anv other man whatever mav not
 
 s 
 
 treat his neighbor as an outlaw because the neigh- 
 bor wears finer clothing than he? If Mr. Roose- 
 velt may so judge, why not the next one? When 
 the legal line is once crossed ; when the Eubicon of 
 fixed law is once behind us, how broad and unlim- 
 ited for the socialist free-shooter will be the plains 
 before us? What is a fair profit? What is a de- 
 cent fortune? 
 
 Ah, your Honors, there are those who will judge 
 Mr. Koosevelt less leniently than we. There will 
 be those who will say that he is only playing a des- 
 perate game of popularity, of political chess, of a 
 demagogic dosing of the people with pink pills for 
 paling adoration when he pursues by all the de- 
 vious ways of press-agency and interstate-com- 
 merce club a corporation like the Standard Oil 
 Company, w^hich has knowingly broken no law. Wo 
 do not say it ; we do not believe it, but others not so 
 full of loving kindness as we will say that he ap- 
 pointed a callow politician as a United States 
 judge to do a dirty political job, because no well- 
 seasoned wearer of the ermine would ever have 
 dared to drag the profit and loss account of a great 
 corporation into court as a basis for a fine so bril- 
 liantly great that it would gild even with brighter 
 gold the already golden halo of the "champeen 
 trust-buster" of the age. We do not say it, but oth- 
 ers less charitable will say that Mr. Roosevelt has 
 thus pursued the Standard Oil Company, in order 
 that he may mount his throne and, pointing to the 
 wounded monster, exclaim, "Oh ye loyal people, 
 our most faithful subjects, behold the mighty dra- 
 gon which your mightier St. George, for your weal, 
 hath transfixed with the sacred spear that know- 
 eth no brother!" That is what some wicked peo- 
 ple will say, your Honors; some people so wicked
 
 that they know not when they see it true holiness, 
 the perfect fount of square deal undenled. We say, 
 confusion upon such undesirable citizens, your 
 Honors! But we fear our anathemas may not 
 carry. 
 
 The rule has always been that a man was en- 
 titled to as much property as he could get a legal 
 title to; and that that property, subject to non- 
 discriminating taxation, was his to enjoy without 
 molestation, unless 1 obnoxious to police or sanitary 
 regulations, or amenable to the law of eminent do- 
 main. There have been no limitations to these 
 rights; no measure as to size or tenure or method 
 of devolution during the life of the owner, other 
 than the one given. Now without establishing 
 any different hard and fast rule that shall govern 
 us all alike, suppose Mr. Roosevelt be allowed to 
 attack first this and then that individual and de- 
 nounce him as "a malefactor of great wealth," 
 making the fact of his wealth a distinguishing 
 characteristic of the man accused ; suppose we per- 
 mitted any one to denounce the profits of this or 
 that person profits 1 being property on the alleg- 
 ation that they were "too large" would we not, 
 be starting down the chute to anarchy? Would it 
 not soon be a go-as-you-please shooting match for 
 all propertyless bummers able to buy a gun? 
 What will guide us, your Honors, after our old 
 rule has been destroyed and before a new rule has 
 been made, except the new rule whose light glim- 
 mers in the heart-sanctuary of Mr. Roosevelt and 
 liis co-anarchists? What are laws for? Why have 
 we had such careful definitions of property-rights 
 for, lo, these hundreds of years? Is it not that a 
 man might know where he was 1 at? That he might 
 know whether, if he taxed his brains and tasked
 
 10 
 
 his flesh to get a little property together, he might 
 have it himself instead of being compelled to di- 
 vide it with the loafers and the lazy, hoodlums and 
 blackmailers, who idled and lay in wait while he 
 labored? What is a country without definite laws 
 hedging property rights, your Honors? Why, your 
 Honors, our laws of this kind are all the compass 
 we have to find our property bearings by. If a 
 ship scorns its compass, what is its fate, your 
 Honors? 
 
 Your Honors, we have often wondered if Mr. 
 Roosevelt ever stops to think just what he is about 
 in constantly using such hard words as "malefac- 
 tors of great wealth," "lawbreakers," and the like 
 so freely in connection with "wealth" and "riches." 
 What he seems to us to be doing is to make thought- 
 less people associate wrongdoing and malefaction 
 peculiarly with the rich, thus psychologizing the 
 mob to believe that rich folk are either criminal 
 because they are rich or rich because they are crim- 
 inal; and that they are, therefore, outlaws in any 
 event. And, your Honors, what must be the in- 
 creasing effect of Mr. Roosevelt's Sunday-school 
 teachings, when to his other hard words he joins 
 his anathemas against "swollen" fortunes and "the 
 moiiace of great accumulations of wealth?" 
 
 This line of talk seems to give point to his 1 de- 
 nunciations of "malefactors of great wealth;" and 
 to lea.ve the impression that the "rich" are a shady 
 lot any way who should be specially regulated ; 
 since it is being rich wherein consists 1 the "wrong- 
 doing" and "malefaction." Is this judicious 1 , your 
 Honors? Is he a good President who attaches a 
 stigma to property and thus breeds contempt for 
 property rights? Is it wise to teach the rabble 
 thnt a man is rich because he is bad and poor be-
 
 11 
 
 cause lie is good? Is it the rnan with much or the 
 man with little to lose, who is the more likely to 
 sack and burn with the mob? Does not the man 
 with property by that same token give heavier 
 bonds for good behavior than the man without. 
 
 It seems to us, your Honors, as if to follow the 
 President would be to go backward into the bogs 
 and swamps of old, where might made right and 
 the booty belonged to the man able to swing the 
 heaviest club. For laws defining property-rights 
 seem to have come to us naturally as the condition 
 of gregarious life. Away back somewhere, the big- 
 gest bully got the biggest share and for a while he 
 had only to shake his Big Stick to make all the 
 weaker ones leave their property in his hands and 
 go hide. But by and by a lot of these weaker ones 
 got together and formed an alliance against Big 
 Sticks, and when the Bully came along and grabbed 
 somebody's horse or cow or pretty daughter, this 
 Alliance pitched on to him and made him unhand. 
 Then he argued the case in his way and they ar- 
 gued it in theirs. He said might made right and 
 they said property belongs to him who gets it first 
 from some fellow not in their circle or tribe. And 
 that was the rule they made. He who gets a thing 
 first is its owner meaning always, unless he took 
 it by force from one of them. But that was the 
 beginning of property law. A lot of men leagued 
 together and beat the Bully, Might makes right; 
 and then, so neither one of the alliance could have 
 an advantage over any other, they made this rule. 
 That was to settle the question of title. And to 
 settle the question, all that one of the Alliance 
 had to do was to prove he got there first, and not 
 that lie had swung the Biggest Stick. You see, 
 your Honors, it was a general rule or law and it
 
 12 
 
 covered all the community with the same mantle. 
 It did not say, He who gets it first owns it, unless 
 he is "a malefactor of great wealth" That was 
 too indefinite and it would -have spoiled the sim- 
 plicity of the rule to lug in differences made by 
 being rich or poor. But the Alliance said, Who- 
 ever will live according to this law, is one of us, 
 and in order that each may know when a thing is 
 his'n, we will all stand together and make it his'n, 
 "If he got it first!" But these early law-makers 
 had to go a step farther by and by. They traded 
 among themselves, and, as usual, there was a lot of 
 bad men among them who trumped up titles to the 
 property which some of their brothers had in the 
 Alliance and turned every stone to cheat them- 
 selves into property they had not earned. And 
 these law-makers had to lay down other laws or 
 rules according to which property once "mine" was 
 declared now to be "thine." And the rule was 
 that if a piece of property was "mine" it became 
 "thine" if the first party delivered it to the second 
 party of his own free will and said it should thence- 
 forth belong to the second party. Or if he had 
 not so delivered it, still, if the second party could 
 prove that the second party had bought it of the 
 first party and had given something of value 
 in exchange for it, it would belong to the 
 second party. But all these were general rules, 
 amoving to everybody alike, without dis- 
 tinction between rich and poor. There was no 
 limit set to the amount of property one could get 
 in this wav. Nobody was called "a malefactor of 
 great wealth" because he had more than another. 
 The T>eoDle did not bother about a man because he 
 was ri^h. Thev were not afraid of him because he 
 was rich. Being rich did not make him proof
 
 13 
 
 against the Big Stick of the constable if he stole 
 or, thinking his riches' would save him, hurt a neigh- 
 bor. But the great point is, your Honors, these 
 rules were general rules and they applied to all 
 alike; because in order to have them enforced they 
 had to please all and be just as good for one as 
 another, or the camp would have been broken up 
 into parties of those whom the rules favored and 
 those whom they did not favor. So, your Honors, 
 the excuse for making a law lies in its universal ap- 
 plication. These laws have come down to us with- 
 out change. As it was in the savage tribe, so now, 
 if a man gets a thing first and there is no other 
 owner, it is his. If his neighbor owns it, still he 
 can have it, with the neighbor's consent; and when 
 he gets it in this 1 way, it is his without question; 
 and any man who goes up and down the land call- 
 ing him a "malefactor of great wealth" because he 
 has gotten together a lot of property in this way, 
 call it the cottage of the laborer or the palace of 
 the rich man, call it stocks and bonds, or tenements 
 on the East Side, or call it profits of the Standard 
 Oil Company or of the United States Steel Corpor- 
 ation, or what not, is an insurrectionary who 
 should be restrained. For, your Honors, if we 
 listen to him, we shall find ourselves right back in 
 the bogs and swamps of the Big Stick and "Might 
 makes right," Our alliance will have been broken 
 up. The rule will have been destroyed and none 
 of us will know whether our title is good. We 
 got it by the old rule, to be sure. But that don't 
 count now. A new rule has been added to which 
 we have not agreed. But, nevertheless, there are 
 a lot of us who will like the new rule even if we 
 have not agreed to it; even if it has not been 
 written into our Constitution and laws and regu-
 
 14 
 
 larly adopted as our law. Some of us will like it, 
 because we have no property of our own; and be- 
 cause it will give us 1 some of the property of other 
 people who have had greater luck than we in heap- 
 ing up property. But others of us who have heap- 
 ed up the property will object to the rule. We will 
 holler, "No fair !" Why did you not make the new 
 rule before we worked so hard and got so much 
 property together? Why did you not tell us that, 
 no matter how hard we worked for it, it was going 
 to be unlawful for us to have any more property 
 than the rest of you? Why did you not begin to 
 cry out "Malefactors of Great Wealth !" before we 
 were wealthy? Why did you not give us a chance 
 also to lie by quietly until a lot of fools had worked 
 their heads off getting property together; and then 
 join the rest of you in shouting "Malefactors of 
 Great Wealth !" and in dividing among ourselves 
 the property of these malefactors. We say all this 
 is "no fair;" you have tajsen a mean advantage of 
 us. Before we had done so much under the old 
 rule, you should have told us that that was the rule 
 no longer. And then, too, there is the difficulty 
 of making the new rule work smoothly; because 
 you will have to fix the line of wealth within which 
 we cannot be called "Malefactors of Great Wealth," 
 and where will it be? At $1000? At |10,000? 
 At $100,000? At $1,000,000 or where" 
 
 This is a very broad and a very difficult ques- 
 tion, your Honors. We are facing legal chaos in 
 its answering, unless we hold on to the old rule 
 until the new one has been whittled down to a 
 very nice fit. Meantime, your Honors, we think 
 it would be a very good plan not to call anybody 
 "Malef actors of Great Wealth" until we fix a hard 
 and fast line bevond which the accumulation of
 
 15 
 
 wealth will be a malefaction ; and not to iterate 
 and reiterate the statement that we are going to 
 bring the "rich" to justice, when the word "rich" 
 carries no necessary stigma with it before the law 
 and cannot differentiate the good from the bad. 
 If we did thus rant against malefactors as being 
 rich, when the law merely divides citizens into 
 those who obey the law and those who do not, we 
 should think the reason why we lugged in "rich" 
 all the while was because we were a demagogue 
 trying to fool the people with a pretense of zeal 
 and were putting votes higher than communal mo- 
 rality. 
 
 But your Honors, there is a reason. This other- 
 wise sensible and just public of ours was not 
 wrought up to this point of lawless frenzy by any 
 stranger. There is method in this madness, the 
 method of experts in preparing public madness to 
 compass private ends. And, your Honors, we are 
 grieved to say that, in the whole trend of their 
 arguments before this Court, counsel for these wily 
 plaintiffs, have shown that, in their view, a fee will 
 justify any associations, any methods, and any col- 
 lateral wrong. 
 
 II 
 
 PERSONAL BITTERNESS SHOULD BE FOREIGN TO THIS 
 CONTROVERSY. ALL MEN DO AS THEY MUST. 
 
 For whatever purpose this withering fire of 
 bard names was furied forth by counsel for the 
 wily plaintiffs, we think we can see more and boi- 
 ter reasons than those of "total depravity" and
 
 16 
 
 ''abhorrent greed" to quote the exact language of 
 plaintiff's counsel urging American Production, 
 the defendant in this action, to appeal this case 
 to this the most equitable court of our nation. 
 And, furthermore, may it please your Honors, we 
 do not propose, in our contention to the contrary 
 of the argument of plaintiff's counsel, to return 
 evil for evil and fritter away our breath and the 
 patience and time of this most high court with 
 argument ad hominem and loud denunciations of 
 wickedness of these wily plaintiffs. For although 
 we can easily prove the wily plaintiff the Importing 
 Trust, to be a pirate, a pickpocket, an assassin and 
 an escaped convict, and the hardly less wily plain- 
 tiff the Exporting Trust to be almost as bad, 
 nevertheless we shall do this, if we do, in no spirit 
 of bitterness, but rather as our duty to our client, 
 American Production, and altogether in sorrow 
 and in no wise in anger; and the reason of our 
 Christian spirit is this: 
 
 After all that has been said on the subject we do 
 not believe, your Honors, that the human heart is 
 such a very bad thing in it's intent. If it is 1 "alto- 
 gether w r icked," it is because bread and butter and 
 their equivalents, in one sense or another, lie in 
 that direction. We do not believe that a poor 
 human creature "wills" either to be good or bad. 
 We believe such a creature has an earnest desire 
 to live with the least pain and the greatest com- 
 fort; which earnest desire is called by some "the 
 instinct of self-preservation." In line with this 
 instinct of self-preservation, your Honors, there 
 have gathered, through the long ages of evolution, 
 a group 'of proclivities', all of which are indispen- 
 sable to agreeable existence, and all of which are 
 expressed by brain-cells, also outlined through the
 
 17 
 
 ages. In fact these proclivities are the ministers 
 unto this physical life which to most of us is so 
 precious; and we could not dismiss either of them 
 without opening a window to a harsh wind that 
 might blow out the little candle of our life. In 
 addition to these proclivities, we have all been 
 gifted with intelligence, also a proclivity, and also 
 represented by, and acting through brain-cells, in- 
 voluntarily formed, the true purpose of which is 
 to make plain to our other proclivities the clearest 
 and surest path to their safe exercise in the line 
 of their object. 
 
 And, your Honors, the man who owns these 
 proclivities, although they have absolute power 
 over his thoughts and actions, had no choice in 
 saying how one proclivity should be related to 
 another.. With different people, these proclivities 
 have different relative values. In some, one pro- 
 clivity will predominate; in others, another. If 
 a man's proclivities are nicely balanced one against 
 another, you have a model citizen. But if they 
 are out of balance, you may have what is common- 
 ly called a "crank ;" or it may be a criminal. But 
 in every case what he will do under given circum- 
 stances is determined by the relative influence of 
 these groups of brain-cells which represent the 
 proclivities; and all the relative sizes and values 
 of these groups are determined by parentage and 
 environment, over which the subject has no con- 
 trol. The manner in which these proclivities, 
 through their respective groups of brain-cells, come 
 into action which eventuates or not in muscular 
 activity on the part of the subject, according to 
 the nature of the proclivity is also entirely be- 
 yond the control of the subject, such action being 
 automatic and irresistible. For, as we have said,
 
 18 
 
 these proclivities are the direct off -spring of what 
 we call "the instinct of self-preservation," and 
 their only business is to save the body of the subject 
 from pain or furnish it with pleasure. Therefore 
 the physical condition of the body is the particu- 
 lar concern of the proclivities and that condition is 
 evidenced by sensations over which again the sub- 
 ject has no control. For instance, if the stomach 
 be empty, the subject feels hunger. This sensation 
 of hunger causes an association of ideas which sug- 
 gests the necessity of food. The hunger procliv- 
 ity awakens the reasoning or intuitional proclivity, 
 through which arises into consciousness a vision 
 called "memory" of when and where food has been 
 theretofore obtained; and muscular play which 
 takes the direction of food follows irresistibly as 
 to the subject and naturally as to its position in 
 the series of actions over which the proper procliv- 
 ity has control, that proclivity for the moment rep- 
 resenting the entire ego and wearing the ego's 
 apparel. And so with any other matter affecting 
 the physical life of the subject. A physical con- 
 dition which, on behalf of the subject, requires 
 action to secure pleasure or avoid pain, immediate- 
 ly causes a memory or vision to arise in conscious- 
 ness, which is associated with some former action 
 to the same end: and through the motive-instiga- 
 tion of the particular group of brain-cells affected, 
 muscular action follows in the direction of the 
 proper relief. All this is done irresistibly, so far 
 as the subject alone is concerned. In a word, the 
 exciting cause of proclivity-action lies beyond the 
 control of the subject in a physical sensation or 
 condition which his humanity imposes upon him; 
 and the action follows its sufficient cause. A 
 particular point that we wish to make is that
 
 19 
 
 sometimes the association of ideas awakened by a 
 given physical condition arouses several proclivi- 
 ties at once, which will persist in proportion to 
 the power of the cells and of the exciting cause. 
 Sometimes the activities of these proclivities har- 
 monize and so contribute to one and the same 
 result. Then there is no sense of conflict or notion 
 of decision or "willing." But sometimes opposed 
 proclivities may be aroused simultaneously; as for 
 instance, the desire, usually called "acquisitive- 
 ness" and the desire usually called "benevolence." 
 In this 1 case, the stronger proclivity will prevail 
 and the subject will prove himself either an honest 
 man or a thief, according to the relative powers 
 of the brain-cells representing these proclivities, 
 and the degree of excitement which each has 
 suffered. In any event, the subject was fore-or- 
 dained from the foundation of the race, under 
 certain circumstances' acting as excitants to pro- 
 clivity-action, to be either an honest man or a 
 thief; but being conscious of the existence of two 
 different emotions, one leading towards the act 
 and the other away from it, the subject will believe 
 that he "willed" either to leave his neighbors purse 
 alone or to appropriate it, according as one or the 
 other group of brain-cells proved the stronger. 
 He could not see the complex machinery which 
 caused his act. He could not realize that the 
 groups of brain-cells which were the next cause 
 of his action, whether he stole or stole not, were 
 "the heirs of all the ages," and that he could not 
 change their action nor prevent them for the time 
 being from assuming his clothing, any more than 
 he could cast a star from it's celestial location. 
 This is natural, your Honors. He felt "free," 
 therefore, he believed he was "free" and that his
 
 20 
 
 act was one of a "free will." But if his will were 
 as free as it seems to be; were his choice between 
 two courses of action possible, he would be nothing 
 less than God himself. Alas! the logic of events 
 proves him to be, just as he is, a single little un- 
 Avilling event in the endless string of changes 
 which the matter composing his body has been go- 
 ing through since it's atoms were created. So far 
 as the individual is concerned, he has no more 
 "free will" than if he were stone instead of flesh 
 and blood, the belief that his will is "free" being 
 merely an inference from faulty premises. There- 
 fore, your Honors, all our actions being thus the 
 result of circumstances over which none of us has 
 any control, and every one of us in body, mind and 
 soul, being just exactly of that causal nature which 
 must produce the very actions proceeding from us, 
 whatever be a person's acts, we cannot say "He 
 did it to injure me." Whatever he did was because 
 of the peculiar balance of his proclivities ; proclivi- 
 ties caused by the necessity of keeping his body 
 from pain or affording it pleasure. All we can 
 honestly say is, "He is so constructed from the 
 beginning of time that this act was caused by 
 what he could not control." Your Honors, this 
 question of the origin of proclivities, namely, as 
 the guardians of our physical lives, the sine qua 
 non 'of the perdurance of our kind, is of great 
 importance to our argument and we venture to 
 summarize our remarks thereon, as follows: 
 
 Our most remote evolutionary ancestor was a 
 minute organic cell. 
 
 This cell developed a muscular and a nervous 
 system. 
 
 Certain things were necessary to its continued 
 life.
 
 21 
 
 It had sensations, denoting need. 
 
 These sensations had a reflex effect upon the 
 motor nerves. 
 
 The muscles of locomotion by an equally reflex 
 action of these motor nerves moved the cell into 
 such a relation with its' environment as to reduce 
 the need and allay the exciting sensation. 
 
 In the course of ages the one cell developed 
 around it other cells, which were the sensoria, 
 corresponding to other needs Avhich arose from 
 variety of environment. 
 
 This collection of cells was what we now call 
 the "brain,' r and they developed a clearing house 
 for their sensations, which interrupted the in- 
 stantaneous play between some of their sensa- 
 tions and the motor nerves. 
 
 This clearing house we call "memory." It was 
 the result of past experience. It contained the 
 beginnings of our metaphysical law which we call 
 "Association of Ideas." Here began the develop- 
 ment of the reasoning creature. Sensations then 
 awoke an association of ideas 1 , a comparison of 
 experiences had under similar sensations. Those 
 "memories" which were connected with agreeable 
 results then transmitted the delayed current of 
 sensation to the motor nerves which set the 
 muscles in operation and disposed the whole 
 organism in accordance with the most satisfac- 
 tory experiences'. Thus eon after eon passed 
 by. The brain grew and became more and more 
 minutely correspondent to environment. It was 
 not a simple but a very complex machine. 
 Groups of cells had evolved to correspond to par- 
 ticular phases of life of the subject, all excitable 
 through specific sensations, which transmitted 
 their currents' through the clearing house of 
 memory and by association of ideas touched just 
 the requisite motor nerves to provoke muscular 
 action which, if the memory-record was correct, 
 would supply the need and allay the sensation. 
 This is whence we came and what we are or- 
 ganic machines.
 
 22 
 
 Your Honors, there is nothing we can think of 
 which so well illustrates our notion of human ac- 
 tion as our modern graphophone. The machine has 
 externally the same identical appearance no mat- 
 ter what record is being delivered from it. But in 
 fact it changes its identity with the changing rec- 
 ord. The same throat is used, but its utterances 
 are from a different source from record to record. 
 Under some circumstances it is a well-known prinia 
 donna; under others, it is a celebrated brass band. 
 And so on indefinitely. Yet all the time it looks 
 the same to the naked eye. Now a man is a grapho- 
 phone. One set of proclivities speaks through his 
 mouth, looks from his eye, acts in his movements. 
 Then he is one creature. The record is changed 
 and he is another creature. Another set of proclivi- 
 ties has been attached to the nerves and the muscles 
 by another sensation; and while externally ident- 
 ical, the internal representative of the ego is differ- 
 ent. How often we have heard it said, "Smith was 
 not himself to-day," meaning that he was different 
 in the way he impressed the witness. Sometimes 
 little Tommy is "as cross as a bear" ; and sometimes 
 "as good as an angel." They are different Tom- 
 mies. Sometimes one group of proclivities is act- 
 ing through his graphophone of a body, sometimes 
 another. But his body is merely the plaything of 
 his proclivities, and his proclivities are as merely 
 the plaything of his physical s-ensations, resulting 
 from a full or empty, a sick or well stomach, re- 
 freshed or tired muscles, or some other condition of 
 body or environment; or resulting even from some 
 state of mind brain-cells caused by some circum- 
 stance which has awakened a peculiar association 
 of ideas, but with regard to which the setting off of 
 one proclivity against another may have neutralized
 
 23 
 
 action. And it may be added that his sensations 
 are the mere plaything of his internal and external 
 environment which in turn are the mere plaything 
 of the course of creation and evolution. 
 
 Under this theory of ours, your Honors, human 
 conduct can best be explained. It is easier to be- 
 lieve that every human action is inevitable than to 
 believe that it had no cause back of the actor. How 
 otherwise can you explain the conduct of the man 
 who, in spite of resolutions to the contrary, solemn 
 promises, and earnest desire, always falls a victim 
 to the same temptation and commits the same act 
 over and over again, never once forgetting his for- 
 mer revolting experience and its bad effect upon his 
 happiness? He promised better things' while under 
 the influence of one set of proclivities; and broke 
 his promises under the influence of another set. 
 The fact is there are as many different men in one 
 body as are possible from permuting and combining 
 human proclivities. 
 
 But let no man say, your Honors that if a man 
 cannot help doing what is injurious to others, and 
 therefore called "wrong," he ought not to be re- 
 strained. If a man kills, he is dangerous to life. 
 Tf lie steals, he is dangerous to property. And as 
 you would confine a wild animal; destroy a mad 
 dog; or raise an umbrella, it is fitting and right 
 that rational beings should protect themselves from 
 unhappily contrived human beings by such re- 
 straint as will remove the danger. 
 
 Therefore, your Honors, we have no bitterness 
 toward the wily plaintiffs. They are as they were 
 oveated. They do as they must. Their machinery 
 is operated by unseen excitants; they naturally 
 move in line with the instinct of self-preservation; 
 or at least intend to; and they are in no wise re-
 
 24 
 
 sponsible in any abstract way ; but if they are doing 
 injury to our client, they must be properly re- 
 strained in ways which mature deliberation will 
 determine. 
 
 III. 
 
 INFLAMMATORY DENUNCIATION AND EXAGGERATED 
 EPITHETS ARE frOT ARGUMENT. 
 
 Your Honors we desire to call to your attention 
 various expressions, in addition to those already 
 mentioned as uttered by counsel for the wily plain- 
 tiffs, the aforesaid Importing Trust and Exporting 
 Trust, and to move that they be expunged from the 
 record of argument in this action. From what we 
 have just said, it appears that there is and has been 
 no such thing as malice in any action heretofore 
 taken by the defendant, American Production ; that 
 whatever it has done is but the result of its inherent 
 nature, which it did not contrive and over which it 
 hath no control ; and that the exciting causes of all 
 its action lie beneath its reach somewhere in the 
 very roots of its being. Therefore, when plaintiffs' 
 counsel lay any action of this defendant to "cor- 
 porate greed" ; when they hiss between their set 
 teeth the expression "predatory wealth," 'or when 
 they thunder out "protectionist avarice," they are 
 using baseless terms, and, we fear, attempting to 
 excite passions, appeal to which is not warranted 
 by any action of our client, American Production ; 
 unless, in the vocabulary of the modern "trust- 
 buster," "greed" means the ordinary enterprise 
 shown by any person in securing the profit allowed
 
 25 
 
 by the current degree of demand for his goods 1 ; 
 "predatory wealth," capital industriously earning 
 dividends, in the same way pursued by capital 
 everywhere, since capital came into being; and 
 "protectionist avarice" the natural desire to con- 
 fine American demand to American supply, giving 
 all Americans a fair field with favor to none. But, 
 your Honors, although we can honestly say that 
 our client has done naught to merit these furious 
 epithets, since what it does is without malice and 
 without volition, AVC are likewise ready to admit 
 that there is no malice in the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, and its 1 partner in sin, the Export 
 ing Trust, when they thus by proxy pour the lava 
 of their volcanic denunciations upon the head of our 
 devoted client, American Production. And yet, 
 your Honors, as we said a little way back, there is 
 a reason. These plaintiffs do not attack our client 
 in this way except it be for the purpose of self- 
 preservation, of diminishing pain or increasing 
 pleasure for themselves, in accordance with the re- 
 sults of our analysis of human actions a few mo- 
 ments ago. The withering anathemas of these 
 plaintiffs merely stand for an attempt to destroy 
 an enemy, not for the joy of the destruction, but in 
 order to remove from their path an obstacle in the 
 way of their happiness. Now, your Honors, it is 
 very easy to see the object of all these hard names 
 as applied to our client by the wily plaintiffs. They 
 wis'h to destroy our client, American Production, at 
 least for a time, in order that they may enjoy what, 
 in a measure, American Production is now enjoy- 
 ing, viz., the American domestic market; the Im- 
 porting Trust, as a location for the sale of cargoes 
 of foreign goods, whereon it will make a profit; and 
 the Exporting Trust, as a location where it can buy
 
 "raw materials" free of tariff duties, to work up 
 into other goods for the export trade. This, your 
 Honors, is the purpose of all this wild tirade 
 against American Production, so cunningly called 
 "the trusts" by counsel for the defense. It is on 
 this account, your Honors, that these plaintiffs 
 have so bitterly attacked our beneficent client, 
 American Production, and not because they delight 
 to see honest and industrious American citizens 
 cast down unto death with the despair that seizes 
 men when they see their employment gone and 
 slow starvation menacing them and their dear wives 
 and children; not because they delight to see this 
 great nation halt upon its upward path to bury its 
 untimely dead and build afresh the structure once 
 so fair and necessary to its life and to its progress, 
 but shaken to the earth by the dynamite conspira- 
 cies of these wily plaintiffs ; for, your Honors, these 
 plaintiffs are not bloodthirsty and wanton, but 
 merely market-thirsty and hungry for trade, and 
 the reflex action of their longing sensations takes 
 no note of the horrors, far worse than internecine 
 war, through which our devoted nation must wade, 
 if "tariff revision" finally accords them their de- 
 sires.
 
 27 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS THE CEN- 
 TURY OLD MORTAL ENEMY OF AMERICAN PRODUC- 
 TION, AND ALL IT SAYS ABOUT "THE TRUSTS," 
 THEREBY MEANING AMERICAN PRODUCTION, THB 
 DEFENDANT IN THIS ACTION, SHOULD BE TAKEN 
 CUM GRANO SALIS. 
 
 Let us be just, your Honors, and, before we con- 
 demn too severely its effort to preserve its family 
 line, acknowledge the lofty pedigree of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and the century-old 
 interests it has at stake. 
 
 The Importing Trust, your Honors, is a vast in- 
 terest, whose octopus-like body rests within our sea- 
 board cities, but whose thread-like tentacles have 
 laid hold, with a more or less deadly grasp, upon 
 Tien rl v all the veins and arteries' of our country. 
 The lives and the happiness and the stomachs of its 
 members depend, primarily, not upon this defend- 
 ant, American Production, but upon Foreign Pro- 
 duction, it having been their practice from time 
 immemorial to inflame the people of this country 
 ncrainst their real benefactor, our client, American 
 Production, by the application of odious epithets 
 like "favored classes," "tariff favorites," "infant 
 industries," iu the earlier days, and latterly by call- 
 ing our client horrific names, such as "trusts," 
 "predatory wealth," "cormorant corporations" and 
 the like, until the people, blind with rage and with 
 hate against their only hope of life and progress, 
 have arisen and torn down the tariff-dike and
 
 28 
 
 allowed the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, to 
 sit as sole mistress in our marts and gather bound- 
 less wealth from the savings of our people, while 
 millions of our people starved on every hand and 
 the whole nation languished in despair. This has 
 been the course of the members of the Importing 
 Trust for more than a century; the same course 
 they are pursuing now, with high hope of the same 
 result as that so often attained of old. 
 
 We say it in all kindness and with full remem- 
 brance of our philosophy which excludes the no- 
 tion of malice, but we say only the truth when we 
 declare that the Importing Trust for more than a 
 century has been for us in this land a giant bird 
 of prey, with no other interest here than to plunder 
 us of our vitals when we wax fat; and when we 
 have thus been levelled to the earth in poverty, to 
 wing its way to a distant hill-top, above the carrion 
 stench from our dead workers, and await the rising 
 of a fresh race of workers and the time when 
 American wealth has accumulated enough once 
 more to make it worth the while of this same foul 
 bird to descend anew upon our homes and hearts. 
 
 It was the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 your Honors, who first applied the name of "trusts" 
 to all American Production, as a term of sweeping 
 reproach that would madden our people to hate 
 their own and cleave to this predatory alien, the 
 Importing Trust. Surely, your Honors, there is 
 only poetical justice in turning the tables upon this 
 monster of destruction, this prodigy of hypocrisy, by 
 also calling it a "trust." Surely, it is no more 
 than just to apply this term to a mighty aggregate 
 of interests, moss-grown with dark and damp life, 
 which for more than a hundred years has fought at 
 every step with bloodthirsty fury the progress of
 
 29 
 
 American Production on this soil. American Pro- 
 duction, did we say? Ay, the progress of American 
 Civilization, we might have said; since American 
 Production for American Consumption measures to 
 an ounce American Civilization. From our Colonial 
 days down to this hour we have thus been victim- 
 ized and betrayed by the wily plaintiff. As colon- 
 ists we were merely a flock of sheep for fleecing by 
 the wily plaintiff, which used every endeavor with 
 the English King and Parliament to strangle every 
 sign of life shown by our client, American Produc- 
 tion, on its manufacturing side. It pretended to a 
 divine right to enter t/ur colonies with its goods and 
 compel the tribute of high prices from our fore- 
 fathers, who were forbidden to manufacture. 
 Therefore we think that it is due "to this wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, thus to say that much of 
 its present-day arrogance and its puzzling intoler- 
 ance are merely heritages from a triumphant past, 
 when, with it, to demand was to receive, to com- 
 mand was to be obeyed. What wonder that lordly 
 members of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 still regard us as but an English colony, where they 
 may while away a portion of the year in taking from 
 our toilers tolls on imported goods, only to go to 
 Europe for the remainder of the year, to loll in lux- 
 urious carriages, live in elegant palaces', and spend 
 their Importing-Trust profits in a thousand ways 
 v>f delight? For this they have always fought our 
 client, American Production. But American Pro- 
 duction would not down. From decade to decade 
 it struggled on, often crushed by the weight of the 
 power of this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust ; 
 often wounded almost unto death by the blind folly 
 of our own people, frenzied by the stealthy slanders 
 of tiro Importing Trust, this wily plaintiff, which
 
 30 
 
 then as now, hesitated at no measure for the de- 
 struction of its adversary, our present client, Amer- 
 ican Production. 
 
 And so, your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, has continued down to this very day, 
 pursuing its happiness by the destruction of Ameri- 
 can Production, at every point and in every way 
 possible. From the necessities of the case, from 
 the fact that it is a struggle as between life and 
 death, we do not believe that there is any crime at 
 which, as a concrete proposition, the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, would balk to work the final 
 dissolution of American Production. It disguises 
 itself in every way and makes' use of any and all 
 agents to accomplish the injury of our client. 
 When in its war against 'our client, after years of use 
 of the naked blade of "Free Trade," our people had 
 come to look with horror upon this 1 weapon, as 
 wielded by the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff 
 look care to conceal its real instrument of destruc- 
 tion by giving it different names, among which your 
 Honors will doubtless recall "Lower Taxation," 
 "Moderate Protection," "Free Raw Materials," 
 "Tariff Reform" and "Revenue Tariff," as 1 some of 
 those employed by the wily plaintiff a decade or two 
 ago; and "Reciprocity," "Cuban Treaty," "Relief 
 for the Cubans," "Relief for the Filipinos," "Reduc- 
 tion of War Tariffs," "German Trade Agreement," 
 "Stopping the Gathering of Gold in the Treasury," 
 and "Tariff Revision," as some of the later subter- 
 fuges by which the wily plaintiff seeks to hide the 
 keen edge of the Free Trade knife with which it 
 cuts the throat of the fat bullock, American Domes- 
 tic Market. 
 
 But, your Honors, at the present moment the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is wielding
 
 31 
 
 with all its power the blade which it calls "Tariff 
 Revision"; and with "Tariff Revision" as a watch- 
 word and the cry, "The American trusts are selling 
 cheaper abroad than at home," it is trying once 
 more to drive our people so crazy that they will turn 
 and tear down our tariff dike which dams out the 
 world's surplus goods and dams in the world's wan- 
 dering capital, and let in the deluge, tie the hands 
 of our workers by forcing capital to seek other 
 scenes and send them all supperles's to bed and 
 many of them to untimely graves. Ah, your Hon- 
 ors, if anything could justify this cruel war on all 
 the workers of this 1 country, it would surely be the 
 happiness of so large and lordly a concourse of blue- 
 blooded commercialists, as that which makes up 
 very largely the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. 
 Who, then, make up the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, your Honors? In answer to the 
 question, we say that far and away its larger por- 
 tion is composed of importers of foreign goods', the 
 fathers and grandfathers of many of whom were im- 
 porters before them, in whose blood has come to be 
 mixed a large spilling of the spice of aristocracy, 
 and who look with proud intolerance on whatever 
 seems to lend dignity and strength to our client, 
 American Production. These people control the 
 chambers of commerce of all our foreign-trading 
 cities, which, under the tutelage of members of the 
 wily plaintiff, pass 1 resolutions declaring that "the 
 people demand an early relief from the iniquities 
 and burdens of the tariff by a substantial reduction 
 of its rates"; or that "we favor an immedate revi- 
 sion of the tariff." These importers 1 live in the 
 most expensive quarters of their respective towns, 
 drive imposing carriages, or thunder by in the larg- 
 est automobiles, and everywhere sow the seeds of
 
 32 
 
 respect for "commerce" or "international trade," 
 showing meanwhile by their opulence and magnifi- 
 cence of living how profitable, for a hundred years 
 past, they have found the business of emptying 
 American savings banks. 
 
 In addition to the hereditary and other importers 
 engaged directly in vulgar trade, there is a wing of 
 the Importing Trust which is not vulgar enough to 
 engage in trade, being made up of Mayflower de- 
 scendants of the silk-stocking variety. These peo- 
 ple and their fathers before them were born with 
 golden spoons, diamond tipped, in their tiny mouths. 
 They are blue-bloods of the purest ultra-marine. 
 They are veritable Plymouth Rocks. They carry in 
 their sacred persons all that is hardly worth saving 
 in this Republic. Do they work? Never. They 
 are the true and only class of exclusive "consum- 
 ers" in the country. When the newspapers of the 
 Importing Trust say the "consumers" must be con- 
 sidered and the tariff tax abolished, they mean by 
 "consumers" these people who forever "consume" 
 and never "produce," these proud and would-be 
 aristocratic people who consider themselves a sepa- 
 rate class, to serve which humbly and forever is the 
 duty of the "laboring classes," by which term they 
 mean all who are not rich enough to live without 
 work and join the illustrious body of "consumers" 
 and buy a pedigree. Believing that they are the 
 whole show, and that the "laboring classes," like 
 the birds and the grass, are mere inconsequential 
 incidents of life here, they also believe that they 
 should have their work done at the lowest price pos- 
 sible through world-wide competition between 
 workers; therefore their allusions to the "robber 
 tariff" and "favored producers," as if they were de- 
 nied their rights when a tariff dike keeps out the
 
 33 
 
 ocean of foreign surplus products, the odds and 
 ends of the world's bargain counters and bankrupt 
 and fire-sale stocks, anxious to be sold here at worse 
 than auction prices. There is another thing they 
 have in mind also as their right, and one which 
 would be re-established by a "revision" of the dike, 
 and that is retinues of servants at European wages, 
 which would be theirs if the dike were "revised," 
 and our workers, turned out of our factories in 
 starving swarms, should beset these choice "con- 
 sumers" for jobs in kitchen, chamber, cellar and 
 stable. For these reasons the silk-stocking, blue- 
 blood "consumers" are enthusiastic members of the 
 Importing Trust, and on every occasion root for 
 "tariff revision," "reciprocity treaties," "German 
 Trade Agreements," "Annexation of Canada," "an- 
 nexation of Cuba," "free trade with the Philipines," 
 "war on the trusts" anything and everything to 
 make their high living come at the lowest price, by 
 exposing American workers to the deadliest com- 
 petition. We cannot blame them for all this. 
 Their brain cells are so arranged that they must 
 ever be blood-suckers and never blood-producers. 
 But the rest of us are fools if we do not understand 
 them. 
 
 Yet another wing of the Importing Trust is made 
 up of college professors and other professional men 
 who think that "revision" would make their broad- 
 cloth cheaper but would not reduce their incomes. 
 Having never "labored," in the vulgar sense of the 
 word, they know nothing of the horrors of indiscrim- 
 inate competition such as follows "tariff revision," 
 the lowering of our dike and the inundation of the 
 country with foreign surplus products. Some of 
 them, it must be admitted, particularly the college 
 professors and other awfully learned men, are quite
 
 34 
 
 frequently the high-thinking devotees of the time- 
 wasted cult of Free Trade, which they still piously 
 worship at a shrine wherein, decades ago, the last 
 venerated relic crumbled into dust. For they still 
 whisper of Free Trade as earnestly and as rever- 
 ently as though Adam Smith of England had not 
 been dead since Adam Smith of Eden was a little 
 boy and as though the world that the younger Adam 
 Smith knew had not been so transformed economi- 
 cally as to be unrecognizable by him if he returned 
 to earth. It is a pious devotion in which these 
 monks of the classic shades are engaged ; and should 
 we blame or criticise them? Lo, do they not do even 
 as we ourselves are doing seek that side of life 
 which grows the most sugar plums and the fewest 
 cacti? 
 
 Yet another wing of the Importing Trust, and a 
 very powerful one, is made up by the steamship 
 lines, notably those subsidized by the German Gov- 
 ernment, either with cash or paternal well-wishing. 
 We say "powerful," because back of the German 
 lines, at least, stands the whole diplomatic corps of 
 their home Government. Of course, they are 
 straining every influence to "revise" our tariff dike, 
 in behalf of heavier cargoes to this country. Again, 
 who could find fault with them for the arrangement 
 of their brain-cells? Or with us for such a brain- 
 cellular arrangement that we recoil from German 
 Trade Agreements fomented by German steamship 
 lines and German diplomacy as from poison rep- 
 tiles. Should it leave a pleasant taste in our 
 American mouths to realize that our industries 
 have been turned over to the tender merices of the 
 German War-Lord by his friend, Herr Trustbuster? 
 
 There is yet another wing of the Importing Trust, 
 your Honors, which should receive our careful con-
 
 35 
 
 sideration. We refer to that wing made up of cer- 
 tain politicians who join themselves to the Import- 
 ing Trust for no other purpose than to eat out of 
 its hand. These politicians, by some strange freak 
 of fortune, belong, generally, to the Democratic 
 Party; and, mirab-Ue dictu, very largely to the 
 Southern Branch of that party, the members of 
 which join in the assault upon our tariff dike, even 
 though the Sunny South, with her wealth in cli- 
 mate, soil and mine, and her marvellous develop- 
 ment behind the tariff-dike since the Civil War, 
 still needs the shelter of the dike, that her growth 
 may not be arrested by the influx of tropical prod- 
 ucts needs it for her cotton, her sugar, her rice, 
 her new-made textile mills and her flourishing foun- 
 dries and machine shops. 
 
 But it is very difficult to teach an old Southern 
 political dog new tricks, even though new tricks 
 mean the saving of his life. His forefathers were 
 Free Trade Democrats before him, and he can never 
 be anything else. He never forgets and never 
 learns. Although our lovely Southland was des- 
 tined, under a tariff-dike, soon to become the 
 wealthiest and proudest section of our country, 
 these old politicians of the Importing Trust would 
 still rule her life through a tradition which scorns 
 our dike as a robber fortress. They are stuck in 
 the same old bog in which they were hard and fast, 
 "fo de wah"; and until they are gathered home to 
 glory they will continue to believe down at Yazoo 
 that Jefferson is still Allah and John Sharp Wil- 
 liams is his prophet. 
 
 Your Honors, we fear we may be tiring you by 
 this long analysis of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, but nothing is more important to the 
 issues in this case tlxan to know the motives which
 
 36 
 
 lead the enemies of our client, American Produc- 
 tion, to raise the battle-standard of "revision" at 
 this time. We have not yet mentioned the wing of 
 the Importing Trust which is perhaps the most dan- 
 gerous because the most insidious in its method in 
 attempting to wreck domestic industry. We refer, 
 your Honors, to those American citizens who, while 
 claiming American citizenship, make use thereof 
 solely for the purpose of hypocritical claims which 
 they hope to coin into gold, even at the price of seas 
 of tears and mountains of suffering among the 
 workers of this country. These people, your Hon- 
 ors, are they who purchase forests, mines, and 
 wheat fields in other countries, and these pa- 
 triots, to get the benefit of Free Trade in our 
 domestic market for their alien products, press 
 for the annexation of Canada. We also have them 
 owning sugar, rice, and tobacco lands in the Phil- 
 lipine Islands, where they are also projectors of 
 railroads, hemp-mills, and other manufacturing in- 
 dustries, under a cost of subsistence which is 
 their cost of production infinitely lower than we 
 have here in our own bleak land. And these Phil- 
 ippine patriots, under the lead of Secretary Taft, 
 the great champion of "revision," a man quite unac- 
 quainted with our client, American Production, 
 and the terror which chills its spine at the threat 
 of tropical competition, are beseeching the Con- 
 gress of the United States to take down our tariff 
 dike towards the Philippines, and so compass the 
 death by starvation of thousands of our wage-pro- 
 ducers here. But these members of the Import- 
 ing Trust, the wily plaintiff herein, by arousing 
 pity for the "poor Filipinos," conceal their own 
 interest in thus "revising" the dike towards the 
 Philippines; just as American promoters of Cuban
 
 sugar plantations, wko were also members of the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, concealed their 
 personal interest in the Cuban-treaty outrage up- 
 on American civilization, by spreading in the 
 newspapers fictions as to the suffering of the "poor 
 little Cubans," and by pretending that unless a 
 "meed of justice" were doled out to these "poor 
 starving Cubans," in the way of a gap in our 
 tariff dike, they would starve to death in great 
 numbers. And the Importing Trust had the nerve 
 to say that we had shut the "poor Cubans" out 
 of the Spanish market by making the little fel- 
 lows free and were about to kill them with hunger, 
 unless by giving their jobs to the Cubans, we 
 killed an equal number of American workers. 
 Yes, your Honors, this wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, with its sly hand in the wage fund of 
 American workers, stood with great briny tears 
 in its eyes, sniveling about the hardships these Cu- 
 bans were enduring, in scenes of unheard of lux- 
 uriance in fruit, vegetable and animal life, where 
 yams spring up over night and where a two-cent 
 cotton pocket handkerchief makes a burdensome 
 suit of Sunday clothes, w r here no snow ever flies or 
 frost ever falls, and where a hut of palm leaves is all 
 the native needs for shelter. Ah, yes, your 
 Honors, they were starving to death on a bushel 
 of bananas and a barrel of yams and a wild tur- 
 key a day apiece; and Senor Trustbuster relieved 
 their suffering by giving them the Cuban treaty, 
 which ripped a gap in the tariff dike and put a 
 bonus of many millions a year in the pocket of the 
 American Sugar Eefining Company, to be distrib- 
 uted pro rata among the starving Cubans we 
 dont think. 
 These Cuban exploiters, members of the
 
 38 
 
 Importing Trust, arc they who slily foment 
 disorder in Cuba and fill our newspapers at times 
 with talk of its annexation to the United States; 
 for, your Honors, that would mean the total level- 
 ing of our tariff-dike towards Cuba, which would 
 be much better even than a Cuban Treaty which 
 only lowered it. But no greater calamity could 
 possibly befall American civilization, your Hon- 
 ors, than either free trade with the Philippines or 
 annexation of Cuba. For all the world is 
 struggling by hook or crook to get inside our 
 tariff-dike with its goods; and all the world of 
 unfixed capital would overflow the Philippines, 
 if w r e had free trade with them; and Cuba also if 
 we annexed her; just for the privilege of free trade 
 with our market here on the main land ; and these 
 tropical islands, with the cost of production not 
 over one-fifth of its cost here, with inexhaustible 
 natural resources of soil, and mineral, and forest, 
 could and would ultimately produce a supply of 
 all forms of goods ever thought of quite sufficient 
 to meet our greatest demand here. And, your 
 Honors, with Senor Trustbuster or some one 
 selected by him, as for instance Mr. Taft, swing- 
 ing the cudgel of patronage and threatening chas- 
 tisement to our "insurgent" Congressmen, who can 
 say, your Honors, how far the wily plaintiff could 
 not go in securing free trade with the Philippines, 
 a renewal of the Cuban Treaty, or the annexation 
 of Cuba? Senor Trustbuster "loveth best who 
 tickleth best," and it may be Mr. Taft does, too. 
 And who shall say that the Importing Trust would 
 never succeed in tickling either of these gentle- 
 men to as profitable an effect as Baron Speck Von 
 Sternburg tickled Herr Trustbuster? 
 
 Your Honors, it may be ungracious to Herr
 
 39 
 
 Trustbuster, but in his treatment of the people 
 of this country in his Cuban Treaty and his Ger- 
 man Agreement, it seems to us he has acted simply 
 as if he were the proprietor of a great estate, with 
 the right to give of that estate as much as he 
 pleased to whom he pleased and to whom pleased 
 him. For he has given a vast slice of our domestic 
 market to the Cuban exploiting member of the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and another 
 great slice to his flatterers and pretended admirers 
 in the German Empire, and in each case he has 
 entirely ignored our Congress as much as a Ger- 
 man nobleman, in the disposition of his property, 
 could possibly have ignored his footman. Does 
 Herr Trustbuster ever stop to think, your Honors, 
 flint he is the servant and not the master of our 
 people? Does he ever stop to think that these 
 United States are not his own shooting park? Does 
 lio realize that our domestic market is our civili- 
 zation, our domestic life, of which we cannot give 
 away a single dollar's worth, without giving away 
 just so much of our civilization and our lives? 
 Wo regret to say, your Honors, that Herr Trust- 
 blister makes us think that he really looks upon 
 our people and their sacred interests very much 
 as he might upon a basket of fish caught in his 
 own Oyster Bay or a bagfull 'of game shot in his 
 own woods, which ho might distribute at will 
 among his favorites at court. He has given us 
 away to the wealthy Tmporting-Trust Cubans. He 
 lias lavished us upon his favorites of the German 
 race. And rumor says that, ere long, Monsieur 
 Trustbuster will have succumbed also to French 
 flattery and havf 1 poured us out with equal gener- 
 osity over the industrial reaches of la "belle France! 
 And will he crown it all in the coming Congress
 
 40 
 
 with scattering us as a handful of alms over all 
 the industrial peoples of the earth, by corraling the 
 "insurgent" Congressmen, in his own strenuous 
 way, and clubbing Philippine Free Trade through 
 Congress, and thus opening us to Free Trade with 
 the whole world through the Philippine Hole in 
 the Wall? How long, O your Honors, how long! 
 
 V 
 
 THE UNION OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORT- 
 ING TRUST, AND THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE EX- 
 PORTING TRUST, IS A MOST UNHOLY ALLIANCE 
 FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF OUR CLIENT, 
 AMERICAN PRODUCTION. 
 
 May it please your Honors, we have thus traced 
 as nearly as we can with our present data an 
 outline of the various branches of the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust; and we now proceed to 
 give you some notion of the origin and the general 
 nature of the partner in sin of the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, that is to say the Exporting 
 Trust. 
 
 Some years back, how many we cannot say, the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, took unto itself 
 a wife, and was joined in the bonds of a most unholy 
 wedlock, the infatuated maiden who consented to 
 the union being none other than Miss American 
 Special Producing Interests. The union was fol- 
 lowed in the course of nature by the birth of a 
 lusty boy, whom the happy twain carried immedi- 
 ately to the High Priest named "Foreign Trade" 
 and had christened under the name of "The Ex-
 
 i 41 
 
 porting Trust." This lusty baby, in due time, 
 came to man's estate, and though the offspring 
 of a marriage of convenience, and, as an independ- 
 ent proposition, having no special affection for its 
 sire, it soon began to assist its father in secret 
 raids upon our tariff-dike, the advantage it sought 
 being the free importation of "raw materials" to 
 work up into its own products, for sale, primarily, 
 in our domestic market, and, secondarily, in the 
 far-famed "markets of the world." 
 
 One wing of the Exporting Trust, your Honors, 
 is represented by certain Massachusetts manufact- 
 urers, notably those of shoes, who want to import 
 "raw materials" free. The mongrel blood within 
 their veins is seen in the fact that, in order to in- 
 crease their profits already large from their mar- 
 ket here behind the tariff-dike, they are willing 
 that all other producers in the United States 
 should be exposed to a low dike, provided the dike 
 shall still remain high over against their own fac- 
 tories. For example, the shoe manufacturers of 
 Brockton demand that all the farmers in the coun- 
 try should lose $3 or $4 a hide, in order that the 
 shoe manufacturers themselves, in addition to the 
 large profit secured them by selling goods here 
 safely behind the tariff-dike, may have the profit 
 which would come to them if they could make 
 American farmers sell hides as cheaply as they 
 are sold in the world outside. In other words they 
 want free trade in what they buy and protection 
 in what they sell. 
 
 We also mention, as belonging to the Exporting 
 Trust, the Minnesota millers who enjoy a high 
 tariff-dike on flour, and thereby secure our entire 
 home market; but who desire "free wheat" from 
 Panada, so they may add to their tariff-profit the
 
 42 
 
 profit to be made by compelling our wheat-raisers 
 to compete with Canada for the custom of the mil- 
 lers of Minnesota. 
 
 We might further mention other manufactu- 
 rers, members of the Exporting Trust, who are elo- 
 quent for "revision" of the dike, so far as it touches 
 their "raw materials," all of which are the finished 
 products of their sister industries in this country ; 
 but are as eloquent in declaring that so far as 
 their own products are concerned, the tariff-dike 
 is now none too high. 
 
 We particularly desire to place this mark of 
 the sorocide on the brow of all those members of 
 the Exporting Trust who manufacture patented 
 articles and ask that the dike be "revised" because 
 it is useless to them, who are already protected 
 both by domestic and by foreign patents, and who 
 are the only real "monopolists" in this country. 
 For these people gladly assist the wily plaintiffs 
 to destroy the dike, not, your Honors, that they 
 may "conquer the markets of the world" through 
 free "raw materials," but, God pity them! 
 that, they may force American wage-producers 
 here to work at foreign wages in making these 
 patented goods for this market, in order that these 
 manufacturers may put the difference between the 
 American and the foreign pay-rolls in their 
 pockets. The fact is that most of our manufact- 
 urers of patented things already have plants abroad 
 and so, for goods to be sold abroad, already have 
 the benefit of foreign wages. But not satisfied 
 with that, they wish the tariff-dike "revised" so 
 the workers in their factories here will be com- 
 pelled to work for foreign wages also, as we have 
 already said. 
 
 Thus these members of the Exporting Trust give
 
 43 
 
 aid and comfort to the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, in its crusade against the tariff-dike 
 and its demands for "revision" of the tariff; and 
 when these manufacturers also root for "revision," 
 the newspaper claque of the Importing Trust says, 
 "Lo, the manufacturers themselves, these infant 
 industries, to protect which the tariff -dike was 
 built, demand "revision." Is not this proof that 
 the time has arrived for a general "revision down- 
 ward" of this barbarous dike, this Chinese wall, 
 seeing that even they whom it was built to shelter 
 consider it an evil?" 
 
 Your Honors, when we see the depths to which 
 our own people will dive in the slums of selfish- 
 ness; when we see how ready human nature is 
 to eat human flesh, American manufacturers, 
 who think they have no further need of protection 
 to absorb into their economies the very substance 
 of other American manufacturers and their em- 
 ployees, it requires all the philosophy over which 
 we have command not to wish our brain-cells were 
 so arranged as to make us approve the banishment 
 of these flesh-eating monsters to the Cannibal 
 Islands. But our brain-cells will not let us.
 
 44 
 
 VI 
 
 THE SOLE RAISON D'ETRE OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF, 
 THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS THE SPOLIATION OF 
 THIS COUNTRY. THE SOLE EFFECT OF ITS OPERA- 
 TIONS IS TO TAKE FROM AND NEVER ADD TO THE 
 WEALTH OF THIS NATION. 
 
 We humbly submit, your Honors, looking back 
 at a century of our national life, that the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is figuratively 
 speaking, a sheep-stealer and nothing but a sheep- 
 stealer, prowling among the producing flocks of 
 this country. It has not even any relation what- 
 ever to any exchange of products whereby its in- 
 juries are in any manner offset. Its generic 
 nature is that of the freebooters, marauders and 
 pirates, its real forefathers, who but a short time 
 ago swept the seas for plunder. Its sole function 
 now is to skim off the cream of wealth from the 
 milk of industrial activity which flows from the 
 prolific udder of this industrious nation. It differs 
 from the old-time pirates only in the fact that it 
 snatches the wealth of a whole nation at once in- 
 stead of that of single merchantmen; and instead 
 of making but one ship's crew walk the plank at 
 a sitting, it puts to death hundreds of thousands 
 of peoDle, by actual starvation, mental anxiety, 
 despair and suicide, all in the course of a single 
 raid ni)on this country's employment. The finan- 
 cial havoc which, from a single victory over the 
 cold sense of our people and a single breach in 
 our tariff dike, it works in the asrirregate upon 
 this country's wealth, runs into billions of dol-
 
 45 
 
 lars. Ten times more destructive than our great 
 Civil War, when Northern Greek met Southern 
 Greek in deadly combat, is but a single triumph 
 over us of this wily plaintiff in its battle of false- 
 hood and feigning, through which alone it suc- 
 ceeds. And here is a point, your Honors, to which 
 we call your most serious attention: This wily 
 plaintiff has hit on the trick of using in its behalf 
 the diplomatic corps of foreign nations and, by 
 the devious ways of diplomacy, breaking our tariff- 
 dike which dams out the ocean of foreign surplus 
 goods. Only recently it secured the aid of the 
 Great German War Lord and his cabinet and all 
 the power of the Reichstag to force Herr Trust- 
 buster to do the dirty work of this 1 wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust. And be it said in shame and 
 sorrow, Herr Trustbuster humbly knelt and mur- 
 mured his vows of vassalage to the Great War 
 Lord; and turned over to the Importing Trust 
 privileges which the workers of this country will 
 pay for from their savings to the tune of not less 
 than a billion dollars; unless our Congress shall 
 call Herr Trustbuster to his senses, repudiate his 
 allegiance to the German Empire, and stop the 
 ruin to our industries, which is already a cloud 
 black and broad with disaster above our fields and 
 factories. This only illustrates further what we 
 have before said, your Honors, namely, that the 
 Importing Trust is merely a diplomatic robber 
 and freebooter, a relic of the ante-industrial days, 
 when tribe matched tribe in theft of cattle, corn 
 and maidens. The Importing Trust is not an in- 
 dustrial factor. It is usurer, thief or assassin, 
 commercially speaking; and when it fails of suc- 
 cess by its own dark ways here, it calls on an 
 emperor to outmatch ns in diplomacy; which is
 
 46 
 
 as bad for us as having been beaten in bloody 
 battle. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE OPERATIONS OF THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS ARE 
 AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF THE CIVILIZED 
 i WORLD. 
 
 Your Honors, all civilized nations produce all 
 things requisite to their prosperity; and no such 
 nation can supply any other such nation with an 
 article the like of which either in form or effect 
 the latter cannot itself produce; and as surely as 
 the sun shines and shades, no organization like 
 either of these plaintiffs can do international 
 business without injury to the great body of the 
 people concerned. For all the active people of 
 any country are producers of one of three grades. 
 Either they labor for wages and are wage-produ- 
 cers; or, by the employment of wage-producers, 
 turn out some kind of property to sell to others, 
 and are, therefore, property-producers; or assist 
 in the preservation, transportation, or distribution 
 of property, and are therefore what might be called 
 "adjunct-producers." There are none other than 
 these among the active people of any country, who 
 do any kind of work, whether of hand or brain, 
 or both. Even doctors, lawyers, ministers, bank- 
 ers, insurance men, telegraphers, telephonists, 
 blacksmiths, tinsmiths, plumbers, masons, paint- 
 ers, carpenters, and clerks, stewards, porters, and 
 watchmen, soldiers, sailors, and errand boys fall 
 into one or the other of these groups, every one
 
 47 
 
 of them dependent upon making domestic goods, 
 real or personal, that is, property-production; 
 and all the other people in a country, unless either 
 too young or too old or too sick to work, are 
 tramps, which includes the "consumers," whose 
 case the Importing Trust so eloquently pleads in 
 its arugment for the substitution here of foreign 
 in the place of domestic goods. We repeat, prac- 
 tically all the people of every nation are produ- 
 cers and depend upon production for their lives. 
 The more meager their production, the more 
 meager their lives; the more abundant, the more 
 abundant their lives in happiness and the fullness 
 of civilization. 
 
 It follows that to import any article into any 
 such country, is to prevent increased production 
 in that country and so increased civilization and 
 happiness. For either the exact like 'of it or an 
 article which would answer the same purpose, 
 could have been made by the producers of that 
 country, and they would have had the benefit of the 
 increase in production, which would have in- 
 creased the demand for wage-producers and so 
 have raised wages and have caused a wider dis- 
 tribution of wealth, the rich becoming somewhat 
 less rich and the poor somewhat less poor. 
 
 But that is not the whole story. To import an 
 article is not merely to prevent domestic produc- 
 tion from increasing, but to make it decrease by 
 a certain definite amount. For the imported ar- 
 ticle meets in its foreign market a similar domes- 
 tic article, or the ability to make it, w r hich is the 
 same thing; and either the domestic article under- 
 bids the imported article or it remains unsold. In 
 either case, the imported article makes the sup- 
 ply greater than before in comparison with de-
 
 48 
 
 mand, and, the wages of the wage-producer fall- 
 ing, instead of a wider there is a narrower dis- 
 tribution of wealth, and the rich become somewhat 
 richer and the poor somewhat poorer. 
 
 Suppose, however, your Honors, that it was not 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, but rather 
 its partner in sin, the Exporting Trust, that had 
 been at work; and instead of coming into the coun- 
 try, the article had gone out of the country. In 
 that case, the country's supply would have been re- 
 duced, demand would have forged ahead of sup- 
 ply, and the pnce would have risen in the home 
 market; which would be the same as a reduction 
 of wages. Ever though the export of the article 
 should continue and the increased demand for 
 wage-producers in that special line of production 
 should raise wages to their former level, in the in- 
 terval, the wage producers would have had the loss 
 occasioned by increased prices. But, in time, the 
 congestion of labor on fewer occupations would 
 lower wages by competition among workers in 
 those occupations and so offset any original up- 
 ward movement of wages, arising from increased 
 demand for a special product. And in any event, 
 should the price of the exported article rise and 
 wages finally rise to offset the price, the country 
 would have gained nothing, but would have merely 
 balanced accounts ; and the net result of the opera- 
 tion would have been the making of the rich mem- 
 bers of the Exporting Trust somewhat richer and 
 the country's wage-producers somewhat poorer. 
 
 In no events, your Honor, could any transaction 
 of the wily plaintiffs bring profit to the nation as 
 a whole; and their operations must always disturb 
 wage-production, to the greater or less harm of all 
 the wage-producers of the country.
 
 49 
 
 Looking at the matter from another point of 
 view, your Honors, these plaintiffs cause a loss to 
 the nation in every transaction to which they are 
 parties, their operations being like those of the 
 pickpocket who steals a watch and pawns it for 
 half its cost to the owner. For they pick the pocket 
 of the American wage-producer of some opportun- 
 ity to work and pawn the swag abroad at far less 
 than its real value to the original owner. If, your 
 Honors, you will refer to your Wealth of Nations, 
 by the economist, Adam Smith, you will find that 
 he says where people in a country buy and sell 
 among themselves it is twice as good for the coun- 
 try as where they buy and sell in foreign countries, 
 because when the trade is all done at home both 
 ends of it benefit the country with their respective 
 gains; whereas if only half of the trade is at home, 
 the country gets only the gain in that half. Now 
 these wily plaintiffs never do any business in which 
 both ends of the trade are in this country; so that 
 whatever they do, they are firing away abroad half 
 of the wealth all of which should belong to us. We 
 think Mr. Smith is right in his idea, which seems 
 to be that if you sell a steam-fire-engine in France 
 and take an automobile in exchange, you are not as 
 well off as if you had sold your steam-fire-engine to 
 some other Yankee in exchange for his automobile. 
 For the half-French trade only leaves to the coun- 
 try the automobile, while the all-American trade 
 leaves to it both the automobile and the engine, 
 with all the benefit remaining here, which could 
 come from the manufacture of both machines, bene- 
 fit in the way of the employment of wage-producers 
 and the demand of their wages on our market. To 
 make the half-French trade as good as the all- 
 American, France would have to send us back not
 
 only the automobile but another steam-fire-engine, 
 too, without extra charge. Of course that is silly to 
 suggest, and shows how silly is international trade. 
 
 But the worst of it is, your Honors, we may not 
 get even the half of the trade, because instead of 
 our sending France an engine in exchange for an 
 automobile, France may refuse anything but gold; 
 and so, in exchange for an automobile which will 
 soon wear out and never inspire industry to make 
 wealth again, we send to France permanent wealth, 
 which can go on inspiring industry to make wealth 
 to the end of time. We have exchanged a living 
 spirit for a clammy corpse. We have paid for our 
 automobile with a section of our producing power, 
 now lost to us forever; and whatever the size to 
 which our industrial stature may grow in the fu- 
 ture, it must always be smaller by the size of the 
 section thus lost to France. And these wily plain- 
 tiffs are the perpetual agents of such losses as this. 
 
 "Ah !" exclaims counsel for the Importing Trust, 
 "you cannot sell unless you buy. If you wish oth- 
 ers to buy of you, you must also buy of them. All 
 international trade is but a system of exchanges, 
 in which goods from one nation are paid for with 
 goods from another nation." 
 
 Your Honors, this falsehood is the stock in trade 
 of these wily plaintiffs. It is the worst one they 
 tell. For we can go on buying of foreign nations 
 without ever sending them a pound of goods; and 
 they can go on buying of us, without ever sending 
 us a pound of goods. We need only stop buying 
 of them when they refuse to trust us any longer; 
 and they need only stop buying of us when we re- 
 fuse to trust them any longer. We can buy of 
 them without selling to them, until we owe them 
 so much they can come over and take our property
 
 51 
 
 for the debts. They can buy of us without selling 
 to us until they owe us so much that we can go 
 over and take their property for the debt. It all 
 depends on how long credit holds out, when the end 
 will come and the sheriff's sale to the creditor will 
 close the chapter. For after all it is not nations 
 but individuals who are trading with each other, it 
 is just the same between dealers in different coun- 
 tries as it is between dealers in the same country. 
 The sum of international trade, is but the sum of 
 the tradings of individuals, carried on as individ- 
 uals, governed by the same rights and made equita- 
 ble by the same remedies belonging to individuals. 
 
 And all these international individuals in trade 
 are looking for the specific profit to them in each 
 trade, and the foundation of that profit is not 
 friendship, "buying of you because you buy of me," 
 but the relative cost of goods. It is not comity but 
 cost which governs all trade, international or other- 
 wise. It is not because we are kind enough to im- 
 port that we have the privilege of exporting. And 
 it is not because we are unkind enough to export 
 that we also find it in our hearts to import. The 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, knows only too 
 well that there is no logical or other necessary con- 
 nection between it and the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
 porting Trust, except in their common raids upon 
 our tariff-dike. 
 
 Both of these wily plaintiffs know that each 
 goes its own way in foreign trade quite careless as 
 to the fate of the other. Each does as much bus- 
 iness as it can, at the widest margin of gain it can 
 make, and puts the winning in its own private box. 
 And we repeat, at the bottom of each transaction o'f 
 either of these plaintiffs lies the mainspring of com- 
 mercial action, viz., relative cost. And we know
 
 52 
 
 that the motto of these wily plaintiffs is this : "Buy 
 in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market;" 
 and that they are strangers to the motto ; "Buy only 
 of him who buys of you." The only way in which the 
 wily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust could cause us 
 to import, would be to sell off so much of our goods 
 in foreign markets that prices would get so high 
 here that the Importing Trust would make money 
 even on goods brought over our dike. And the only 
 way in which the Importing Trust could make us 
 export, would be to fill us so full of foreign goods 
 that our unemployed people would be so poor that 
 they would work for wages so low that the wily 
 plaintiff the Exporting Trust could send goods 
 abroad in spite of low wages abroad, and thus coin 
 the bodies and souls of our wage-producers into 
 gold for its till.* And, your Honors, it pains our 
 compassionate brain-cells to think it, but way down 
 in our hearts we believe that these wily plaintiffs 
 when they practically say, "If you keep on export- 
 ing you surely will import; and if you keep on im- 
 porting, you surely will export," really mean that 
 prices will get so high, in the first place, and wages 
 so low, in the second place, that goods will pass 
 between us and foreign countries, in the way we 
 have said. But we can scarcely understand the 
 sort of a heart that could be so cruel as to deceive 
 our innocent wage-producers to their own undoing 
 in this way. True, goods might pass in this way; 
 but, as we have said, not because of any agreement 
 by which goods should be paid for with goods; but 
 
 * For over two generations, Great Britain, by Free Trade, 
 has been thus coining the bodies and souls of her workers into 
 profits for her Importing and Exporting Trusts, the fact being 
 that the members of these Trusts embrace all the wealth and 
 nobility of the British Islands, whose natural spoil British 
 workers seem to be.
 
 53 
 
 because of the alternate starvations of the wage- 
 producers in competing countries. And because of 
 goods passing as a consequence of alternate starva- 
 tions, these wily plaintiffs are given a panorama at 
 which to point, and say, "See, it is just as we said. 
 There go goods abroad in exchange for our im- 
 ports; see how goods are paid for with goods!" 
 Could anything be more perfidious, your Honors! 
 ( 1 ould brain-cells ever dip to deeper depths of turp- 
 itude than that! 
 
 What is the object of this cheating of our wage- 
 producers by these wily plaintiffs, your Honors? 
 Why, only to build a theory of international ex- 
 changes with which to justify their doings. The 
 Importing Trust wants to be so it can say to Amer- 
 ican wage-producers, "If you take my goods, which 
 I offer so cheap, my partner, the Exporting Trust, 
 will take the goods which you make and will sell 
 them abroad, and so increase your employment. 
 For if you import, you must surely export." And 
 the Exporting Trust wants to be so it can also say 
 to wage-producers, "If you want to work for me 
 making goods for export, you must help me break 
 the dike in order that we may import. For if we 
 export, we must surely import;" while it hides the 
 fact that what it really w r ants is free "raw" wages 
 and "raw materials" and a greater profit for it- 
 self. 
 
 We have proven that cost and not comity, your 
 Honors, decides whether there shall be an exchange 
 of goods, and so whether the injury done us by the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, shall be offset 
 by a kindness done us by the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
 porting Trust, as these wily plaintiffs in chorus 
 claim; therefore the question whether the wily 
 plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, will thus pour oil
 
 54 
 
 upon us and bind up our Importing-Trust wounds, 
 must depend upon the fact whether or not we can 
 produce goods more cheaply than any other coun- 
 try on earth, and not at all upon any mysterious 
 connection between imports and exports, and vice 
 versa. 
 
 Now, your Honors, if we remember that when 
 the dike is "revised" it must be "revised" for all 
 countries in the world alike, it falls out that, un- 
 der a "revised" dike the country we would have to 
 beat in cheapness of production would be the coun- 
 try made up by all the rest of the world outside 
 of our boundaries, including Canada, Cuba, and 
 the Philippines; and it does not seem possible that 
 we could beat all this great tract of country in any- 
 thing at all, except in a few things perhaps, and 
 for a very short time, before the world had stolen 
 all our machinery and methods. For, your Hon- 
 ors, we are but one-sixteenth as great in land- 
 area and population, and therefore have but one- 
 sixteenth as much natural wealth, labor, and 
 capital, as this great country with which we have 
 to compete. This fact of difference in size alone 
 should make it seem like a reckless thing for us to 
 throw down our barriers and jump into a hand- 
 to-hand contest in trade with the rest of the earth. 
 Why, your Honors, this great outside country is a 
 very busy place. People there everywhere are mak- 
 ing all sorts of things the same as we are, only 
 more so, in proportion to the size of their country; 
 and, just like us, they must pile up a whole lot 
 of things they don't want. Why, your Honors, the 
 fire and bankrupt, closing-out and winding-up 
 stocks in all that great country ought to be about 
 as large in volume as all the goods we use from 
 year to year; and we know that if it was our mat-
 
 55 
 
 ter, we would sell off dog cheap and at any price 
 we could get all those odds and ends and damaged 
 goods that we did not want to store in our own 
 attic. And what is troubling us, your Honors, is 
 the question whether or not this heap of half or 
 quarter price goods that the world wants to get 
 rid of, would not come piling in here over our "re- 
 vised" dike so fast and so furious and in such 
 volume that, no matter how cheap we came to make 
 things here ourselves, this bargain-counter stuff 
 would drown out our own market here for our own 
 goods forever and a day. You see, your Honors, 
 with a pile of cast-offs like this, the sellers would 
 not stop for price. The main thing would be to be 
 rid of it and if not at one price, at another. For 
 nobody's bread and butter depends on selling such 
 goods. All you get is velvet. Now would not "re- 
 vising" our dike just make of this country a sort 
 of catch-basin in the valley into which the nations 
 of the earth could just pour off their waste pro- 
 ducts in this way and would not such waste pro- 
 ducts alone be enough to keep our markets 
 crammed until our wage-producers were starved to 
 death? We think, at any rate, your Honors, that 
 it is worth while to dream a little further over this 
 point before we take the leap in the dark. 
 
 Then, your Honors, before we do a. rash thing, 
 we should think a moment on the point of whether 
 or not our whole country is as well situated to do 
 things cheap as all the rest of the earth together. 
 We know, when we stop to think, that the real cost 
 of what a man makes is what he spends in mak- 
 ing it. And what is that, your Honors'? Is it not 
 what he pays for the stuff he works on in making 
 something else out of it? But that stuff cost some- 
 body else to make what the somebody had to pay
 
 56 
 
 out while making it; so that our workman's "raw 
 material" costs him what the other fellow spent. 
 Then, in addition to his "raw material," does what 
 he makes not cost him what he spends to keep him- 
 self alive and well while he is making it? And is 
 not that his food, clothing and shelter? Then is 
 not the cost of the whole thing when he finishes it, 
 the cost of the food, clothing and shelter of the man 
 who made his "raw material" while making it, 
 added to what it cost him for these same things 
 while doing his 1 part of the work? And it is not this 
 all cost of subsistence, and is it not right to say, 
 Cost of subsistence is cost of production? We think 
 so at least. Now if cost of subsistence is what 
 things cost, do not you think, your Honors, that, 
 before we "revise" our dike, it would be well to find 
 out if others in the outside world cannot live just 
 as well as we do but a good deal more cheaply? 
 We should think so. Now, your Honors, everybody 
 knows that it is cheaper to live where the sun grows 
 plenty of grass and other vegetables, and lets you 
 stroll around a la Mother Eve, and makes a bam- 
 boo hut all you need for shelter, than where you 
 have to grow your food all in three or four months 
 in the year, wear heavy clothing most of the time 
 and have a lathed and plastered, battened and 
 calked house over your head. Now, your Honors, 
 looked at in this way, what parts of the earth are 
 the dearest to live in and what the cheapest? 
 Would you not say that the poles of the earth, 
 where winter blights the year round were the dear- 
 est spots, and the tropics, where summer blesses the 
 year 'round were the cheapest? And would not 
 you say that subsistence would be dearer, the near- 
 er the poles you were, and cheaper the nearer 
 the tropics you were? That is the way it seems
 
 57 
 
 to us, at least. Now, your Honors, the highest lat- 
 itude is at the poles and the lowest at the equator; 
 that is, the colder it is, the higher the latitude, and 
 the warmer, the lower. So that as your latitude 
 increases cold increases, and as your latitude de- 
 creases, cold decreases; so that the sun's heat, and, 
 as we have found, the cost of subsistence, and so 
 the cost of goods, vary directly as latitude varies. 
 Therefore, we can say, Cost of subsistence, which is 
 cost of production, varies directly with latitude. 
 This seems, your Honors, like getting down to the 
 bed-rock of cost; and when we look at it in that 
 way and realize that about 20,000,000 square miles 
 of the world's land-surface lies in lower latitudes, 
 and therefore lower costs of production than we, 
 about 14,000,000 square miles of which lies in the 
 tropics, or in the area of lowest possible cost, it be- 
 gins to look as if, taking things all 'round, even 
 mildly to "revise" our tariff dike, is a little more 
 than risky, if our continuing to live in this happy 
 land at all is a thought we fondly cherish. The 
 cards are against us, your Honors, doesn't it seem 
 so to you? 
 
 "Ah," says counsel for the wily plaintiff, "but 
 we have the most inexhaustible and the richest 
 stores of "raw materials" in the world, and we can 
 beat the universe on that account." 
 
 Does this look likely to you, your Honors? Does 
 it look likely that one-seventeenth of the earth has 
 more and better things in it than sixteen-seven- 
 teenths? We would not insult you by thinking you 
 think so, your Honors. 
 
 And now, your Honors, if all international trade 
 is only an exchange of goods, as the free traders 
 say ; and if latitudes lower than ours can make all 
 the kinds of goods that we can make, and many
 
 58 
 
 that we cannot make at all; and we can make all 
 the kinds of goods made by higher latitudes than 
 ours, and many that they cannot make at all ; how 
 can we exchange with lower latitudes, if all our 
 goods are dearer than theirs; and how can the 
 higher latitudes exchange with us, if all their goods 
 are dearer than ours? In a word, why should a 
 lower latitude ever buy anything of a higher? And, 
 if it should prove that international trade is not 
 merely an exchange of goods alone but one of cash 
 and credit as well, how could there be free trade 
 between all latitudes without the lower latitudes 
 soon owning the higher that is, without the higher 
 latitudes selling all of themselves to the lower for 
 products of the lower? 
 
 But, suppose, your Honors, the learned counsel 
 were correct and some parts of the world could 
 produce some things more cheaply than we, and we 
 some things more cheaply than they; what pledge 
 have we that, of the cheaper things, which they can 
 make, they will always produce a sufficient quan- 
 tity, not only for themselves but for all the world 
 less favorably situated; and will always keep from 
 producing at all any of those things which we can 
 produce more cheaply? What pledge have we that 
 they will not corner their own cheaper product and 
 hand it out to us at a price so high that we might 
 better have produced it ourselves, even at a higher 
 cost, rather than to have depended on their con- 
 stant industry and fairness? And if we keep from 
 nroducinsr a particular thing in order to import it 
 from a cheaper eountrv, what earnest have we that 
 the crops may not fail tliore, or that some war or 
 other circumstance may not so reduce the supply 
 that the price will go very high and make us pay 
 such a bonus for a single year's supply that if we
 
 59 
 
 had made it ourselves* even at our higher cost, we 
 would not have lost as much as by having trusted 
 to a foreign supply? 
 
 There is another point, your Honors, right in 
 this connection : If we agree to the rule that we 
 are only to make what we make cheapest and ex- 
 change it for what other countries make cheapest, 
 may we not find that we have natural stores large 
 enough to last only during a reasonable time even 
 if we make things only for ourselves and not for 
 other countries at all? 
 
 If that is so, ought we not to make some things 
 ourselves, even at a somewhat higher present cost 
 to us than the present cost abroad, rather than get 
 them from other countries in exchange for articles 
 made by us, the cheap raw materials for which in 
 our country must one day be entirely exhausted, 
 leaving us thereafter at the mercy of the rest of 
 1h<- world and its higher cost for materials the 
 cheap stores for which we had so foolishly squan- 
 dered? At the very best, is this plan of the learned 
 counsel for plaintiffs anything more than for a 
 postponement of relative dearness for us? And 
 taking a long look ahead, is it not possible that, if, 
 through making all things for ourselves, we pocket 
 a present loss, we may later enter upon a perpetual 
 gain ; and that, if through foreign exchanges, we 
 pocket a present gain, we may later enter upon a 
 perpetual loss? Does it not thus seem, after all, 
 your Honors, as if all foreign trade were a gamble 
 and as if our wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 and its ignoble and base-born partner in sin, the 
 Exportinir Trust, were gamblers in human lives for 
 the benefit of their own purses alone? 
 
 Another point, still, your Honors : If we adopted 
 the plan of the learned counsel and made only cer-
 
 60 
 
 tain things in which we excel in cheapness, would 
 there be enough to do in making only those things 
 to give us all work all the time? For, if not, that 
 would make another leak in the bucket by which 
 we might lose a great deal more than we would 
 have lost by making also the things we left for 
 other nations to make. 
 
 Because the total cost of maintaining a nation, 
 your Honors, is made up of the costs of all its citi- 
 zens, at that degree of consumption which will 
 keep each citizen in the most vigorous health. We 
 humans are very complex machines aggregations 
 of cells, your Honors and to make our income of 
 energy balance its outgo we need a great deal more 
 than just a fixed number of pounds of food. We 
 need recreation, diversion, mental expansion, and 
 a great variety of things to keep our brain-cells 
 healthy and at their highest point of action respon- 
 sive to our sensations and associations of ideas; 
 and the cost of all this for the nation cannot fall 
 below a certain point. Now, your Honors, this cost 
 of subsistence is the burden which the nation has 
 to bear; and like any other burden, it will be 
 lighter per capita, the more hands are applied to 
 its bearing. That is, if you increase the number 
 of a nation's producers, you decrease for the nation 
 the per capita cost of living. If you decrease the 
 number, you increase the per capita cost. There- 
 fore the policy which is best for the nation employs 
 the greatest number of the nation's producers the 
 greatest number of hours a day and at the highest 
 degree of efficient effort. Because of this rule, 
 your Honors, all the talk of the learned counsel 
 in which he has so highly lauded these plaintiffs, 
 sounds like an argument in favor of haphazard 
 gambling rather than a plan which reckons with
 
 61 
 
 all the conditions necessary to a nation's highest 
 good. Your Honors, the only method in sight by 
 which, with scientific certainty, the highest good of 
 this nation may be assured cuts off these plaintiffs 
 in their pack-peddling and gambling and makes of 
 their members producers instead. For their opera- 
 tions through foreign trade always result in less 
 employment of producers here. Because on the 
 one hand, as we have already several times said, 
 the Importing Trust stops the exchange of products 
 between two of our citizens by itself supplying the 
 demand on which the exchange depended. This de- 
 stroys the employment of the producer who cannot 
 sell his product. It increases the labor supply 
 without increasing domestic demand therefore, and 
 so makes a labor glut which means idleness, hun- 
 ger and decline to labor ; at the same time, by mak- 
 ing men idle, it makes fewer the burden-bearers, 
 and therefore increases the per capita burden of 
 the nation's subsistence. And, on the other hand, 
 the Exporting Trust increases prices by sending 
 goods abroad and thus diminishing supply; de- 
 creases wages by crowding wage-producers upon 
 a smaller number of occupations; assists foreign 
 countries to live cheaply by the exhaustion of our 
 natural stores; and generally aids the Importing 
 Trust in putting off that industrial equilibrium 
 which would one day follow the cutting out of these 
 plaintiffs and the direction of our whole domestic 
 demand, to our whole domestic supply. 
 
 We repeat, your Honors, that we believe that, 
 by no hocus-pocus of these plaintiffs, and by no 
 juggling with foreign trade, can the cost of this 
 nation's maintenance be less than that which it 
 would be if no foreign business were done, and, 
 the entire domestic supply being absorbed by the
 
 62 
 
 domestic demand, we averaged up the over-cost 
 which we suffered in some directions with the un- 
 der-cost we enjoyed in others. We believe, your 
 Honors, that expert people could ascertain the 
 average cost which we would have to pay by rely- 
 ing upon ourselves, and that this average cost could 
 he denoted by a number related to some standard ; 
 and that this index cost-number as it could be 
 called, would always remain the same as long as 
 we relied on ourselves alone; but for the many rea- 
 sons already given in detail, would increase when- 
 ever we traded abroad. 
 
 Your Honors, the more this matter is thought- 
 fully weighed, the more it seems that the only ones 
 \vho would not be injured by "revising" the dike 
 downward, would be these plaintiffs; and that if 
 in an wise they were benefited, it would be by a 
 corresponding injury to this nation. 
 
 It is certain, your Honors, that, in their desire 
 to "revise" the tariff dike, and let in the ocean 
 which rages to lay waste our fair fields of industry, 
 these wily plaintiffs are moved by the lowest mo- 
 tives which ever have birth in human brain cells, 
 namely, those which satisfy appetite by taking 
 innocent human life. For they must know that 
 in a deluge which follows a broken dike, there is 
 always death for many thousands of us; whereas, 
 on the contrary, our lives are safe and our nation 
 thrives and grows greater, the higher the dike and 
 the more surely it keeps out foreign goods. For 
 the dike enables us to appropriate for our own civ- 
 ilization and progress all the wealth growing be- 
 hind it since there is no way for wealth to be spilled 
 out of the country except through a breach therein. 
 And thev must also be aware that an "unrevised"
 
 dike means a more wido distribution of our wealth, 
 in the ways we have so fully explained before. 
 
 What we say, your Honors, may be summed up 
 in one short sentence, namely, close the ports, cut 
 off foreign trade in both directions, and prices will 
 fall and wages rise until "trusts" are no more and 
 all American capital is earning the same as that 
 earned by capital abroad. And that means the wid- 
 est possible distribution of wealth among all our 
 people. 
 
 But it is against this very distribution of our 
 wealth among the wage-producers that these wily 
 plaintiffs strive with all their might, when they 
 push for dike "revision" downward. For they do 
 not wish our wage-earners also to become property- 
 producers, as the latter are rapidly becoming from 
 their economies and savings, which now figure 
 nearly four billions. They do not want property- 
 producers here to become so numerous that prices 
 will fall so low that the plaintiffs will no longer 
 have any excuse to cry out that the "trusts" are 
 selling more cheapy abroad than at home ; but they 
 wish the gathering wealth of our wage-producers 
 to be scattered again to the four winds of heaven, 
 in order that they themselves may still make for- 
 tunes in brokerages and commissions on foreign 
 trade with us. You see, therefore, your Honors, 
 that our tariff dike is a nation-building device, 
 while the plaintiffs are a nation-destroying com- 
 bination, one which pursues such a course that, if 
 it were not ever and anon checked by our more 
 enlightened people, our end would be final impov- 
 erishment, the reversion of our civilization to the 
 most primitive conditions, and the ownership of 
 all our land by a handful of grandees. Is it not 
 strange, your Honors, that the brain-cells of so
 
 many of our people are arranged so peculiarly that 
 such a combination is able from time to time to 
 make this country "revise" its dike and set us all 
 on the down-hill road? But so it is, your Honors, 
 and alas, and alack, for the slip-shod arrangement 
 of brain-cells under so many skulls ! For it would 
 be far better for us if our beloved land were invaded 
 by a barbarian army of millions, armed with all 
 the most terrible engines of war, than that our 
 tariff-dike were thus "revised" by these wily plain- 
 tiffs. We would oust the barbarians quicker, bury 
 our dead, rebuild our cities, strengthen our fort- 
 resses and our defending armies, and, knowing by 
 what we had been hit, be wise for the future. But 
 these wily plaintiffs, appealing through their alien 
 press to the basest passions of our people, inflict a 
 more grievous injury than that possible by an armed 
 invasion, and yet cover their work with such hy- 
 pocrisy and mysticism that half of our wounded 
 people never know by whom they were struck and 
 very soon think the basest thoughts of these wily 
 plaintiffs after them once more and assist to rouse 
 the dikebusting fury that sleeps in the words "The 
 trusts sell more cheaply abroad than at home!" 
 
 Ah, your Honors, why do we not choose the more 
 intelligent part, which is to quit stealing the sheep 
 of others and to stop others stealing ours? Why 
 do we not cut off entirely this barbarous matching 
 of wits against wits, this playing of our national 
 life against the lives of other nations? For in this 
 day and generation, all foreign trade, is spolia- 
 tion. It is the robbing of wage-producers of their 
 opportunities to produce wages, and therefore 
 their food, clothing and shelter. To sell our goods 
 abroad is for us to despoil the wage-producers of 
 the country in which we sell. While for any other
 
 65 
 
 country to sell us its goods, is for that country to 
 despoil wage-producers here. Because, as we said 
 in the beginning of this head of our argument, all 
 civilized countries are now able to produce all 
 things necessary for their inhabitants; and for its 
 highest development, every country through its 
 own wage-producers, needs to produce every thing 
 required to supply the wants of its people. This 
 is so from the fact that the more opportunities 
 people have to work for others, the greater the field 
 of their action, and their means of reaching the 
 farthest goal reachable by them. Not only so, but, 
 by foreign trade to disperse these opportunities is 
 to waste in idleness the energies of your workmen 
 at home; energies for the existence of which the 
 country pays; for either it must support its idle 
 workmen from its poor fund, or let them die of 
 starvation and so lose their energies altogether. 
 On the other hand, to give its own wage-producers 
 all the opportunities to work made by the wants 
 of the nation is to give to them all they are entitled 
 to have ; for no nation is entitled to greater wealth 
 than that developed in supplying its own wants. 
 
 As we have said, your Honors, there is no causal 
 relationship between the amount of business done 
 respectively by the wily plaintiffs. But even if 
 there were, no system of foreign exchange could 
 help a nation to greater prosperity as a nation than 
 it could help itself to by simply supplying all its 
 own wants. For, as we have said before, any profit 
 from foreign trade would go to these wily plain- 
 tiffs alone, the net result to our wage-earners be- 
 ing a loss. For, inasmuch as foreign trade must 
 be in goods the like of which either by duplication 
 or substitution, we produce at home, for us to buy 
 abroad is to withhold from production at home and
 
 66 
 
 congest our wage-producers upon a narrower field 
 of work and so cause wages to fall; and this, your 
 Honors, is to make but one industry grow where 
 more than one grew before. But on the contrary, 
 the more kinds of things we make, the more wealthy 
 our people must become, because that gives more 
 chances to work and employs workers in doing 
 those very things they can do the easiest and best 
 and therefore with the greatest returns. But not 
 only so, your Honors, the diversification of indus- 
 tries diversifies the objects of exchange; so that the 
 wage-producer, in the wages which he receives for 
 doing a single thing, has the equivalent of many 
 things, of which, by proxy, he is himself the pro- 
 ducer and, by virtue of his wages, the owner. This 
 is to fill lives fuller and give a higher development 
 to our citizenship ; for the wage-producer works for 
 no other purpose than to be able to exchange his 
 wages for goods. 
 
 And right here, your Honors, we wish to refer 
 again to our remark of a moment ago, when we 
 said that foreign trade could not possibly give a 
 nation greater prosperity than would come from 
 the nation's supplying its own wants by the em- 
 ployment of its own wage-producers. We repeat 
 and confirm that remark and say that, with the na- 
 tion's demand confined to its own supply, its wage- 
 producers must exchange their wages for practic- 
 ally the total volume of goods they have made and 
 that volume of goods must surely be large enough 
 to go all round; for the wage-producers would nat- 
 urally be employed at least to supply their own 
 demand. Even if owing to a more bleak climate 
 or a less productive soil, poorer mines, and scantier 
 forests, a wage-producer was compelled to give up 
 in making an article more strength than that given
 
 67 
 
 up doing the same work by another wage-producer 
 in a better country, the former wage-producer, to 
 prevent his country's prosperity from being made 
 less, would still, by the sale of his product, have to 
 get back the strength he had expended under his 
 poorer circumstances. Because, suppose his coun- 
 try, instead of taking his product at the price of his 
 energy left it on his hands and imported a similar 
 product at a lower price; or even suppose his coun- 
 try dickered with him, and, because it could buy 
 more cheaply abroad, compelled him to sell his 
 product at a lower price than would return his 
 outlay of strength, would this not reduce the pros- 
 perity of your unfortunate wage-producer at least 
 as much at it increased the prosperity of him who 
 thus got a lower price? What would be true of 
 one wage-producer would be true of any number; 
 and therefore it would be true of the entire coun- 
 try, and our declaration as to the country's pros- 
 perity is true, that it cannot be increased through 
 buying anything abroad. And inasmuch as the 
 country must feed or starve its unemployed wage- 
 producers, it will be easily seen, your Honors, that 
 the rule upon which counsel for the wily plaintiffs 
 laid so much stress, viz., buy in the cheapest and 
 sell in the dearest market the world over, is a rule 
 which would put money in the pockets of the wily 
 plaintiffs by taking it from the pocket of the coun- 
 try, and would therefore make the rich richer and 
 the poor poorer. 
 
 Changing the form of their statement, learned 
 counsel say, "Exchange what you can make the 
 cheapest for what other countries can make the 
 cheapest, so that you can live with the lightest 
 labor;" and by that saying they interest those 
 whose brain-cells are few in number and simple in
 
 68 
 
 arrangement. But the impression left by this 
 plausible dictum is full of fallacies. It impresses 
 him of the simple brain-cells that an exchange be- 
 tween two nations is like an exchange between two 
 individuals. For instance, Farmer A grows fine 
 potatoes but poor pumpkins; while Farmer B 
 grows fine pumpkins but poor potatoes; therefore, 
 let these farmers exchange potatoes for pumpkins 
 and both have large fine fruit. Even in a case 
 like this Farmer A might get a chance to pinch 
 Farmer B out of the profit; or Farmer B to do the 
 same to Farmer A ; and both farmers might better 
 grow potatoes and pumpkins; but even if such a 
 deal were profitable between individuals, it might 
 be otherwise between nations. Nations are like 
 large families who have to feed their children any 
 way; and if one nation contracted to grow all 
 pumpkins to exchange with another nation that 
 grew all potatoes, it might find that half its work- 
 ers could raise pumpkins enough for both nations; 
 yet, under the contract, the other half of its work- 
 ers could not raise such potatoes as they could ; and 
 they would have to be supported in idleness. And 
 what would be gained? That is what happens 
 when a low tariff-dike snuffs out a great industry 
 that aforetime was booming. Plaintiff's counsel 
 say, "Set the idle workers at something else." That 
 is against the contract; but suppose you tried it 
 and the workers had been trained to a difficult 
 trade now wiped out, might not the loss of time 
 and strength in teaching them a new trade more 
 than eat up your profit? Who arranges this high- 
 daddy "international exchange" so it wont leak a 
 drop?
 
 VIII 
 
 IN ORDER THAT THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS MAY FLOUR- 
 ISH, WAGE-PRODUCERS THE WORLD OVER MUST 
 DIE. 
 
 Your Honors, we trust you will further bear 
 with us and our brain-cells while we call your at- 
 tention again to the fact that these wily plaintiffs 
 flourish best where their operations are most cer- 
 tainly fatal to the lives of wage-producers; that 
 is, where the fall of their victims from high to 
 low wages, from high to low living, is farthest. 
 Your Honors, both of these wily plaintiffs are 
 loaded at both ends for destruction. The Import- 
 ing Trust flourishes here by causing our wage- 
 producers to bid for their lives against the poor- 
 est-paid labor in the world; while, being an Ex- 
 porting Trust abroad, in order to find goods there 
 to continue its work of death here, it causes wage- 
 producers there to rush to narrower fields of em- 
 ployment and so cut down their own wages. On 
 the other hand, the Exporting Trust reverses the 
 order of destruction. Here, if successful, it con- 
 gests on specific employments our wage-producers 
 who then tumble over each other for jobs in those 
 employments, and plump down go their wages; 
 and, abroad, our Exporting Trusty being there 
 an Importing Trust, makes wage-producers tem- 
 porarily compete for employment against our su- 
 perior machinery and methods here in specific 
 lines ; and so the work of death of these wily plain- 
 tiffs goes merrily on. Thus the entire business of
 
 70 
 
 these wily plaintiffs is to make two competing 
 groups of wage-producers see who can survive 'on 
 the least food, wear the poorest clothes, and live 
 in the poorest houses; thus cutting off the lives of 
 the weak, and making weaker the lives of the strong 
 Moreover they go forth to all climes and coun- 
 tries in search of the best chance to destroy wage- 
 producers in this way, often starving to death 
 wage-producers in some dear climate by forcing 
 them to work for the same wages as wage-pro- 
 ducers in a cheap climate. 
 
 Yes, your Honors, these wily plaintiffs search 
 the earth over for places where goods are made at 
 the lowest costs ; in order to search the earth again 
 and find where similar goods cost the most to 
 produce; and when such places are found they 
 sell out of their jobs and their lives the workers 
 who make goods at the higher cost. Verily, in order 
 tha.t these wily plaintiffs may flourish, wage-pro- 
 ducers the world over must die. This foreign 
 trade is the most destructive and heartless pur- 
 suit in which human beings can engage; and yet 
 the brain-cells of these wily plaintiffs seem well 
 fitted for the job. 
 
 IX 
 
 THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS PREVENT THE DAWNING 
 FOB THE WORLD OF A BRIGHTER AND HAPPIER DAY. 
 
 For wage-producers, life is indeed made hard 
 and barren, your Honors, a losing game, so to 
 speak, where these wily plaintiffs have free 
 course. But on the other hand what an oppor-
 
 71 
 
 tunity to live in the broadest and richest sense 
 is afforded by a tariff-dike and dam which compel 
 domestic demand to look alone to domestic supply ; 
 and domestic supply to look alone to domestic de- 
 mand. This makes an endless chain of prosperity. 
 Every rising sun sees the country's whole demand 
 carried to the country's domestic market to ab- 
 sorb the accumulated supply and leave there a 
 vacuum into which may flow another greater sup- 
 ply. For, your Honors, the secret of our pros- 
 perity behind a high tariff -dike is 1 the fact that 
 people's wants multiply with their satisfying. 
 When there is any hope of their fulfillment,, 
 human ambitions for better things are never still. 
 Wants multiply with the means of filling them. 
 When the wage-producer is steadily at work and 
 wages are high, he not only provides his family 
 with what he can pay cash for; but also pianos 
 and music lessons for his girls, books, ponies and 
 bicycles for his boys, and better and more clothing 
 for his whole family, to say nothing of educa- 
 tion in its various forms 1 for his young people, 
 for which he may to some extent mortgage his 
 expectation of the future; and when the tariff- 
 dike and dam are high, he does not trust the fu- 
 ture in vain ; for his rising wages see him through 
 his highest hopes. And so, your Honors, indus- 
 tries multiply and expand to meet the multiply- 
 ing wants of busy wage-producers; and the result 
 is a boom of prosperity. 
 
 Why, your Honors 1 , it is all so easy to under- 
 stand! A single man's wages act upon our mar- 
 ket like hydraulic pressure, which multiplies the 
 unit of pressure many fold; and a single oppor- 
 tunity to exchange furnished the market by the 
 wages of a single wage-producer clears a path for
 
 TV 
 
 i - 
 
 a series of exchanges, each exchange doing aar 
 much good to others as the first did to the wage- 
 producer to whom the tariff-dike gave a good job. 
 And thus, your Honors, the growth of desires with 
 the hope of satisfaction will keep on forever behind 
 the dike and the dam ; and, with growth in the num- 
 ber of those who assist in production and thus by 
 their wages put hyrdaulic pressure on demand, 
 will keep the demand for wage-producers greater 
 than the supply; so that wages will keep on ris- 
 ing, in spite of growing population and what 
 would otherwise be greater competition between 
 wage-producers; until wealth is scattered widely 
 among us all so that property-producers, besides 1 
 interest on their capital, will get only about the 
 same wages for their trouble in the work of pro- 
 duction as those received by the wage-producers 
 in their shops. 
 
 And here, your Honors, we observe a derisive 
 smile on the faces of counsel for the wily plain- 
 tiffs and anticipate their rejoinder. "What!" they 
 will say, "Build a Chinese Wall around the coun- 
 try! On the one hand allow the whole people 
 to be choked to death by the 'trusts,' who will 
 'screw up' prices to the strangling point! And 
 on the other hand, allow the labor unions to 'screv 
 up' wages until business comes to a standstill ! 
 Allow the 'consumer' to be robbed and murdered 
 outright by such brigands as 1 these!" Our reply 
 is that the tariff-dike does not keep out of this 
 country capital on the one hand or labor on the 
 other; and just as long as prices are higher than 
 a fair profit requires, just so long will foreign 
 capital come in to take its chance at the same 
 blackberry bush which the "trusts" are stripping. 
 And just so long as American wages will buy more
 
 73 
 
 here behind the dike than foreign wages will buy 
 in other countries, just so long will there be a 
 stream of immigration, now over a million souls 
 a year, bringing in workers from all over the world 
 to share wages in this country. Inflowing capi- 
 tal will keep down prices; and inflowing men and 
 women will make wages reasonable. But capital 
 comes by millions 1 through a single cable message; 
 while the coming of labor drags 1 slowly through 
 the years; so capital will compete with capital 
 more strongly than labor with labor; and prices 
 will fall while wages rise and, in the way we have 
 said, wealth will reach a wider and wider distri- 
 bution. 
 
 And why is not our plan, your Honors, the best 
 one to cause the dawning on the world of a bright- 
 er and happier day? By it are we not now in- 
 viting here all the peoples' of the earth? As we 
 have just said they are now coming at the rate 
 of a million or more a year. They are coming to 
 a land of employment under a system which con- 
 stantly makes the poor richer and the rich divide 
 more and more with the poor through the medium 
 of wages. When these people come here, we have 
 them under our flag, subject to our laws and our 
 civilization. And what is more appropriate? Are 
 we not all immigrants together? Should we not 
 share our system of wealth-distribution with them, 
 osneoiallv when they bring their willing hands 
 and needy bodies to help us both in product"'" 
 and in consumption? Tf it is "foreign" trade we 
 want, is it not better to import the trade in the 
 bodies 1 of these immigrants than in the form of 
 Sfoods to kill industry here? Tf we get foreign 
 frade in this way, we can control it, sure enough. 
 We can fence it in and have it all for ourselves
 
 74 
 
 and not fight for it with all creation. What ia 
 the use of going abroad after foreign trade when, 
 if we keep wages high here by a sky-high tariff- 
 dike, foreign trade will come to us? In this way 
 we are gradually annexing the world and fencing 
 in its trade under such terms that nobody can 
 kick. You remember what the old Quaker lady 
 said, your Honors. We think it was something 
 like this : "I do not see why the young men should 
 put on their best clothes and go out to see the 
 young women. Why, if the young men would 
 only sit quietly at home, the young women would 
 come to see them." And so it would be with 
 foreign trade, if we would not go out to look it 
 up, but sat quietly at home. And that is what 
 it is doing in the persons of these immigrants. 
 But that don't bring any grist to the mill of the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. Tt don't want 
 us to annex the world in easy instalments' through 
 immigration. And so it plots against the dike 
 which brings in the world and says, "Down with the 
 'trusts!' Down with the 'malefactors of great 
 wealth,' that sell their goods dearer at home than 
 they do abroad." Why, your Honors, if this plain- 
 tiff would only stay quiet a spell and let the dike 
 do its perfect work, there would very soon be no 
 "abroad" left, for all "abroad" would have been 
 annexed to us.
 
 75 
 
 THE WILY PLAINTIFFS BREED ANARCHISTS. 
 
 This 1 , your Honors, is the gravest charge which 
 we have to bring against these wily plaintiffs. 
 Although by dynamiting our dike they scatter 
 throughout the length and breadth of our land 
 misery like fire-brands in standing corn; although 
 their effect upon the temporal happiness of our 
 people is baleful and nothing but baleful, it is 
 their effect upon the immortal souls of our citi- 
 zens which we most deeply deplore. For they not 
 only vociferate their charges against the "trusts" 
 and "predatory wealth," and thus divide the 
 people into imaginary classes of "rich" and 
 "poor," "labor" and "capital," "producer" and 
 "consumer," whereas in this whole country there 
 is no rich class or poor class, laboring class or 
 capital class, consuming class, or producing class; 
 they not only destroy all boundaries between what 
 specific laws outline as crime and what is crime 
 only to the frenzied victims of these wily plain- 
 tiffs, thus making each individual a judge, a jury, 
 and a hangman for whomsoever his prejudices do 
 not approve; they not only obliterate the land- 
 marks of legal distinctions by thus discounting 
 the distinctions established by ages of judicial de- 
 termination ; they not only substitute envy, mal- 
 ire, and the guess-work of prejudice in the place 
 of fixed law; they not only foment anarchy by 
 accusing men of being robbers and criminals for 
 acquiring, holding, and disposing of property, ex-
 
 actly in the same manner as do all other citizens, 
 with the difference only that those accused have 
 more property, hold it more securely, and dispose 
 of it more in accordance with their own interests 
 than do others who are less independent; they 
 not only destroy all respect for courts that do 
 not depart from the letter and the spirit of the 
 law and confiscate property held by "predatory 
 wealth," "bad combinations," and "wealthy male- 
 factors," when the only proof that the accused 
 are "predatory," "bad," or "malefactors," is the 
 fact that they have property which they have ac- 
 quired, held, or sold, guided by exactly the same 
 rules and laws which guide their accusers, and 
 not that they have violated any written or un- 
 written law hitherto known ; they not only breathe 
 into our ill-arranged aggregations of brain-cells 
 the spirit of Lynch law and naked confiscation; 
 but they also at the same time are bringing about 
 a condition wherein a premium will be placed up- 
 on crime and a penalty upon honesty. For, your 
 Honors, as we have said before, the instinct of 
 self-preservation is but the instinct which leads 
 us away from pain and towards pleasure; and we 
 are at the mercy, not only of our various 1 groups 
 of brain-cells which, when they get certain sen- 
 sations, urge us to act in this way but we are 
 also at the mercy of those brain-cells which ex- 
 amine and approve or disapprove the means of 
 switching on pleasure or switching off pain; 
 which brain-cells also have the form which was 
 given to them by heredity and previous environ- 
 ment, neither of which was within our control. 
 Now, your Honors, we all love pleasure and hate 
 pain; but we differ in the brain-cells which set- 
 tle upon the means by which we take the pleasure
 
 77 
 
 and leave the pain ; and we are very serious in the 
 opinion, your Honors, that the majority of ua 
 would be so weak that, were we given the choice 
 of dying from hunger on the one hand, or living 
 from stealing on the other, our judicial brain-cells 
 could not hinder our desiring brain-cells from 
 stealing instead of dying. Now, in the manner 
 we have noted before, the tariff -dike makes it more 
 easy and much safer to" work than steal. But, 
 alas, your Honors, when the dike is down, it looks 
 to many of us as if the one who steals has the 
 best time; and more and more of us decide it is 
 better to steal than to starve; and when we are 
 forced to steal or starve, your Honors, we listen 
 with far more patience than otherwise to these 
 plaintiffs who divide our people into rich and poor, 
 capitalists and laborers, producers and consumers, 
 the governing and the governed, and set us all 
 quarreling with each other, in order that these 
 plaintiffs may pinch the clothing which we have 
 laid aside for the scrap. It is these wily plain- 
 tiffs, your Honors, who by dynamiting protection 
 dikes and dams, cause all chronic lawlessness in 
 this and other countries; they and their itching 
 palms for our bank-savings; they and their life- 
 business which is to feast from our famine. For 
 when we feast, they are hungry, your Honors; 
 then they holler "fire" and stampede us down 
 stairs to the street and sit down in the seats at 
 the table still warm with our late occupancy. But, 
 your Honors, the policy of this country should be 
 to make men honest and orderly by makiug it 
 easier to earn a living than to steal it. This policy 
 continued from now on would gradually make us 
 the most moral and well-ordered community under 
 the sun. All our brain-cells which urge towards
 
 78 
 
 pleasure and away from pain, would be urging to- 
 wards houest toil and away from the lives lived 
 by pickpockets, burglars', highway robbers, and 
 these wily plaintiffs. 
 
 Therefore our public sentiment should say to 
 every citizen: 
 
 "If in quality and variety, the products of this 
 country are not sufficient for your refined tastes, 
 you would do well to emigrate to some place 
 where you can get what you want. For, if you 
 remain with us, you must spend with us all the 
 money we pay you for working for us. One good 
 turn deserves another, and our good turn in giv- 
 ing you a good job and good wages in working for 
 us deserves that you return our good turn by giv- 
 ing us 1 a good job at good wages working for you. 
 But if you return our good turn by taking the 
 money we pay you and serving our good turn on 
 aliens abroad, you will have robbed us of our 
 deserts, weakened us morally, mentally and 
 physically, and proved yourself an "undesirable 
 citizen." For you will have taken from us some 
 of our natural opportunities to exercise our stom- 
 achs, our consciences, our intellects and our 
 muscles, and have left us weak in these things 
 where we need to be strong for the strenuous 1 lives 
 that are before us. If you and your like, operat- 
 ing through the wily plaintiffs, the Importing 
 Trust and Exporting Trust, are allowed to keep 
 on stealing these opportunities and selling them 
 to people in foreign parts at a profit for yourself 
 alone, there will soon not be enough of these 
 opportunities to go around among us here at 
 home, and some of us must die of starvation ; and 
 a lot more of us will lie, cheat, steal and even kill 
 to save our lives. And this would be going back 
 to the woods and darkness of savagerv. instead 
 of forward to the sunnier heights of civilization. 
 This is the mathematics of the case. Therefore, 
 if vou remain with us, we shall not allow you to 
 sell out our morality, our intelligence, and our
 
 79 
 
 precious human bodies to your pals 1 in foreign 
 countries, and grow rich and proud members of 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, or can- 
 nibal and fratricidal members of the Exporting 
 Trust also a wily plaintiff on the reward, 
 whether in silver or goods, of the betrayal of our 
 nation to the spoilers." 
 
 XI 
 
 TO PROMOTE INTERNECINE STRIFE AMONG THE PEOPLE 
 FOR THEIR OWN PRIVATE GAIN, THE WILY PLAIN- 
 TIFFS, IN DIVIDING THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY 
 
 INTO "GOVERNING" AND "GOVERNED;" "RICH" 
 AND "POOR;" "CAPITAL" AND "LABOR;" AND 
 "PRODUCERS" AND "CONSUMERS," ATTEMPT AN 
 IMPOSSIBLE CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 Your Honors, it must be apparent to you by this 
 time that there is nothing accidental in the way 
 the American people destroy their own prosper- 
 ity for the profit of these wily plaintiffs. For 
 there may be felt at all times a strong undercur- 
 rent of public- sentiment against our tariff-dike; 
 and the cause of this undercurrent is not far to 
 seek. It is the adroit hypnotism of these wily plain- 
 tiffs, but principally of the Importing Trust. For 
 example, the jealousy and envy of our people are 
 excited by calling the servants of this Republic 
 names which imply subjection on the part of the 
 people and awaken the hatred which all free men 
 have for tyranny. For instance, your Honors, the 
 Importing Trust, through its newspaper following, 
 speaks of the President as 1 our "ruler 1 ' and his rule 
 as the "government at Washington;" and of peo-
 
 80 
 
 pie as being "presented'' to the President at the 
 White House as if he were a king, and something 
 more than merely our servant, and the "govern- 
 ment" something more than merely we, the people 
 acting through our servant the President; and this 
 is done, your Honors, to arouse in the minds of 
 the thoughtless a sort of "class" feeling, as if the 
 governing were one class and the governed another, 
 with grievances' against an irresponsible despot, 
 and with no way of getting free other than by 
 revolution. Thus the Importing Trust foments 
 antagonism between the people as the "govern- 
 ment" and the people as the "governed;" and as 
 the "government" builds the tariff-dike, the Im- 
 porting Trust eggs on the "governed" until they 
 overturn it; whereat, of course, the Importing 
 Trust rejoices with exceeding great joy and 
 pounces on the spoils of its victory, our domestic 
 market. Now, your Honors, nothing could be more 
 false than this idea which the Importing Trust 
 suggests to our people. The president is the hum- 
 ble servant of the rest of us; or would be "hum- 
 ble," if he stopped to think how and for what pur- 
 pose he was made president; and if he gets a 
 swelled head as presidents sometimes do, why, 
 your Honors, we have only to go quietly to the 
 ballot-box and snow him under so deep that he 
 cannot thaw out before late spring. The trouble 
 with many of us is, however, your Honors, that 
 our brain-cells which strike for violent measures 
 are more powerful than those which are tempered 
 by passing through the clearing house of reason; 
 and the result is that, instead of managing our 
 own affairs quietly and in our own interest, some 
 sly fellow like the Importing Trust stands by and 
 uses hypnotism to manage us in his own interest.
 
 81 
 
 Again, your .donors, sometimes through its 
 newspapers and sometimes through persons higher 
 up, the Importing Trust, suggests that the people 
 in this country are divided into the "poor" and 
 the "rich," "predatory capitalists," "malefactors 
 of great wealth," and the like. Again, your 
 Honors, any one with but a few sound and sane 
 brain-cells in the thinking area of his cerebrum, 
 would know better than take such classifications 
 as true ones. In this country there are no poor, 
 as a class, and no rich, as a class. There are poor 
 people and rich people; but where the poor leave 
 off and the rich begin, no fellow can find out. 
 What is poverty for one is wealth for another; 
 what is wealth for one is poverty for another. It 
 is all in the point of view. The man with a mil- 
 lion dollars who does not want money but the 
 love of some good woman which he can never have, 
 is one of the poorest and most wretched of men. 
 But the man with no more than his daily wages, 
 no matter how small, so long as they are enougn 
 to maintain, in very reasonable comfort, him and 
 the family he worships, is one of the richest men 
 on earth. 
 
 Again, your Honors, there are no "predatory 
 capitalists" in the sense that they make up a class. 
 People are not "predatory" in a sense deserving 
 public denunciation, unless they have broken the 
 law, no matter whether they are "capitalists" or 
 not; and whether or not they have broken the law 
 is a question for the established courts; and when 
 these courts have determined that they have bro- 
 ken the law, the same courts will punish them 
 without any oratorical foam and fury, self-ad- 
 vertisement and self-glorification, and still irre- 
 spective of whether or not they are "capitalists."
 
 82 
 
 And until the courts have determined that people 
 have broken laws, people are all innocent before 
 the law. And any one who will brand a great body 
 of people in a general way as "predatory capital- 
 ists," and then leave it for the prejudices of each 
 individual to make personal application as they 
 please, convicts himself at least of having more 
 brain-cells of force than brain-cells of fairness, 
 and not knowing a "square deal" when he sees it. 
 In fact he is a good anarchist. For he is destroy- 
 ing the standard by which to judge, your Honors. 
 The law and its definitions of crime are ignored 
 by people with brain-cells of this kind, who cast 
 reproach broadside at an indefinite cloud of peo- 
 ple. It is then a go-as-you-please competition be- 
 tween those who wish to stick labels marked 
 "predatory capitalist" on any one whom, not the 
 courts, not the law, not orderly procedure; but 
 whom the particular label-sticker desires so to 
 mark. This, your Honors, is to discount law at 
 a very low figure. "Predatory capitalist" is used 
 in a condemnatory sense; and, as we have said, 
 to apply such terms with any color of authority 
 is to breed anarchy, to make every man the exe- 
 cutioner of whomsoever disagrees with him in 
 opinion or is superior to him in wealth. To apply 
 such terms as this is 1 to show very weak brain- 
 cells where brain-cells should be strong. For to 
 single out "capitalist" as a class to which to 
 attach the term "predatory" is 1 as narrow as to 
 condemn a man without a hearing because he is 
 Jew or Gentile, white or colored, and not because 
 he has done wrong. All "predatory" people are 
 punishable to the extent of the law, whether they 
 are "capitalists" or not capitalists; but to refer 
 to "predatory" capitalists is a dangerous thing;
 
 83 
 
 since there are those with, such weak brain-cells 
 that forever thereafter they will consider that 
 "predatory" is particularly descriptive of "capi- 
 talists" and therefore that a "capitalist" is nec- 
 essarily "predatory," a sort of an outlaw, to shy 
 at whom is doing God's service. Here is a bad 
 jumble of brain-cells, your Honors. 
 
 And it is the same, your Honors, with "male- 
 factors of great wealth," and all similar expres- 
 sions. The injury done to the judicial capacity 
 of the thoughtless 1 by thus selecting people of 
 wealth alone to pillory as "malefactors," is very 
 great. Yet the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 puts these expressions in the mouths of its news- 
 paper organs' and its open and secret members 
 everywhere, for the express purpose of making the 
 people, in the end, destroy the tariff-dike and 
 bring great wealth to the purse of the Import- 
 ing Trust. 
 
 Another expression, used with misleading and 
 inflammatory intent, is "capital" and "labor." 
 There is no such thing as "capital" in the class 
 sense; nor is there in this country, any such thing 
 as "labor" in that sense. As a matter of fact, 
 every man who handles capital is a laborer, oft< 
 a very strenuous and unresting one; while every 
 man who labors is a capitalist. But where the 
 laborer leaves off and the capitalist begins; or 
 where the capitalist leaves off and the laborer be- 
 gins, it is impossible to say. No man could use 
 capital successfully without personal labor; and 
 no laborer could offer the work of his hands with- 
 out capital. The only classification possible among 
 people who are thus all capitalists and all labor- 
 ers at one and the same time is the one which we 
 mentioned a little while ago, that of "wage-produ-
 
 cers," "property-producers," and "adjunct-produ- 
 cers;" which includes everybody in this country, 
 except the juvenile, the senile, the sick, the tramps, 
 and the "consumers," who live on their money and 
 never earn any. There is really no way to class- 
 ify people in the manner given out by the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, whose echo in this 
 matter the Exporting Trust sometimes is. 
 
 But perhaps, your Honors, in this busy land, 
 where everyone worth while depends upon some 
 form of property-production for his means of liv- 
 ing, the most mischievous work of the Importing 
 Trust, in this attempt to divide us all into hostile 
 camps is that which it does by separating us 
 all into "producers" and "consumers," as if each 
 group were a tribe by itself, with its knives and 
 tomahawks whetted for the throats and skulls of 
 the other fellows. Nothing could be farther from 
 the fact than that there are two classes of this 
 kind ; and we cannot understand in what way the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, somewhat 
 feebly backed in this regard by the wily plaintiff, 
 the Exporting Trust, could have hoped to impress 
 this classification upon our people; unless per- 
 haps it was a harking back to conditions in Great 
 Britain and the continent, where the feudal sys- 
 tem was the mother of a distinct class of grandees 
 who practically owned the bodies and souls of the 
 workers within their zones of influence, the work- 
 ers being regarded as the "producers" and the 
 grandees and their families and favorites being 
 regarded as ^consumers." It must have been un- 
 der such conditions, where labor was considered 
 degrading by the upper classes, who practically 
 owned and felt they had a right to the earnings 
 of the "producers," that this idea of a separation
 
 85 
 
 of workers into "producers" and "consumers" had 
 its origin, the same classification being now made 
 here by the Importing Trust to inflate the pride 
 of would-be grandees in this country, who also 
 feel as if labor is performed by a lower race than 
 themselves. We may depend, your Honors, that 
 it was during this 1 feudal condition and the sepa- 
 ration of people into workers or "producers" and 
 rulers or "consumers" that the old laws and rul- 
 ings against "restraint of trade" were made, which 
 had no other object than to flog the "producers," 
 the practical slaves of the "consumers," into sur- 
 rendering to the "consumers" or non-producers, 
 without regard to the cost to the workers or pro- 
 ducers, the results of the tatter's labor, at the 
 price which the "consumers" might themselves 
 consider fair. Thus, when the grandees on the 
 one hand combined to force legal rulings against 
 "combinations in restraint of trade," they out- 
 lawed on the other combinations which were mere- 
 ly offsets to their own combination, which latter 
 was contrived to enforce destructive competition. 
 AVe have certain people in this country, whose 
 brain-cells in the equity division are small and 
 feeble, and who make a great deal of capital by 
 following in the footsteps of those old grandees 
 and their oppression of the "proudcers." We ven- 
 ture to say, your Honors, that every rule made 
 against "combinations in restraint of trade' 1 was 
 made by some combination to compel the produ- 
 cer, through destructive competition, to give up 
 his property at a ruin price to the "consumer." 
 The corrupt source 'of the laws against combina- 
 tions in restraint of trade is proven by the fact 
 that there was no law preventing any corporation 
 in which the grandees or "consumers" had stock
 
 86 
 
 interests, no matter ho\v large and how compre- 
 hensive in its hold on prime necessities of life, 
 from acquiring as much or as little property as 
 it pleased, sending it where it pleased, selling it 
 as soon or as late as it pleased and at what price 
 and under whatever conditions it pleased; and no 
 law thus limiting property rights in corporations 
 has ever been since made and all the talk of our 
 Importing-Trust-owned demagogues against "bad 
 corporations," in which they promise to prevent 
 the "extortions" of the trusts is idle clap-trap and 
 must remain so until a constitutional amendment 
 lodges in Congress absolute power to limit the 
 property-rights of all citizens of the United States 
 in any way it pleases; and then any political 
 party which holds the presidency and both 
 branches of Congress can strip the "other fellows" 
 of as much of their property as they please, at 
 any rate up to the limit where it would make Lu- 
 cifer blush for the depravity of his brain-cells, had 
 he been such a thief. 
 
 Your Houors, it seems impossible to divide our 
 active people into "producers" and "consumers;" 
 for it seems to us, your Honors, that production 
 and consumption are the same thing looked at 
 from opposite standpoints; and that, therefore, 
 "producer" and "consumer" are the same, being 
 merely the reverse faces of the same coin. We 
 might mount the high horse of prancing rhetoric 
 and say: production and consumption are but 
 eternally alternating phases in the endless pro- 
 cession of changes in the phantasmagoria of mat- 
 ter. Look, your Honors, is not production also 
 consumption? In his production does not the 
 property-producer consume the "finished pro- 
 ducts" of other property-producers? And are not
 
 87 
 
 these finished products also the "raw material" 
 which some of our property producers, who, con- 
 spiring with these wily plaintiffs, desire to get 
 from abroad over a broken tariff -dike? Look- 
 ing backward to your buying market, are you not 
 consuming; and looking forward to your selling 
 market, are you not producing? And is it not 
 also the same with the wage-producer? Looking 
 backward towards his food, clothing and shelter, 
 which have given him the energy that he is now 
 turning into wages', is he not consuming these 
 things? And looking forward toward his wages, 
 is he not producing wages? It seems so to us, 
 your Honors, and that, therefore, producer and 
 consumer, are the same. 
 
 XII 
 
 BY AROUSING THE "CONSUMER" AGAINST THE "PRO- 
 DUCER/' THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING 
 TRUST. TREACHEROUSLY LURES THE "CONSU- 
 MER" TO HIS OWN DESTRUCTION. 
 
 In the active world, your Honors, every producer 
 produces because he must consume; and every 
 consumer consumes because he must produce. 
 This is a law of nature. Whatever the transient 
 form of a given mass of matter, necessity is back 
 of all voluntary changes' in its relations to another 
 mass. It is changed in production and changed 
 again in consumption, which itself is production. 
 It is changed in producing a supply for him who 
 changes it, either for his own consumption or to 
 exchange at the demand of another for the supply
 
 88 
 
 offered by that other. In either case, it is changed 
 for further change by consumption in effecting a 
 further production. Therefore, since a man pro- 
 duces a supply in order to effect a demand and 
 consume another's supply, his demand is measured 
 by his own supply to the market, so that his sup- 
 ply is practically the same thing as his demand. 
 If you desire the demand on a market always to 
 be equal to its supply and business to be uniformly 
 good, you must see to it that each supply takes 
 effect as a demand. To meet a domestic supply 
 with a demand already satisfied by a foreign sup- 
 ply, is to tie the tongue of your domestic demand. 
 It is to leave a domestic want unsupplied, and 
 domestic misery where there should have been 
 satisfaction. Therefore, your Honors, the happi- 
 ness, yea, the very life of our community hangs upon 
 the opportunity of its people to supply their own 
 demands; and this depends upon whether or not 
 the STipply expressing A's want or demand meets 
 at short and quick range B's want or demand, 
 expressed in the terms of a supply which satisfies 
 A's demand. 
 
 This is the whole philosophy of communal pros- 
 perity, morality, civilization, progress, refinement. 
 By hitching supply and demand together so closely 
 that they don't leak a drop and each exactly fills 
 the other, all chance should be taken out of the 
 question. 
 
 Ah, we hear our learned brother at our left, 
 counsel for the wily plaintiffs, say in a stage whis- 
 per: "And what a fix your producers would be 
 in from overproduction, if they found no market 
 but that made by their own bellies, backs, and 
 beds!" No, your Honors, there would be no over- 
 production. There would be production enough
 
 89 
 
 to keep the whole community happy, with a safe 
 margin for emergencies; and then there would be 
 here and there a holiday, a few more picnics and 
 periods of rest and rationality. There would be 
 a happy communal life; but there would not be 
 the piling up of great fortunes at the expense of 
 the overworked. The confinement of home demand 
 to home supply and contrariwise, would make such 
 a division of wealth that wage-producers would be 
 able to work fewer hours in a day and fewer days 
 in a week and still save just as much for a rainy 
 day. 
 
 It is just as bad to allow your domestic supply 
 to be wasted on foreign demand as it is to allow 
 your domestic demand to be wasted on foreign 
 supply. To do the first is to raise prices. To do 
 the second is to depress wages. To do either is 
 to separate producer and consumer, which pre- 
 vents the wage-producer from receiving back in 
 full the energy and life which he has put into his 
 product. The condition of an even exchange in 
 this regard is that a man as a producer should 
 be separated from himself as a consumer by as 
 small a gap as possible. In the primitive state, 
 each man supplied his own wants and wanted only 
 his own supply. But now-a-days we make directly 
 a single sort of thing and by proxy all the other 
 things we need. With most of us, wages are the 
 only thing we produce directly, while we produce 
 by proxy everything necessary for our use. We 
 hire others to do our work. Others' hire us to 
 do their work. We producers are all agents for 
 each other and each of us is entitled to just as 
 many agents as he can pay for with his own work 
 for them. But now along comes the Importing 
 Trust, and by some one of its mouthpieces says,
 
 90 
 
 "the price of bread is too high. The 'consumer* 
 is being robbed. Give us a low tariff-dike on the 
 side of wheat." Now one of these badly used 
 "consumers" is a cobbler, for instance. He la 
 mending shoes directly but raising wheat by proxy ; 
 and the price the farmer pays for cobbling depends 
 on the price he pays the farmer for wheat. So the 
 "consumer," the cobbler, is as much interested in 
 a good price for wheat as is the farmer. Cut down 
 the price of wheat and you cut down the price of 
 cobbling. Now suppose the people of the commun- 
 ity barkened to the Importing Trust and, helped 
 the wily plaintiff break the tariff-dike for wheat. 
 Why, all the cobblers would find that the low price 
 of wheat had put the farmers out of the cobbling 
 shop and they were doing their cobbling them- 
 selves 1 , or going barefoot. And the illumination 
 of the cobblers would be but a specimen of that 
 experienced by all the other "consumers" in town. 
 No matter how high the prices which the "con- 
 sumers" are paying, with a high tariff-dike, the 
 community as a whole gets it all; and the "con- 
 sumers" are the community. The higher the prices 
 they pay as "consumers," the greater the wages 
 they get as producers. But the dear old "consu- 
 mer" always figures about so large in a dike "re- 
 vision" campaign, which is always a campaign of 
 confusion of fact by the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, who depends upon the ignorance 
 nnd fury of the people to help it steal our savings. 
 After the battle the valiant "consumers" glory a 
 while in their victory and then give themselves 
 to happy slumber: but only to awaken soon to the 
 eoid and clammy fact that however warm and well 
 filled they were last night as victorious "consu-
 
 91 
 
 mers," as "producers" they are this morning very, 
 very hungry and forlorn. 
 
 Such an artless arrangement of brain-cells as 
 these "consumers" have, your Honors! 
 
 XIII 
 
 BY ITS OWN RULE "BUY IN THE CHEAPEST, SELL IN 
 THE DEAREST MARKET/' THE WILY PLAINTIFF, 
 THE IMPORTING TRUST,, TACITLY SAYS, WHEN IT 
 OFFERS US ITS GOODS, THAT WE ARE ITS DEAREST 
 MARKET; AND THUS, TACITLY GIVES THE LIE TO 
 ITS OWN DECLARATION THAT, IN DEALING WITH 
 US, IT IS EXCHANGING GOODS FOR GOODS. 
 
 We know, your Honors, that it is the business 
 of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust to im- 
 port, and to say that neither the producer, whose 
 products you buy nor the consumer, who buys your 
 products, need be your next door neighbor at all; 
 but he may just as well be in Portugal or Persia; 
 that the course of trade will see that the thing you 
 want to buy is handy, no matter where made ; and 
 that the thing you want to sell has a customer 
 somewhere on earth ; and that it is your privilege 
 to exchange your product for the product of some 
 ono far away, if the distant product is cheaper 
 tli an that of your next door neighbor. But you 
 don't exchange the direct product of your hands, 
 a <>offpo-pot, a hairbrush, or a door-mat, which, as 
 a wage-producer, you have already sold for wages 
 to the property-producer. If you tried to exchange 
 the TOTT Ihing you make for the very thing the 
 fellow in Portugal or Persia makes, the trade
 
 92 
 
 would stop right there; because the foreigner 
 would not exchange with you for the simple reason 
 that, at half your price, he could buy in some 
 market other than ours the same thing you offer. 
 But for what you buy abroad you exchange gold 
 coin instead of goods or what you produce; and 
 that deceives you as to the true nature of the trade, 
 which is a sort of unwritten treason on your part. 
 Because, the reason you buy a thing abroad is that 
 you can buy it at a lower price than at home, where 
 the price must pay back to your neighbor the same 
 sort of high wages which he pays for your labor. 
 That is the only reason why you buy abroad; and 
 when the Importing Trust wants to sell you any- 
 thing, that fact alone is enough to warn you that 
 in buying you are weakening a home industry. 
 For the business of the wily plaintiff is to "buy 
 in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest: 
 and its selling to you is a sign that you are it's 
 dearest market for that article. In other words, 
 that some other locality than your own country 
 has been discovered by the Importing Trust where 
 the article is made more cheaply than it is made 
 here; which makes the purchasing of that article 
 from the wily plaintiff by our people the same as 
 the substitution of an industry in Portugal or 
 Persia for one in the United States, and, over a 
 whole industry, separates the producing side from 
 the consuming side ; which simply means the death 
 of that industry and the death of many and the 
 degradation of all its wage-producers. It would 
 be a good plan for every American wage-producer, 
 before helping the Importing Trust "revise" the 
 dike, to see how far he could go in exchanging 
 the very article he makes in the shop with some
 
 93 
 
 article shown on the counters of the Importing 
 Trust in this country. 
 
 It would be easy to smoke out the wily plaintiff 
 in this way and test its own belief in what it says 
 about international trade being an even exchange 
 of goods; and about the necessity of buying if you 
 wish to sell. For if it wanted your goods so badly, 
 it would charge you no commission at all, but 
 would take your goods at your price, which 
 would cover your high wages, the cost of the 
 material and the property-producer's profit; and 
 in exchange and to the extent of your price 
 would give you goods which it had brought from 
 abroad, charging no commissions to the producers 
 abroad, and making the price of the foreign goods 
 to you just enough to cover the wages paid abroad, 
 the materials, and the usual profit to the foreign 
 maker. If the wily plaintiff would take your goods 
 on these terms, it would be a sign it could sell them 
 abroad; that there was a real demand there for 
 the very kind of goods you made and that such de- 
 mand was good enough to bear the commissions of 
 the wily plaintiff in the price at which it sold them. 
 
 But on the other hand, if when you went up to 
 its counter, the wily plaintiff wanted you to pay in 
 cash instead of in your own goods, it would prove 
 that, for the same money, the wily plaintiff could 
 buy abroad more of your kind of goods than you 
 are willing to sell. 
 
 Since it is the Importing Trust which is "root- 
 ing" for a tariff-dike "revision" downwards, it 
 must be doing so for its own profit and because it 
 believes that such "revision" would increase its 
 sales in our market; and since everybody knows 
 that the Importing Trust takes nothing but gold 
 for goods sold to our people, it is plain that its
 
 94 
 
 goods are cheaper than ours and that if we traded 
 with it, it would destroy American industries by 
 buying our gold with its goods and thus separating 
 those industries entirely from their "consumers." 
 
 We think, your Honors, we have proven that, to 
 a fatal degree, the Importing Trust is separating 
 our consumers from our producing side; and that 
 we have incidentally accounted for the hunger, soup 
 houses, nakedness, crimes, diseases and untimely 
 deaths which follow on the heels of tariff-dike "rev- 
 ision" and the good luck of this wily plaintiff in 
 maddening our people against the "trusts," our 
 client, American Production. 
 
 We think an inspection of the cerebrum of the 
 wily plaintiff, your Honor, would reveal a flourisli- 
 ing colony of brain-cells in the organ of Appetite, 
 but a yellow, sickly, puny, scattering and expiring 
 handful of the same in the organ of Compassion. 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, WHEN 
 IT URGES DIKE "REVISION" ON BEHALF OF AMER- 
 ICAN MANUFACTURERS, IN ORDER THAT THE 
 LATTER MAY CHEAPEN THEIR PRODUCT AND SO 
 CONQUER "THE MARKETS OF THE WORLD/' 
 KNOWS THAT, FOR ITS OWN PURPOSEvS, IT IS 
 HOLDING OUT AN ILLUSORY HOPE. 
 
 Your Honors, those acquainted with the history 
 of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, should 
 be amused by its worry at the present time over 
 the health of that branch of our client devoted to 
 manufacturing. We could hardlv believe our ears
 
 95 
 
 when counsel tor said wily plaintiff, his voice mod- 
 ulated to tones of touching tenderness, deplored the 
 "selfishness" and the "greed" and the "avarice" 
 which led so many Americans to want a high- tariff 
 dike, even though it made "raw materials" dear for 
 our dear manufacturers, thus making their product 
 dearer, and shutting them from the mighty profits 
 which he said were awaiting said manufacturers 
 "in the markets of the world," and which would be 
 theirs when the dike was lowered and the boon of 
 "free raw materials" conferred upon them. Why, 
 your Honors, what brain-storm has scattered the 
 cells presiding over morality and equity in the cere- 
 brum of this wily plaintiff! Lo, after years of 
 calling our manufacturers "robber barons," fatten- 
 ing from the blood of our "consumers;" and "pam- 
 pered creatures" of "class legislation,'' which made 
 ducks and drakes of the great Democratic princi- 
 ple of "equal rights to all, special privileges to 
 none," the wily plaintiff has ceased this terrible 
 condemnation and on the contrary is filled with 
 tremblings lest our manufacturers should make 
 not too great but too small profits from our people ; 
 and is imploringly pointing the way by which their 
 depredations may be no longer confined to this 
 country but luxuriated in also by all the grand 
 peoples who buy their manufactures in the "mar- 
 kets of tjie world." No pent-up Utica should now 
 contract the powers of those who formerly could 
 do nothing but wrong, your Honors, the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, being judge. By what 
 evangel has the American manufacturer thus been 
 converted from sinner to saint, your Honors! Ah, 
 your Honors, we are beset with gloomy doubts. 
 We have read Aesop, and we remember the story 
 how Mr. Fox praised the voice of Mr. Crow until
 
 96 
 
 the Jatter opened his mouth to show off his voice 
 and let fall his dinner in the jaws of Mr. Fox; and 
 we repeat, we are harrassed with doubts as to the 
 kindheartedness of the wily plaintiff's plaint for 
 "free raw materials" for the American manufact- 
 urer. We are not sure but he is after Mr. Manu- 
 facturer's dinner. We fear that the real reason 
 why the wily plaintiff wants American manufact- 
 urers to go abroad in search of "the markets of 
 the world" is because it thinks the room of those 
 same manufacturers in our markets here at home 
 is better than their company, what time the wily 
 plaintiff wishes to occupy the thoughts of the poor 
 American "consumer." And we are confirmed in 
 our fears for various reasons : 
 
 First, your Honors, the Dingly Tariff lets in 
 practically free of duty all "raw materials" em- 
 ployed in making goods for export. Therefore the 
 dike does not need to be "revised" to assist our 
 manufacturers to "free raw materials" if that is all 
 that keeps them out of the "markets of the w r orld." 
 
 Second, in the cost of high-grade manufactures, 
 raw material cuts very little figure. For one ex- 
 ample, the "raw material" in a watch spring is 
 worth almost too little for calculation ; but finished 
 watch springs are very valuable; it is the wages in 
 the watch spring that count. What the wily plain- 
 tiff should do, if it really wants its old enemy, the 
 American manufacturer, to conquer the markets of 
 the world, is to import "free raw labor" that will 
 work for less than fifteen cents a day. 
 
 For another example, if hides are imported free at 
 the cost of our farmer's home market for hides, s'hoes 
 could not be made cheaper here by more than from 
 2c to 4c per pair, which saving would not go into 
 the pocket of the "consumer" but of the manufact-
 
 97 
 
 urer, as it is too small to change the retail price; 
 and it would "cut no ice" in cheapening shoes for 
 the "capture of the markets of the world," as hides 
 or leather to be used in exports is already "free," 
 as above noted. 
 
 Third, we have absolute free trade now in raw 
 silk, raw cotton, raw rubber, raw timber, raw hard 
 coal, raw petroleum, and various "raw" other 
 things and we export no more of the finished pro- 
 ducts of these things than we would do if there 
 were a tariff against them all when imported. 
 
 Fourth, in order, by lowering the dike against 
 "raw materials," to "capture the markets of the 
 world," our manufacturers would still have to pay 
 freights and insurance on their goods to the foreign 
 markets; and at the ports of foreign countries pay 
 high tariffs, which are levied by most of them to 
 protect their domestic industries. Does the wily 
 plaintiff mean to tell us, your Honors, that, after 
 these other additions to cost, our tariff on "raw ma- 
 terials" is the only thing which still keeps our man- 
 ufacturers out of the "markets of the world." 
 
 Fifth, very many American manufacturers, the 
 number of whom is increasing daily, have built 
 branch factories in the very foreign countries to 
 which the wily plaintiff claims these same manu- 
 facturers wish to export goods and capture "the 
 markets of the world ;" and thus these manufactur- 
 ers already have, free from American tariffs, all the 
 "raw material" they need from which to make 
 goods to sell in the countries where their branch 
 plants are, and at the same time they pay no 
 freights and insurance on goods to those markets, 
 as they would do if supplying them from their 
 American plants. 
 
 Sixth, it looks very much as if the wily plaintiff
 
 98 
 
 had made common cause with American capital 
 having branch plants abroad, to "revise" the tariff 
 dike so far downward that both the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, and American expatriated 
 manufacturers could get goods into this country 
 from the low foreign pay-rolls. 
 
 Seventh, "raw materials" and "finished prod- 
 ucts" are different names for precisely the same 
 identical articles. It depends upon the point of 
 view which expression is used. If the tariff-dike 
 is to be "revised" downward to admit "raw ma- 
 terials," it must simply be taken down for every- 
 thing. If it needs to be put up to protect "finished 
 products," it must be put up to protect everything. 
 When the learned counsel for the wily plaintiff says 
 we should "revise" the dike downward as to raw 
 materials, he means either that we should take it 
 all down so as to let all things in free, or take it 
 down for certain things only; that is expose the 
 goods of one American producer to free trade in 
 order that some other American producer may add 
 to the profit he already has from his protected mar- 
 ket here any profit he may be able to get from "free 
 raw materials" and sending some of his goods to 
 "the markets of the world." Does this do credit 
 to those brain-cells of the wily plaintiff which rule 
 or are supposed to rule its sense of justice? 
 
 Eighth, under no circumstances could our man- 
 ufacturers ever capture the "markets of the world," 
 in any such sense that, for any article now known 
 to commerce they could monopolize the foreign 
 market for any great length of time. And this for 
 the simple reason that there is no article known 
 to commerce which, with the same machinery and 
 the same organization as those employed here, can- 
 not be produced in the outside world for not to
 
 exceed one-half of the lowest possible ultimate cost 
 in the United States. This is a fact too well known 
 for discussion between those who know the actual 
 cost of production in the outside world. Our arti- 
 cles of greatest export are wheat and cotton; but 
 this happens by accident in the world's develop- 
 ment. In Europe, Asia, Africa and South America 
 are hundreds of millions of acres fully as well 
 adapted to raising wheat and cotton as the best 
 land we have; while in Mexico, next door and Cen- 
 tral America, near at hand, are great tracts of 
 cotton soil equal to our cotton belt; and these for- 
 eign fields are at the moment almost wholly un- 
 tilled. The conquest of the earth by the mechani- 
 cal, industrial and commercial age in which we now 
 find ourselves began in such a way as to pick up 
 our lands first and leave these broader and richer 
 acres for later invasion. But the invasion is now 
 at the door. For Mexico, Central America, South 
 America, Africa and Asia are being assailed by 
 the world's unfixed capital in greater and greater 
 volume; and billions of American capital are in- 
 terested in this movement also, and for the express 
 purpose, as we have said, of sending back to our 
 home market here products made at the low costs 
 possible from working virgin soils w r ith the 
 coolie labor of the world. And this expatriated 
 American capital stands by the side of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and holds up its 
 hands in its deadly assault, through its newspapers 
 and American political allies, upon the tariff-dike, 
 which alone stands between the American wage- 
 producer and the deluge. 
 
 Your Honors, under this eighth head, let us note 
 the fact that the countries which are each and all 
 our competitors in this desperate battle to dom-
 
 100 
 
 mate "the markets of the world' are themselves, 
 for us, "the markets of the world." Also that in 
 population, capital, skilled labor, soil, and all other 
 things needful for production, they are at least six- 
 teen times as large as we are. Also that at least 
 one- third of their combined areas, containing the 
 richest soils, the most valuable mines, the deepest 
 forests, and the cheapest and most industrious labor 
 in the world, lies within the tropics; and that at 
 least two-thirds of the combined areas 1 of these coun- 
 tries lies between the 30th parallels of north and 
 south latitudes, in all of which cost of subsistence, 
 which is the cost of production, averages not over 
 one-fifth of the lowest average in the United States. 
 And let us note farther one more fact, namely, that 
 beginning with England, where wages average one- 
 half of those in the United States; and crossing 
 over to Germany, where wages average but one- 
 third of what they do here; to France where the 
 average is nearly the same as in Germany; and to 
 Italy, where the average wages are but one-fourth 
 the American; and going eastward to the shore of 
 the Pacific and to Japan, wages become lower and 
 lower than they are in the United States. In 
 Japan, the last country before we reach American 
 territory again, from 80 to 90 per cent, of the labor 
 in its manifold factories shipping goods here are 
 women and girls, the women being paid 11 to 12 
 cents for a 11-hour day and the girls from 7 to 8 
 cents for the same period; and the factories which 
 employ these women buy their so-called "raw ma- 
 terial" in the rest of the world, some of it from us, 
 pay the freight from abroad to their factories, and 
 back across over the tariff-dike to our shops and 
 stores here in the United States, and then undersell 
 here under our very noses anything that we make of
 
 101 
 
 a like nature. These Japanese factories are water- 
 ing our civilization now. What would they do if 
 the tariff-dike were "revised?" Looking at the mat- 
 ter from the standpoint of percentages and taking 
 100 as the standard wage-payment when countries 
 are compared, since we pay the highest wages in 
 the world, our wagescale would be denoted by 100. 
 Now, it is not too extravagant to say that, taking 
 the world around, the average of the foreign pay- 
 rolls is not over one-fifth of ours for the same 
 labor. 
 
 Therefore, if our wage-rate is denoted by 100, 
 the average wage-rate in the world outside, being 
 but twenty per cent, of ours, should be denoted by 
 20. 
 
 Now, your Honors, the cost of everything in this 
 world from top to bottom is the cost of labor 
 somebody's labor. Therefore the price of an article 
 contains in it the wages of every person who has 
 had anything to do with its production, followed 
 from where the so-called raw-material was first 
 contracted for, even from the surveying and pur- 
 chase of the title of a mine, a farm, or a timber 
 tract, all the way down to where the price 
 which attracts our attention was realized. And 
 wages are merely the cost of the wage-producer's 
 subsistence. Where, therefore in view of the cost 
 of it's keep as shown by wages, life is only 20 % as 
 expensive as ours, goods are eventually going to be 
 but 20% as expensive as ours in the making. And 
 a prudent estimate would discount any temporary 
 advantage we may have in machinery or other 
 things. Well, then, 20% of ours is the average 
 cost of goods in the outside world as fixed by a pru- 
 dent estimate. Now, your Honors, as a broad prop- 
 osition, does it look reasonable that the world's
 
 102 
 
 capital, considered as an aggregate and armed with 
 an executive head, is going to be satisfied to furnish 
 for the "markets of the world" goods which cost it 
 $1 to make here in the United States, when it can 
 make the same supply in the outside world at a cost 
 of 20c? For, in view of what the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust says, that, in order to "capture 
 the markets of the world," we merely need to "re- 
 vise" our tariff downwards and give our manufact- 
 urers the benefit of "free raw materials," the broad 
 proposition we have to consider is to make our $1 
 beat the world's 20c cost. 
 
 Now, if the index number of average cost in the 
 United States stands at 100 and the average cost 
 in the rest of the world at 20, supposing we let 
 in free over our tariff-dike, not here and there an 
 ingredient in the products of our manufacturers, 
 but each and every ingredient entering therein; 
 how far, after paying freights and insurance on 
 their "raw materials" from abroad, would this help 
 our manufacturers reduce their cost-100 so that 
 the product ready to be shipped to "the markets 
 of the world," would cost but, say, 19 instead of 
 the present cost abroad of 20? Because in the dif- 
 ference of 1 is embraced the profit of our manu- 
 facturers, together with freights and 'insurance 
 from here abroad, not to speak of the tariff 
 which American goods must pay foreign govern- 
 ments to enter the "markets of the world." For it 
 must be remembered that, if we are to capture "the 
 markets of the world" through "free raw mater- 
 ials," we must pay freights, insurance, cartages, 
 and expressages on "free raw materials" both to 
 and from our ports; whereas the foreigner who 
 manufacturers at 20 already has among his sup- 
 plies these raw materials which we buy of him and
 
 103 
 
 he therefore has to pay no tariffs, freights, or insur- 
 ance on them, 20 representing every expense of pro- 
 ducing his article, including profit, to the point of 
 sale in the market. We repeat, how far could "free 
 raw materials" help our manufacturers to the 
 "markets of the world" under these circumstances? 
 
 Another thing which we have not noted, and it 
 is the most important item of all : If our manufact- 
 urers had "free raw materials" at a cost of 20, how 
 would they also get at 20 the labor necessary to 
 make up their materials into finished products? 
 
 We must remember that labor here is at 100 
 instead of 20 and that it is 1 the most expensive in- 
 gredient in the product. Ah, what does the learned 
 counsel for the wily plaintiff remark? Does he say 
 that letting in raw materials free would liberate 
 so many of our wage-producers from other employ- 
 ments that they also would be glad to work at 20? 
 Tha,t is just what we thought and what we have 
 been coming to, namely, that "free raw materials" 
 are after all our own finished products, and their 
 free importation cannot be of any use to our man- 
 ufacturers in "capturing the markets of the world/' 
 unless we have "free raw labor" also ; and that both 
 what the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and 
 the wily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, are really 
 fighting for is, not to let American goods out, but 
 to let foreign goods in. 
 
 For the purpose of profiting ; either with or with- 
 out a dike, the position of the wily plaintiff, the Ex- 
 porting Trust, is unique. It does not like the tariff- 
 dike; because that takes the profit from the goods 
 made in its foreign plants at wage-20, by making 
 it pay wages here equal to wage-100. But while the 
 tariff-dike is high, the foreign-American, behind 
 the dike, running his American plant, gets here at
 
 104 
 
 least the American price for whatever goods he 
 sells in competition with other American producers 
 who have no foreign plants. Meanwhile, he works 
 all the time for "free raw materials," in order, if 
 successful, to get what advantage he may against 
 his American competitors of less power as whole- 
 sale purchasers of material. But he greatly pre- 
 fers the dike to be so broken not that the materials 
 of which his product is made may be admitted free, 
 but the finished product itself from his foreign 
 plant; and, if he succeeds in smashing the dike, he 
 closes his American factories and runs his foreign 
 branches on double time, and, by making at wage- 
 20 and sending his goods in here, drowns out com- 
 petition from American factories that have no for- 
 eign branches. He then works our market here 
 from the 100 price all the way down to the lowest 
 limit in the falling market that always 1 follows a 
 break in our wage-schedule. Thus the Exporting 
 Trust clams the tide both out and in. 
 
 Ninth. We have given eight reasons why we 
 question the good faith of these wily plaintiffs in 
 their crusade against the tariff-dike to "capture the 
 
 markets of the world;" but the ninth it soems to 
 
 / ' 
 
 us should appeal to the hard common sense of your 
 Honors as well as to your legal acumen; and it 
 is this : We are here a country of 100. That refers 
 to cost, price, wages, and business-volume. For, as 
 to the business-volume, we have already said that 
 the entire value of the country's products is the 
 wage it pays itself for doing its own work; and 
 "business" is the mere act of making this payment 
 through our merchants who hand out the goods. 
 Tn other words the product-volume is the wage-vol- 
 ume, and the wage-volume is the business-volume. 
 Now, wo think we have proven that to disturb the
 
 105 
 
 tariff -dike at all is to let in foreign goods at cost- 
 20, hence wage-20 as cost is all somebody's wages, 
 hence business-volume-20. Therefore, in the 
 measure that "revision" of the dike increases for- 
 eign competing imports, it reduces our business- 
 volume from 100 towards 20. It follows, of course, 
 that if the dike is so broken that there is no pro- 
 tection left against foreign goods, our business- 
 volume must land at 20, that is, at wage-20, in 
 which costs of subsistence come in on the basis of 
 sustenance-costs in tropical and semi-tropical 
 areas; and these are so low that we shall die of 
 starvation before we reach them. This great fact, 
 viz., the reduction of the volume of our domestic 
 business pari passu with the influx of foreign com- 
 peting goods, explains all "over-production," "scar- 
 city of money," "high price of gold," "dullness of 
 trade," "depression in business circles," "industrial 
 decline," "hard times," "panics," and poverty, 
 which always follow any break in our tariff-dike. 
 The wily plaintiffs know this as well as we and 
 therefore know that for us to "capture the markets 
 of the world," by "revising" the dike, is to wipe out 
 our domestic business. 
 
 Tenth. This reason for doubting the good faith 
 of the wily plaintiffs is their knowledge of the con- 
 ditions upon which capital remains at work in this 
 country. For, as we have said, we are a cost-100 
 country; the world at large, against the whole of 
 which we must buck to hold our own domestic mar- 
 ket in low-dike times, is a cost-20 country. Now the 
 only condition upon which capital will work any- 
 where is that of making a profit at least equal to 
 that made by capital in similar linos elsewhere. A 
 patriotic, nation-building policy would make the 
 tariff-dike so high that it would make higher than
 
 106 
 
 the domestic cost the cost of landing in our market 
 the goods of the cheapest country in the world. In 
 other words, no foreign goods would be admitted at 
 so low a tariff considering their cost, as to stand on 
 equal terms with domestic goods. Citizens of this 
 country, living quietly under its laws, supporting 
 its government, submitting to taxation for the 
 maintenance of its institutions, and ready to spring 
 to its armed defense in case of need, ought, in all 
 equity, to be preferred in our markets over aliens 
 abroad who do nothing at all for the country's good. 
 But the only condition upon which capital will re- 
 main at work here is that a tariff-dike raises the 
 foreign cost to that of the domestic. Otherwise 
 active capital here has the alternative of either mi- 
 grating to lower-cost areas or being dissipated into 
 the hands and added to the capital of its competi- 
 tors abroad. For it is plain that, with a "revenue- 
 tariff" dike only, the capital invested by our prop- 
 erty-producers in making goods would not be re- 
 turned to their keeping in their price. If their 
 goods sold at all against lower-cost goods, from 
 their cost-100 goods they would get back but a por- 
 tion of their cost, the balance remaining with the 
 American purchaser. If American purchasers con- 
 tinued to give them preference at the same price as 
 the goods offered by the Importing Trust, it would 
 all end by our property-producers losing all their 
 capital to their customers and stopping business; 
 which would leave the field entirely to the Import- 
 ing Trust ; and thereupon the money from our prop- 
 erty-producers' capital, scattered into the hands of 
 the American purchasers, would now be spent by 
 the latter with the Importing Trust, which, nfter 
 deducting its commissions, would send it to the 
 foreign producer, who would use it in making more
 
 107 
 
 goods wherewith to destroy any of our industries 
 still left standing.* 
 
 In this way, with the tariff-dike "revised" and 
 made lower than would equalize the lowest foreign 
 cost to cost-100, our capital would go to foreign 
 producers. But our capitalists would not wait for 
 that. They would either discharge their wage- 
 producers, close their factories, save as much as 
 possible of their cash and credit and wait for the 
 next presidential campaign to restore the dike; or, 
 which is more likely, they would go abroad with 
 their capital, best skilled labor, machinery and 
 methods. And the great majority of our own wage- 
 producers and the aforetime property-producers of 
 the smaller sizes, would be turned out to live di- 
 rectly from the soil like the rabbits and woodchucks 
 and other such "small deer." This would cost us 
 our civilization and millions of our workers' lives, 
 cut off by breaking connection between food and 
 stomachs. 
 
 From the foregoing ten reasons, all well known 
 to the wily plaintiffs, we think we have proven that 
 
 * A low.tariff dike does not wait for the exhaustion of our 
 capital before closing our factories. It has been the custom of 
 the Importing Trust, at every prospective lowering of the dike 
 below the protective limit, to leave with our wholesale mer- 
 chants a written guarantee to furnish any goods in its line at 
 something like 10 per cent, less than the lowest offering of 
 American makers no matter what This method has secured 
 the American demand for the supply of the Importing Trust 
 from the very start and caused the almost immediate closing of 
 all American factories thus exposed to the competition of the 
 Importing Trust. This practice accounts for the fact that It 
 was no sooner known, in November, 1892, that Mr. Cleveland, a 
 free trader, and a Congress, free trade in both branches, would 
 control tariff legislation thereafter, than the country was 
 seized with a violent panic and factories were closed on all 
 hands and working forces of those still open heavily reduced. 
 Even as earlv as that, it is safe to say, the Importing Trust had 
 Its underbidding schedules in the hands of American whole- 
 salers, which was sufficient to discount the impending free- 
 trade legislation and make the actual business condition of the 
 country the same as if such legislation had already taken place.
 
 108 
 
 these wily plaintiffs' know that they are putting 
 forth a poisoned bait when they invite our property- 
 and-wage-producers into their trap of "the world's 
 markets." 
 
 And your Honors, we think you will bear with us 
 when we say that, using the term in the same 
 sense in which the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, uses it against all our great industries, the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and the wily 
 plaintiff, the Exporting Trust, making common 
 cause, form the wickedest trust in the world; and 
 we verily believe that an inspection of the brain- 
 cells of this wickedest trust in the world would re- 
 veal the same nature as that shown by the brain- 
 cells of the late lamented Kiug of the Cannibal 
 Islands. 
 
 XV 
 
 IN KEEPING A NEWSPAPER CLAQUE CONSTANTLY EM- 
 PLOYED IN CULTIVATING A PUBLIC OPINION 
 AGAINST THE TARIFF-DIKE, THE WILY PLAINTIFF, 
 THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS WORKING FOR ITS OWN 
 POCKET ALL THE TIME. 
 
 \ 
 
 Your Honors, in and out of season, especially in 
 the great importing cities, where the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, is almost supreme in power, 
 you read in the newspapers, slurs of all sorts 
 against the policy which builds tariff-dikes, from 
 those which damn by faint praise, which often ap- 
 pear in newspapers pretending to be protectionist, 
 to those which denounce the tariff -dike as the work 
 of "robber-barons," purchasing Congress through
 
 109 
 
 compaign contributions. We should study this hos- 
 tility to the tariff-dike, and the purpose to destroy 
 it, which in the breast of the Importing Trust never 
 slumbers or sleeps. The following appeared not 
 long ago in a newspaper published in our greatest 
 importing city, a newspaper which for a century 
 has been a tool of the Importing Trust to under- 
 mine American Production : 
 
 "The hide of the stand-patter is extremely tough and 
 its sense of humor is slight, judging from the reply of 
 the Kennebec Journal to this sarcasm of the Waterville 
 (Me.) Sentinel: 'The idea that the Dingley tariff is re- 
 sponsible for all business advancement robs the Almighty 
 of the credit of all of the natural blessings which He has 
 bestowed upon us, and robs mankind of the credit of 
 having accomplished anything for itself by industry, fru- 
 gality, and enterprise.' The reply is: The people of 
 Maine know that they are enjoying to-day, under the 
 Dingley tariff law, the greatest period of prosperity in 
 their history." 
 
 This is an attempt, your Honors, to belittle tlie 
 work of the tariff-dike, by accusing the Almighty 
 of favoritism to our country in giving it "natural 
 blessings," the like of which He has given to no 
 others of His children. It does not need to be 
 pointed out that this is little short of an impeach- 
 ment of the Most High on the ground of injustice to 
 the rest of the world. Of course, the purpose of 
 the article is on the surface. It is merely to make 
 light of the effect of the Dingley dike upon our 
 prosperity. Every one acquainted with our indus- 
 trial, commercial, and financial history knows that 
 whenever the Importing Trust has succeeded in 
 blinding and maddening our people so that they 
 have broken or "revised" the dike, our "natural 
 blessings" are worthless as against the artificial or 
 other blessings of the countries whose payrolls are 
 less than half as high as ours. As to our "indus-,
 
 110 
 
 try, frugality, and enterprise," they are about as 
 effective in stemming the tide of foreign surplus 
 products which rolls over our broken dike, as the 
 efforts of a blind puppy in stemming Niagara 
 Palls. 
 
 Here is another sample of a dike-breaker: 
 
 ' 'A tariff mast be changed to meet conditions, and only 
 the most myopic 'stand-patter' will contend that our 
 trade and industrial relations in 1907 "bear any close re- 
 semblance to our trade and industrial relations ten years 
 ago. The Dingley rates are in many cases out of touch 
 with present national needs, and both for purposes of 
 revenue and for purposes of rational protection could be 
 altered to advantage. The great maiority of the voters 
 in the country are now convinced that protection has 
 been a wise and helnful policy. They want to continue 
 to anply the principle, but they want to see it applied 
 intelligently, fairly, and for the greatest good of the 
 greatest number." 
 
 Your Honors, when the Importing Trust wants 
 to do a very dirty thing to our client, American 
 Production, it piously appeals, through some pro- 
 tectionist newspaper, to the interest alleged to be 
 the "greatest good of the greatest number." We are 
 sorely afraid, your Honors, that the brain-cells of 
 us all still have some likeness to those we had when 
 we all belonged more or less to the genus Vmtor- 
 liomo, an animal which, sometimes all by his lone- 
 some, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes in great 
 numbers, but all on one and the same "job," in 
 olden times infested our highways. When these 
 worthies saw an innocent but rich wayfarer making 
 tracks in their direction, thev hastily took a vote on 
 the subject which invariably decided that "the 
 greatest good of the greatest number," of their 
 crowd, demanded that they should pounce on the 
 innocent but rich wayfarer, who was himself mere- 
 Iv "a malefactor of great wealth," and divide
 
 Ill 
 
 equally between themselves his clothing and other 
 goods. 
 
 This is the sort of a vote which before announc- 
 ing that the greatest good of the greatest number 
 of importers demands a "revision" of the Ding- 
 ley dike the members of the Importing Trust are 
 taking among themselves now. The item last men- 
 tioned ends as follows : 
 
 "But whether 'revision' is to come a year sooner or a 
 year later, the fact is clear that the country is beginning 
 to think the time is near at hand for overhauling the 
 tariff of 1897." 
 
 "The country," your Honors, means the Import- 
 ing Trust. When it is manufacturing public opin- 
 ion it bows to itself in this way through newspapers 
 such as the one last quoted. The taking way in 
 which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, uses 
 this word "country" is the secret of its fooling so 
 many people all the time. 
 
 Here is another specimen of the public-opinion 
 makers circulated through its newspapers by the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust : 
 
 ' ' This newspaper does not think there is any excuse for 
 the United States longer shutting its eyes against the 
 fact that the whole world is engaged in tariff adjust- 
 ments, and that an ossified tariff involves the menace of 
 an ossified commerce." 
 
 This paper was rooting for "revision" when it 
 published this; and "revision" never means any- 
 thing but "reduction;" and is never used by any- 
 body but people who are opposed to our tariff -dike. 
 But in order to catch more crabs in its net, the 
 wily plaintiff baits the net merely with "revision.'' 
 That, it thinks, will fool the mollusks. When it 
 says "the whole world is engaged in tariff adjust-
 
 112 
 
 inents," it wants you to think, your Honors, that 
 the whole world is reducing its tariffs; whereas the 
 whole world is raising its tariffs against foreign 
 goods, not by way of retaliation, but because it is 
 getting the fashion for nations to do their own work 
 and pay themselves therefor. When in this article, 
 it refers to the "menace of an ossified commerce," 
 it wants you to think that "commerce/' meaning 
 foreign commerce, is that by which we live; and 
 that if we don't watch out and give the Importing 
 Trust a show we shall find ourselves steering up 
 Salt River. Whereas, the fact is that foreign com- 
 merce is our very national bane; the source of all 
 our panics and hard times, of treachery to our na- 
 tional interests from within and without, the cause 
 of the Revolution, the W T ar of 1812, our Great Civil 
 War, the Cuban Treaty, the rooting for Philip- 
 pine free trade, the late German Agreemeent, and 
 all the other mischiefs of which our nation has ever 
 been the victim, including the periodical obsession 
 of our industries by these wily plaintiffs, and the 
 turning back of the Clock of American Progress 
 ten years at a time. That is what foreign commerce 
 does for us. 
 
 Here is a sample of dike-busting, which like all 
 the rest of the same kidney is specially constructed 
 to conceal the voice of the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, which speaks through it : 
 
 "A proposal for a revival of Democratic tariff reform 
 is at least in the line of common sense. When stiff- 
 necked old Assyrian hunkers like Joe Cannon come to 
 admit the tariff is susceptible of improvement and is not 
 a flawless and inspired whole, there must be clear proof 
 of a popular desire for tariff revision. At any rate the 
 Western Fanners have discovered that a high protective 
 tariff is not a heaven-born means of getting rich without 
 injuring anybody but the accursed foreigners." 
 
 The thing particular to note about this last ex-
 
 113 
 
 ample of tariff-busting editorial comment, plainly 
 showing as it does the dictation of the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, is its bell-wether char- 
 acter. You know, your Honors, when you want a 
 lot of thoughtless folks to join you in some damn- 
 foolishness, it is very important to make them think 
 they will only be doing what a whole crowd of other 
 people are doing or have already done; therefore, 
 you will observe that the editor first flatters his 
 readers that they will only be in the line of "com- 
 mon sense" if they assist in "a revival of Democratic 
 tariff reform;" for "common sense" is supposed to 
 be a sense that is common. This establishes the 
 feeling of community and large numbers. Then 
 see how quickly this allusion to "common sense" is 
 followed by the assurance that any fellow who goes 
 in for "tariff revision" will only be joining in a 
 "popular desire;" and the editor has no sooner rung 
 you in among the great throng of the popularly- 
 desiring than he makes you a member of the great 
 guild of "Western Farmers," who have discovered 
 what a heinous thing is the protective tariff; and 
 at the same time the editor causes your heart to 
 swell large with pity for the poor foreigners whom 
 you have so unjustly cussed out aforetime. This 
 last is a real artistic touch, your Honors. It is very 
 seldom that a hireling of the wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, can kill so many dollars with the 
 same pen-full of ink. For we suppose, your Hon- 
 ors, that these scribblers against American Pro- 
 duction, our worthy client, are paid in proportion 
 to the number of blows in the same paragraph they 
 can give to the tariff-dike. Note, your Honors, the 
 majestic climax elaborated by this gifted stabber of 
 American Production: He first modestly brings in 
 "tariff reform;" then with a bolder note broaches
 
 114 
 
 "tariff revision;" and fetches up the rear with a 
 roar in your ear against the "protective tariff." 
 Very artistic, your Honors, and very effective; a 
 first-class example of the virus of hatred for Amer- 
 ican Production injected systematically in the 
 veins of public opinion by the vsily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust. And so adroit, too! Why, bless 
 your hearts, your Honors, the newspaper that con- 
 tained this editorial counts as a Republican pro- 
 tectionist newspaper! And when "protectionists" 
 themselves damn the dike isn't that enough? 
 
 Now listen to what comes next, your Honors. It 
 is a rich bit from an Importing Trust mouthpiece 
 of over a hundred years standing. The occasion is 
 the discovery by our State Department of what this 
 newspaper calls "A Useful Cudgel" with which to 
 "get back at" nations that do as Germany has been 
 doing: Double their tariffs in order to halve them 
 again as a concession to national fools like our- 
 selves who "lie down," as we did in the German 
 Agreement. Kindly listen : 
 
 "Originally bestowed [the 'cudgel'] to enable the 
 President to retaliate for German discrimination against 
 our meats, this power was speedily forgotten when that 
 dispute was adjusted. It is now to be used against other 
 nations, as the President shall determine. We see once 
 more how tariffs are the most perfect means of producing 
 concord and friendly feeling between nations and what 
 measures of good- will grow out of them." 
 
 This is a gem, your Honors, if you consider its 
 object; which, of course, is neither more nor less 
 than to assist the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, to another inning as the monopolist of our 
 domestic market. It breathes the "lie-down" pol- 
 icy, so well illustrated in the German agreement 
 before mentioned. It assumes that the tariff-dike 
 is only a matter of caprice or an incident of politi- 
 cal vicissitudes such as this poor land is the victim
 
 115 
 
 of. It reeks with the sentiment that the way for a 
 nation to get along is to open its markets to all 
 other nations. And there is not an argument in it. 
 It aims at a very low mark, namely, that part of 
 the public devouring newspapers which nourish no 
 brain-cells of the higher tiers. It is of the sugges- 
 tive order, a sort of hypnotic pabulum for those 
 born too tired to think for themselves. Don't argue 
 the case at all. Just keep telling the country it is 
 a fool to maintain a tariff-dike; keep suggesting 
 that "concord and friendly feeling between na- 
 tions" is really all our stomachs need; that tariff- 
 dike bread and butter is a delusion and a snare! 
 And by and by enough heads will have been filled 
 with these hypnotic fumes to promise success for 
 another Importing Trust Campaign against the 
 tariff-dike. 
 
 Your Honors, there is another method of attack- 
 ing the tariff-dike, very dear to the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust; and it is even more danger- 
 ous than that illustrated by the editorial extracts 
 which we have just read. For it does not even men- 
 tion the tariff-dike. This method is that of ethere- 
 alizing the sources of our prosperity. Our prosper- 
 ity "comes out of everywhere into here. r It could 
 not come from a hard-headed and intelligent policy 
 such as that which, by an import tariff-dike and an 
 export-tariff dam, would confine the whole Ameri- 
 can demand to the American supply and the Ameri- 
 can supply to the American demand. Oh, no; to 
 account for prosperity and adversity, the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, tells ghost-stories 
 through its newspapers. Here is one of them : 
 
 "The fact we know to be that men and women fall 
 in love by instinct or inexplicable passion; and that their 
 later explanations of the precise reason are rather laugh-
 
 116 
 
 able afterthoughts. May it not be the same with the 
 emotions about finance and the state of trade? 
 
 "That feeling has a great deal to do with prosperity, 
 and its lapsing, is an old story. Sentiment is not quoted 
 on the exchanges, but it has much to do with fixing 
 prices. A comtortable sense gets into the hearts of people 
 that they are increased in goods and have need of noth- 
 ing; and then they are prosperous, partly because they 
 think they are. But when the reverse feeling sets in, 
 they sometimes cease to be prosperous, partly because 
 they think they are so no longer. And this is, at present, 
 perhaps the most critical element in the commercial situa- 
 tion. People begin to feel it in their bones that we are 
 in for a period or trade depression. They begin to talk to 
 each other about it; repeat in private conversations their 
 belief that we have passed the crest of prosperity; and 
 little by little create a sentiment, an expectation, which 
 may be unfounded in strict reason, but which nevertheless 
 must be reckoned with and is certain to have a powerful 
 influence. ' ' 
 
 This is an editorial from, the regular staff of the 
 Importing Trust. Nevertheless its writer is a poet. 
 He reduces to a Christian Science basis the whole 
 matter of the prosperity or adversity of a country. 
 There is no such thing as sin, sickness, and death. 
 "Feel" you are prosperous and prosperous you will 
 be. "Feel" the contrary, and your financial name 
 is Dennis. It is all in mind; no matter anywhere 
 in it. A man does not "feel" prosperous because 
 he knows that he will get a little more than a dol- 
 lar back for every dollar he invests in staple pro- 
 duction in this country. He does not "feel" unpros 1 - 
 perous, because he discovers that a leak in the dike 
 has knocked his domestic market endwise, and that 
 if he lays out a dollar in making goods here he is 
 certain to get back but 75c in his price. Commer- 
 cial facts are nowhere; "comfortable sense" which 
 clambers into his heart makes prosperity; and a 
 "reverse feeling" makes adversity. Somewhere 
 away off in the sweet empyrean sits a beneficent 
 angel giving him absent treatment; and, lo, he is 
 happy and prosperous. But, presto ! the beneficent 
 angel is out of business, and somewhere else, away
 
 117 
 
 off in the smoking, smoldering pit of woe's inferno 
 sits malicious animal magnetism, treating him ab- 
 sently, and the milk of prosperity goes sour. 
 Brains and their judicious use no longer affect! 
 human affairs. Oh, bother them all! Pack them 
 in your grip and send them back by American Ex- 
 press to Eden ! They are out of date frippery from 
 antedeluvian times! No such things as a tariff- 
 dike, keeping out the foreign surplus deluge from 
 your industrial gardens, could possibly have any- 
 thing to do with your prosperity. Just take a good 
 dose of "feeling" and your prosperity will glow 
 from within you out of you like a sun. 
 
 Your Honors, with great good reason have we 
 dubbed the Importing Trust the "wily plaintiff." 
 Such newspaper- work as we have just described is 
 meant for two things, viz., on the one hand, to 
 ignore the dike entirely, if the object is a general 
 impressing of the idea that it has nothing to do 
 with our prosperity; and, on the other hand, when 
 the wily plaintiff has once more destroyed the dike 
 with a keg of anti-"trust" dynamite, to cover the 
 tell-tale footprints of the Importing Trust up to 
 and away from its job. 
 
 There is no doubt, your Honors, that the pres- 
 ent administration is a mere auxiliary of the 
 Importing Trust. The Cuban Treaty, the dis- 
 charge of Appraiser Wakeman, the German 
 Agreement, and the measures 1 to promote smug- 
 gling generally, the strenuous effort to give 
 the Importing Trust free access to our markets 
 through a Philippine Hole in the Wall, to say noth- 
 ing of this Taft crusade in favor of tariff "revi- 
 sion," more than prove this. All these assaults 
 have badly shattered the dike; and the deluge of 
 foreign goods upon our markets is making itself
 
 118 
 
 more and more felt; and it is much to the interest 
 of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, to con- 
 ceal the true cause of the hard times that are sure 
 to follow. The editorial just read helps do that; 
 and the same is true of the following : 
 
 "But now, what of the future? Industry as yet has 
 shown only scant signs here and there of declining ac- 
 tivity. The crop outlook is not altogether satisfactory, 
 but considering the advanced prices and the great stores 
 left over from other harvests, there is nothing in that 
 situation to bring real disaster. The mercantile situation 
 seems healthy" 
 
 Yes, your Honors, healthy for the Importing 
 Trust, whose interests are the limiting horizon of 
 this speaker's vision. The situation should seem 
 "healthy" for the Importing Trust, when imported 
 goods are storming across our dike at the rate of a 
 billion and a half a year. There is a good chance 
 in that for healthy commissions for the wily plain- 
 tiff. It has no cause to complain. But let us con- 
 tinue the reading from this mystifier of that about 
 which there is no mystery. He continues: 
 
 "Labor is still fully employed at the highest rate of 
 wages ever paid. The banking position is sound. But in 
 spite of all this, in spite of a half-year's record just clos- 
 ing, which in most lines of business will be the equal of 
 last year's phenomenal figures, nearly all experienced 
 business men are of the opinion that we are facing a 
 practically certain recession in trade, that we have ahead 
 of us a period of smaller industrial totals." 
 
 Why, "a recession in trade," your Honors'? Has 
 our death-roll so outstripped our birth-roll of late? 
 Your Honors, the only possible direction from 
 which at this time can come any "recession in 
 trade" is from a leaking tariff -dike, lessening our 
 home demand by letting in a deluge of foreign 
 goods, putting out our factory fires and turning our 
 millions of wage-producers out of doors. For with
 
 119 
 
 us, the maker of trade is the American people, 
 wages' in hand, drawing upon the supply of goods 
 which flows from American Production. So when 
 by imports you stop American Production, you stop 
 to the same degree, American consumption, and so, 
 American business. Is not our orator preparing us 
 for a stoppage of American Production? Docs that 
 mean anything else than that the tariff dike is too 
 low and that the tariff-juggling and smuggling of 
 our Importing-Trust administration is supplant- 
 ing American by foreign production? That i.> just 
 what "a recession in trade" will prove, your Hon- 
 ors; and our orator is preparing us with his mysti- 
 cism to expect "a recession in trade" as a matter 
 of course, so we will not "get onto the game" of the 
 Importing Trust and the leaking of our tariff-dike. 
 But let us continue our orator's profound remarks : 
 
 "Such a view is almost universal among well-informed 
 business men. There is no longer a disposition courage- 
 ously to enter upon new enterprises. Railways are cur- 
 tailing expenditures. Bankers are inclined to exercise 
 caution in extending accommodations. Most manufac- 
 turers and merchants are planning their fall campaign 
 with much conservatism. 
 
 "That the period ahead of us is one in which com- 
 mercial activities will he curtailed and manufacturers 
 totals show a decrease, there is really little division o* 
 well-informed opinion." 
 
 There you have it again, your Honors, manufact- 
 urers' totals are to show a decrease; that is, Ameri- 
 can manufacturers' totals. Foreign manufactur- 
 ers' totals will show an increase; but that is not 
 "in the game," It is that fact which must be con- 
 cealed. And so the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, trains its literary guns on our mental fort- 
 resses in any way that will shatter the tariff-dike 
 most, and at the same time make a smoke that will 
 conceal its own hand on the lanyard.
 
 120 
 
 XVI 
 
 THE SYSTEMATIC IGNORING OP THE TARIFF-DIKE AS A 
 SOURCE OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY PROCEEDS 
 FROM BUT ONE SOURCE AND HAS BUT ONE OBJECT. 
 
 Your Honors, we cannot repeat too often our 
 warning to you against the subtleties by which the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, carries on its 
 great propaganda of public opinion against our 
 client, American Production, and in favor of its 
 own monopoly of our domestic market. We have 
 given you a number of examples of its methods of 
 bringing into contempt the great tariff-dike behind 
 which and because of which our client lives and 
 moves and has its being. 
 
 A distinct method by which the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, thrusts its pick and its crow- 
 bar deep beneath the foundations of this defense to 
 our national being is that by which its newspapers, 
 authors, and orators 1 , when seeking to account for 
 our prosperity on the one hand and our adversity 
 on the other, ignore the condition of the tariff-dike. 
 You have not the time and we have not the breath 
 to go into our budget of proofs of this method of 
 assault employed by the wily plaintiff just named, 
 proofs which we have gathered from a thousand 
 sources; and we shall spare you and content our- 
 selves by the analysis of a single remarkable case 
 wherein the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, by 
 the mouth of one of its most devoted servants 1 , seeks 
 to hide the only source whence prosperity beams 
 upon our land and warms to quick action the great 
 powers of this nation. To quote from an oration
 
 121 
 
 delivered not so long ago by an orator well known 
 as an advocate of the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust : 
 
 "Men need training to become skillful. They must 
 have variety of work if their outlook and technical skill 
 are to have breadth. They must know something of prin- 
 ciples, if they are to have original ideas of value. I be- 
 lieve that we have failed utterly to grasp the problem of 
 the relation between education and our industrial de- 
 velopment and prosperity." 
 
 Please note, your Honors, that this speaker as- 
 sumes that the only source of our national pros- 
 perity is foreign trade; for only on that assumption 
 has this statement any force. The speaker ignores 
 the fact that our domestic trade absorbs nearly 
 98% of our average total annual production. He, 
 therefore, ignores our tariff-dike entirely as the 
 source of prosperity; nay, as the source of our 
 chance to live at all. You will observe that his 
 key-note is education, which he assumes to be the 
 one thing needful to help our artisans' "capture the 
 markets of the world." 
 
 But back to our orator : 
 
 "Within the memory of most Americans there has 
 been what amounts to nothing short of a revolution in 
 industrial affairs. We have seen England lose much of 
 her pre-eminence among the industrial nations." 
 
 Please note again, your Honors, the course of 
 this orator's reflections. England, he says, has lost 
 much of her industrial "pre-eminence." It is* a no- 
 torious fact that she has lost it by tearing down her 
 tariff-dike and exposing herself, a cost-50 country, 
 to struggle for her own domestic market with goods 1 
 from countries whose costs range from 30 down to 
 5, our own country at cost-100 being taken as the 
 standard. And yet our orator would make you be- 
 lieve that it was want of education and not tariff-
 
 1 2 
 
 dike protection against a foreign deluge which 
 robbed England of industrial supremacy. But back 
 
 again to our orator : 
 
 
 
 "We have seen two other nations grow from compara- 
 tively small beginnings to places of the first rank." 
 
 These "two other nations," your Honors, are Ger- 
 many and the United States, both of which have 
 erected high-tariff dikes and shut out a large part 
 of the foreign deluge, on the principle that the do- 
 mestic market which you have is worth twice as 
 much as the domestic market which some other 
 fellow has, and to gain which you must compete 
 with all creation. And our author says that these 
 two nations which have applied this common-sense 
 maxim to their industrial affairs are those which, 
 "from small beginnings'," have grown "to places of 
 the first rank." One would think that this curious 
 coincidence would make our orator sit up and take 
 notice. But he is not paid to think that way. He 
 proceeds : 
 
 "I have indicated what I believe to be the principal 
 elements upon which our own industrial success has been 
 based." 
 
 lie had previously pointed out, your Honors, that 
 the "principal elements upon which our own indus- 
 trial success has been based" are "unexampled sup- 
 plies of raw material'- and "an unequalled genius 
 for doing things on a great scale." This alone 
 would have marked our orator as a member of the 
 Importing Trust, without going further into his 
 deliverance. But back to our eloquent friend: 
 
 "But we have seen another nation [Germany] without 
 the special advantages of raw material which we have 
 enjoyed push forward in a development as rapid as ours, 
 and wrest from others in competitive fields the advantage
 
 they had long held in security. Germany has had the 
 scantiest aid from nature to make that progress possible. 
 Not only has she had no wealth of raw material such as 
 we have had; she has had no vast homogeneous domestic 
 market, a factor which has been of vital aid in building 
 up our own manufactures. Her people have lacked the 
 peculiar inventive ingenuity which has, in many fields 
 of industry, been the sole basis for our achievements." 
 
 Your Honors, we believe it is a libel thus to write 
 down the great German nation as a lot of mechan- 
 ical idiots. Our own "peculiar inventive ingenuity" 
 is German, as well as English, Irish, Scotch, 
 French, Spanish, and all the rest. For we are all 
 importations ; and there is not a rivulet of the "in- 
 ventive ingenuity" now bragged about by us which 
 did not take its rise in the great European spring 
 of intelligence. But let that pass and back again 
 to our Importing Trust orator: 
 
 "Her [German] artisans have not possessed that deli- 
 cate artistic sense." 
 
 Hifalutin, your Honors! 
 
 "which has made the handiwork of France superior to 
 the obstructions of all tariff walls." 
 
 More hifalutin, your Honors! 
 
 "Her industries have been forced to grapple with Eng- 
 lish competitors who were intrenched behind a domina- 
 tion of international markets successfully maintained for 
 generations." 
 
 Your Honors, we beg to call your attention to 
 the well-known fact that for three hundred years 
 Knirland maintained an almost impassable tariff 
 dike against the influx of manufactures in any wise 
 competing with her own. During those three cen- 
 turies her industries were so developed as to dwarf 
 by comparison those of all other countries. She
 
 124 
 
 had reached such momentum in her flight upward 
 that it seemed as if she might forever defy the law 
 of gravitation. Her capital was almost unlimited, 
 an enormous amount of it being fixed in the best- 
 equipped work-shops in the world, manned by the 
 descendants of generations of artisans, who, in the 
 operations of the factory, inherited the cunning of 
 their forefathers. Her place seemed eternally se- 
 cured. But in 1846 she tore down all her protect- 
 ing dikes and her destruction began. Not even 
 lordly England, easily the giant leader of the earth 
 in manufacturing, proved superior to the law of 
 economic gravitation expressed in the words: 
 
 "Capital desiring a given market for its output, must 
 finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production 
 for that market." 
 
 Too powerful even for England was the fact that 
 she was a cost-50 country, as we have before stated, 
 while just across the channel were cost-30 and 
 cost-25 countries, which sucked away her capital 
 to build factories on the continent of Europe with 
 which to put English industries out of business. 
 The havoc wrought among British wage-producers 
 beggars description. Industry after industry went 
 into decay. Hundreds of thousands of her wage- 
 producers starved slowly to death, their very blood 
 and bones being coined for the coffers of heir 
 wealthy manufacturers who had repealed the Corn 
 Laws. And the havoc is still going on. Her only 
 hope lies in restoring her tariff-dikes, converting 
 her gentlemen's shooting preserves, forests, and 
 parks into corn-fields and cattle ranches, bringing 
 back her farmers to her farms with the hope of life, 
 and relieving the congestion of wage-producers at 
 manufacturing centres until manufacturers are
 
 125 
 
 forced to pay living wages to their workers. Eng- 
 land's plight is 1 so plain that a blind man can see it. 
 And yet we have our orator laying England's loss 
 of primacy to want of technical education ! Your 
 Honors, it is not education in anything but human- 
 ity to her wage-producers that England needs. Put 
 good wages ahead of the English wage-producer, 
 and he will take care of his own education and that 
 of his children. It is in the breed. Our orator 
 continues: 
 
 "But amidst a poverty of natural resources," 
 
 Bismarck built a high tariff-dike, our orator 
 might say and account for the whole matter; but 
 he is afflicted with Importing-Trust blindness and 
 could not see a tariff-dike three feet away. He 
 continues : 
 
 "and from among a people not singularly gifted 
 either with inventive ability or artistic temperament, we 
 have seen emerge in a generation the great industrial 
 forces of the German Empire. The time is within the 
 memory of most of us when Germany was in large meas- 
 ure an agricultural state winning but meagre return from 
 sterile acres. There were neither rich mines below ground 
 nor exhaustless forests above. Whatever was done by 
 the Germans had to be done in the sweat of their brows. 
 Whatever thev have accomplished we must admit fairly 
 earned, for they have been heirs to few bounties of 
 nature. I have made a somewhat careful study of Ger- 
 many's economic success, and in doing that I have be- 
 come firmlv convinced that the explanation of the re- 
 markable German nroerress is to be traced in the most 
 direct manner to the German system of education. The 
 schoolmaster is the great corner-stone of Germany's re- 
 markable commercial and industrial progress. The school 
 system of Germany bears a relation to the economic 
 situation that is not met with in any other country. ' ' 
 
 Your Honors, the source of this effusion is the 
 heart of the Importing Trust, wily plaintiff herein. 
 The orator who uttered these words did not believe 
 them himself. For he is an intelligent man, and
 
 126 
 
 we do not think that his brain-cells are so arranged 
 as to make a cart couchant in front of a horse ram- 
 pant his heraldry. But to lay to education Ger- 
 many's "remarkable commercial and industrial 
 progress" is merely to put the cart before the horse. 
 The first tariff-dike as a bulwark to industry was 
 made for Germany by Bismarck some time after 
 the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Our orator, just 
 quoted, assures us that "the time is within the mem- 
 ory of most of us when Germany was in large mea- 
 sure an agricultural state winning but meager re- 
 turn from sterile acres." That was something like 
 a generation ago, and before protection was adopted 
 by Germany as a definite national policy. What- 
 ever tariff existed before that time was 1 only inci- 
 dentally protective. But a consistent tariff -dike, 
 by reserving to her own capital the German do- 
 mestic trade, no sooner gave Germany a chance to 
 market the fact that she was a cost-30 country, as 
 against England's cost-50, than Germany ceased to 
 b*> "in large measure an agricultural state winning 
 but meagre return from sterile acres," and became 
 a manufacturing state, the same one mentioned by 
 our orator as having assisted to drive England 
 down from her proud industrial primacy to the 
 third rank. Now, your Honors, it seems to us that 
 it is worse than silly to believe that education in 
 already-educated Germany gave to German capital 
 tho certainty of getting back, mark for mark, and 
 a little more, what it invested in manufactures for 
 the German domestic market. Of what use would 
 "technical education" have been to Germans who 
 had no manufacturing industries in which to get 
 back some return for the expense of becoming 
 "technically" educated? If German technical edu- 
 cation has put in an appearance, it is certain that
 
 127 
 
 it appeared because the factories had appeared, and 
 the factories were built with Germany's tariff-dike 
 as a foundation. 
 
 Our orator, your Honors, says that we here owe 
 our long step ahead to our "unexampled supplies 
 of raw material" and "unequalled genius for doing 
 things on a great scale," which he otherwise alludes 
 to as "inventive genius." But we have no technical 
 schools worthy of the name, or, at any rate, none 
 that, for numbers and age, have had any effect 
 whatever on the prosperity which set in strong 
 for us at the date of the erection of the Dingley 
 dike. 
 
 He says that Germany has 1 neither raw mate- 
 rial nor inventive genius to account for her indus- 
 trial advance, but that she has a school system 
 which bears a relation to the economic situation 
 that is not met with in any other country, and that 
 "the explanation of the remarkable German prog- 
 ress is to be traced in the most direct manner tc 
 the German system of education.*' 
 
 He also says "we have seen England lose much 
 of her pre-eminence among industrial nations. We 
 have seen two other nations grow from compara- 
 tively small beginnings to places of the first rank." 
 But we all know that England has inventive genius, 
 natural resources in her mines of coal and iron, 
 and plentiful education. 
 
 Now, remembering that, as to comparative costs, 
 we stand at cost-100, England at cost-50, and Ger- 
 many at cost-30, let us gather all these facts into 
 a, table, in order that we may see whether the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, by the mouth of its' 
 servant, our orator, is talking rationally when, 
 comparing England, Germany and the United 
 States, it lays to "technical education" the differ-
 
 128 
 
 ence between going ahead and behind. Here is the 
 table : 
 
 Nation 
 
 Tariff Dike 
 
 Cost 
 Number 
 
 Technical 
 Education 
 
 Inventive 
 Genius 
 
 Natural 
 Resources 
 
 Movement 
 
 England 
 
 Revenue 
 
 50 
 
 Fair 
 
 Good 
 
 Important 
 
 Backward 
 
 Germany 
 
 United 
 States 
 
 Protective 
 
 30 
 
 Best 
 
 Poor 
 
 Meagre 
 
 Ahead 
 
 Protective 
 
 100 
 
 Lacking 
 
 Best 
 
 "Unexampled"! 
 
 Ahead 
 
 Your Honors, we have printed and now hand you 
 copies of this table. Please note that, with regard 
 to the characteristics at the head of the columns, 
 the whole three countries' differ in cost, education, 
 inventive genius and natural resources. We think 
 even the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, will 
 agree with us here. As to the remaining two 
 points, England is directly opposed to Germany 
 and the United States, upon these two points, and 
 these alone, Germany and the United States stand- 
 ing together, and the table showing that, irrespec- 
 tive of cost, education, inventive genius, and natural 
 resources, both of the countries which have protec- 
 tive-tariff dikes are going ahead, while England is 
 going behind. Moreover, as to the four non-coin- 
 ciding points, Germany differs more widely from 
 the United States than from England; and yet Ger- 
 many and the United States, having similar tariff- 
 dikes, also stand the same with regard to progress. 
 How a person whose brain-cells did not illustrate 
 the cart before the horse could lay progress in Ger- 
 many to "technical education," when "technical 
 education" in Germany did not precede but fol- 
 lowed her forward movement, and is lacking in the 
 United States, the second of the two nations who 
 have grown "from comparatively small beginnings
 
 129 
 
 to places of the first rank," is a mystery which only 
 the intelligence of an Importing-Trust orator could 
 solve. Why would it not be more logical, your 
 Honors, to attribute the progress of Germany and 
 the United States to the characteristics in which 
 they are similar, viz., the protective-tariff dike, than 
 to a characteristic in which they are so dissimilar 
 as that it is gloomily lacking in the one but radi- 
 antly present in the other? 
 
 ;We repeat, your Honors, that the making little 
 of the tariff-dike as the bulwark of American pros- 
 perity has only one source, viz., the interest that 
 would be most injured in pocket if our people all 
 realized that our tariff-dike is our only hope against 
 national annihilation; which interest, of course, is 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. But 
 speeches, magazine articles, and newspaper edi- 
 torials, all arising from one or the other of these 
 wily plaintiffs, are busy throughout this country, 
 doing just what was done by the orator whose words 
 we have quoted; that is, hiding the Dingley Dike 
 behind a veil of sophistry and fallacy. But some- 
 thing had to be done, your Honors. The Dingley 
 Dike, in such sharp contrast with Cleveland free 
 trade, was so plainly the rock upon which our pros- 
 perity was built, that the campaign of explanation 
 was a necessity, if the wily plaintiffs were not to be 
 destroyed by the sheer common sense of the people. 
 In passing, we cannot help regretting, your Honors, 
 that the brain-cells of the majority of our people are 
 not so well ballasted that they cannot be paralyzed 
 by every Importing Trust sophist who gets their 
 
 ear.
 
 130 
 
 XVII. 
 
 AND, AS SYSTEMATICALLY IGNORING A BROKEN TARIFF- 
 DIKE AS THE SOURCE OF INCREASED IMPORTS, AND 
 LAYING SUCH INCREASE TO OTHER CAUSES BE- 
 YOND THE REACH OF THE DIKE AS A REMEDY, THE 
 WILY PLAINTIFF STILL SEEKS TO BLIND AMER- 
 ICANS TO THEIR PERIL. 
 
 Your Honors, we have just shown you how the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, has tried to 
 account, by "technical education," for Germany's 
 success, denying that Germany to account therefor 
 has inventive genius, natural resources or other 
 things, and, as the real cause of her prosperity, 
 wholly ignoring her high tariff-dike. Your Honors, 
 it is as certain as anything can be that Germany's 
 success comes from her tariff-dike and the keep- 
 ing of her domestic market wherewith to induce 
 her capitalists to promote domestic industry; and 
 it is just as certain that neither "skill" nor "inven- 
 tive genius" has had anything more to do with 
 Germany's success than with that of any other na- 
 tion, since "skill" and "inventive genius" are at 
 least as universal as the reward therefor which always 
 accompanies a well-protected domestic market. 
 But as this wily plaintiff accounts for a bounding 
 German export trade without seeing the high tariff- 
 dike as the cause, so it also accounts for rising im- 
 ports in the United States without seeing the holes 
 in the American tariff-dike through which imports 
 are rushing. The high tariff-dike in Germany and 
 the low-tariff dike in the United States work to- 
 gether perfectly, through our increase in German 
 exports, to drown out American goods from the
 
 131 
 
 American domestic niaiket, and yet the orator just 
 quoted says Germany's prosperity comes from 
 "technical education," not from its protected do- 
 mestic market; and the Germans themselves say 
 it is "German skill and faithfulness in manufac- 
 ture," and not the hole in our dike which lets them 
 into our market. In this way, your Honors, the 
 conspirators against our national prosperity, they 
 who are bent on taking from us the savings of a 
 decade, in order to keep our ignorance for future 
 profit, seek to blind us Americans to the cause of 
 our weakness, on the one hand, and, on the other 
 hand, the cause of the strength of our great pro- 
 tectionist adversary the Empire of Germany. 
 
 We have before alluded to the German agree- 
 ment, whereby the Roosevelt Administration pur- 
 chased misery for millions of our wage-earners by 
 a compact which tore down our tariff-dike from 
 one-fifth to one-half on German goods. This be- 
 trayal of our country is doing its hellish work. 
 German goods are pouring in here as never before. 
 The Germans have so far succeeded in destroying 
 our tariff-dike by the Von Sternburg route that 
 they are willing to remit their efforts for "tariff 
 concessions''; but they are laying to their great 
 "skill," not to our broken dike, the immense in- 
 crease in their exports to this country. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt is trying to ride at once two horses 
 racing in opposite directions; but it is a very hard 
 straddle. He wants to pose to our workers as a 
 friend of "labor," as the "champeen trust-buster," 
 and at the same time pose as a friend of Germany 
 and of the New York importers. He wants to be all 
 things to all men ; to serve God and Mammon and to 
 pray to both with the same breath. And the Ger- 
 mans are trying to help him fool the American peo-
 
 132 
 
 pie ; they are trying to make us think there is not so 
 much of a hole in the dike after all ; and that any- 
 way we cannot build dikes high enough to keep out 
 the results of German skill, and therefore might 
 better not try. They say the Dingley Bill even 
 the Dingley Tariff, so high and imposing "has 
 proved a sieve, through which the torrent of Ger- 
 man enterprise flows unchecked." But it was Ger- 
 man enterprise in "getting away" with the Koose- 
 velt administration and no enterprise that Ger- 
 mans ever yet displayed in their mills and factories. 
 Your Honors, we propose reading to you from 
 the Literary Digest of October 26, 1907, an inval- 
 uable publication of world-gossip most reliably re- 
 ported. In this magazine, of the date above given, 
 is the following: 
 
 "A ROSY VIEW OF GERMANY'S TRADE WITH 
 AMERICA. 
 
 "The German Government, having been unable to se- 
 cure any tariff concessions from this country" 
 
 except the German Agreement which is very nearly 
 a total prostration of our entire tariff-dike towards 
 Germany 
 
 "ia telling its people through the semi-official CONTI- 
 NENTAL CORRESPONDENCE that German trade can 
 win its own way without concessions from anybody. ' ' 
 
 A sop for babies, your Honors. Does this German 
 Government organ mean to say that we, for in- 
 stance, could not totally shut out its goods, if we 
 desired? But to continue: 
 
 "In its effort to gain tariff modifications from the 
 United States the Berlin Government has been urged on 
 by the German manufactures, who want our tariff bars 
 lowered so they can sell more goods here."
 
 133 
 
 Why, your Honors, should they require the bars 
 lowered to sell more goods here, when the German- 
 Koosevelt Agreement has left as good as no bars at 
 all for German goods? We think this sort of talk 
 is for broad public consumption; for peddling 
 through the United States to fool our people to 
 think that the bars have not already been lowered, 
 and that if the Germans come in here and take our 
 domestic market away from us entirely, it will 
 prove that no tariff bars can keep out the "skillful 
 Germans" skillful in back-door politics, your Hon- 
 ors. Therefore, the tariff bars being of no use to 
 keep out these brilliant Teutons, we might as well 
 resign ourselves to the fate the politico-economic 
 gods have meted out to us, throw down the dike en- 
 tirely and become colonists to the German Empire. 
 
 Why, your Honors, talk about the German War- 
 Lord colonizing South America, to the menace of 
 the Monroe Doctrine and our sovereign security 
 here, bless your ingenuous hearts, he is colonizing 
 these very United States with the fabrics of his 
 factories, to the Teutonizing of us all to the shade 
 to which the proximity of Herr Von Sternburg has 
 already colored Herr Von Trust-Buster Roosevelt, 
 like a Dutch meerschaum ! But back to our Liter- 
 ary Digest: 
 
 "The German Agrarians second this effort with the 
 suggestion that if we do not capitulate, Germany should 
 retaliate by raising its own tariff bars against American 
 products. This is just what it cannot very well do, how- 
 ever, for Germany must have our grain and meats, and to 
 raise the tariff on these supplies, while enriching the 
 Agrarian landowners, would be to raise the cost of living 
 in Germany and that is what makes Socialists. So the 
 Government is letting well enough alone, and assuring the 
 tariff complainants that they are doing splendidly" 
 
 Splendidly, indeed, your Honors! Our dike has 
 been smashed with a Dutch club and the Germans
 
 134 
 
 have here, practically free, the greatest market in 
 the world, which they can take from us as fast as 
 they please, not because of their superior skill, your 
 Honors, but because they are a cost-30 country and 
 we are a cost-100 country. 
 
 they are doing splendidly and don't need any help," 
 
 Except, your Honors, a Koosevelt Administration 
 at Washington and a Von Sternburg hob-nobbing 
 with the President in the White House. But back 
 to our Digest : 
 
 "And it is true that Germany is only second to Great 
 Britain in her trade with us and is well in the lead of 
 any other country." 
 
 And will keep in the lead, your Honors, and soon 
 outstrip Great Britain in our markets here, for 
 Great Britain is a cost-50 country against Ger- 
 many's cost-30, and the biggest profit-margin is 
 going to beat everything else. But to continue our 
 reading : 
 
 "The tariff on imports into the United States imposed 
 by law some ten years ago has not, according to THE 
 CONTINENTAL CORRESPONDENCE, interfered in any 
 way with the sale of German goods in the United States. ' ' 
 
 Then, your Honors, in the name of truth, why 
 did the Germans threaten to double their tariffs 
 against our goods and why did Mr. Koosevelt lie 
 down and let them walk over him in the German 
 Agreement? But, your Honors, we believe this talk 
 is all for show just to conceal the fact that the 
 Germans have captured our markets by diplomacy. 
 There is something so puzzling about all this contra- 
 dictory business that we cannot quite reconcile our- 
 selves 1 to believe that this dark-lantern, stealthy
 
 135 
 
 German Agreement was not made to the immense 
 profit of somebody here in the United States. We 
 have been sold out, your Honors. Our invaluable 
 domestic market, the envy of the earth, has been 
 sold out to the Germans for a solid quid pro quo. 
 We cannot believe that Americans are such fools 
 that they do not know the value in gold of such 
 a large section of our market as was delivered to 
 the Germans by this infamous Agreement. Who 
 got the quid pro quo? And was it money, flattery, 
 political popularity or poodles? It was something, 
 your Honors, or else the American end of this deal 
 was in the hands of unreasonable beings. Still to 
 our Digest: 
 
 "This it considers the result of German skill and faith- 
 fulness in manufacture, and 'Made in Germany,' it thinks, 
 is a guaranty that should control any market." 
 
 A iid yet these same fellows, before the German 
 Agreement was born, said if we did not aid German 
 "skill" and "Made in Germany" by cutting down 
 our dike, they would cut us out of their market for 
 grains and meats, which is about all we sell them, 
 except raw cotton. Back to the jewsharp. 
 
 Of the increase of the German importations into 
 this country this organ remarks: 
 
 "In every respect the fiscal year ending in 1907 shows 
 record figures. The value of German wares imported 
 into the United States reached the amount of $161,- 
 500,000, while Germany bought $240,000,000 worth of 
 American goods. That shows an excess of 50 per cent, 
 on the side of Germany's purchases and seems at the 
 first glance very disadvantageous for the Fatherland. 
 But we find that seven years ago this excess amounted 
 to 90 per cent., and in 1898 even to 130 per cent, of 
 Germany's exports into the United States. In proportion 
 at least the German balance of trade shows a consider- 
 able improvement. If we limit our attention to the in- 
 crease in the last two years" 
 
 Ah, your Honors, these bland Teutons should have
 
 186 
 
 said, "in the last three months" or since our tariff - 
 dike was crushed with the Eoosevelt battering- 
 ram! But, no, it is the fairy wand of German 
 "skill and faithfulness in manufacture" that did 
 the job. Sleep, my baby, sleep, 'tis not the cat lap- 
 ping your milk that disturbs your dreams but the 
 wing-rustle of the fairy "Skill !" This is all a beau- 
 tiful lullaby, your Honors, written for the score 
 "Benevolent Fairy," dedicated to the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust. Here is more if it : 
 
 " 'If we limit our attention to the increase in the last 
 two years, we find even absolutely the same figures. 
 Germany got in 1907 American goods of $43,000,000 value 
 more than in 1905; and by the same amount of $43,- 
 000,000 we find the German imports into the United 
 States higher in 1907 than in 1905. Now, if we go into 
 details, we notice that among the American goods im- 
 ported into Germany cotton is principally responsible 
 for the increase. On account of the large demand of the 
 German spinning mills and the higher prices, the United 
 States increased their sales of raw cotton to Germany 
 within two years by not less than $34,000,000, so that 
 the cotton imported into Germany accounts for 80 per 
 cent, of this very remarkable increase.' 
 
 "When we come to ask the proportion between the 
 exports and imports of the United States and Germany, 
 this writer tells us that while German exports to the 
 United States are less than those of the United States 
 to Germany in regard to raw materials, the contrary is 
 the case when we calculate the interchange of manu- 
 factured articles. America exported to Germany $90,- 
 600,000 worth of such goods for the year ending 1907, but 
 imported from Germany manufactured goods to the 
 amount of $147,000,000." 
 
 Yes, your Honors, the Germans get our meats 
 and grains to feed their workers and underbid our 
 factory hands in this market under the German 
 Agreement. They take our raw cotton, to make 
 into cotton fabrics which are sent back here to take 
 our market from our own factories and bread from 
 our own cotton workers. Our Sunny South is the 
 natural field for all forms of cotton manufactures; 
 and yet the German Agreement takes the work
 
 137 
 
 from Southern mills and gives it to the Germans, 
 and we pay the freight both ways. How the South 
 can keep quiet under this outrage is a puzzle. This 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, in order to 
 fatten from its commissions on foreign goods, would 
 keep us here forever as the coarse and codgerly 
 makers of "raw materials" to send abroad for man- 
 uafcture and return to us. This is evidently Roose- 
 veltian philosophy. Still more from the digest: 
 
 "The writer accounts for this as follows: 'In knitted 
 fabrics the well-known superiority of the German in- 
 dustry told all the more under the high import duties of 
 the Dingley tariff' " 
 
 Oh, your Honors, this is too much ! They were so 
 afraid, were these benevolent Teutons, that they 
 would take our whole market under the high tariffs 
 which so made "the well-known superiority of the 
 German industry tell all the more" take all our 
 market and starve us quite to death, that they 
 Iwgged and implored us to take down the tariff 
 wall and take away their deadly advantage; and 
 when we would not, as a nation, listen to their 
 prayer, they got this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, through its lobby at the White House and its 
 representatives in the Cabinet to go with cat-like 
 stealth and in the dead of night and unlock our 
 tariff-dike gates with the key of the German Agree- 
 ment, just to save us, even against our childish 
 wills, from the dire disaster which was surely 
 awaiting us, unless we cut down the dike and cut 
 off this dreadful advantage over our own factories 
 which this high dike gave the Germans in our do- 
 mestic market. Such devotion to humanity, even 
 when it could be counted in a loss of many marks, 
 was never witnessed before. Well, let us read this 
 Teutonic philanthropist a little further:
 
 138 
 
 "Indeed, against the American articles of ordinary use 
 no other European industries could compete in this line; 
 we therefore find that 90 per cent, of all imported knitted 
 fabrics came from Germany. The same remark holds 
 good with regard to toys and coal-tar colors. For leather 
 gloves and furs the latest change of fashion favored the 
 German importer, as the American firms could not pro- 
 duce enough for the suddenly increased demand "- 
 
 Oh, what a sinful falsehood, your Honors! 
 "Could not produce enough for the suddenly in- 
 creased demand!'' Why, certainly not. If they 
 had, this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, would 
 not have won its commissions. That is the uniform 
 reason, your Honors, why Americans cannot pro- 
 duce this or that thing fast enough. The meaning 
 always is "fast enough to leave the profits of it 
 in the hands of the Importing Trust." If our client, 
 American Production, were paying this wily plain- 
 tiff, the same, or a little better, commissions than 
 are being paid to it by Foreign Production, we 
 never would hear anything about being too slow or 
 too unskillful or too anything else to supply our 
 market here. But let us hear this mystifier out : 
 
 "Earthenware and porcelain would be imported in 
 large quantities because the German manufacturers 
 adapted their produce to the American taste that favors 
 bright colors and fantastic patterns." 
 
 Yes, your Honors, any way to account for their 
 filching our markets here, except by the fact of 
 their pitting their cost-30 against our cost-100 and 
 by German Agreements bribing our sentinels, to let 
 them pass our tariff line. Surely, we are South Sea 
 Islanders, with rings in our noses and bells on our 
 feet, fond "of bright colors and fantastic patterns/' 
 if that will account for the Germans beating us in 
 our own market and hide the hole in the tariff- 
 dike. Still more prodigies from the German magi- 
 cians:
 
 139 
 
 "Paper and stationery were, in the last few years, 
 exported from Germany at ridiculously low prices on 
 account of a crisis in the trade" 
 
 Which illustrates what we said some time back, 
 your Honors. "Crises in trade" abroad and their 
 consequent fire and bankrupt sales could drown out 
 this market but for our tariff-dike; for there is 
 enough of the world and enough of such sales go- 
 ing on all the time to supply us with all things at 
 costs even far lower than the normal cost abroad. 
 Our dike should be built to heaven instead of being 
 cut down to hell for our workers. But let us go on 
 with our reading: 
 
 "Cement was much in request on account of the San 
 Francisco catastrophe and could not be immediately 
 supplied "by American manufacturers." 
 
 Of course not, your Honors. There is always on 
 hand an Importing-Trust jobber ready to rob our 
 workers by any pretext at any short notice. No 
 American enterprise is ever in such a real hurry 
 that it should not be compelled to await the rising 
 of American Production to the occasion. The wel- 
 fare of those concerned in the development of the 
 waiting enterprise is of no greater consequence 
 than the uniform development of this whole nation. 
 Reading again: 
 
 "The same may "he said of eellrrtose. whi<*h in 1907 
 exported frorn Gwrmanv into the TTnitefl States to 
 the amount of $858.500 or twenty-one times as much as 
 in 1899. 
 
 "In short, Germanv. arrordipo' to this writer, has Tvpn 
 trintnnhant. All cotrmetitors. li^e 'DOTIHTUX time. ' 'toil 
 after her in vain.' atirl the Dinsrlev "Rill jiag Tnvwort a 
 sieve, through which the torrent of German enterprise 
 flows unchecked. To quote the last paragraph of this 
 arresting article: 
 
 " 'It, is plonr that in the interchange of merchandise 
 nfbpr conrHtions. ever of a transient nature, are far more 
 important than the effect of a customs tariff.' "
 
 140 
 
 Conditions, your Honors, of such "transient na- 
 ture," for instance, as the sort of an Administration 
 we have at Washington. A Roosevelt can discount 
 the most effective tariff-dike in the world, and do it 
 without even being suspected by the dear devoted 
 people of being a rank free trader. We think our 
 Teutonic friend is quite right. When you have at 
 court a Von Sternburg joker in a Koosevelt pack, 
 you can well say, "I care not who makes tariffs for 
 the American people, so long as I own the Execu- 
 tive ear." But let us finish this triumph of mysti- 
 fication : 
 
 " 'The German manufacturers and exporters have suc- 
 ceeded so well by the intrinsic merits of their produce, 
 the painstaking study of American wants and American 
 tastes' " 
 
 For gaudy colors and uncouth shapes, your Hon- 
 ors, our fellow savages! 
 
 " 'and by the quick utilization of the proper means 
 for finding customers on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 The progress of American industries and the more severe 
 competition of the exporting countries of Europe were 
 the principal factors to be counted with. As a matter 
 of fact the Dingley tariff did not prevent an extraordi- 
 nary growth of the German exports into the United States 
 during the last ten years.' " 
 
 Your Honors, we quite agree with the Literary 
 Digest that this is an "arresting article"; so ar- 
 resting that it ought to arrest and throw in jail a 
 figurative jail, your Honors any one in this coun- 
 try who not- only does not root for tariff-dike 
 revision downwards, but who does not root 
 with all his might for such an immediate 
 tariff -dike revision upwards as that the dike 
 will be something more than a "sieve 
 through which the torrent of German enterprise 
 flows unchecked," The Dinglev Law never was an
 
 141 
 
 effective protection measure. That is proved by 
 the tide of imports which has been rising ever since 
 it was passed. According to Republican statements, 
 it was only made high enough just to offset the ad- 
 vantage in cheaper labor held by foreign produc- 
 ers and give our own workers in their own market a 
 mere equal chance with foreign workers. But since 
 it was made, foreigners have been improving their 
 machinery and methods, and, like the Germans, 
 have been making special efforts to get into our mar- 
 ket, with the result that the Dingley Dike was far 
 too low, even before the Roosevelt Administration 
 practically destroyed it by the German Agreement. 
 The Germans now tell us, in the article just quoted 
 that "the torrent of German enterprise flows un- 
 checked" through the tariff dike, which has proven 
 a "sieve"' ; that practically they have beaten down 
 all opposition, even from our American industries, 
 although they admit, now that the fight is over and 
 they are in full possession of our market, that in the 
 scrimmage which preceded their final victory, "the 
 progress of American industries" was to be counted 
 with to make their success more difficult. But they 
 have succeeded, not because "protection does not 
 protect," but because, in addition to our cost-100 
 market never having been half-way protected 
 against a cost-20 world, we have been nightmared 
 by an administration at the head of which is a man 
 who knows nothing about true American business, 
 who has taken his catechism from New York im- 
 porters, who has filled his cabinet with free traders, 
 who has flagellated Cuban Treaties through Con- 
 gress, who has removed faithful custom house offi- 
 cers in order that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, might have a freer hand, and, to crown all, 
 lias made a German Agreement which practically
 
 destroys whatever real protection there ever was 
 in the Dingley Dike. 
 
 The wily plaintiff the Importing Trust, has great 
 hopes of success. It thinks in addition to the Ger- 
 man Agreement, it will get a downward revision 
 of the dike within a reasonable time. It feels that 
 its campaign against our client, American Produc- 
 tion, its maddening of the thoughtless people to a 
 frenzy about the "trusts" and their sales abroad 
 cheaper than at home, and all its wily w^ays, will 
 soon bear a rich fruitage of commissions and brok- 
 erages, as it sits in our markets once more supreme 
 mistress and monopolist there. But it knows that 
 as surely as the sun continues to shine, it no sooner 
 will get comfortably seated than the greatest panic 
 the world has ever known in any country will 
 shake this devoted land from end to end ; and it has 
 already begun to hedge against such an event; it 
 already is devising means to say "This panic is 
 none of my doing. Look ! Was not the New York 
 panic in October, 1907, the result of the Dingley 
 Tariff? Did it not happen while the country was 
 enjoying the highest protective tariff it ever knew? 
 How can you charge me with this disaster, when 
 such disasters come, protection or no protection? 
 You cannot shake your gory locks at me. You can- 
 not say I did it." It is laying the ground for this 
 now, your Honors, for it has already started its 
 chorus amonc; the New York papers who owe to it 
 their lives. Here is a hymn which chants to heaven 
 the melodies of the Importing Trust : 
 
 "A PANIC COME HOME TO BOOST. 
 
 "People are beginning to write to the newspapers to 
 ask if this is to be known as the 'Roosevelt' panic. That 
 is comparatively unimportant. The certain and signifi- 
 cant thing is that it will be known as a Republican and
 
 143 
 
 high- tariff panic. Protest as Republicans may, they will 
 be held responsible. And it will not only be poetic but 
 political justice that they should be. 
 
 ' ' Out of their own mouths the Republican party and the 
 Dingleyites will stand condemned. ***** 
 
 "Whatever other effects the panic may have, it has 
 at least dealt a death-blow to the tariff superstition. 
 Perhaps in no other way could we have got rid of it 
 Hereafter, any man who uses the argument that you 
 must not demand the abolition of tariff outrages, since, 
 if you do, you will imperil prosperity, will be laughed 
 at. The way is at last open to attack the question of 
 protective duties in statesmanlike fashion, without hav- 
 ing to face the abuse and prejudice and idolatrous ig- 
 norance which have for years made it difficult to deal 
 with the tariff like rational men." 
 
 Well, your Honors, at the risk of being laughed 
 at, at least by this creature of the wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, which has owned it for over a 
 hundred years, we are going to say that the whole 
 prosperity of this country depends entirely on 'tar- 
 iff outrages," if that expression suits the gentle- 
 man who wrote this editorial. We say this with 
 the perfect knowledge that nobody in this or any 
 other country can successfully contradict us. We 
 say this because, if any one has a grain of common 
 business sense, he knows that a cost-100 country 
 cannot do business in competition with a cost-20 
 world. The business-volume, and, therefore, the 
 prosperity-volume depends, as we have said be- 
 fore, on the wage-volume, and the wage-volume 
 here would dwindle towards zero the moment our 
 domestic market, a cost and wage-100 market, 
 your Honors, were opened to competition with the 
 cost and wage-20 world. This is 1 too plain for any 
 talk. Therefore, we repeat that, not only will an 
 "abolition of tariff outrages" "imperil prosperity," 
 but it will destroy this country as a civilized prop- 
 osition. Any business man, not living by Import- 
 ing-Trust commissions, not only knows this, but
 
 144 
 
 will say so even at the risk of being laughed at 
 by some Importing-Trust donkey. 
 
 And we are going to repeat, your Honors, that 
 no real panic ever struck this country, while a 
 good tariff-dike kept production and value-making 
 at the front in this country. We have had dikes 
 like the Dingley Dike, which only half did their 
 business; so that, in time, the thing became so 
 leaky that our producers were put out of the mar- 
 ket; and then, when panics and depression came 
 on, the Importing Trust was privileged to say, as 
 in the present case, that the "tariff outrage" had 
 caused the panic. The October panic in New York, 
 to which this writer refers, was not a real busi- 
 ness panic at all; it was not a material panic; no- 
 body failed; the banks all stood pat. It was a 
 Christian Science panic, all in your mind, your 
 Honors, all in the thinking so. A lot of copper 
 securities, worth but a fraction of what they were 
 puffed up to be, were taken by a great bank as 
 collateral to loans. Somebody found it out we 
 believe it was the New York Clearing House and 
 "peached." Then everybody thought that every 
 other bank was just as bad; and so everybody ran 
 for his money and made a "run" on some half 
 dozen banks. Why, your Honors, that was no 
 more a national, business and property-panic, 
 closing mills, throwing millions out of employ- 
 ment, filling the land with starvation, and making 
 soup-houses the only real thing, than, when some- 
 body hollers fire when there is no fire, a panic in 
 a theatre somewhere in a little city, is a panic 
 in all the theatres of the United States. And yet 
 this rather over-zealous servant of the wily plain- 
 tiff holds it up as a real panic and says protec-
 
 145 
 
 tion, which we have not got, is the reason of it, 
 just hollers "fire" when there is no fire. 
 
 If we are tired of prosperity at any time, your 
 Honors, we have only to open our wage-100 mar- 
 ket to the wage-20 world and our demand will be 
 landed all over creation rather tfyan in our mills', 
 and prosperity will be no more and panic will 
 claim us as its own. Then if we want to turn 
 panic out and get prosperity back again, all we 
 shall have to do is to close our ports, and turn 
 our one-hundred-and-seventy-thousand-million dol- 
 lar business 1 demand over our own wheel of indus- 
 try again and the same old mill will grind out 
 prosperity once more as sure as fate and as fine 
 as a fiddle. There is no mystery about this. No 
 Christian Science in the whole rig. It is just 
 plain business. We are not prosperous because 
 we feel so; but we are prosperous because we are 
 so; and that consists in getting back a dollar and 
 five cents for our outlay of a dollar, which is a 
 thing we never can do when, in the same market, 
 the cost-20 world is bidding against us and our 
 cost-100 product. 
 
 But as to whether the Christian Science flurry 
 in and about Wall Street in October last was a 
 "Roosevelt" panic we cannot quite say. The state of 
 the public mind had something to do with the effect 
 that the public announcement of banking rot- 
 teness had upon bank depositors. It is strange, 
 surely, that people should think all the banks 
 were rotten because one was; any more 
 than they should think all men are bad be- 
 cause occasionally or semi-occasionally a man 
 goes wrong. But it may be that Mr. Roosevelt's 
 ravings against "malefactors of great wealth," 
 "swollen fortunes," "very rich men," and the "bad
 
 146 
 
 corporations," in sonit: way made thoughtless 
 people count all banks and moneyed institutions 
 as being tarred with the same stick; so that when 
 it seemed as if the rottenness had reached the 
 banks, it set a lot of people skeery. That is all 
 there was of the panic which, according to the 
 Importing Trust parrot from which we have just 
 quoted, proves the tariff -dike a failure. There was 
 some Roosevelt in it, no doubt. The public mind 
 was ready to suspect all sorts of trouble, because 
 its Chief Magistrate had gone batty on the same 
 subject. And what he said about it had more in- 
 fluence, because it was more advertised. 
 
 But, your Honors, we somehow think people 
 take Mr. Roosevelt altogether too seriously. He 
 is a great show. A good deal of an actor. When 
 he is sober he does not more than half believe 
 himself what he says so earnestly under the demi' 
 divine afflatus. But he is a good self-hypnotizer, 
 a self-suggester into all sorts of situations and 
 moods. He has a very large talent for imitation- 
 Mr. Bryan says he imitated him and only mod- 
 erate talent for sticking to a thing; and when he 
 has the "power" he naturally thinks he is the man 
 or mood he is unconsciously imitating. But he soon 
 switches off on to a sidetrack somewhere, blows 
 off steam, draws his fires; and goes to sleep. 
 When he wakes up, he is ashamed of himself be- 
 cause he thinks he has let up a little on "my poli- 
 cies" and he clambers on to the nearest platform 
 car in the train and says he has not forgot, even 
 if some malefactors of great wealth, just to dis- 
 credit him, have conspired to bring on money- 
 trouble in Wall Street. Then, too, besides being 
 a great mimic of manly moods and an all-'round 
 self-fooler, he likes praise, that is, to be tickled
 
 147 
 
 because he is so good. Jiis love of praise is very 
 strong; and in addition to this we have in our 
 Hero a weakness in reasoning power and a not too 
 over-grown benevolence, linked to great love of 
 blood-letting. Why your Honors, he gets so thirsty 
 for blood that when malefactors of great wealth 
 have all reached the tall timber, he has to cut off 
 into the swamps and hunt deer and bear and other 
 innocent things; unless, perhaps, he runs across 
 a herd of Mississippi pilots on his way afield. 
 We think, your Honors, a study of these few and 
 simple characteristics 1 pretty well accounts for Mr. 
 Roosevelt. He does love praise so much that, if 
 he should stay President long enough and exchange 
 all he now has left to swap for a tickling, namely, 
 the rest of our markets, for such a tipsy titilation 
 as those which coaxed from him the Cuban Treaty, 
 Wakeman's dismissal, and the German agreement, 
 he would be the unhappiest man in the world. 
 Then, your Honors, he is an impetuous thing. This 
 taken in connection with his 1 love of the lime-light 
 and his weak benevolence makes him a good deal 
 of a savage. Look at the way he publicly jumped 
 on poor innocent old Tyner and pushed him into 
 his grave! And how he dismissed from the ser- 
 vice a whole battalion of colored boys without 
 any proof of guilt against any one of them! And 
 then the way he whirled down on poor Nicholls, 
 the pilot of the Hartwig, was something scandal- 
 ous. And in this matter, too, his action carried 
 him right up to if not across the impeachment 
 line. He could not remove Nicholls, but he could 
 remove the men who could remove Nicholls if they 
 refused to remove Nicholls. And he made them 
 do it, illegally, too; for the steamboat inspectors 
 had no right to remove the pilot unless he was
 
 148 
 
 proven guilty of a breach of the rules; and they 
 not only could not prove he had been so guilty 
 but it was proved to them by a cloud of expert 
 witnesses that he had not. Nevertheless, this 
 Apostle of the Square Deal himself condemned 
 and executed this poor man on the spot, without 
 judge or jury, when the law provides 1 that no such 
 pilot can be dismissed except after his day in court 
 and the proving that he has broken the rules. 
 If anything much worse than this was ever done 
 by Nero, we have failed to note it. Your Honors, 
 we do not know what Mr. Roosevelt calls himself 
 when he does such things as that, but when we use 
 our power to remove a steamboat inspector to make 
 him remove an innocent pilot, whom the steam- 
 boat inspector has no cause to remove, and all be- 
 cause in some way said pilot has ruffled our im- 
 perial dignity, we call ourselves an undesirable 
 citizen. This sort of conduct is hardly moral. 
 But is not Mr. Koosevelt moral? Yes; but his 
 morality is all under heavy bonds to love of 
 praise, love of a scrap and "my policies." Your 
 Honors, that single case of the Pilot Nicholls, to 
 say nothing about the Brownsville matter, our ven- 
 erable friend Tyner, Dr. Long, and the rest, proves 
 to us that we are right in saying that Mr. Koose- 
 velt is a natural actor, an impersonator of moods 
 and manners, and that really his "square deal" 
 sentiment is for political use only. We do not 
 ask his pardon for this opinion and this expression 
 of it. He has^ convicted himself. The Constitu- 
 tion guarantees to us all "the equal protection of 
 the laws;" and Mr. Roosevelt, as President, is 
 charged to "take care that the laws be faithfully 
 executed;" that is, laws pertaining to the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States; and yet, instead of
 
 149 
 
 seeing that the United States law governing the 
 misdemeanors of pilots was "faithfully executed," 
 he took especial care to see that, by the breaking 
 of the laws for his personal spite, they were vio- 
 lated and a pilot irretrievably wronged. 
 
 The American people are indulgent towards the 
 nnspanked, roistering boy. They smile at pranks 
 of his which they would jail a full-grown for. 
 Whether as a sophomore in college he hazes the 
 freshmen in their dormitories or as a freshman 
 in the White House he hazes the seniors on Capi- 
 tal Hill, it is all the same. Boys will be boys', 
 and the unspanked boy, the bous en polei, is the 
 favorite of the dear America public. 
 
 People should mind their eyes as well as their 
 hasty hearts. A study of the Roosevelt physiog- 
 nomy is worth while. If the wolf and the 
 bear are the strongest in us, w-e admire the same 
 quadrupeds in others. A study of the out- 
 side tells us what there is inside; for people are 
 as hands'ome or as homely on the inside as they 
 are on the out. Hero-worship is dangerous; un- 
 less the hero is dead or out of office. It paralyzes 
 common sense and puts blinders over eyes that 
 otherwise could see. 
 
 It does not s'eem to us, your Honors, that a 
 man of this mold and make should very seriously 
 influence the public mind. He has shown a very 
 large lack of just appreciation of his true position 
 as President of the United States. He had been 
 a Governor of a State and when he became Presi- 
 dent did not seem to think there was any change 
 of jurisdiction. As he would have recommended 
 to a State Legislature laws governing corpora- 
 tions, so he recommended to the Congress of the 
 United States laws governing corporations, al-
 
 150 
 
 though the Constitution ^ives Congress no power 
 to monkey with State citizenship in this way. 
 For, of course, every corporation is a citizen of 
 the State of its organization ; and although another 
 State may make rules 1 for the admission of for- 
 eign corporations to denizenship within the State, 
 the Congress of the United States has no power 
 whatever to dictate terms to corporations more 
 than to individuals. It has no right to look into 
 the organization, stock issue, property-holding, or 
 any other matter connected either with an indi- 
 vidual person or a corporation within a State. 
 Mr. Roosevelt says that some general national law 
 should place corporations under the supervision 
 of the general Government, in the same manner 
 as the national banks are so placed. But Mr. 
 Koosevelt seems to overlook the fact that the 
 national banks are the creation of Congress origin- 
 ally ; and that we may have State banks over which 
 Congress has no control. Congress alone has 
 power "to coin money and regulate the value there- 
 of," and "to borrow money on the credit of the 
 United States ;" and these functions have a peculiar 
 connection with the subject of banking, and to 
 create and oversee a series of national banks 
 might well be within the "general welfare" pro- 
 vision of the Constitution, specifically in view of 
 the exclusive power of Congress over coinage and 
 so over currency. But the "general welfare" clause 
 is void for indefiniteness except when given defi- 
 niteness 1 in matters specifically indicated in sub- 
 sequent clauses; and the interstate commerce 
 clause or the post-roads clause cannot be construed 
 in any wise so as to give Congress the power of 
 going into a State and regulating the affairs of 
 corporations. As we shall elsewhere argue, the
 
 151 
 
 power of Congress to "regulate commerce" is only 
 power in rem; and, to use that power to block the 
 interstate traffic of a corporation, unless it showed 
 up its books and admitted Federal officers to hold 
 inquest over its 1 private methods, would be a species 
 of blackmail to stoop to which would put Congress 
 on the level of the official who jammed the Cuban 
 Treaty through Congress 1 by holding over Con- 
 gressmen the power of destroying their hold on 
 their constituencies, by special press-agency treat- 
 ment and the appointing power. 
 
 But the strongest reason why the public should 
 not take Mr. Koos'evelt too seriously is that to get 
 the public to take him too seriously is part of 
 his trade; and in order to get the public into this 
 frame of mind, he knows there is nothing like 
 judicious advertising taking the public into his 
 confidence, except in making Roosevelt- Sterjn- 
 burg-Wilhelm-Second trade agreements 1 , in which 
 the public are the most interested but the least 
 "let on." In short Mr. Roosevelt is a politician 
 of politicians. It is said by some that he is the 
 keenest politician in the United States; and the 
 United States 1 grows some pretty good politicians. 
 But then Mr. Roosevelt has had oceans of experi- 
 ence. He has been pulling political wires ever 
 since he got out of Knickerbockers. Most of us 
 remember how he ran for mayor of New York 
 something like twenty years ago we believe he 
 was not thirty at the time; and it takes a good 
 doal of political skill to get put on a big party's 
 ticket for mayor of such a place as New York. And 
 over since his Knickerbocker days he has always 
 boon a candidate for some kind of an office. He 
 pursues politics as he does bears 1 . He loves the 
 excitement of the chase. Now, we believe Mr,
 
 152 
 
 Roosevelt is no more human than the rest of us 
 and no less. And when the rest of us live by poli- 
 tics, we sometimes have to do things we would 
 hardly have the nerve to consult our Heavenly 
 Father about before doing; and we do not believe 
 Mr. Roosevelt is any better than we are. For in- 
 stance, we do not believe Mr. Roosevelt consulted 
 the Throne of Grace before, in a "practical" sense, 
 asking Mr. Harriman for that $250,000 to help 
 out the Republican campaign in New York, just 
 before election day, when there were no more ex- 
 penses for torch-light processions, public halls, 
 public speakers and public booze. We do not 
 know the very reason why Mr. Roosevelt asked 
 Mr. Harriman for the money or anything about it 
 or why he intimated that it was a "practical" prop- 
 osition but we do not believe he wanted it spent to 
 carry the true gospel to the East Side slums'. 
 Again, we do not believe he sought divine guid- 
 ance when he wrote the letter to a friend saying 
 that a bright idea had struck him, or words to that 
 effect; and that he thought it might pan out in 
 popularity to take a crack at the corporations, 
 "swollen fortunes," or something of the kind. 
 We have forgotten the exact language, but it was 
 going the rounds of the press sometime ago and 
 those interested can look it up. Now, in all this, 
 your Honors', Mr. Roosevelt has seemed to us like 
 a very human sort of a politician. Even his thirst 
 for the blood of "malefactors of great wealth" and 
 "bad corporations" is only the ordinary political 
 thirst for a campaign issue. He is arranging his 
 political samples in his political shop-window and 
 asking the public to purchase. If he has a bar- 
 gain sale of dead "bad corporations" and dead 
 "malefactors of great wealth" and the public are
 
 153 
 
 interested in that sort of goods, why, he will drive 
 a thriving political business 1 ; but if they get tired 
 of that line of goods, he will sit down, like any 
 other shopkeeper, and think up a new line. He 
 had just thought up a new line when he wrote to 
 the friend the letter alluded to. People should get 
 it out of their heads that Mr. Koosevelt is more 
 of a saint or more of a sinner than any other 
 human being. If we were in his business, we 
 would do as be does that is the most human of 
 us; we would study out the thing the public 
 wanted most, and the public would get it. Now 
 as to this pursuit of "very rich men," "swollen 
 fortunes," etc., it is simply a matter of politics. 
 It is always right with oi poloi to curse out wealth. 
 And it is just as popular to discover that Dis- 
 honesty is running away with the country. But 
 people are the same, yesterday, today, and 
 forever.. The rich have we always with 
 us; and the dishonest grow on every bush. They 
 are no strangers. It is just as bad a speculation 
 to be rich or to be dishonest now as it ever was, 
 and no worse. But if Mr. Roosevelt, in his func- 
 tion of office-seeker and all-round politician, can 
 make the public believe that it was never risky 
 either to be rich or to be dishonest until he came 
 to town and that that has always been just what 
 ails us; and that no rich or dishonest man was 
 ever caught in the act until Mr. Roosevelt broke 
 into the Presidency, why, your Honors, the gud- 
 geons he thus catches are the reward of his 
 angling, and who is kicking? But we do not see 
 how the public can forget that the woods are full 
 of hunters for Malefactors of Great Wealth and 
 for Dishonesty, and that all you have to do is to 
 pay your money and take your choice. Let us
 
 154 
 
 understand that it is now and always has been 
 only the common game of politicians to get after 
 the rich and the dishonest, although it is a toss- 
 up whether it is a case for politicians or the Pink- 
 ertons, with the chances of a cleaner game on the 
 side of the latter. Do we not all know how softly 
 sweet sounds the tinkling of the word "reform?" 
 And what is that but a calling back to Poverty, 
 Chastity, Honesty, and the public crib? Is there 
 anything that reaches the public ear more quickly 
 than the story that you have tried to save the dear 
 public's dollars by catching the thief or making 
 a rich man pay double taxes? 
 
 Now would not any politician, Mr. Roosevelt 
 or any other, naturally work the old vein as far 
 as it would go? Well, that is just what he has 
 been doing all along, no disgrace to him. For it 
 is his trade; his business; and we ought not to 
 make a demi-god or a great hero out of him for 
 doing what all other politicians always have done 
 and for the same purpose. The only difference 
 between Mr. Roosevelt and some others is that he 
 "takes the public into his confidence" somewhat 
 inorp srenerously whenever it suits film. For it 
 does not always suit him ; and that fact proves 
 that he is a politician pure and simple and does 
 everything for his own success and only inci- 
 dentallv for the good of the public. He makes a 
 loud crv when he runs down the Standard Oil 
 Tomoanv that can bring no fish to his political 
 ru4. vmless ho kills it and holds up its' gory sr^ 1 ^ 
 to the public; but ho does not even whisper to the 
 hisrhlv interested public what he is doing by way 
 of a German Agreement, even when it is going to 
 break w the business of thousands of our people 
 and bring aotunl starvation to large numbers.
 
 155 
 
 lie has his own reasons for being frank in the one 
 case and the reverse in the other. He merely treats 
 the public as a good thing to "work" in any way 
 it pans out most. The people like to be flattered 
 by being taken into the confidence of the Presi- 
 dent; and they are lazy enough to like to believe 
 that at last a man has been found who will "stand 
 without hitching" and attend to the public busi- 
 ness and let them nap. And, in this everlasting 
 battle of wits, Mr. Koosevelt is entitled, to let 
 them, if they will, fool themselves into thinking 
 he is but little lower than the angels; and he has 
 been shrewd enough to understand human nature 
 in these matters and to profit by it. But he is no 
 saint, no superman, no demi-god. He is just a 
 man, like the rest of us; and none of us is yet suf- 
 fering from cutting wings and the prick of the 
 celestial pin-feathers. 
 
 But there is one thing that puzzles us amaz- 
 ingly and that is how the people could so soon 
 have been fooled into thinking an ordinary stren- 
 uous politician with a press-agency was the real 
 thing, when he stepped out of an accidental vice- 
 presidency into the shoes of the benign and refined 
 Mclvinley. With such a pattern for comparison, 
 it beats our time how the public failed to see the 
 difference between a real statesman, fully worthy 
 to sit in the seat of Washington, Lincoln and 
 Grant, and a politician pure and simple. Mr. 
 McKinley never raved up and down the land de- 
 nouncing "very rich men" or "malefactors of great 
 wealth" or made capital of his purpose to "control 
 monopolies'' or "supervise great wealth in busi- 
 ness, especially in corporate form." Probably Mr. 
 McKinley knew he could not do any of these things 
 and to pretend that he could, when he knew he
 
 156 
 
 could not deliver the goods, even to raise an altar 
 for incense-burning to himself, was far beneath a 
 gentleman and a statesman of the McKinley type. 
 But then Mr. McKinley was not a politician. 
 But we repeat that what gets our wind is the fact 
 that these two types, each perfect in itself, the 
 perfect statesman and gentleman, and the perfect 
 politician and trust-buster, should have stood off 
 against each other in such strong relief and the 
 public should not have noticed the difference be- 
 tween them. That Mr. Roosevelt can make capi- 
 tal by saying he is going to do things that can't 
 be done under our Constitution puts us in a di- 
 lemma: We must either believe he is so ignorant 
 that he does not know he can't do these things, 
 or that he is so much of a politician that he does 
 not care whether he can or not as long as he gets 
 the glorv which, for making the attempt, the igno- 
 rant will cover him with. 
 
 Whatever is said or thought about Mr. Roose- 
 velt, there is one thing certain and that is he is 
 a thorough success as a politician. He knows 
 human nature from the ground up. He knows 
 how to play on the fanaticism, the ignorance and 
 the blind devotion of the multitude; and how to 
 make the hopes and the fears of his fellow poli- 
 ticians bring him the largest crop of points in 
 the political game. For, whatever they think of 
 him, however much they hate him for his stren- 
 uous handling of their private rights, and how- 
 ever much thev curse him in private, they follow 
 him in public like little lambs. There is no doubt 
 but what Mr. Roosevelt has this influence by what 
 some would call an unscrupulous use of the inci- 
 dental power of his position as President; the 
 power which his prestige as the highest Govern-
 
 157 
 
 ment official gives him, in the first instance, and, 
 in the second, the actual power to use his govern- 
 mental attributes to reward or punish those who 
 either do or do not sit into his personal game. 
 Of course, this conduct of his, pure Jacksonian 
 as it is, is not only unjust but very much to be 
 blamed from every point of view. And that he uses 
 power in this way is pretty well attested by the 
 fact that there are more people in Washington this 
 moment who have had their sacred sense of jus- 
 tice wounded by some freak of Mr. Roosevelt's 
 than would be necessary, if all the facts were 
 known and understood, to destroy forever the 
 meteoric popularity which he now enjoys. And 
 yet nobody dares speak; not because anybody is 
 afraid of Mr. Roosevelt personally there are 
 thousands of as good men physically and men- 
 tally in every city of any size but because of this 
 fortuitous power with which the Presidency has 
 clothed him and with which he can do almost mor- 
 tal harm to those who offend him. This is so 
 much so that during the last presidential cam- 
 paign, when the country seemed aflame with en- 
 thusiasm for Mr. Roosevelt, it was freely said in 
 AVasliington, and among the politicians of the 
 Republican party, that Mr. Roosevelt was a man 
 for whom everybody was shouting and whom no- 
 body wanted. 
 
 Now, your Honors, wo have loyally accounted 
 for Mr. Roosevelt's onslaught upon "monopolies," 
 "givat wealth in business, especially in corporate 
 form/' He., He., on the ground that Mr. Roosevelt 
 is a simple and innocent politician, like all the rest 
 of us in politics, just working an old, old vein for 
 all it Is worth ; just doing as old Andy Jackson did, 
 when ho clomb all over the banks and generallv set
 
 158 
 
 the poor against the rich and basked in the lime- 
 light of sans calotte popularity. But there is an- 
 other version of the matter from which we shrink 
 with horror, considering our paternal interest in 
 the President. There are those who see in Mr. 
 Roosevelt more than the ordinary politician in the 
 political sense. They see in him a politician with 
 dreams far beyond those of avarice, mounting to 
 the shining heights of despotic power, with the Lord 
 only knows what a cloud-capped Olympian throne 
 at the top. These people say that it is not merely to 
 get the wins culotte and the petroleum fiends on his 
 side that causes him so fiercely to go for "malefac- 
 tors of great wealth" and shut his eyes to our real 
 criminal class of the city slums. They say that 
 he should logically begin with the city slums in his 
 reformation of the country's morals by butting into 
 State affairs; because the slums give no bonds for 
 uood behavior in the shape of "great wealth," which 
 keeps its criminal owners anchored and reachable 
 at any time, but the slums are flying light for prop- 
 erty and may take the next steamer to Europe, be- 
 yond the reach of the arrows of our presidential 
 Long Bow ; it is not alone for the voices and votes 
 of pomilistic human souls although these are good 
 nroperty which makes* Mr. Roosevelt "play to the 
 galleries" and jam futile laws through Congress 
 aimed at "great wealth in business, especially in 
 corporate form," but that he really wishes to de- 
 stroy the only force, viz., conservative wealth in 
 harmonious* movement, which stands in the way of 
 l>is vaulting ambitions. He wishes to dissolve our 
 Standard Oil Companies, put all our railroads in 
 terror of his power and make them his allies, and 
 then go onward and upward, ever upward to the
 
 159 
 
 dizziest heights' of fame ever reached by mortal 
 foot. 
 
 That is what, some think. Others think this : 
 It is true that there is no limit to Mr. Roosevelt's 
 ambition. And there seems no limit to the elas- 
 ticity of his' conscience when ambition is speeding 
 his red-devil car. There is some plausibility, at 
 least, in this belief that Mr. Roosevelt hates con- 
 servative wealth, both because it offends his dignity 
 and pride to feel that conservative wealth is even 
 greater than he, the lionized hero of the populace, 
 and because it stands in his way to greater things. 
 Mr. Roosevelt is a man of but moderate fortune 
 himself. He feels that he is Heaven's own sou in 
 his Titanic popular role of the all-saver of his 
 country's morals and that politics are only means 
 to a Heaven-favored end. Therefore, away with 
 everything that makes against him away with 
 "'malefactors of great wealth"; away with the Su- 
 preme Court; away with the Constitution! What 
 are these but worn-out tools of righteousness 1 ? Aim 
 is not righteousness the great aim of government? 
 
 Piqued pride at the thought that he is not quite 
 supreme, and the hope of writing "my policies" 
 large on American history, may well explain Mr. 
 Roosevelt's unceasing pursuit of "great wealth." 
 Wealth is congealed conservatism. It cannot mix 
 with Rooseveltism. Therefore, out on the whole 
 horrid heap of it ! 
 
 That there is a deep feeling among our most 
 thoughtful citizens that Rooseveltism is all wrong 
 crops out every now and then, in spite of the terror- 
 is'm which a terrorized press causes to paralyze pro- 
 test ing tongues. And some time ago, at New Ha- 
 ven, Connecticut, at the annual banquet of the New 
 Haven Economics Club, Mr. John W. Ailing had
 
 160 
 
 his frank say. Mr. Ailing is one of the foremost 
 lawyers in Connecticut; president of the New Ha- 
 ven County Bar Association; president of a fire 
 insurance company; a director in several banks; 
 and president of the club above named. He said 
 this : 
 
 " 'My policy,' not necessarily that of the Republican 
 party, but 'my policy,' for the carrying out of which 
 'I am pledged during my term and shall see to it that 
 my successor shall be a President who will also carry it 
 out,' is that the Federal Government shall have and 
 exercise the power to control, regulate and restrain large 
 business wealth engaged in interstate commerce. 
 
 "President Roosevelt is alone responsible for raising 
 the railroad rate question. It was not a plank in the 
 Republican platform. In the Senate it did not command 
 a majority of the Republicans. In the Senate committee 
 the Republicans and Democrats combined against it, 
 and this Rooseveltian measure was intrusted to a Demo- 
 crat, Senator Tillman. The overwhelming popularity of 
 President Roosevelt jammed it through." 
 
 Here Mr. Ailing is not quite correct. AVhat 
 jammed it through was the fear of Mr. Roosevelt's 
 press-agency which overawed Congressmen. We 
 shall explain this press-agency later. Mr. Roose- 
 velt's popularity is largely an artificial product of 
 this press-agency. AVe read further : 
 
 "Now what has been the result? From the instant 
 it appeared likely that the power to fix rates was to be 
 taken from the railroads and put into the hands of com- 
 missioners in the interest of the shippers, commissioners 
 every one of whom could be removed at once by Mr. 
 Roosevelt," 
 
 Could Mr. Roosevelt have removed Judge Lan- 
 dis, your Honors, if Judge Landis had failed to 
 "soak" the Standard Oil Company? 
 
 "every one of whom could be removed at once by Mr. 
 Roosevelt, the value of railroad properties began to de- 
 cline and their credit to disappear. Railroads are obliged 
 to stop improvements. Their power to raise the neces-
 
 161 
 
 sary capital has vanished. The havoc wrought by this 
 Roosevelt crusade against railroad capital runs up into 
 the billions of dollars. It affects hundreds of thousands 
 of individuals, every savings bank, every benefit so- 
 ciety, every fire or life insurance company, and through 
 these sources the whole community, and this so-called 
 statesman, President Roosevelt, not content with the 
 havoc already wrought, is determined that Congress shall 
 further regulate, control, and restrain railroads. 
 
 "President Roosevlt has shown himself bitterly hostile 
 to large corporate wealth. His aim has been to break 
 it up." 
 
 Because he hates what is bigger than he is, your 
 Honors? Because it blocks the road to his ambi- 
 tion's goal, your Honors? Or because, when he has 
 busted its bronco back, he hopes to hitch it all to 
 his chariot? 
 
 "His aim has been to break it up. He has disdained 
 all party policy in his grand, lofty way. It has always 
 been 'my policy.' The constitution has not stood in his 
 way. 
 
 "This is not the statesmanship of a constitutional 
 President. It is a revolution and a substitution of abso- 
 lutism under a Presidential monarchy." 
 
 "President Roosevelt has assumed that he is the 
 United States Government. It is true he is immensely 
 popular with the masses." 
 
 The poor, unsuspecting masses, your Honors, 
 who little know how they have been "worked" by 
 the White House press-agency and the Cuckoo Me- 
 lodens Roosevelti! 
 
 "It is true he is immensely popular with the masses. 
 So were the leaders of the old crusades against the un- 
 speakable Turk. They did not do much harm to the Turk 
 but they wrought untold misery on their blind followers. 
 Mr. Roosevelt is essentially like those old crusade leaders, 
 powerful, arrogant, conceited, with a halo of Heavenly in- 
 spiration, a born leader bound by no party ties, himself 
 the whole thing in searcn ox valiant deeds" 
 
 Your Honors', Mr. Ailing puts Mr. Roosevelt on 
 a more dangerous footing than we have dared to do. 
 It is lofty heroics which hurry Mr. Roosevelt on his
 
 162 
 
 intrepid way, and not sordid polities. But we will 
 not take issue with Mr. Ailing. He may be right 
 after all. 
 
 ."himself the whole thing in search of valiant deeds, 
 claiming a supernatural power to detect and uncover and 
 punish the wealthy malefactor, foUowed, as he thinks, by 
 the whole people. 
 
 "He is the most dangerous force to constitutional 
 liberty that has ever existed in this country." 
 
 These be hard words, your Honors, but has not 
 Mr. Roosevelt brought them on himself? 
 
 "He is the most dangerous force to constitutional 
 liberty that has ever existed in this country. He has 
 taken the press by the nape of the neck and to a great 
 extent forced it to do his bidding." 
 
 All too true, your Honors. And we admit that 
 this is really a dangerous feature of the situation. 
 The power of the press is almighty. And when a 
 man chains the press to his obedient service, he 
 comes pretty near being a troublesome proposition. 
 
 "He has taken the press by the nape of the neck and 
 to a great extent forced it to do his bidding. 
 
 "Notoriously, President Eoosevelt does not respect the 
 independence of the judiciary" 
 
 Too true, again, your Honors any more than he 
 respects the independence of our law-makers in 
 Congress. He terrorizes Congress as he terrorizes 
 the newspapers, and plots 1 against the independence 
 of the judiciary. Oh, Catiline! 
 
 "President Eoosevelt does not respect the independence 
 of the judiciary. In the great New York Circuit two of 
 the three Judges of the Circuit Court of Appeals are of 
 his appointment. His Attorney-General, a man after his 
 own heart, was by him appointed to the Supreme Court 
 of the United States. In the great circuit which em- 
 braces Chicago, his District Attorney, Bethen, and Judge 
 Kenesaw Mountain Landis are Rooseveltian. There is no 
 accident in these appointments."
 
 163 
 
 Your Honors, this, at least, is very interesting if 
 true. Is it possible that Mr. Roosevelt appointed 
 Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a professional politi- 
 cian and devoted Roosevelt retainer, judge in that 
 circuit for the express purpose of slaughtering the 
 Standard Oil Company? Judge Landis's rulings 
 were the astonishment of the judicial world, in that 
 great case against the Standard Oil Company; 
 and his sending for all the books of the 
 company and finding out how much money 
 it had and fixing the size of the fine ac- 
 cordingly "staggered humanity 7 ' that is, 
 judicial humanity. Was it that Mr. Roosevelt 
 might have an obedient servant on the United 
 States bench, up against whom, by preconcert, the 
 poor old Standard Oil Company could be pushed to 
 its certain condemnation and spoliation, that Mr. 
 Landis was elevated from the ward politician to the 
 Federal judiciary? These be questions which 
 surely give us pause. And then, when you think 
 of it, it seems a considerably more than barely 
 possible that this is 1 true. The case against the 
 Standard Oil was not a rebate case. There had 
 been no violation of anti-rebate legislation, and no 
 such violation was charged. The question was 
 merely as to the legality of a freight-rate. Judge 
 Landis, as 1 if bent on carrying out a conspiracy to 
 find the company guilty in any event, to increase 
 Mr. Roosevelt's popularity with the mob, would 
 admit no proof that the six-cent rate had been filed 
 by the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, and was there- 
 fore a "legal rate"; that linseed oil, for instance, 
 was carried at eight cents, and other bulky com- 
 modities 1 as low as live cents; but, on the contrary, 
 insisted that eighteen cents was the only legal rate 
 for oil, when no one had ever paid it, and when it
 
 164 
 
 was authoritatively sworn that it did not apply to 
 oil. Moreover, Judge Landis refused to consider 
 the fact that the rate on oil between Chicago and 
 East St. Louis had been six cents per hundred 
 pounds for fourteen years, or from 1891 to 1905, 
 which was an open published rate known to every 
 one concerned in the shipment of oil and generally 
 known in all railroad circles in Chicago. Both 
 Chicago and East St. Louis being in Illinois, the 
 railroad company was under no legal obligation to 
 file this rate with the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion at Washington ; but Whiting, being in Indiana, 
 shipments from Whiting to East St. Louis were, 
 technically, interstate, and the Alton Railroad filed 
 with the Interstate Commerce Commission an "ap- 
 plication sheet" applying to Whiting the Chicago 
 rate, and in doing so thought the filing of the appli- 
 cation sheet all that was required by law. All 
 these little towns about Chicago have, for thirty 
 years, been given the same rate as Chicago; and 
 Whiting was practically a Chicago suburb. Fur- 
 thermore, the Standard Oil Company was advised 
 by the Kate Clerk of the Chicago & Alton that the 
 six-cent rate, held criminal as against the Standard 
 Oil, had been legalized by filing with the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Still further, besides the 
 Chicago & Alton, there were two other railroads 
 over which the Standard Oil was shipping oil at the 
 six-cent rate, legalized by regular filing with the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, one of these rail- 
 roads being the Chicago & Eastern Illinois and the 
 other the Burlington ; therefore the defendant com- 
 pany had no reason, for its own gain or for over- 
 reaching competitors, for sending oil at all by the 
 Alton route. All these facts were known to Judge 
 Landis, yet he went forward and "soaked" the
 
 165 
 
 Standard Oil in a fine of $29,240,000 ! This looks 
 very much as if the conviction of the Standard Oil 
 Company was foreordained, to help Mr. Koosevelt 
 "make good" to the rabble; and as if Judge Landis 
 had been appointed to the bench to do just that job. 
 Other things still make it look very dark for the 
 President, and seem to establish the fact of a con- 
 spiracy to destroy the Standard Oil, irrespective of 
 the merits of the case. The principal of these facts 
 are connected with the opportune publication by 
 Commissioner Smith of the Bureau of Corporations 
 of his reports as to Pipe Lines and Petroleum 
 Prices and Profits, the latter of which, as if to fire 
 the public fury at the exorbitant profits alleged to 
 be earned by the Company, and to justify the enor- 
 mous fine imposed by Judge Landis, was timed to 
 appear and did appear only two days after the pub- 
 lication of the Landis fine. 
 
 Your Honors, this is a very serious business, in- 
 deed. When you take into consideration the pre- 
 vious destruction of the freedom of the press by the 
 White House Cuckoo Kegime; the strangling of 
 freedom of speech in Congress, also by White House 
 pressure; this later public pillorying and prosecu- 
 tion as an object lesson, before a Koosevelt ap- 
 pointee who scorned every proof of innocence of- 
 fered, of the greatest corporation in this country; 
 the subsequent further pursuit of this same cor- 
 poration, bombarded by destructive Federal reports 
 opportunely published, into the Circuit Court for 
 the Southern District of New York, whose action 
 will be reviewable by a Federal Circuit Court of 
 Appeals, two-thirds of the Judges in which are 
 Roosevelt appointees when all these things in 
 close sequence are taken into consideration, it cer- 
 tainly looks as if our judicial dice were loaded and
 
 IfWJ 
 
 that no one but the loyal vassals of Mr. Roosevelt 
 iieed apply for justice in any court controlled by 
 him ; and as if there were a. well-digested conspiracy 
 at work to Roosevelt-revolutionize the whole coun- 
 try to satisfy Mr. Roosevelt's ulterior purposes. 
 And what can these purposes 1 be, your Honors? 
 We are sure, your Honors, that the people of this 
 country can be depended upon to right their boat 
 after the gale. Conservative wealth, in which all 
 share, must at last out-wind Roosevelt Populism. 
 For Mr. Roosevelt is a populist in all his ways a 
 boss populist, not an ordinary, rank-and-file, foul- 
 bearded populist. If you don't think so, just listen 
 to the Kansas populists, now calling themselves 
 "Republicans," as they rattle the roof with their 
 hand-clappings at Mr. Roosevelt's prowess against 
 property. It is really very remindful of 
 these very Populists and their antics in 
 1896. But the good sense of the people 
 will at last down Populism now as it did 
 in 1896. In the meantime, however, who shall say 
 wiiat bees of ambition may not be buzzing in Mr. 
 Roosevelt's 1 bonnet. All these populists want Mr. 
 Roosevelt for a third term. It is true he waves 
 back the crown, and says he will have none of it; 
 but, protesting, he doth protest too much. Thrice 
 did Ca?sar, protesting, wave back the crown. Is it 
 not rational, your Honors, to suppose that a man 
 who has had a head long enough to muzzle Con- 
 gress, muzzle the press, and muzzle or "pack" the 
 judiciary, carrying it even so far as the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, according to Mr. Ailing 
 is it not rational to suppose that this 1 was for 
 some far-reaching purpose in which there was 
 "something in it" for Mr. Roosevelt? It seems to 
 us, your Honors, that to suppose anything else
 
 167 
 
 would be to suppose Mr. Roosevelt an idiot. And 
 who supposes that, your Honors? 
 
 But let us go back to Mr. Ailing and his remarks 
 as to the reconstitutiou of our Federal Courts for 
 Mr. Roosevelt's "policies" : 
 
 "There is no accident in these appointments. Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt does not conceal that his object is to bring 
 about such a judicial and final construction of the Federal 
 Constitution as will give the United States power to regu- 
 late, control, and restrain all the business wealth of this 
 country, and clearly he expects to succeed by the educa- 
 tional process of appointments." 
 
 Your Honors, this is appalling, if true; for our 
 liberties would be in danger. It is also appalling 
 to think how popular clamor could possibly land 
 in the White House a man of such low morality. 
 Packing primaries is nowhere in wickedness com- 
 pared with packing our courts for the reduction of 
 the country's wealth to pay perpetual blackmail 
 to the President. For that is all it would amount 
 to. If all this is true, then, surely, the judicial 
 mood is not a jewel found in Mr. Roosevelt's casket. 
 I f true, this proves many times over what we have 
 said about Mr. Roosevelt being a mere politician; 
 and, we are sorry to say, not a politician of very 
 elevated instincts, either. To pack the judiciary 
 as you would pack a primary! To appoint to the 
 bench men to decide hard and fast always in one 
 direction, facts and law be hanged ! Standard-Oil- 
 (""ompanyize all judicial decisions'! Why, your 
 Honors, where, for Lord's sake, in all this mucky 
 muddle are we at! 
 
 Is it possible that this reduction of all our wealth 
 to tribute-paying to the President is only a prepa- 
 ration of the ground in which shall flourish the 
 royal line of Roosevelt, with its fingers in the pock- 
 ets of all the railroads and big corporations for-
 
 108 
 
 ever? Why, Croker, and his Democratic Club, with 
 his 20% rake-off on $70,000,000 of officeholders' 
 salaries a year, would not be a circumstance for 
 business sagacity. But isn't it reasonable? Other- 
 wise, what is all this muzzling of press and Con- 
 gress and judiciary for? They are certainly 
 Croker strategics. 
 
 But Mr. Ailing continues : 
 
 "The secret of Mr. Eoosevelt's character is a tre- 
 mendous love of personal power. He is the most ar- 
 bitrary, the most arrogant man in the Unites States." 
 
 Oh, your Honors, gladly would we defend our 
 President against this terrible arraignment! But 
 the shades of the venerable Tyner, the brooding 
 cruelty of Brownsville, the wanton wounds of a 
 Long, the bruised and battered character of a Nich- 
 olls, and the dumb suffering of the poor civil-service 
 coachman, chill us that the tongue of our protest 
 against such hard words doth cleave coldly to the 
 roof of our mouth. 
 
 But Mr, Ailing still plies the birch : 
 
 "He thinks he can manage all business better than its 
 owners can. Jack Cade, 500 years ago, promised the same. 
 Even hell is paved with good promises and intentions.." 
 
 Your Honors, the man who would pave hell when 
 he could pave his own pockets is not in the Croker 
 class, after all. 
 
 "Three bilions of dollars is an awful price to pay as a 
 first instalment to get rid of Theodore Roosevelt and 'My 
 Policy.' It will take a long time to clear this matter up. 
 But in the end we shall go back to the doctrines of our 
 fathers that that government governs best which governs 
 the least. * * * 
 
 "Nobody can question the enormous effect of the uni- 
 versal impairment and injury to our credit, bringing on 
 the recent panic, or question the direct and cogent work 
 of President Eoosevelt in bringing on the general impair- 
 ment of credit.
 
 169 
 
 "There has been no financial scandal attaching to any of 
 the 'wicked malefactors' about whose heads President 
 Roosevelt has been brandishing his big stick. There have 
 been only three large public scandals. The Consolidated 
 Gas of New York, the life insurance companies and the 
 traction system in New York. 
 
 "In neither of these has President Roosevelt taken any 
 part nor could he. Consolidated Gas has come out tri- 
 umphant in the report of the master appointed by the 
 court to ascertain the facts. I have no doubt of the re- 
 sult of the pending trial, except that as I notice a new 
 Rooseveltian Judge is to decide the case. 
 
 "It is about three years ago in a stirring speech at 
 Raleigh, N. C., that Mr. Roosevelt startled all thinking 
 people by the proposition that the United States should 
 regulate, control, and restrain the large business wealth 
 engaged in interstate business. He has strenuously prod- 
 ded the public, prodded Congress, prodded the judiciary 
 up to this date, and it is the panic alone which has 
 served to give us a rest. 
 
 "In my judgment it has been 'my policy' which has 
 been the principal and direct cause in bringing on the 
 panic." NEW YORK SUN, Nov. 1, 1907. 
 
 Your Honors, we are morally certain that the 
 woods' are full of such birds as Mr. Ailing, only 
 their voices are not heard. The circling Koosevelt 
 hawk overhead, with his press-agency and Federal 
 and Presidential thumb-screws, gives the whole 
 chorus the hush. 
 
 Now, your Honors, all this talk about Mr. Koose- 
 velt would be of no relevancy in this argument, ex- 
 cept for his close association with these wily plain- 
 tiffs in their nefarious schemes against our client, 
 American Production. It is proven by abundant 
 evidence, which we shall hereafter most clearly set 
 forth, that Mr. Roosevelt, in spite of all his brave 
 utterances in behalf of American labor, is and has 
 been exchanging for various sorts of quid pro quo 
 this sacred domestic market of ours, the life-blood 
 of our whole people, its civilization and hope of 
 heaven ; and that in so doing he is obeying the beck 
 of these wily plaintiffs.
 
 170 
 
 XVIII 
 
 THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, 
 STEADILY MISREPRESENTS THE TARIFF-DIKE AND 
 CALLS IT THE OFFSPRING OF "CLASS LEGISLA- 
 TION." 
 
 Your Honors, this way of attacking our tariff- 
 dike is one of the oldest known to the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust. In your presence this 
 morning, counsel for the Importing Trust made 
 these walls ring 'round and 'round again with de- 
 nunciations of Congress for "lending itself to 
 small party politics and permitting the manufact- 
 urers of this country to victimize the 'consumer.' ' 
 We have already shown you, your Honors, that 
 there is no distinct class of "consumers" in this 
 country, and that if any "consumer" is paying a 
 protected price for what he buys, he certainly is 
 obtaining a protected price, a price twice as high 
 as is paid by any other people in the world, on 
 what he sells, namely, his wage-production. We 
 have only time to offer one or two examples of 
 this form of tariff-dike attack as they appear in 
 the newspapers of the Importing Trust from day 
 to day. Here is one: 
 
 ' ' As Cromwell said that peaee without a worm in it 
 was impossible without righteousness, so prosperity can- 
 not be without a taint unless it is founded on fair deal- 
 ing and a justice as exact as human beings can make it. 
 There is also such a thing as law-made prosperity. This 
 can but rankle in the hearts of citizens. How can a 
 prosperity be untainted which depends, for example, upon 
 a needless tariff on steel rails or beams, put on and kept 
 on only to swell fortunes already great? Here we see the 
 political absurdity and moral contradiction of those who 
 have admitted the gross injustice of the high tariff"
 
 171 
 
 It is the Importing Trust, your Honors, who 
 has "admitted the gross injustice of the high 
 tariff," and no one else 
 
 "but have said it must not be touched because to 
 do so would imperil prosperity. But it is those high 
 duties themselves which imperil prosperity" 
 
 The prosperity of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, your Honors 
 
 "since they make the people distrustful and dis- 
 contented." 
 
 "The people" are the members of the Importing 
 Trust, your Honors. They are "distrustful and 
 discontented" because the tariff-dike hinders their 
 monopoly of our market here and gives the Ameri- 
 can wage-producer somewhat of a chance with the 
 wage-producer abroad to draw wages from our pro- 
 ducing fund. But this Tmporting-Trust writer 
 keeps on with his lingo: 
 
 "Protectionist avarice is indeed a taint upon prosperity 
 which long ago should have been removed. 
 
 "A stand-pat Administration confessing that its fondly 
 loved prosperity is stuffed with sawdust, is truly a moral 
 spectacle. If Prosperity itself now has to be written 
 down Tainted, all the equivocations and vacillations about 
 the tariff, during the last six years, are verily nothing but 
 vanity and vexation of spirit." 
 
 In reading such things as this, your Honors, so 
 full of falsehood, direct or indirect, so careless of 
 the prosperity upon which hang the lives of mil- 
 lions of our people; nay, so anxious to belittle that 
 prosperity, and make it seem to the wage-producer 
 a burden instead of a blessing, all for the purpose 
 of profiting by our misery, we come almost to favor 
 the old belief in demons, rather than the idea that 
 such cruel tricks are only the pestilent vapor from 
 unhappy brain-cells. And yet, after all, your
 
 172 
 
 Honors, there is consolation in the thought that 
 they who do these wicked things are impelled 
 thereto by their heritage of badly balanced brain- 
 cells from the long past ages of savagery, and not 
 from absolute will in this day and generation and 
 in our present environment. 
 
 Here is one more sample of this style of attack 
 upon the tariff -dike: 
 
 "Calhoun, if we remember, maintained that occa- 
 sional periods of commercial depression and even panic 
 were good for the country." 
 
 How the Importing Trust, your Honors, breathes 
 its prayer against the tariff-dike in every word of 
 this ebullition! It even preaches the healthfulness 
 of panics; yes, your Honors, such panics as always 
 follow the breaking of the dike and the swamping 
 of our industries in the deluge of foreign surplus 
 products which overwhelms 1 us! Was ever greater 
 coldbloodedness than this shown by any other New 
 York bunco-steerer ! The Importing Trust, the foul 
 bird of prey, who pecks our eyes out one by one 
 every now and then, preaching panic as a cure for 
 sin American panic which is the harvest home of 
 the Importing Trust! A highway robber, your 
 Honors 1 , preaching to the victim whom he has 
 robbed of all clothing the gospel of poverty and 
 obedience and lauding the good effect of nakedness 
 in hardening one's skin to the winter's blast ! Can 
 we believe our eyes and ears, your Honors, when 
 we see and hear such words from the monster who 
 is to profit by our undoing! It wants our purses, 
 our watches, and our clothing, your Honors, and 
 solemnly sermonizes us on the holy chastening 
 effect of hunger and nakedness 1 ! Was there ever 
 such scientific knavery as this in all the world ! 
 But the Importing Trust preaches on :
 
 173 
 
 "They [panics] enabled us, he said, to take our bear- 
 ings, politically; to see through false theories of gov- 
 ernment. ' ' 
 
 Tariff -dikes, your Honors, were the "false theories 
 of government" tariff -dikes which gave discomfort 
 to the Importing Trust : 
 
 "To expose charlatanism and return to sounder 
 methods" 
 
 the sounder methods, your Honors, which exposed 
 our naked high-cost market to capture by the Im- 
 porting Trust. 
 
 "In the moderate check to business which we have 
 already experienced, some political good has been 
 wrought. Belief in a magical tariff has been partly 
 broken" 
 
 by the German Agreement, your Honors, by which 
 an Importing-Trust Administration gave Germany 
 the power to fix its own tariffs on goods entering 
 our ports. 
 
 "People have had glimpses of laws of trade and forces 
 of nature too powerful for any politician or legislative 
 contrivance. And they are prepared to go back more 
 easily to the conception of government as something that 
 should meddle with business as little as possible, and 
 then only for reason shown." 
 
 "The people" referred to in this extract, your 
 Honors, we repeat, are the members of the Import- 
 ing Trust, whose business is the destruction of our 
 client, American Production. It is they who have 
 had "glimpses of laws of trade and forces of nature 
 too powerful for any political or legislative contriv- 
 ance." "The laws of trade" were the trickery and 
 chicanery of German diplomacy by which the Ger- 
 man Agreement was forced on our people. These 
 tli ings were too powerful for the "legislative con-
 
 174 
 
 trivance" known as the American Constitution. It 
 is these people who "are prepared to go back more 
 easily to the conception of government as some- 
 thing which should meddle as little as possible" 
 with their business, which is taking brokerages and 
 commis'sions from the deluge of foreign surplus 
 products rolling over our dike through the grievous 
 rent made by the German Agreement. Yes, your 
 Honors, these people are always ready to recognize 
 such "laws" and such "natural forces" and to have 
 such "conceptions of government." 
 
 We have given these extracts, your Honors, as 
 mere samples of those now swarming in Importing- 
 Trust newspapers all over this great country, the 
 sx>le purpose of which is to discount the tariff-dike 
 as our great bulwark against an industrial cata- 
 clysm here ; and we warn you of the fact that these 
 makers of public opinion are one and all paid by 
 the Importing Trust to destroy American Produc- 
 tion, that our arch enemy may rob our people of 
 their savings. 
 
 The Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff herein, 
 doals in no ordinary trickery in deluding the Ameri- 
 can people to their own undoing ; but disguises its 
 purpose in many ways. One of these ways is to 
 control some newspaper ostensibly a believer in 
 tariff-dikes and a supporter of the party which has 
 usually held to the dike-building policy; and from 
 such a newspaper, as from a masked battery, to dis- 
 charge its broadsides against the forts of American 
 Production. Through such newspapers as these 
 it never "roots" for vulgar and barefaced Free 
 Trade. It rather professes to like the idea of dik- 
 ing out the flood of foreign products; and yet it 
 regrets "the inequities" and "burdens" of a tariff- 
 rliko "too high": nnrl hints that perhaps somebody
 
 175 
 
 is getting "an unfair advantage" from so much pro- 
 tection, and suggests that the dike might better be 
 ''revised" for the purpose of correcting "abuses" 
 and giving the "consumer" a better chance. This 
 is the sapping and mining trick of the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, which it employs be- 
 cause, in these times, the connection between the 
 Dingley Dike and American prosperity is so plain 
 that to assault it openly would put the people on 
 their guard. Here is a sample of the sapping and 
 mining method of destroying the dike displayed in 
 a Republican newspaper : 
 
 ' ' ' The tariff will not be touched during the coming ses- 
 sion of Congress, and when it is touched it will be after 
 a declaration in the next Republican convention and after 
 the next inauguration.' SENATOR WABREN OF WYO- 
 MING. 'Touched* implies the least possible revision from 
 the Senators point of view. Meanwhile, are the people 
 being 'touched' by the stand-pat interests?" 
 
 Your Honors, this is perhaps the most perfidious 
 thing of the kind in American journalism. This 
 newspaper knows that there are no distinct "stand- 
 pat interests'" in this country. The whole "stand- 
 pat" interest is the whole of American Production, 
 and from American Production every wage-pro- 
 ducer, every property-producer, and every adjunct- 
 producer in this country draws his life-blood. This 
 paper knows as well as it knows its own name that 
 to sweep away and keep swept away our tariff-dike 
 
 would be to sweep away and keep swept away the 
 nation, which is only a group of immigrants ready 
 to leave this country on the same provocation 
 which caused them to leave their former habitat. 
 It knows that, with the dike down to stay, from this 
 country at cost-100, every manufacturing dollar 
 would gravitate in a decade out into the rest of the 
 world and its cost-20. And yet it is one of the hire-
 
 176 
 
 lings, or, rather, the personal chattels, of the Im- 
 porting Trust, and its business is to feign Kepub- 
 lican principles while undermining the tariff-dike. 
 It knows that the general breaking up of the dike 
 would be followed by the starvation to death of our 
 wage-producers, the bankruptcy of our property- 
 producers, and the paralysis of all our adjunct- 
 producers, and that the land would be overrun with 
 insurrection and bread-rioting, to the destruction 
 of millions, aye, billions, of dollars worth of prop- 
 erty belonging to innocent business men and thou- 
 sands and thousands of lives; and it knows that 
 the American people no sooner would have realized 
 what they had done, than they would turn every 
 stone to build anew the tariff-dike. But this creat- 
 ure and chattel of the Importing Trust also knows 
 that it takes several years to repair a tariff-dike; 
 because, before they can hope for laws repairing 
 the dike, the people have to await the expiration 
 of presidential and congressional terms of office and 
 the exorcising of the devils of the Importing Trust 
 from the sick body politic of the country. It 
 knows, that for several years the Importing Trust 
 would be the King of American Trade, and, monop- 
 olizing our entire domestic market, would absorb 
 the whole savings-bank fund of our people, which 
 being accomplished, the Importing Trust would be 
 ready itself to assist in the building of the dike 
 anew, in order that American savings might be 
 dammed up behind it once more, and one day be 
 worth snatching again by the Importing Trust 
 after the same sort of a campaign against the 
 "trusts" which it is now carrying on for "revision." 
 Your Honors, to refer again to what counsel has 
 said about tariff-dikes being "class legislation," no 
 such thing as "class legislation" is ever enacted by
 
 177 
 
 Congress. Every law must be universal in its ap- 
 plication. It can mark out no classes. There can 
 be no "favoritism," no laws which "rob the many 
 for the enrichment of the few." This tariff-dike 
 protects all alike, for it is that which prevents this 
 country, as an industrial proposition, from being 
 wiped from the face of the earth by a raving deluge 
 of cost-20 products. The wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, knows this better than any other one 
 else on earth. Why, your Honors, the Importing 
 Trust stands by us centuries long, for even the 
 slightest opportunity to pocket the difference be- 
 tween foreign cost-20 and our domestic cost-100; 
 for, against every rule of wise statecraft, ay! 
 against the simplest common sense, this arch- 
 marauder of the centuries has always been allowed 
 by our people to play blood-sucker to our industrial 
 arteries, and is even now permitted to rush 
 across our dike nearly two billions of 
 dollars' worth of goods a year, every dol- 
 lar's worth of which should be made by 
 our wage-producers, to the raising of wages, the 
 wider distribution of our wealth, and the refine- 
 ment of our morals and civilization. And yet, 
 knowing all these things, these wily plaintiffs often 
 join in spreading the belief that the tariff-dike pro- 
 tects "special interests," who secure in Washing- 
 ton in their own private behalfs legislation in its 
 benefits to them exactly proportioned to the size of 
 the lobby for which they pay. We might inquire, 
 your Honors, how large is that lobby which at 
 Washington represents these wily plaintiffs and 
 their attempt to destroy American Production for 
 their own special profit. Our savings bank account 
 now is nearly four billions of dollars; and our 
 annual domestic transactions as shown by the
 
 178 
 
 banks amount to one hundred and seventy thou- 
 sands of millions of dollars. It is this entire sav- 
 ings account and as many of our domestic transac- 
 tions as they can appropriate to themselves 
 which move these wily plaintiffs to maintain their 
 own lobby at Washington, which, for unscrupulous- 
 uess and richness in bribes is a Titan where other 
 lobbies are Tom Thumbs. Does not this look rea- 
 sonable, your Honors? 
 
 To return the taunt as to "class legislation," we 
 declare that these wily plaintiffs' are demanding 
 of Congress the most abominable kind of "class 
 legislation." For the legislation they demand is 
 the "revision" downwards of the tariff-dike, which 
 would immediately divide the people of this country 
 into two classes, viz., those who had money to 
 profit by peddling foreign goods in our markets 
 and those who had not. Those who had such 
 money would be the masters of those who had not. 
 Money would be everything; flesh and blood noth- 
 ing; and workers without money would be so poor 
 that their misery would sell them body and soul 
 to the moneyed men for a mess of pottage. By 
 lowering the dike you snatch from those without 
 money to peddle foreign goods the only thing which 
 makes them independent, the value in their labor. 
 Truly, dike "revision" is "class legislation" of the 
 wickedest kind. Truly, the high-tariff dike wipes 
 out all "class" landmarks by making all alike inde- 
 pendent in the value of their labor. Labor is then 
 the coin of exchange, a coin which all may have. 
 But lower the tariff-dike, and you dig a deep gulf 
 between those with and those without money. 
 Labor is no longer anything; money is everything; 
 and those without money become the chattels of 
 those with it.
 
 179 
 
 But far ou the other hand, we declare that tar iff - 
 dike legislation is non-class legislation of the high- 
 est kind. It makes labor first and money the ser- 
 vant and not the master of the people ; and reduces 
 the whole country to the common level of workers. 
 Moreover, it is merely common justice and equity ; 
 for it goes on the principle that American wage- 
 producers should have in their own domestic mar- 
 ket at least some chance with wage-producers 
 abroad, who do not support our government and our 
 laws and are not liable to serve in our army or navy 
 for the defense of the country. 
 
 As a final reply to counsel for plaintiffs under 
 this head, we simply point to the Dingley Law, en- 
 acted July 24, 1897, which is the dike that for more 
 than a decade now has kept out a portion, and a 
 portion only, of the foreign deluge of surplus prod- 
 ucts. An examination of this Law by people who 
 believe in the square-jawed falsehood of the wily 
 plaintiff will show that this "class legislation" em- 
 braces provisions for every "class" of producers in 
 the United States, except those of kerosene oil, 
 anthracite coal, cotton, undressed timber and per- 
 haps a few other things called "raw materials." * 
 
 * Since we are now importing something like $20,000,000 of 
 raw cotton annually, the tariff -dike needs to be mended to shut 
 out foreign cotton. It is said that when the Dingley Dike was 
 under discussion, a committee representing our Southern cotton- 
 growers appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the 
 House at Washington and made an appeal for the protection of 
 cotton; but the appeal came to naught through the appearance 
 of some New England cotton manufacturers before the same 
 committee who represented that a tariff on raw cotton would be 
 against their interests. These New England manufacturers 
 were immediately afterwards found dead by the wayside and an 
 examination showed that each had died from a wasting disease 
 of the brain which had eaten away as with a cancer all the brain- 
 cells in the organ of conscience. Had this dread disease not al- 
 ready destroyed their sense of justice, they never would have 
 had the courage to protest against protection to others when 
 they were themselves protected.
 
 ISO 
 
 Therefore, even granting for argument's 1 sake that 
 it is "class" legislation, it is also national legisla- 
 tion, benefiting every producer and so every con- 
 sumer within our gates; because the nation is but 
 a composite of producing "classes," and when you 
 have sheltered each class behind the tariff -dike, you 
 have sheltered the whole nation. We do not forget, 
 your Honors, that learned counsel for the prose- 
 cution ponderously declared that those engaged in 
 industries which can be at all benefited by "protec- 
 tion" are so few in number and the burden of the 
 "tax" upon all the rest who must remain unbene- 
 fited is so great that the greatest good of the great- 
 est number requires the "revision" of the dike 
 downwards to a revenue level. But, as we have 
 said before, those who are sheltered primarily by 
 the dike are, without discrimination, our wage- 
 producers and property-producers; and the whole 
 country depends directly upon our wage-and-prop- 
 erty-production. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS EVEN 
 ATTEMPTING TO COVER WITH THE VEIL OF 
 MYSTERY THE RESULTS OF ITS MACHINATIONS 
 AGAINST THE TARIFF DIKE, WHICH MUST SOON 
 EVENTUATE IN PANIC AND HARD TIMES FOR OL-K 
 PEOPLE. 
 
 Your Honors, a few moments ago we read to you 
 the words of various of the mouthpieces of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, the purpose of which 
 was to mislead our people as to the real source 
 of the industrial and financial disaster which the
 
 speakers scented in the distance. There is no 
 doubt, your Honors, that sad times are just ahead 
 of us but there is no mystery as to their source. 
 There is no doubt, your Honors, but the disaster 
 will flow from breaches in the tariff-dike which 
 for a decade, in various secret ways, have been 
 making by the Importing Trust. For, your Hon- 
 ors, this wily plaintiff never slumbers or sleeps, 
 when by any subtlety whatever there is a possibility 
 of working a crevice in our dike through which 
 more foreign goods can trickle into this country 
 and more commissions and brokerages into its 
 strong box. It is because there is already a baby- 
 iiumdation of our country by foreign goods at cost- 
 20 that there is that anxious "feeling" in our busi- 
 ness centres. It is too plain a case for mystery, 
 your Honors. As we believe we have said before, 
 business is simply demand being connected with 
 supply; and as long as our whole domestic demand 
 is connected exclusively with our home-made sup- 
 ply, business must always keep a volume at least 
 as great as our whole domestic demand. Our de- 
 mand expresses our wants, and our wants are 
 rather increasing than diminishing; and as long 
 as we ourselves have the right to work and provide 
 our own supply, and utter our demand by finding 
 a market for what we produce ourselves, whether 
 wages or property, goods and cash will pass back 
 and forth over the counters of our merchants in 
 unbroken torrents and business will get rather bet- 
 ter than worse. But if there is an escapage of our 
 domestic demand to foreign fields of supply; if the 
 opportunity which we give to others to work for us 
 be not returned to us in an opportunity to work 
 for others; if thus our means of exchange is taken 
 away from us, the demand across the counters of
 
 182 
 
 oui' business men will slacken in just the degree 
 that our employment thus slackens; and then and 
 only then shall we face a "practically certain re- 
 cession in trade'' and realize that "we have ahead 
 of us a period of smaller industrial totals." Yes, 
 your Honors, as the power of our people to buy 
 leaks away through our demand placed in the 
 foreign cost-20 supply, the face of our prosperity 
 will be averted and we shall soon hear that "rail- 
 ways are curtailing expenditures," "bankers are in- 
 clined to exercise caution in extending accommoda- 
 tions" and that "most manufacturers and mer- 
 chants are planning their fall campaigns with much 
 conservatism," and there will be "little division of 
 well-informed opinion" "that the period ahead of 
 us is one in which commercial activities will be 
 curtailed and manufacturers' totals show r a de- 
 crease." And the Importing Trust tells us that all 
 this has happened ; but what a mystery it is to this 
 wily plaintiff ! It is itself the very cat which swal- 
 lowed the canary, but just listen to its plausible 
 purr ! There is not a feather sticking to its teeth ; 
 not a suspicion of blood on its velvet coat. And 
 yet that canary, at this very moment, is in the cat's 
 grateful stomach. If the cat is so reckless as to 
 get caught in the act, or to confess* its theft, it will 
 never get another chance at the country's canaries. 
 Hence its bland ignorance of the true cause of the 
 "practically certain recession in trade," which is 
 that, through the ceaseless efforts of the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, backed by the fact that 
 foreign industrial growth and enterprise have 
 largely discounted the height of the Dingley Dike, 
 the balance of foreign trade is hundreds of millions 
 against us annually, in spite of the pretense that 
 it is 1400,000,000 in our favor.
 
 183 
 
 The report that comes to us from the United 
 States Treasury, your Honors 1 , purporting to tell 
 us how much we have sold and bought abroad, does 
 not tell the whole foreign-trade story. Because it 
 is in figures and says nothing about quantities, upon 
 which depends the power of foreign products to 
 supplant American supply, that is, to cancel the 
 need of the physical thing; a power unconnected 
 with the money value of the goods. A Japanese 
 brush, for instance, Japan being a cost-10 country, 
 supplants a cost-100 brush made here, and so can- 
 cels a 100-demand; but the Treasury figures only 
 rover the Japanese brush at 10, and leave out of 
 account 90 points of a 100-point loss in our do- 
 mestic business 1 . And going thus through the whole 
 list of imports the total would be an average world- 
 price of 20 instead of our price of 100. In other 
 words, our imports would have had something like 
 five times the American-demand-killing power of 
 the figures given in our list of imports. But this* 
 is not the whole story of the deception contained in 
 our Treasury report as to our foreign trade. V 
 we export we are at the reverse disadvantage. Or- 
 exports 1 are figured in the list at cost-100, and their 
 displacing power, pound for pound, is but one-fifth 
 of 100 in a world whose costs are at 20. The high 
 American price cuts too burly a figure compared 
 with its effect in cancelling foreign demand; and 
 our real trade is but an average of one-fifth as great 
 as the figures show. In other words, when we buy 
 in the world at large, the average destruction of 
 American domestic demand, caused by paralyzing 
 the American medium of exchange, otherwise the 
 wage-producer's opportunity to produce wages, is 
 five times as largo as that shown by the Treasury 
 while, on the other hand, the figure cut by
 
 184 
 
 our exported' goods in supplying foreign demand is 
 only one-fifth as great as appears by the Treasury 
 figures. 
 
 On the basis of this reasoning, your Honors, let 
 us do a little figuring ourselves : 
 
 American imports annually, $1,500,- 
 
 000,000, with displacing power in 
 
 quantities five times as great, or. .$7,500,000,000 
 American exports annually 2,000,000,000 
 
 Loss to American business $5,500,000,000 
 
 Here is a nominal loss of $5,500,000,000, in de- 
 mands which should have gone to American Pro- 
 duction and should have shown in the records of 
 our property-producers. 
 
 But this does not tell the whole story either, 
 your Honors. A single opportunity offered 
 American Production is the starting of a 
 whole procession of opportunities which other- 
 wise would not have come into play. Did you 
 ever observe, your Honors, how r a single trolley 
 car off the track blocks a procession of a hundred 
 trolley cars on Broadway? It is something that 
 way with an opportunity which has gotten off the 
 track through a demand for a given supply hav- 
 ing gone off the track into the hands of the Im- 
 porting Trust. It blocks the procession. There- 
 fore, when you say that our business is $5,500,- 
 000,000 worse off in a year by the activity of the 
 Importing Trust, you have not begun to put in 
 figures the actual loss to the country. ' Our annual 
 domestic business, as shown by our banks, as we 
 have said before, covers something like one hun- 
 dred and seventy thousand millions of dollars <of 
 exchanges, while our actual production of goods
 
 185 
 
 in the same time is but a fraction as large. This 
 shows that production is the good old hen of oppor- 
 tunity which lays a nest full of eggs and hatches 
 chickens enough in a short time to make a whole 
 regiment of hens. 
 
 There is no doubt, your Honors, that this reason- 
 ing comes pretty close to the real truth as to why 
 "we are facing a practically certain recession in 
 trade;" why "bankers are inclined to exercise 
 caution in extending accomodations ;" and why 
 "most manufacturers and merchants are planning 
 their fall campaigns with much conservatism." 
 If our figures 1 are only half true and we believe 
 they are wholly true what a terrible destruction, 
 your Honors, through our upward-bounding for- 
 eign imports, is going on among our sources of 
 wealth. Think of it, your Honors! What a wan- 
 ton thing is this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust! To land a single dollar's 1 worth of goods 
 in this country, it kills a corresponding domestic 
 demand equal to $5! We repeat it, your Honors, 
 supply is the measure of demand; for to offer a 
 supply is to demand its' equivalent in exchange. 
 Kill the cause for an American supply by a dollar's 
 worth of foreign goods, and you have killed f 5 of 
 American supply, that is, $5 of American demand, 
 which is $5 of American business. This killing 
 of American business at the rate of $5 of domestic 
 business for every fl of foreign imports is going 
 on at a reckless and ever-increasing rate; and this 
 alone, were there in fact a trade balance such as 
 the Treasury reports 1 show, would be enough to 
 do all the things in the direction of a "practically 
 certain recession in trade" which our Importing- 
 Trust orator says are happening in such a mysteri- 
 ous wav.
 
 186 
 
 But the Treasury reports do not tell the whole 
 story. They merely give arbitrary balances shown 
 by the exchange of the goods, and do not touch 
 matters incidental to foreign trade, which wipe 
 out the credit balance and leave a heavy debit 
 balance instead. Let us 1 figure a little, your 
 Honors, and see if we cannot bring some honest 
 common sense into the method of keeping the 
 country's accounts relating to foreign trade: 
 
 Favorable balance of trade as shown by 
 the Treasury figures $400,000,000 
 
 Freights paid by American to foreign 
 ships $300,000.000 
 
 Expenses of American tourists abroad, 100,000,000 
 
 Immigrants' remittances to old folks 
 at home 100,000,000* 
 
 Interests and dividends on American 
 securities 200,000,000 
 
 Undervaluations of imports ' 100,000,000 
 
 Smuggled goods 100,000,000 900,000,00 
 
 Actual balance of trade against the 
 United States $500,000,000 
 
 Your Honors, we verily believe that, without 
 reference to the incalculable injury wrought from 
 the cancellation by every unit of import of five 
 units of the American demand upon our business 
 won, the actual cash balance of trade against us 
 is upwards of f 500,000,000 a year at this moment ; 
 and to this for the future must be added $100,000,- 
 000 more at least because of the increased under - 
 valuations permitted by the German Agreement, 
 and from 150,000,000 to $100,000,000 still more, 
 because of the premium upon smuggling lately 
 offered by our German Administration through 
 a. Treasury order which makes perjury on the part 
 
 *'To this should be added the money taken out of the country 
 every fall by the eastward migration of Italian, Hungarian and 
 other workers, who spend the winter in the old country.
 
 187 
 
 of the traveler the only thing between him and 
 the profits of a trunk full of smuggled goods 1 . 
 
 Your Honors, in this state of things with re- 
 gard to our foreign trade, we have the seeds of a 
 national disaster of great proportions. The tariff- 
 dike, as you see, is being made powerless to pre- 
 vent the cancellation of our domestic demand at 
 the ratio of 5 to 1, that is $5 of American home 
 business cancelled for every dollar's worth of for- 
 eign goods imported. There is a growing trouble 
 in the "feeling" of the country. Confidence is 
 oozing away because the underpinning of confi- 
 dence, the certainty of f 1.05 corning back for every 
 $1 expended in American production, has been and 
 is being kicked away by the trickery of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust. But mark, your 
 Honors: This trouble is coming on because we 
 have no sufficient dike to dam out foreign cancella- 
 1i<ms of our domestic demand, foreign malicious 
 animal magnetism, which changes into dross our 
 domestic coin of exchange, wage-production. 
 
 And yet, your Honors, the wily plaintiff is even 
 now beginning to instruct its newspapers and 
 orators to say the trouble comes from "the hin- 
 drances to foreign trade imposed by the robber 
 tariff!" Pointing at our failing business to jus- 
 tify its declaration, it will gibe and sneer and jeer 
 at the tariff-dike as unable to make prosperity; 
 and at the same time raise a din for "revision," 
 in order to "remove the shackles from the sturdy 
 young limbs of the great American giant of in- 
 dustry/' And it is quite likely it will succeed, 
 as it has done so many times before, from the lap- 
 ses 1 of the national memory, or, rather, the total 
 absence of a national memory. Then, what will 
 follow? .Tnst what has followed so manv times
 
 188 
 
 before: Before the dike is discounted by ad- 
 vanced foreign methods of production, and before 
 the Importing Trust has picked it too full of holes, 
 the season of prosperity will have filled our prop- 
 erty-producers so full of the belief that each dol- 
 lar they put out in material and labor will come 
 back, say, fl.05 in the price of their finished 
 product, that large numbers of them will have run 
 into debt to increase their business. Some will 
 have put up as 1 collateral to their borrowings vari- 
 ous securities which were earning good dividends 
 and paying good interest. Others will have mort- 
 gaged real estate. And some will have been 
 fortunate enough to get loans for stock in the cor- 
 porations of which they are the moving spirits. 
 In all possible ways 1 these people will have given 
 security to money-lenders. Now so long as there 
 is a bottom in the country's bucket, so long as it 
 will hold the fluid of American demand, which buys 
 their goods and leaves' them a profit, their credi- 
 tors will not hesitate to extend their notes and 
 even slightly to increase their loans. The coun 
 try seems solid as oak and everything goes swim- 
 mingly. But now the dike has sprung aleak 
 through the hammer and crow-bar of the wily 
 plaintiff; and it begins to be hammered by a lot 
 of the hirelings of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, who get paid in proportion to their zeal 
 and the weight of their blows; and soon a lot of 
 bobv babblers among the would-be-intellectuals 
 of the conntrv also take up hammers and bars 
 aarainst the dike; then the "raw material" fiends 
 join the srang: then the politicians wake up and 
 trv their hand also; then a lot of members of the 
 Manufacturers' Association, with mole-eyes and 
 gormand bellies 1 , swell the music; and it ends by
 
 189 
 
 half the country being hypnotized into believing that 
 the dreadful high-tariff-dike, already as good as 
 none at all because gushing foreign goods at every 
 joint, is the source of all the stringency of money 
 conditions really arising from the leaking dike; 
 and finally, instead of mending the dike like sen- 
 sible people and putting a couple of additional 
 stories on it to equalize late foreign economies 
 in production, the whole swarm of sap-heads 
 makes a dead rush at it and levels to the sea-bot- 
 tom the already tottering dike. Then in breaks 
 the foreign deluge with hungry fury. Mill after 
 mill closes'. Furnace after furnace puts out its 
 fires. Concern after concern cuts down its work- 
 ing forces; and swarm after swarm of wage-pro- 
 ducers is turned idle on the streets to live in- 
 definitely on charity or their savings'. Well, a 
 mill that's dead is no good security; and securi- 
 ties that depend upon the earnings of such a mill 
 are no good collateral. The pay-roll has taken 
 about all the loose cash the mill-owner had when 
 he paid off his men and let them go. But the 
 interest on his large note is coming due. He hus- 
 tles around to borrow on what other security ho 
 can offer. Money-lenders wont take it. It is per- 
 haps a mortgage he holds on some employe's house. 
 But the employe is out of work now, and the mill 
 is closed and perhaps 1 the house will be worth 
 nothing as a worker's home; because the mill may 
 never open and the workers may be scattered for 
 good and all. Who knows? At any rate the 
 lender will not accept the mortgage a's security. 
 Then the mill-owner offers, perhaps, some rail- 
 road stock. But, no, the lender says that, because 
 its freight-earnings had dwindled so and, over a 
 large part of it, the passenger traffic had entirely
 
 190 
 
 failed, especially where it had depended on any of 
 the closed mills along the route, within a month 
 after the dike was busted, the road passed its divi- 
 dend and went into the hands of a receiver. Well, 
 nothing the mill-owner offers will satisfy the 
 lender. His interest falls due and he cannot meet 
 it. His 1 creditor is himself a debtor. He also 
 has notes to pay and he has depended upon the 
 interest from the mill-owner's notes to pay them; 
 and he must save himself as he can. He rushes 
 into court and gets judgment against the mill- 
 owner; and the sheriff levies on the mill and all 
 its contents of unsold goods. There is a sale. 
 The property, real and personal, is sold out under 
 the hammer. The mill-owner is ruined. The re- 
 sults of a lifetime of hard work have been swept 
 away. And very likely the mill-owner commits 
 suicide. This is what happens in thousands V)f 
 oases. Every man who owes money is in danger 
 of being sold out, and, to save himself, rushes to 
 those who owe him money and compels payment. 
 This keeps up until thousands of failures occur 
 every day and the country is swept by a cyclone 
 of panic. Wall Street has already fallen with a 
 crash. The cockle-shell of speculation was crushed 
 by the shock which knocked values out of the 
 money-earning collateral it relied on; because 
 by the destruction of the dike and the in-rush 
 of cost-20 goods to supplant cost-100 goods, money- 
 earning was cut out of the enterprises which is- 
 sued the securities. This is the plainest matter 
 in the world, your Honors. We cannot believe 
 the wily plaintiff's counsel are talking in good 
 faith, when they affect not to know the reason 
 of these panics; when they say that they come 
 a round about once in eleven years and are be-
 
 191 
 
 lieved to be more or less connected with the sun- 
 spots; or that they come because of "short crops;" 
 or "scarcity of money;" or "over-production;" or 
 the "corner in gold;" or the "exactions' of the 
 trusts," who sell abroad at lower prices than at 
 home. These wily counselors to the wily plain- 
 tiff do not call attention to the fact that the 
 panic immediately followed the smashing of the 
 dike and that the country was already in the 
 Slough of Despond before anybody thought to lay 
 it to any of these things. 
 
 Could it be "over-production," your Honors, 
 when the demand of our people would require 
 all the goods on hand and more, if, by the smash- 
 ing of the dike, they only had not lost their jobs 
 and their wherewithal to buy? At any rate, your 
 Honors, is over-production such a bad thing, when 
 people are sure of their jobs at any rate; even if 
 now and then they do take a day or two off and 
 wait for consumption to catch up with demand? 
 For, your Honors 1 , people who believe this over- 
 production yarn seem not to realize what a tre- 
 mendous* mountain of goods is swept out of our 
 markets by the demand of a single well-paid wage- 
 producing day in this country. Why, your Honors, 
 rebuild the dike, shut out foreign supplies, and 
 every particle of American goods, no matter how 
 much, could be swept out of our markets in a 
 single month by our own demand; and from "hard 
 times" we would jump instantly over our heads 
 into the tall grass of good times. But, your 
 Honors, instead of only a little month, these 
 hard times which they say come from "over-pro- 
 duction" last years long, when the dike is down; 
 and don't you think it looks as if the Importing
 
 192 
 
 Trust and its profits were at the bottom of this 
 little falsehood about "over-production." 
 
 Furthermore, your Honors, could there be "over- 
 production" of more than a few hands full of goods? 
 Do people produce goods just for the fun of it; 
 or do they produce them to sell? And if they 
 found their goods would not sell, would not they 
 just stop producing a little while, until there was 
 a demand for them, instead of keeping on day 
 after day, and week after week, and month after 
 month, "over-producing," that is, putting their 
 money into materials and labor, only to let the 
 goods lie in their warehouses to become moth- 
 eaten or to rust out? "Over-production," your 
 Honors', belies the intelligence of producers. And 
 especially is this talk of "over-production" very 
 weak when it applies to the producers of a whole 
 great country like ours. It means, that all of the 
 producers at once were seized with a sort of lunacy 
 for hazard-spiel, for, making up masses of capital 
 into goods for which there was no sale and per- 
 haps not likely to be. 
 
 No, your Honors, this "over-production" talk 
 does not bridge the chasm. It does not wash. 
 But, your Honors, we think we see what the 
 wily plaintiff means* by "over-production" with 
 regard to our industries. It is simply any 
 American production at all when the dike is 
 down. At such times our market belongs to the 
 Importing Trust and it is mere impudence for 
 an American property-producer to try for any of 
 it. We think we see that sort of over-production 
 in sight now. We think we see why, to revert to 
 the language of our Importing-Trust orator re- 
 ferred to a few moments ago, "most manufacturers 
 and merchants are planning their fall campaigns
 
 193 
 
 with much conservatism;" and why, "there is 
 really little division of well-informed opinion 
 that the period ahead of us is one in which com- 
 mercial activities will be curtailed and manu- 
 facturers' totals show a decrease." And we have 
 only to go to the columns of an Importing Trust 
 newspaper of the "revisionist" Republican type 
 for the explanation. In this paper one item reads 
 like this: 
 
 "Despite the opening of the fall season the pig iron 
 market continues stagnant. It appears absolutely im- 
 possible to dispdse of pig iron except in very small 
 quantities and then only in cases of emergency." 
 
 This quotation is upon one page of the paper. 
 We turn to another page of the same issue of 
 
 the same paper and find an item headed "Our 
 Chief Imports by Quantities;" and among these 
 imports' we find there were 564,846 tons of pig 
 iron imported into this country in this fiscal 
 year 1907 as against 23,316 tons of the same ar- 
 ticle imported into this country during the fiscal 
 year 1899. We think that an increase of over 
 2400% in the imports of pig iron in eight years 
 is a sufficient cause for the sentence, "Despite the 
 opening of the fall season, the pig iron market 
 continues stagnant." We think there has been an 
 "over-production" of pig iron abroad for our mar- 
 ket here. When there is trouble anywhere in 
 France, the Frenchman says "Cherchez la femme!" 
 But when there is any "stagnation" or decay any- 
 where in our business fabric, Cherchez la leak in 
 the dike! The leak this time is in the tariff on 
 pig iron. 
 
 Again, in the same paper, we find this item: 
 
 "The falling prices of copper will very soon have 
 an appreciable effect on the mining industry of Butte
 
 194 
 
 ana the copper output, for a low price of the metal will 
 torce many lessees and small mining companies to quit 
 operations. ' ' 
 
 And in another part of the same issue of the 
 same paper we find the statement that, whereas 
 in 1899 the Importing Trust brought into this 
 country 10,292 tons of copper ore and 39,812,667 
 pounds of pig copper, in the fiscal year 1907 the 
 same Importing Trust brought into our market 
 278,488 tons of copper ore, and 198,442,715 pounds 
 of pig copper. We rather think than an increase 
 in eight years of 2700 % in our imports of copper 
 ore and 400% in our imports of pig copper will 
 be the cause which "will force many lessees and 
 small mining companies to quit operations;" and 
 we are quite willing to grant that "over-produc- 
 tion" is the thing to blame; but "over-production" 
 of foreign copper and not "over-production" of 
 American copper for our market. 
 
 Your Honors, looking over this list, "Our Chief 
 Imports by Quantities," just referred to, we would 
 not be surprised if there were various other items 
 which would soon suffer from the same sort of 
 "over-production" which is threatening so seriously 
 to affect copper and iron. For example, we note 
 that the importation of lemons has increased by 
 over fifty millions of dozens annually since 1899. 
 This looks like a serious and soon "over-produc- 
 tion" on the part of our lemon-growers in Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Also cotton cloths' appear to be in a fair way 
 to be "over-produced" in the quite near future; 
 since annual imports of the same have increased 
 by some thirty millions of square yards since 
 1899. 
 
 Furthermore, we are annually importing some
 
 195 
 
 fifty-odd millions of pounds of raw cotton more 
 than eight years ago; some twenty million square 
 yards of woolen dress-goods, s'ome twenty-two 
 million pounds of cheese, some twenty-two million 
 pounds of leaf tobacco, some three million pounds 
 of wrapper tobacco, some million and a quarter 
 pounds of woolen cloths', some one hundred and 
 fifty thousand dozens of bottles of champagne, 
 some two hundred and twenty-thousand tons of 
 nitrate of soda, and some one hundred and eighty 
 thousand tons of wood pulp, more than we im- 
 ported eight years ago; and we would not be at 
 all surprised to discover by the end of the year 
 that we were charged by the Importing Trust with 
 serious "over-production" in all these directions. 
 At any rate, your Honors, imports in all these 
 things are rapidly increasing to compete with 'our 
 own farms and factories; and, contrary to pru- 
 dent statesmanship and to natural justice, the in- 
 crease in wages which would respond to the ad- 
 ditional employment of our own wage-producers, 
 in making these goods now imported, is being de- 
 nied our workers. The dike is already leaking 
 badly enough in all conscience without any "re- 
 vision." 
 
 Your Honors, with almost inexhaustible sup- 
 plies of copper in our own mines, the Import- 
 ing Trust bids fair before many years to handle 
 most of our copper through its commission houses 1 ; 
 and for the simple reason that there is no tariff - 
 dike against copper in any of its unworked forms. 
 And in spite of a tariff of 40c a ton on iron ore 
 and $4 on pig iron the importation of pig iron has 
 rolled over twenty-four times in eight years and 
 is still rolling; while imports of copper ore, with- 
 out a tariff, were rolling over twenty-seven times!
 
 196 
 
 We observe, your Honors, that wool is in some- 
 thing of the same sort of a fix as copper and iron. 
 In eight years the Importing Trust has increased 
 its commissions from this source by increasing 
 from 77,000,000 pounds to 204,000,000 pounds its 
 annual sales of foreign wool in this market. 
 Again, with regard to this article, we have bound- 
 less territory good for nothing but wool-raising; 
 while a defective tariff dike has caused imports 
 of wool to roll over nearly three times in eight 
 years. We observe that "over-production" of wool 
 is very close at hand for the American farmer. 
 Evidently the tariff-dike needs no "revision" to 
 assist the country to "cheaper" wool. 
 
 In passing, we remark one thing, your Honors: 
 With one of its mouths, the Importing Trust says 
 we need no tariff dike, because our "inexhaust- 
 ible supplies of raw materials." in which we 
 "stand without a peer," coupled with our "invent- 
 ive genius" in making machinery, assure us for 
 all time lower costs than can be reached elsewhere. 
 And yet, your Honors, in spite of the tariff-dike, 
 iron, copper and wool, came surging in here in 
 irresistible billows? Why is this, your Honors? 
 If our "raw materials" are so abundant that we can- 
 not be beaten in price, why do foreign "raw 
 materials" come pouring across the water and over 
 the top of our dike? If we had no dike at all, as 
 the Importing Trust wishes, would these "raw 
 materials" stop coming over? Is it the dike that 
 makes them come, your Honors? If it is, why 
 does the Importing Trust want the dike taken 
 down? Doesn't it want any commissions on "raw 
 materials?" Doesn't it want "over-production" 
 in these things, too; "over-production" by foreign 
 producers for American markets? But if it is hon-
 
 197 
 
 est when it says "we can't be beat" in cheapness 
 because of our "unexampled supplies of raw ma- 
 terial" and "unequalled genius for doing things 
 on a great scale," why does it want the dike down 
 on "raw materials?" If the Importing Trust can't 
 beat us any way, because of our "unexampled 
 supplies" and "unequalled genius," what harm 
 does the dike do if it stands? If it were down, 
 these "raw materials" couldn't get in here, could 
 they, if we have such "unexampled supplies" and 
 "unequalled genius?" 
 
 But this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust is 
 very funny, your Honors. We have just told you 
 why it says we "can't be beat" it is "unexampled 
 supplies" and "unequalled genius" that take the 
 trick. We have both bowers and the joker. But 
 with another of its' mouths, the wily plaintiff says 
 we ought to "let raw materials come in free, so 
 our manufacturers can get them cheaper, work 
 them up into goods, cheaper, at any rate, than 
 they would be if American "raw materials" were 
 used, and send them abroad to "conquer the mar- 
 kets of the world," thus "giving more work to 
 our manufacturers and higher wages to their em- 
 ployes." Isn't this very funny? Our "raw ma- 
 terials" are so cheap by nature that nobody can 
 get them so cheap; but our "raw materials" are 
 so dear by nature that unless our manufacturers 
 get foreign raw materials they can't get the big 
 bird in the bush of a market abroad. 
 
 The confusion of the Importing Trust prophets 
 upon this subject of raw materials, your Honors, 
 is a conclusive proof of the bad faith in which they 
 carry on their warfare against our client, the de- 
 fendant, American Production. This confusion 
 is so great, even in the same mind, that from one
 
 side of his mouth an Importing Trust minion will 
 say that we beat the earth in all sorts of raw 
 materials, and from the other that w r e are very 
 defective in this regard. To clinch our statement 
 we cannot forbear citing an example of this con- 
 fusion. Here we have a New York Free Trade 
 newspaper, notoriously pro-British in its man- 
 agement, under date of September 23, 1907, say- 
 ing this with regard to our raw materials: 
 
 "It may help to put a better face upon the facts if 
 we regard these importations as the remedy the ac- 
 customed remedy, in fact for the chief cause of our 
 industrial check. Every authority agrees that we have 
 suffered from deficiency of capital. Here is the proof 
 that we are remedying the deficiency at an unexampled 
 rate, and yet there is general dismay." 
 
 This article, your Honors, was one attempting 
 to quiet the fears of our business men awakened 
 by our greatly increased imports, which threat- 
 ened soon to leave a trade balance against us. 
 
 "and yet there is general dismay. It can only re- 
 sult from the confusion of thought which regards capi- 
 tal as exclusively gold, or as bank credits. In fact the 
 deficiency in those forms of capital is the least import- 
 ant part of our present deficiency of capital. WE 
 HAVE LACKED PARTICULARLY EVERY FORM OF 
 RAW MATERIAL. There was a shortage a few months 
 ago of copper metal, but its importation swelled the fig- 
 ures under discussion and helped to revive the consump- 
 tion of copper through the reduction in price which re- 
 sulted from the accumulation of stocks." 
 
 Please observe, your Honors, that while this 
 creature of the Importing Trust is trying to 
 quiet our fears with regard to our growing 
 imports, it smooths the matter over by 
 saying, "We have lacked particularly every 
 form of raw material." Now, in another 
 part of the same paper, in making an assault on 
 our tariff-dike, which prevents its British masters
 
 199 
 
 from destroying American industries, wishing to 
 show that we really have no need of the dike, it 
 says: 
 
 "But as pointed out by Governor Folk, the economic 
 vice of the protective tariff is not less conspicuous than 
 its violation of equity. Here we are a Nation with im- 
 mense resources which we are developing with steady 
 determination and energy with the announced purpose of 
 taking a great part, if possible a dominant part, in the 
 commerce of the world. And we keep in operation a 
 system of obstruction and restriction of commerce of the 
 most rigid, complex, vexatious, and costly character. IF 
 IT WERE NOT TOR OUR EXTRAORDINARY NAT- 
 URAL ADVANTAGES, THE IMMENSE RANGE AND 
 VARIETY OF THE PRODUCTS OF OUR SOIL AND 
 OUR MINES, and the unfailing stream of immigration 
 from our earliest days as a nation, we never could have 
 stood our own efforts to impede trade. Sooner or later 
 the reversal of this absurd policy, the emancipation of 
 our commerce, is bound to be a dominant issue in our 
 politics, and it may be sooner rather than later." 
 
 Here, in the same Importing Trust newspaper, 
 in immediately contiguous columns, we have the 
 statement on the one hand that we have been and 
 are importing very heavily because we have "lacked 
 raw material in every form 7 ' and on the other hand 
 that we have "impeded trade" with our dike and 
 all that has saved us from sorrow is an "immense 
 range and variety of products of our soil and 
 mines.'- To justify increasing imports, we are 
 lacking in raw materials and they are flowing in 
 as if we had no dike. To justify a wholesale 
 damnation of the troublesome tariff-dike, we have 
 raw materials in great abundance, which save us 
 from ruin. In each case, it will be noticed, how- 
 ever, the writer had the same object, the destruc- 
 tion of the dike, in the faithful and true service 
 of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and all 
 its cruel designs against the homes of American 
 Avagc-producers*. But this is not all we find in this 
 same issue of the same paper. We have a com-
 
 200 
 
 munication printed there from a New York Cleve- 
 land Democrat and a notorious Free Trader, in 
 which occurs the following language: 
 
 "In this praise of Mr. Whitney's speeches, which I 
 share with your editorial of to-day [Sept. 20], I would 
 make one qualification. The census returns of 1900 and 
 the Bulletins of the Bureau of Statistics which bring 
 these down to date, afford sufficient material to enable 
 us clearly to see that the principal raw materials, such 
 as iron ores, coal, lumber, and hides, should at once be 
 put on the free list, and that it should be immediately 
 enacted that no duty except in the case of wine, spirits, 
 and tobacco, should exceed 50 per cent. With these two 
 immediate reforms, we could go about tariff revision 
 somewhat on the lines suggested by Mr. Whitney [Demo- 
 cratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts], through 
 the medium of an intelligent commission, without serious 
 derangement to business and to the great and lasting 
 benefit cf the whole country." 
 
 We have already read to you, your Honors, the 
 words of a celebrated Importing Trust orator and 
 author who says "we have combined with the ad- 
 vantage of unexampled supplies of raw material 
 an unequalled genius for doing things on a great 
 scale." 
 
 It is too plain for dispute that what all these 
 people are after is not American prosperity, but 
 the prosperity of the wily plaintiffs herein. 
 
 These Importing Trust advocates should get to- 
 gether and settle upon a uniform falsehood, and 
 see what they can do towards proving that a lie 
 well stuck to is as good as the truth. For, if they 
 keep on telling opposite lies for the same purpose 
 they may be charged with inconsistency. You will 
 remember that one of our doctors said that Eng- 
 land had fallen behind to the third place in inter- 
 national commerce, while the United States had 
 gone to first place and Germany had pulled her- 
 self up to second. But we have just heard another 
 doctor say that we have "impf*ded trade" by our
 
 201 
 
 tariff dike. If great "we" have impeded trade by 
 a tariff dike, what must have happened to little 
 Germany, with a dike worse than ours. But Ger- 
 many has been so "impeded" by her dike that she 
 has beaten England who has no dike; and we have 
 been so "impeded" thereby that we have gone clean 
 to the head of the class. 
 
 But let us return to the various' subterfuges 
 which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, em- 
 ploys to hide the havoc which always follows dike 
 "revision" downward. 
 
 As it is with "over-production," your Honors, so 
 it is with "scarcity of money," given as a reason for 
 hard times after the dike has been "revised." 
 Money is then scarce to invest in American produc- 
 tion or business of any kind, except that of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust. Because there is no 
 chance for any American business to succeed at 
 cost-100 while the country is being inundated with 
 all forms of cost-20 goods. No money-lender can 
 see any security in a mortgage on an American mill, 
 while the wheels 1 of the mill are silent and its chim- 
 ney smokeless, with no assurance in sight as to 
 when the mill will start again. And when rail- 
 roads are in the hands of receivers, as they were in 
 the Cleveland low-dike era, between 1893 and 1896, 
 neither their stock nor their bonds are considered 
 the best of security by the "malefactors of great 
 wealth" who otherwise would advance the where- 
 withnl. That condition, when the dike is busted 
 and the times are hard, accounts both for "scarcity 
 of. money" and "the high price of gold," or "the 
 corner in gold," of the days of Bryanesque jim jams 
 in 1896. 
 
 We pas's over the "sun-spot" theory of hard times. 
 It is too profound for us to handle with our usual
 
 202 
 
 distinguished ability. Alas, for our unresponsive 
 brain-cells ! 
 
 Then they say, your Honors, do these wily plain- 
 tiffs', that the trouble which follows the "revision" 
 of the dike arises from "bad" or "short" crops. At 
 any rate, when the people have kicked up a large 
 bobbery over the broken dike and have repaired it 
 more or less, these wily plaintiffs account for the 
 reurn of good times by -'good crops." It is strange 
 that there are never any good crops' when the dike 
 is in a state of "revision." But it is easy to ex- 
 plain "bumper crops," your Honors. When the 
 dike is "revised," prices are so low because of our 
 weak workless demand, arising from our want of 
 wages to buy with, that there is no encouragement 
 to a farmer to raise much more than what he wants 
 to eat himself So he does not do it. But when the 
 mended dike dams money in the country and for- 
 eign competition out, demand picks up and prices 1 
 follow ; then the farmer plants with the crops that 
 bring the best price every inch of ground he can 
 clear and clean. Now, your Honors, this country 
 is a good deal larger than an ordinary pocket hand- 
 kerchief, and when prices are high, and the returns 
 are in at harvest time, the crop from this whole 
 great country is sure to be a "bumper." Bad 
 weather cannot spoil a part of it large enough not 
 to leave an abundance afterwards. And so, as 
 times continue good behind the dike, the farmer 
 plants more and more every year, because it means 
 more and more cash. But sinas'h the dike, let prices 
 fall to the bottom rung, and your crops fall with 
 them. 
 
 What is a crop worth, if you can't sell it? 
 
 "Over-trading" and "over-speculation" are of the 
 same sort of timber as the "over-production" apol-
 
 203 
 
 ogy for the hard times following "revision." If 
 you "over-trade" and business still is good, just hold 
 your horses a moment, until they quit their canter- 
 ing and until steadiness returns to the vehicle. If 
 you "over-speculate'' you are a bad penny, anyway, 
 and belong to the crazy-gamblers ward at Bellevue. 
 But in either case, with the dike down, and the Im- 
 porting Trust doing all the business, when a man 
 is pulled to his knees, there is no getting up. 
 Everything is flat and the devil to pay with no pitch 
 hot 
 
 XX 
 
 IT IS THE CENTURY-OLD POLICY OF THE WILY PLAIN- 
 TIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, TO FORCE THE PROS- 
 PERITY OF THIS COUNTRY TO DEPEND UPON CROPS. 
 
 The reason why the Importing Trust and all its 
 retainers have so much to say about "crops" as the 
 rock upon which American prosperity is built, is 
 that the condition which has made us so largely an 
 agricultural people, and therefore so largely de- 
 pendent upon crops, is one created by the power of 
 the Importing Trust expressly to keep its hold on 
 our cash. You will recollect that we said some 
 time back that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, had been since our earliest colonial 
 times, the worst enemy of American Production, 
 and for the reason that American products compete 
 in our market here with foreign products and the 
 Importing Trust gets no brokerage from American 
 products ; whereas 1 it gets a very high brokerage on 
 every pound, yard, and gross of foreign products 
 brought into our market. You will remember what
 
 204 
 
 we said about this wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, securing acts of Parliament forbidding us, 
 as American colonists, to manufacture various 
 goods, in order to compel us to buy all our manufac- 
 tured necessaries and luxuries of the wily plaintiff. 
 We were not forbidden to raise farm stuff, for the 
 English wanted that and got it at their own price. 
 Therefore, instead of developing in a consistent and 
 symmetrical manner upwards from a broad base of 
 diversified industries, we were forced in the direc- 
 tion of wheat, and corn, cotton, lumber, and such 
 things; and instead of being able to sell our farm 
 products to our own manufacturing settle- 
 ments, which we would have been permitted to build 
 but for England's Exporting and Importing Trusts, 
 we were compelled still to raise food for "the mar- 
 kets of the world" and so to wander farther and 
 farther West and turn up new grain fields and lay 
 out new cattle ranches, all to feed "the world" in- 
 stead of ourselves. In other words, we were con- 
 gested upon one general field of employment, to our 
 practical enslavement to foreign patronage of our 
 products. And so our "crops" came to cut a large 
 figure in our foreign trade, and they have continued 
 to hold us in a sort of peonage to Europe ever since. 
 If our "crops" fail we are under the wheels of 
 Europe's automobile in a moment. Because about 
 one-half of all the heap of stuff we send abroad 
 every year is products of the soil ; and as our 
 ostensible credit balance last year, for instance, 
 was about $400,000,000, if our exports of $2,000,- 
 000,000 were reduced by "bad crops" to $1,000,000,- 
 000, we should be owing $600,000,000 a year to for- 
 eign countries instead of their owing us, and soon be 
 in the midst of a panic. And "bad crops" would 
 immediately follow the "revision" of the dike. This
 
 205 
 
 is a vicious and quite unnecessary condition of 
 things, your Honors. There is no sound reason, un- 
 less to increase the commissions of the Importing 
 Trust be a sound reason, for our constantly rising 
 imports of manufactured goods. More, your Hon- 
 ors, there is no reason whatever, except a reason 
 which spells profit to these wily plaintiffs, the Im- 
 porting and the Exporting Trusts, and at the ex- 
 pense of the whole country, why we should import a 
 penny's worth of anythiug at all. As we have said 
 before and now say again in all seriousness, we 
 can easily produce a satisfactory substitute for, if 
 not the exact counterpart of, everything we now 
 import. And this statement extends to coffee, tea, 
 and spices. But we are in perpetual bondage to 
 foreign countries in order that the Importing Trust 
 may get richer and richer at our expense and our 
 Exporting Trust may learn deeper and deeper les- 
 sons in its text-book of treason. We are made 
 the foot-ball of weather and foreign diplomacy by 
 being tied down to "crops" as the pivot of our 
 prosperity. And yet "crops" fail at the time they 
 are most needed and for a good reason. They 
 never were known to fail until the dike was broken 
 down. The breaking of the dike kills American 
 demand in the way we have explained before. That 
 makes prices too low for profit, and the farmei 
 does not see why he should work for nothing any 
 more than the manufacturer. Why should he sweat 
 himself thin just to send more "crops" to Europe 
 at Europe's own price and keep "the balance of 
 trade" favorable for our bankers and the Importing 
 Trust? So when prices drop, the American farmer 
 drops, and the "crops" drop, tno, at the very md- 
 ment when, by compelling us to buy goods abroad, 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, has created
 
 20G 
 
 the need of even greater "crops" to "balance" the 
 damage it has done. This accounts for the frightful 
 swing and sweep of panic among us when the dike 
 is broken down or "revised." Yet, your Honors, 
 see by what shrewd shuffling the wily plaintiff 
 tries to fool our people! The dike is broken first. 
 American demand for farm produce instantly fol- 
 lows; and low prices drive the American farmer 
 to gunning for woodchucks instead of planting po- 
 tatoes, corn, and wheat. The "crops" lie down. 
 Imports go up with nothing to call their bluff. 
 Panic overwhelms us. But the wily plaintiff 
 shuffles the pack so the panic card turns up in his 
 hand after the "short crops" card, and he says, 
 "See! Short crops drew out panic!" 
 
 A wise policy would so distribute our property- 
 production that there would be no surplus for ex- 
 port. We would raise all our own sugar, for one 
 thing, putting a prohibitive tariff-dike up against 
 Cuba and all other sugar-producing countries; 
 and we would do the same with rice and tobacco; 
 and follow with a good export tariff on cotton and 
 a prohibitive import tariff both on raw and manu- 
 factured cotton. We would also gradually pro- 
 hibit the importation of wool and double our tar- 
 iffs on manufactures of wool. We would prohibit 
 the importation of steel in any form and place 
 an export tariff on all its products. The importa- 
 tion or exportation of ores of all kinds should 
 likewise be prohibited. And so we would go over 
 the list, gradually increasing the tariffs on every 
 manufacture; prohibiting the importation of 
 every staple of the soil and every food product; 
 and placing an export tariff on everything now 
 exported in large quantities, and especially on all 
 articles which are habitually s'old abroad cheaper
 
 207 
 
 than at home. In this way our own people would 
 have the benefit on the one hand of all the employ- 
 ment necessary to supply our own wants, which 
 would make wages high; and of limiting largely 
 to the domestic market the sale of supplies aris- 
 ing from our own industry, which would make 
 prices constantly lower until they reached the 
 point where a lower price would cause the emi- 
 gration of capital, where they would stick. Your 
 Honors, we cannot too seriously impress upon you 
 the great importance of turning over a new leaf 
 in this matter. These wily plaintiffs should be 
 sent to the tail of the procession. They are lead- 
 ing our country into a bad morass. They breed 
 in us a sort of conceit best adapted to keeping us 
 docile in their service. They tell us about "un- 
 exampled supplies of raw materials" and say we 
 are destined forever to be "the granaries of the 
 world." And so they brush and curry us and feed us 
 sugar from their hands. Nobody has such wheat fields ; 
 nobody such cotton soil! Our cattle ranches beat 
 the sun, moon, and stars and all the planets! We 
 are simply immense! Did you ever stop to think, 
 your Honors, what it was that, in the mind of the 
 wily plaintiff, makes us such good fellows for pur- 
 veying to Europe, sending her our wheat, and corn, 
 and cotton, our beef, pork, and other provisions? 
 Simply because as long as we will feed Europe, 
 she will be perfectly willing to do our manufact- 
 uring. It pays to manufacture and it don't pay 
 to feed the manufacturer at the manufacturer's 
 figures. But that is what we are doing for Europe. 
 We are wasting the very royal substance of our 
 noble country in feeding aliens to destroy our in- 
 dustries. If we should get the prices at which 
 alone it would pay us to export it, Europe would
 
 20S 
 
 not buy it or u&. She would raise her own food. 
 She has land enough to do it; and to do it, all 
 she would need to do would be to put a portion 
 of the power she now puts into her manufactur- 
 ing upon the transformation of her gentleman's 
 parks and shooting preserves, her swamps and her 
 forests, into grain fields and cattle farms. The 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, through its 
 learned counsel, has told you that Europe would 
 starve if we shut off her food supply, for we are 
 the onliest only food-producer in the world. All 
 rot, your Honors. The Importing Trust says so 
 because the Importing Trust does not want us to 
 shut off its commissions by building factories in- 
 stead of grain-elevators. It has been on the job 
 of collecting tribute from us as colony and State, 
 for a couple of "hundred years or so, and it has 
 succeeded tolerably well in making the thought- 
 less think there is something like a divine right 
 in its hold on us. As long as it was big enough 
 and we were little enough, it bullied us outright 
 and made us carry water to its mill. But now 
 that it can paddle us no more, it hypnotizes us. 
 That is the course taken in all its newspapers. 
 There is no argument in the discourse you read 
 about "revising" the tariff. They do not state a 
 single fact to back their glittering generalities. 
 They merely suggest the imperishable perservance 
 of foreign trade. They assume it is the thing, 
 and the only thing we have to look to for happi- 
 ness. And by these suggestions they breathe into 
 the million the feeling that foreign trade is the 
 whole show. This is the tone of all the large 
 bankers and brokers in our seaboard cities. The 
 boards of trade almost universally fiddle on the 
 same string. The orator from whom we quoted
 
 209 
 
 about the "practically certain recession in trade" 
 and who drapes in the impenetrable cloud of Olym- 
 pian mystery the whole fact of the killing effect 
 of imports upon our business activity, is a dis- 
 tinguished banker in one of our great seaport 
 cities; and his whole oration is based on the un- 
 utterable unutterableness of foreign trade as the 
 key to American development. This seems as true 
 to these people as it is false in fact. They have 
 been reared in an importing atmosphere. They 
 think in terms of exports and imports. The 
 "money market" is 1 believed to be dependent upon 
 the "crop report" as showing our probable bal- 
 ance of credit in foreign hands. But the fact is, 
 your Honors 1 , this country is great in spite of for- 
 eign trade, not because of it; and it is great only 
 in the proportion in which its sagacity is great 
 enough, by an adequate tariff dike, to shut out 
 cost-20 foreign goods from its cost-100 domestic 
 market 
 
 To encourage exports, your Honors, is to en- 
 courage a non-symmetrical unfolding of our eco- 
 nomical life. This 1 means disaster in the near 
 future. Instead of exhausting our soil only 
 enough to feed our own people, we are boasting 
 that we "are feeding the world," as counsel for 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, said in 
 your hearing, an hour or so ago. Instead of rais- 
 ing only cotton enough to run our own mills, we 
 think it a great feather in our cap to raise enough 
 for Europe besides. But Europe is laughing in 
 its sleeve; for the only reason it does not raise 
 its own cotton through its African and South 
 American dependencies and allies, is because it 
 pays better to spend its money in cotton factories, 
 make up our cotton into goods and then send
 
 210 
 
 them back to us. And so we go on exhausting 
 in a century stores' that should last us a thousand 
 years at least; and all the time we are giving the 
 other fellow the best end of the job. For we 
 send him a bale of cotton for which he pays us 
 X dollars; and from that same bale of cotton 
 he returns us cotton manufactures for which we 
 pay him X+Y dollars. He keeps us at work 
 hoeing corn to feed his pigs which he slaughters 
 and sells back to us for twice as much money as 
 he paid us for the corn that fattened them. Mean- 
 time, he is doing a work which raises him higher 
 and higher while we are wrestling with a job 
 which keeps us most of the time in cow-hide boots 
 and blue-over-alls. Our service comes very cheap 
 to him; his very dear to us. 
 
 But this is not all, your Honors. In this pur- 
 veying to foreign needs, we get a distorted de- 
 velopment. If we raised food for our own people 
 alone, we would not employ a larger force than 
 necessary to that end. But if we furnish food for 
 the world, we draw off into our food-making in- 
 dustry a disproportionate number of our people. 
 Now if we kept only enough farmers in the field 
 to farm for us, they would never lack a market. 
 But if we trained a great army of them to work 
 for Europe, and Europe should take a notion 
 some day to do her own work in that line or buy 
 it elsewhere, what would our army of farmers do, 
 being thus out of employment? For employment 
 means grub; and in this problem of national hap- 
 piness, your Honors, we are dealing very largely 
 with stomachs which on pain of their otherwise 
 going on strike and putting their owners 1 out of 
 business, have to be filled several times every 
 twenty-four hours. This matter of domestic trade
 
 211 
 
 is, after all, a very homely, and we are afraid to 
 some of our broad-clothed, free-trade doctrinaires, 
 a very vulgar business; but upon it depend our 
 hearts and homes and hopes. 
 
 For all these reasons, your Honors, we believe 
 that we should "cut out" foreign trade altogether 
 and with it our dependence upon "crops" as our 
 one source of happiness 1 . 
 
 XXI 
 
 THE ATTEMPT OF THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IM- 
 PORTING TRUST, TO AROUSE OUR PEOPLE AGAINST 
 AMERICAN PRODUCTION MISNAMED "THE 
 TRUSTS/' IS THE MOST INFAMOUS AND DEADLY 
 OF ALL ITS METHODS OF DESTROYING THE TAR- 
 IFF DIKE, LEADING,, AS IT DOES, TO CONTEMPT 
 FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS ON THE PART OF THE IG- 
 NORANT, AND OFFERING, AS IT DOES, TO UttPRIN- 
 CIPLED POLITICIANS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BLACK- 
 MAIL OUR MOST IMPORTANT INDUSTRIES UNDER 
 COLOR OF PROTECTING THE PEOPLE AGAtNST 
 "PREDATORY CAPITAL/' 
 
 Your Honors, we have shown you some of the 
 veils of mystery with which the wily defendant, 
 the Importing Trust, drapes its attacks upon the 
 savings-bank fund of our people. We have ex- 
 plained how "scarcity of money," "over-produc- 
 tion," "over-trading," "over-speculation," "corner 
 in gold," "high price of gold," and "bad" or 
 "short" crops are held up to explain hard times 
 and panics which result immediately from a "re- 
 vision" of the tariff dike. But there is one other 
 explanation which the wily plaintiff makes, both
 
 212 
 
 for panics and hard, timeb when the dike is down, 
 and for high prices when the dike is up. We mean 
 American Production, our client, burdened with 
 the name of "the trusts." It is a part of the re- 
 ligion of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 to trace directly to American Production every 
 ill to which this country is heir. This has been 
 so almost from the very day of the landing of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. For example, it 
 blames present high prices on to "the trusts." 
 But since our tariff -dike was mended in 1897 by 
 the Dingley Law, there has been all over the 
 world a general rise in prices. Now there is no 
 doubt, your Honors, that our mended tariff-dike 
 caused this general rise. For it set at work again 
 at good pay our millions of wage-producers and 
 so poured a great flood of wages upon our do- 
 mestic market in a constantly rising demand and 
 our wave of prosperity was felt "round the world," 
 and prices began to rise universally; because, 
 though, while acting as a dike, the tariff kept out 
 a large part of the ocean of foreign surplus pro- 
 ducts, nevertheless, wiiile acting as a dam, the 
 same tariff failed to keep in the country all the 
 wages paid to our wage-producers, and it was the 
 money of our wage-producers going out in return 
 for foreign goods coming in through our leaky 
 dike, which caused the world-wide rise in prices; 
 and yet the whole thing was laid to the American 
 "trusts," otherwise our client, American Produc- 
 tion, who was represented as "entering into com- 
 binations in restraint of trade" and "extorting" 
 and "exacting" dreadful prices from the poor peo- 
 ple, every mother's son of whom was "extorting" 
 and "exacting" a higher price for his merchan- 
 dise, namely, the labor of his hands. It was all
 
 213 
 
 right for the price of Avages to rise. That was 
 approved by all American patriots. But when the 
 price rf other things rose, it was "the trusts" who 
 were "extorting" and "exacting" robber tolls and 
 tributes. Oh, consistency, where is thy jeweled 
 form ! Oh justice where are thy scales ! 
 
 But the point is, your Honors, that the "trusts" 
 did not put up prices. Prices went up all over the 
 world and from the same cause, namely, the in- 
 creased demand for goods because of the increased 
 wage-payments to labor. Where would be the 
 equity in compelling the "trusts" to sell their goods 
 cheaper than others sold their goods 1 ? Prices had 
 gone up and, for what they bought to work into 
 their goods, they were compelled to pay higher 
 prices. Who should say that they had not the 
 same right to get back in the price of what they 
 sold the higher price they paid for what they 
 bought? 
 
 The wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, by its 
 learned counsel, also says that the "trusts" sell 
 abroad cheaper than at home? Your Honors, since 
 when were the laws repealed which gave people, 
 "trusts" or not "trusts," the right to sell their 
 property at any price they pleased? Are those 
 who sneeze when the Importing Trust takes snuff 
 willing to have the Importing Trust step into their 
 private affairs and fix the price also at which 
 they shall sell their goods? This criticism of 
 the "trusts" for selling where they please, when 
 they please, and at what prices they please, so 
 long as our laws remain unchanged, is criminal 
 impertinence which every decent American citi- 
 zen should resent. There is one thing certain, 
 your Honors : If you could inspect the brain-cells 
 of people who take kindly to this arraignment of
 
 214 
 
 the ''trusts," you would find them very much like 
 the brain-cells of many other people, commonly 
 called "pickpockets," who also have derived the 
 notion from some source that they have a right to 
 take the property of others at their own appraisal. 
 But about this "selling cheaper abroad than at 
 home" again: Do the disciples and followers of 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, imagine 
 that "the trusts" sell abroad at lower prices than 
 they must? What is it that has so suddenly 
 breathed into the monster "trust" the soul of a 
 Sister of Charity? Surely, we should clap our 
 hands and stamp our feet with joy at the sight of 
 such a sinner come to repentance and good works. 
 But look at the consistency of the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, your Honors! From one 
 side of its mouth it is lashing the "trusts" for 
 selling so cheaply abroad; while from the other 
 side it is barking for a "revision" of the tariff- 
 dike in order that these same "trusts" may get 
 cheaper raw materials from abroad in order to 
 sell abroad their finished products even at lower 
 prices than they are now asking! Isn't the fabric 
 of its feigning altogether too diaphanous 1 for suc- 
 cessful deception, your Honors? Isn't this a Walk- 
 into-my-Parlor-s'aid-the-Spider-to-the-Fly s /o n g 
 which the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust is 
 piping to the country, your Honors? Look! It 
 says the dike must be "revised" because the 
 "trusts" are selling things too cheap abroad ! And 
 it says the dike must be "revised" because the 
 "trusts" are not selling things cheap enough 
 abroad! The point upon which the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, forever fixes its gaze is the 
 tariff-dike which to a certain moderate extent 
 only, dams out of the country the goods of the
 
 215 
 
 Importing Trust; and for every ill which it dis- 
 covers to be hurting the dear American people its 
 prescription is "revision." Isn't the wily plaintiff 
 too thin, your Honors? Now your Honors, if it 
 were any of the people's business at what price 
 any citizen of the United States' of America sold 
 his goods either at home or abroad, the dear peo- 
 ple could stop the "trusts" from selling cheaper 
 abroad than at home by putting an export tariff 
 on the goods thus sold, making the tariff equal 
 to the difference between the price at home and 
 the price abroad for the same thing. This could 
 be done without smashing the dike and drowning 
 the country; by this means covetous citizens, who 
 sell their labor in the American market from twice 
 to ten times as high as they could sell it abroad, 
 would have cooled at least one cause of their palm- 
 itching. But, after all, the price at which the 
 "trusts" sell abroad is the market price abroad 
 for such things; and what they sell at home is 
 their market price at home. If it is wrong for the 
 "trusts" to get market prices abroad, Is it right 
 for the Importing Trust to get market prices here 
 and for workers who join the Importing Trust 
 crusade against the "trusts" to get market wages 
 at home? Where are we, any way, your Honors, 
 in this casuistic confusion? 
 
 One point more as to selling abroad cheaper 
 than at home, your Honors: You have heard of 
 our department store bargain counters, have you 
 not, your Honors? Upon these bargain counters 
 are odds and ends of goods sold far below their 
 ordinary price. Are these bargain counters' un- 
 huvful and is it wrong thus to sell when, where, 
 and how you can surpluses that might otherwise 
 remain unsold? Or is it wrong, your Honors, to
 
 216 
 
 "clear out" a summer's stock in order to make way 
 for a winter's display? Should we be bound to 
 the same prices in all respects, your Honors, and 
 can no circumstances, contingencies, or emergen- 
 cies justify one's selling to Tom cheaper than he 
 already has sold to Dick or Harry? Should our 
 department stores be forbidden to have "sales," 
 during which, mayhap, they sell the same goods 
 to-day for half the price of yesterday? Now, your 
 Honors, if it is lawful for our "trusts" thus to have 
 "bargain counters" and "sales" at home, by what 
 rule is it unlawful for them to have "sales" and 
 "bargain counters" abroad? What is it that 
 learned counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust remarks, your Honors'? Ah, he says 
 that our people, having nursed these "trusts" to 
 life by tariff impositions, have a right to insist 
 upon receiving the benefit of the lowest prices at 
 which the "trusts" sell. But, your Honors, the 
 learned counsel does not notice the fact that the 
 tariff-dike is absolutely impartial and shelters not 
 here and there a "trust" but the whole people; 
 and if the "trusts" get higher prices at home than 
 abroad it is because they have to pay the people 
 higher prices' than the people could get abroad. 
 Isn't it fair to get back as much as you give? If 
 the "trusts" must reduce their prices to where 
 they would stand if there were no tariff -dike, ought 
 not the people to reduce their wages, too, to what 
 they would get if they competed with the world 
 outside? Is not sauce for the goose also sauce 
 for the gander, your Honors? 
 
 Right in connection with this matter, your 
 Honors, we want to illustrate to you once more 
 the subtle ways in which these wily plaintiffs, 
 the Importing and Exporting Trusts, attack tho
 
 217 
 
 tariff-dike, in the interest of their respective 
 pockets. The illustration is furnished by a tariff 
 deliverance by a Congressman, Hon. Samuel W. 
 McCall, who is put down in the World Almanac 
 as hailing from Winchester, Massachusetts, born 
 in Pennsylvania, educated at Dartmouth College, 
 by profession a lawyer and in politics a Republi- 
 can. At any rate he is a firm member of the Im- 
 porting Trust, judging from his article in the Cen- 
 tury for October, 1907, entitled "Outlook for Tar- 
 iff Reform." In that article he says: 
 
 "In certain articles of prime necessity, great combina- 
 tions have destroyed internal competition" 
 
 a statement, to begin with, your Honors', which 
 is absolutely false. There is not a single "combi- 
 nation" in this country which has even begun to 
 destroy "internal competition." The gentleman 
 who said this was looking through Importing-Trust 
 spectacles colored blood red. But to continue: 
 
 "have destroyed internal competition and with refer- 
 ence to such articles the tariff wall serves the purpose of 
 shutting out the succor that might come from abroad." 
 
 Yes, your Honors. We believe he must have 
 been educated at Dartmouth and have drawn in 
 with the milk of his alma mater great, soul-filling 
 drafts of inspiration about the "markets' of the 
 world." Continuing : 
 
 "Those who are interested in that sort of a discourse 
 may discuss the genealogy of the trusts, but the man 
 whose pockets the law has just helped monopoly to pick 
 cares little whether the tariff is called the mother or the 
 grandmother of the trusts." 
 
 Said bravely, your Honors. But we think the World 
 Almanac must have omitted one McCall ; for there
 
 218 
 
 seems to be two. This could not have been Hon. 
 Samuel W. McCall, marked "R" and said to hail 
 from Massachusetts. The one who wrote these 
 words must hail from Mississippi and be the con- 
 gressional understudy of John Sharp Williams. 
 Continuing : 
 
 "It matters little to him whether the law creates the 
 implements of plunder or whether it seizes the victim and 
 delivers him over bound for the operation." 
 
 This sounds more like a Democratic stump 
 speech against protection than like a serious con- 
 tribution to a reputable magazine, your Honors. 
 We have all heard precisely these same words be- 
 fore many, many, many times; but from people 
 who did not masquerade either as Republicans 
 or Protectionists. Continuing: 
 
 "But the fact cannot be doubted that, in some lines of 
 manufacture in which we are able to compete and do 
 compete with foreign producers in their own or neutral 
 markets, a combination, in the absence of internal com- 
 petition, is able to require the American consumer to pay 
 the full foreign price with the duty added. In such a 
 case, the simple effect of the duty is to make it necessary 
 for the consumer to pay tribute to the manufacturer." 
 
 Your Honors, we have observed that this man 
 is a lawyer. We would not like to know the size 
 of the retainer paid him by the Importing Trust 
 to plead its case so eloquently. But in writing 
 such stuff as this, he smashes himself all to pieces 
 as even a pretended protectionist. He evidently 
 belongs in the coterie of President Roosevelt and 
 the rest of the German Agreement crowd. He does 
 not believe in living up to the very weak and di- 
 luted protection promises of the Republican plat- 
 forms. They promise the American workman a 
 tariff, not that will give him his own domestic
 
 219 
 
 market as against all coiners, but one which will 
 give him as good a show to fight for what is al- 
 ready his own as the alien abroad has to take it 
 from him. The "duty" was promised to be great 
 enough to equal the difference between American 
 and foreign wages. That is, so high that those 
 who bought imported goods in this market should 
 pay at least the foreign market price, and the 
 "duty added." This is what our brave Congress- 
 man kicks about. He does not want to pay the 
 foreign price "with the duty added." Living in 
 America, getting American fees and American com- 
 forts generally, he wants to buy foreign goods at 
 foreign prices, with the duty "not added;" that 
 is \vith the dike "revised" and such as he allowed 
 to pay others' foreign wages, while getting Ameri- 
 can wages themselves. But 'our Congressman 
 will say : "You don't understand my point, which 
 is that the manufacturers are our protege's; we 
 make a tariff for them to work behind because 
 they can't work without it. We give them the 
 privilege of getting higher prices here than they 
 ran abroad and they ought to reciprocate the 
 favor and give us lower prices here than they get 
 abroad; or, at any rate just as low prices as they 
 get abroad. But now, since they have gotten 
 cockey and are charging us higher prices than 
 they got abroad, I say tumble down the tariff 
 dike and make them work for us as cheap as they 
 work for foreigners or go out of business." Your 
 Honors, this is about the gist of what our Con- 
 gressman would say. But he is about as thick as a 
 lath and as broad as floor-crack in the way he un- 
 derstands this tariff question. We put a tariff on 
 foreign goods for the benefit of the whole coun- 
 try and as a general principle, not as a favor to
 
 220 
 
 any manufacturer, either in Massachusetts 'or 
 Mississippi. We want done here the business rep- 
 resented by the money piled up in the mill. We 
 want employed here the people employed in mak- 
 ing the goods which our people want; and we 
 want the wages paid for making goods of that 
 kind spent by our workers right in our own stores 
 here and not by alien laborers in stores abroad; 
 and because some American manufacturer sells 
 his goods in a weak foreign market at a weak for- 
 eign price, we don't want to make blithering idiots 
 of ourselves and smash all this American business 
 with a smashed tariff dike. Nobody but a vas- 
 sal of the Importing Trust would waste his breath 
 with any such drivel. 
 
 And, then, our Congressman paints himself all 
 over "Free Trader" in bilious green letters, when 
 he utters the kind of nonsense he uttered in the 
 October Century. If he believes in smashing the 
 dike to drown out the fellow who can sell cheaper 
 abroad than at home and does so sell, he believes 
 also in doing the same thing to the fellow who 
 could sell cheaper abroad than at home, and don't 
 so sell for fear Congressman McCall will "peach" 
 on him and get Congress to rip down the tariff- 
 dike and drown out the whole country. For, as 
 we have said, we do not take it that Congress- 
 man McCall would destroy an American manu- 
 facturer's American market just for revenge or 
 for mere punishment, so the manufacturer would 
 not do it again; but only because, in his opinion, 
 selling abroad as cheap or cheaper than at home 
 would prove that the infant industry had grown 
 up and no longer needed the nursing bottle of 
 "Protection." And that would be proven just as 
 well by getting President Roosevelt's Bureau of
 
 221 
 
 Corporations to look over the manufacturer's 
 books and, finding that the manufacturer if he 
 chose, could sell abroad cheaper than at home, 
 and still not go out of business, as 1 it would be 
 proven by the fact that he had already done so. 
 So that, if Congressman McCall is not talking for 
 a fee or for buncombe, the first thing he will do 
 when he gets the congressional floor will be to in- 
 troduce a bill authorizing and directing said Bu- 
 reau of Corporations to sit in judgment on the 
 profits of all our manufacturers, to the end that a 
 law may be passed stripping of tariff protection 
 all manufacturers who if they wanted to, could 
 sell abroad cheaper than at home. 
 
 If he does not do this, another good man will 
 have been snared in by malefactors' of great wealth 
 or by the conspiracy of rich men. 
 
 When you stop to think of it, your Honors, the 
 logical result of Mr. McCall's reasoning would be 
 to take off the tariff on everything the American 
 producers of which sold any of it at all abroad. 
 Because, to sell abroad, whether at a lower or a 
 higher price than at home, proves that foreign 
 competition is 1 powerless not only to pay ocean 
 freights and take our domestic market from us, 
 but, paying no freights, to keep us out of the for- 
 eign market. Now, Mr. McCall would say, "What 
 is the use of your dike if the foreigner can't keep 
 you out of his o\vu market?" Well, we export 
 an infinite variety of goods in small quantities, 
 sweepings of our shops, etc., besides some things 
 like raw cotton, wheat, apples, provisions, etc., 
 etc., in very large quantities, and if we followed 
 Mr. McCall's rule, the tariff would come off of all 
 these things we export, no matter if they were 
 only sweepings sold at auction rates.
 
 Another thing, your Honors. Mr. McCall does 
 not claim that these wicked combinations of which 
 he speaks in the October Century are paying their 
 workers only European wages. The fact is that 
 they are paying American wages, which, in some 
 branches are from three to four times as high as 
 European wages. Now what Mr. McCall is root- 
 ing for with all his might is that these manufactu- 
 rers should have an opportunity to pay foreign 
 wages on goods sold in this market. For, take 
 off the tariff, and our manufacturers would cut 
 down wages here to the level of foreign wages, 
 plus the expense of getting goods from abroad to 
 this market; if they did not, they would not be 
 business men. For all it would cost them to get 
 their work done at foreign wages would be those 
 wages plus the expense of getting goods here from 
 abroad. Because our manufacturers could sup- 
 ply their trade with ready-made goods straight 
 from abroad, either from their own plants already 
 located others, or by contract with foreign manu- 
 facturers. A great many manufacturers are do- 
 ing it in part now. And this accounts for our 
 great importations of partly manufactured arti- 
 cles, which is only a partial development of a 
 business which, with the tariff-dike "revised," 
 would find its full development very soon. We 
 think it likely that Congressman McCall, in writ- 
 ing as he does, is pleading the case of certain 
 Massachusetts manufacturers who already buy 
 ready made in Europe, at the European wage- 
 level, parts of their product which they assemble 
 here; but who, seeing the great profit in thus 
 iretting a part of their work done in Europe, are 
 anxious to have the dike "revised" so they can 
 got it all done there, and resolve themselves into
 
 223 
 
 mere assembling establishments, or, the parts also 
 being assembled in Europe, into mere American 
 selling agencies of their European-made goods. 
 Now, the only thing in the world which prevents 
 this thing being done wholly and not in part, as 
 now, is the very weak tariff-dike which we already 
 have. This illustrates what we are trying to im- 
 press upon this Court, and that is 1 that this coun- 
 try is and always has been exploited by these 
 wily plaintiffs, who are mere peddlers after all, 
 having no love of country or home, ready to be 
 changed from Exporter to Importer or vice versa, 
 at a moment's notice; that is, from a builder of 
 American factories to a destroyer of American fac- 
 tories, in accordance with the showing of their 
 profit and loss account. They are two practically 
 dumb and dead forces, like the force of gravita- 
 tion, arising as they both do from the instinct of 
 self-preservation. And what we are pleading for, 
 your Honors, is that the same force which drives 
 these wily plaintiffs into such tremendous activity, 
 piling up wealth, as it does, within a compar- 
 atively narrow circle, simply by fomenting the 
 sentiments and prejudices of the people to adopt 
 s'uch laws as, by destructive competition, will 
 segregate our national wealth from the workers, 
 and gather it in the hands of the members of these 
 wily plaintiffs that this same force which works 
 such marvels for these wily plaintiffs' may be har- 
 nessed to our own national and communal reaper 
 and pile up wealth for the widest possible distri- 
 bution among the people of this nation. This is 
 what would happen, if we raised a dike so high 
 on the one hand and a dam so high on the other 
 that no American jobs would leak away for for- 
 eign workers to do to the lowering of our wages,
 
 224 
 
 and no American-made goods, the natural property 
 of those who made them, would leak away to for- 
 eign countries, to our impoverishment in goods 
 and the increase of our prices. 
 
 It seems, your Honors, as if, after all, this mat- 
 ter of punishing manufacturers for selling abroad 
 cheaper than at home had nothing to do with the 
 necessity of the tariff dike. We raise tariff dikes, 
 not for individuals, but for the country at large. 
 The business made by the wants of this country 
 is the property of its citizens. It is yours, your 
 Honors, and ours. To destroy the dike is to dis- 
 perse this business abroad. Whatever any one or 
 any hundred and one manufacturers do with their 
 goods abroad has nothing to do with the case. We 
 ought not to destroy our country to get square 
 with individuals who, it is rumored, are getting 
 a good thing by manufacturing here. What would 
 you think, your Honors, of the Hollanders, if, be- 
 cause some provision-dealer there handed across 
 their dikes to here and there a foreign boatman on 
 the outside rancid butter at lower prices than he 
 asked for good butter from his own countrymen, 
 the Hollanders should avenge themselves by tear- 
 ing down all their dikes and letting the sea swal- 
 low up their country. Congressman McCall is 
 too absurd, your Honors. He ought not to expect 
 sensible people to believe for a moment that thb 
 real reason why he wants the tariff-dike destroyed 
 is to get square with the wicked manufacturers. 
 
 Ah, your Honors, counsel for the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, asks the indulgence of the 
 Court to make another interruption of our argu- 
 ment. He says that while, by the tariff-dike, prices 
 of goods here are hoisted too high the wages of the 
 people are not affected by the tariff-dike but are
 
 225 
 
 fixed by the richness of the country's natural re- 
 sources and the ease with which "raw materials" 
 can be worked into wealth. He says in this regard 
 America has no peer; and just as long as the 
 natural treasures of the country are "economically 
 utilized and safe-guarded from vandalism" the 
 American pay-roll will be the largest in the world. 
 Ah, your Honors, if "America has no peer" in its 
 stock of cheap raw materials, why does the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, turn heaven and 
 earth, backed with all the might of the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Exporting Trust, to have the dike "re- 
 vised/' so raw materials can be admitted free for 
 use in Exporting-Trust products in "conquering 
 the markets of the world?" We believe we have 
 asked this question before and do not remember 
 having an answer from the learned counsel whose 
 interruption we are now replying to. 
 
 What does he now say, your Honors? That the 
 "superiority of our labor and its greater skill and 
 efficiency supplement our raw materials in es- 
 tablishing a pay-roll without an equal on earth," 
 and a pay-roll which is in no wise indebted to the 
 "Chinese Wall" of a tariff which girdles the coun- 
 try. That is distilled honey for American labor, 
 your Honors'. With our skill in cerebral inspec- 
 tion, your Honors, we verily believe that, if the 
 learned counsel really believes that statement, we 
 would find a bunch of honey bees occupying his 
 bump of causality instead of virile brain-cells. 
 But he does not believe it, your Honors. It is all 
 in his 1 fee and not in his head this argument 
 which simply makes ducks and drakes of the old 
 economic law relating to the ratio between supply 
 and demand. You know, your Honors, fully as 
 well as we, what that old law is. With demand
 
 226 
 
 and supply equal, your price remains the same. 
 With demand larger than supply, prices rise. 
 With supply larger than demand, prices fall. 
 That, in its essence is all there is of it; and it 
 is just as true as the multiplication table. Let 
 two customers bid for the same supply, and the 
 one who gives the higher price gets the goods. 
 Prices rise. Let two sellers offer to one and the 
 same customer the same goods, and the seller 
 sells who will sell the lower. Prices fall. This 
 rule applies to men, women, and children selling 
 their labor in the same way that it applies to 
 other people selling goods. And yet counsel for 
 the wily plaintiff says that the tariff -dike, which 
 prevents the American supply of labor, amount- 
 ing to about 20,000,000 hands, large and small, 
 from being increased to 200,000,000 million hands, 
 without any increase whatever in demand, has no 
 effect in maintaing American wages! We do not 
 like to be disrespectful, your Honors, but we would 
 much like the opportunity to measure our learned 
 brother's head that is, if he really believes his 
 own statement. We have explained to you before 
 the disparity between American and foreign wages. 
 Our learned brother did not dispute us, when we 
 fixed the outside world at wage-20 and our own 
 inside world at wage-100; and we believe that he 
 agrees with us that, for all practical purpose our 
 figures are near enough to the fact. Now, your 
 Honors, what would happen if, at the door of 
 some factory of ours where they paid their work- 
 ers $2 a day apiece, some cold morning there pre- 
 sented themselves a body of workers as to num- 
 bers and skill, exactly like the workers inside, who 
 offered to work for 40 cents a day apiece. Suppose 
 the pay-roll of the mill were now f 200 per day, and
 
 227 
 
 its owner could hire this new gang of men at a 
 total of $40 a day by what rule of business would 
 you say he went by if he did not go to his workers 
 and say, "Either you will have to work for 40c a 
 day apiece, or I must hire these other fellows at 
 that price. I cannot afford to lose $160 a day 
 because of my kindness of heart?" But put our 
 whole country in the place of the single mill, 
 your Honors, and let the mill-owner be repre- 
 sented by the national sentiment which has con- 
 sented to dike "revision." Suppose the dike has 
 been "revised" and no longer prevents competition 
 between the worker at wage-20 in the outside 
 world and the worker at wage-100 on our inside 
 world. There is now no sentiment to prefer do- 
 mestic workers at wage-100 to foreign workers at 
 wage-20; for the tariff-dike was the only form in 
 which the people expressed that sentiment and 
 they have now done away with the dike. So now 
 it is "Every man for himself ajid the devil take 
 the hindmost!" What happens your Honors? 
 Does the country consent to buy with its savings 
 labor at wage-100 when labor is offered by the Im- 
 porting Trust in the form of all kinds 1 of goods at 
 an average of wage-20? Well, your Honors, in 
 order that what counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, says, could be true, namely, that 
 wages are neither increased, maintained, nor de- 
 creased, because of the presence or absence of the 
 tariff-dike, it would be necessary that the nation, 
 as ono mill-owner, should throw away the differ- 
 ence between the cost at wage-100 of our manu- 
 factured goods, say f 17,000,000,000 (their cost to us 
 in 1906) and their cost at wage-20 or $3,400,000,- 
 000, that is, a difference of $13,600,000,000. Now 
 curiously enough, if we buy the same amount we
 
 228 
 
 bought in 1906, our present savings bank fund is 
 just about enough to buy a year's supply of manu- 
 factures at cost-20. We might live a year with the 
 dike down and enjoy the riot of cheapness per- 
 mitted by the incoming of foreign goods at cost-20. 
 But after that we w r ould have to work or starve; 
 for our savings 1 would be gone into the hands of 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. And will 
 counsel for the wily plaintiff say that, facing star- 
 vation, our wage-producers, if they desired to get 
 back their jobs which then would be in the 
 possession of foreign wage-producers all over the 
 world, would not be compelled to work at wage- 
 20? What in the world would force w r ages back 
 to their former level here but a new tariff-dike 
 which would shut out the deluge of foreign sur- 
 plus products and so reduce the supply of labor 
 to the size of the demand here? 
 
 Your Honors, we appeal to you whether or not, 
 under the circumstances we have described, or 
 even if the outside world would not work for less 
 than wage-90 instead of wage-20, there would be 
 any way to prevent our own w r ages falling to wage- 
 90, except the erection of a dike damming out 
 wage-90 products. 
 
 After all, your Honors, the dike, is merely a 
 coffer-dam in the great world-wide sea within which 
 our own people can labor, so that wages and prices 
 may be fixed by the ratio of local supply to local 
 demand, without reference to the outside world. 
 Sweep away the dike or the coffer-dam and our 
 wages become a part of the one confluent sea w r hich 
 seeks the same level the world around; and we 
 would eventually be forced down with the rest of 
 the world to about wage-20. 
 
 And wage-20 in our latitudes would not sus- 
 tain life.
 
 229 
 
 We think, your Honors, that, whatever counsel 
 for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust may 
 pretend to the contrary, we have convinced him 
 that the wage-producers of this country have noth- 
 ing to say against the "trusts" selling more cheap- 
 ly abroad than at home. We think he will agree 
 with us that, if the "trusts" get higher prices here 
 than they get abroad, the workers or wage-produ- 
 cers, or in the language of the learned counsel for 
 the wily plaintiff, the "consumers," get wages as 
 much higher than the wages they could get abroad 
 as the "trusts" get prices higher than they get 
 abroad; and that, if it is wrong for the "trusts" 
 to get higher prices at home than they get abroad, 
 it is equally wrong for the "consumers" to get 
 higher wages at home than they can get abroad. 
 And if the tariff-dike prevents competition from 
 abroad in our markets' and enables the "trusts" to 
 get prices from the "consumers" higher than prices 
 abroad, the same tariff-dike prevents competition 
 in our market from foreign labor and enables the 
 "consumers" to get wages higher than they could 
 get abroad. But, your Honors, why should coun- 
 sel for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, be 
 thus partial in his championship? Why should 
 he be more indignant because our "trusts" sell 
 more cheaply abroad than he is because all other 
 countries "trusts" sell more cheaply in our mar- 
 ket here than they do in their own domestic mar- 
 kets? For that is what they do all around the 
 ring, your Honors. Is it not tit for tat, your 
 Honors, and is it not right that, when these for- 
 eign "trusts" attacking the home market of our 
 "trusts" with lower prices than the foreign 
 "trusts" get at home, our "trusts" should balance 
 the account by attacking the home markets of
 
 230 
 
 these foreign ''trusts" with lower prices than our 
 "trusts" get at home? 
 
 It strikes us, your Honors, that the entire ar- 
 gument of counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust about the high prices of our 
 "trusts" is weak. Who are these so-called "trusts," 
 your Honors? Simply the whole force of Ameri- 
 can Production. Together they make up the en- 
 tire fabric of industrial activity in this country. 
 For it should be remembered that the word "trust" 
 employed in the sense intended by the Importing 
 Trust has no application to any particular in- 
 dustry in this country. The term is one of odium 
 selected by the Importing Trust by which to brand 
 every American industry whose competition it 
 fears. It is applied without discrimination to any 
 branch of American Production which the Import- 
 ing Trust particularly wishes to destroy. The 
 "trusts" are American Production, and American 
 Production is simply the whole active business 
 and industrial country. Therefore, when the Im- 
 porting Trust accuses the "trusts" of raising 
 prices, it accuses all the industries in the country 
 of raising prices; and the inference is that prices 
 are raised arbitrarily from pure "greed" as the Im- 
 porting Trust describes the asking of a profit on 
 the part of any block of American capital. Now, 
 your Honors, we repeat that this rise in price has 
 been a general one; and we inquire whether or 
 not it is sensible to suppose that the American 
 "trusts" have raised prices merely for fun of pay- 
 ing the high prices themselves. For all prices have 
 risen; and the "trusts," in their various branches 
 of work, are obliged to pay these very prices them- 
 selves for the materials they buy to make up into 
 their own sorts of goods; and among these ma-
 
 231 
 
 terials so raised in price is the most costly 
 material which goes into goods, viz., human labor. 
 
 A's a maatter of fact, your Honors, those who 
 have any business experience at all know that the 
 .ast thing any American producer wants to see is 
 a rise in prices. That means a fall in sales and 
 a corresponding fall in profits. In competition 
 throughout this great country, a rise in the price 
 of any article, whether of food for the wage-produ- 
 cer or material for the property-producer, brings 
 uncertainty and perplexity for the property-pro- 
 ducer. He does not know how his comeptitors are 
 going to deal with the matter in order to balance 
 the increased cost of producing without handicap- 
 ping their goods' with a higher price in the market. 
 Instead of being the fiends who make prices high, 
 your Honors, our "trusts" are timorous spirits to 
 whom high prices are vicious demons. 
 
 You all know, your Honors, how the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, breathes discontent into 
 the hearts of our wage-producers by showing sched- 
 ules of prices which have risen while wages have 
 been rising, and saying that the rise in prices more 
 than balances the rise in wages and that the wage- 
 producer, if he had to pay merely the old prices, 
 would be better off with his lower wages. Your 
 Honors, this 1 is one of the most cruel things to 
 which the Importing Trust is driven in its struggle 
 to block American Production. Its argument is 
 a cheat. It quotes the percentage of increase in 
 wages and over against it the increase in prices; 
 and because one percentage is greater than the 
 other, tries to make the wage-producer think he 
 is being made poor by the higher prices. The 
 trick of which the Importing Trust is guilty in 
 this move would hardly do credit to a patent-
 
 282 
 
 medicine vender under his smoking torch in a pub- 
 lic square. The hole in the cheese is in the fact 
 that the wages at their higher rate apply for every 
 hour in the day and for every possible working 
 day in the year; whereas the higher rate for food 
 applies only to three meals a day for no more 
 days at the higher wages than at the lower; and 
 the higher rate for clothing applies merely to two 
 or three suits a year; and the higher rent only to 
 the same shelter that was necessary at the lower 
 wages and the shorter time. In other words, your 
 Honors, the same items being considered, from the 
 year's total earnings deduct the year's total ex- 
 penses, and you are left with a very much larger 
 balance for the savings bank or for comforts, than 
 you were left with when the old prices were de- 
 ducted from the old wages. It is a very cheap 
 trick, your Honors, which the Importing Trust 
 shows us here. And a further proof of its wicked- 
 ness is the fact that our savings banks now hold 
 nearly four billions of dollars saved by people 
 working at the wages brought by the mended dike ; 
 and the flood of savings is still pouring into the 
 banks all ready to flow backwards into the hands 
 of the Importing Trust when it succeeds with dike 
 "revision." 
 
 Your Honors, we know that the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, has a favorite spear which 
 knows no brother in saying that, if you shut the 
 country up with a very high-tariff dike, you aban- 
 don all our people to the rapacity we believe the 
 word is "rapacity," your Honors to the "rapacity" 
 of the "trusts," because they have already throt- 
 tled competition and are "screwing up" auf- 
 schmiiben, we believe the Staats Zeitung says, 
 obeying the Gorman steamship lines and attack-
 
 233 
 
 ing our dike at any rate, are "screwing up" the 
 prices and "exacting" and "extorting" and a lot 
 of other horrid things from the American people. 
 In the first place, your Honors, if the "trusts" 
 are breaking any law, they should be restrained. 
 But if they are merely selling their own property 
 at their own prices, the same as you and we would 
 do, your Honors, these people who are thus at- 
 tacking them should be punished for sedition and 
 conspiracy. For we should never forget, your 
 Honors 1 , that we are all poor creatures who have, 
 at the very best, but very weak if not wicked stores 
 of brain-cells and that the "trusts" are no more 
 likely to get our money by making prices too high 
 than we are to get the "trusts' " money by making 
 prices too low. The law is there to determine this 
 very thing, viz., whether the "trusts" are trying 
 to filch our property or we are trying to filch the 
 "trusts 1 ' " property. The "trusts" are just as good 
 and no better than we are. We are just as bad 
 and no worse than they are. When it comes to 
 talking of "greed," "voracity," "extorting," "ex- 
 acting," and such things, honors are easy. Now 
 it seems to us, your Honors, that, under these cir- 
 cumstances, we and the "trusts" might better call 
 it a standoff. That is, we might better let the 
 "trusts" alone to deal with their property in the 
 way the law allows and not cry out "extortionist" 
 when it figures out that, to come out even, it will 
 have to get a little more money for its goods to- 
 day, with its running expenses higher, than it did 
 Yostorday, before the rise in their expense account; 
 and we will pay their prices or not as we please; 
 and we dare say that, in exchange for this cour- 
 tesy on our part, the "trusts 1 " will be quite willing 
 for us to fix our own price on jroods we sell to
 
 them, which they will pay or not as they please. 
 For, your Honors, we each have the privilege of 
 buying the other's goods or leaving them. If we 
 don't want their goods at their price and they will 
 not sell at our offer, we can leave the goods in 
 their store; and if they don't want our goods at 
 our price and we will not sell at their offer, they 
 can leave the goods in our store. There are plenty 
 of other stores for us and for them to buy goods 
 in, the Importing Trust and its list of American 
 "trusts" and "combinations" to the contrary not- 
 withstanding. Do you know what your Honors? 
 This country would be overturned in a minute by 
 a dollar watch if the prices of the "trusts" were 
 not prices we could refuse to pay and still live 
 and be good citizens and not common hoodlums, 
 by loud bawling trying to get somebody else's pro- 
 fit. 
 
 The fact that we worry along so prosperously, 
 fill the savings baks so full of our savings, and our 
 stomachs so full of sirloin steak, is proof that we 
 who vilify the "trusts" because they ask a price 
 which makes it as profitable for them to sell as 
 for us to buy, have a bad case of itching palm. 
 We need a change of heart and a dose of the Ten 
 Commandments ; or we ought some day to land in 
 jail. 
 
 Now, your Honors, one more word on this head. 
 The only respectable criterion of whether the 
 "trusts" or we are robbing somebody is the law 
 of the land. Before we howl about the "trusts" 
 robbing us, we might better go to the law in the 
 case and see whether, in the penal code, what the 
 "trusts" are doing is described as "robbery." If 
 it is, we should file our complaint with the dis- 
 trict attorney and furnish him proofs. Then the
 
 235 
 
 "trusts" can be punished in due course. The law 
 will test the question and classify the doings of 
 the "trusts'" as they deserve. But if, while the 
 penal code contains nothing which condemns their 
 doing's, we, without making any orderly complaint 
 at all, go up and down the land roaring out against 
 "predatory wealth," "malefactors of great wealth," 
 and "bad corporations," charging the "trusts" with 
 "extorting" and "exacting" things which they have 
 no right to, we convict ourselves of manufactur- 
 ing crimes 1 to fit those whom we wish to destroy 
 in the public mind, of playing the cheapest kind 
 of politics, and, generally, of such conduct as ex- 
 poses us to the suspicion of meaning to blackmail 
 the "trusts." Especially is 1 this true, if, occupying 
 any position of power, we have it within our reach, 
 by means which will not drag us into the matter, 
 to persecute "trusts'" who refuse to be "touched." 
 
 Your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, says that but for foreign competition, the 
 kind that lines the pockets of the Importing Trust, 
 all the producers in this country would unite in 
 a great big "trust" and choke us all to death with 
 high prices. That sounds either like what some fel- 
 low says who either knows nothing about business 
 or who thinks those he says it to know nothing about 
 business. But, your Honors', those who know about 
 business and speak to others also supposed to 
 know about business, say it is not because the 
 "trusts" want to raise prices that they are form- 
 ed the "trusts'" are merely large corporations, 
 your Honors, usually made by consolidating two 
 or more smaller ones it is not because the "trusts" 
 want to raise prices 1 that they are formed, but be- 
 cause prices want to raise them so high that they 
 would be ii total loss if they rose. In other words,
 
 236 
 
 "trusts" are not formed until, from competition, 
 conditions are such that it is only by consolida- 
 tion and the reduction of expenses by the eco- 
 nomies 1 which come from buying and selling in the 
 gross, that they can put out goods at prices low 
 enough to keep them in business. So that the exist- 
 ence of "trusts," your Honors, is a sign of economy 
 and of the fact that the public is getting the goods 
 of the "trusts" cheaper than before the "trusts" 
 were formed. This fact is notoriously true of the 
 celebrated Standard Oil Company. Their pro- 
 ducts are retailed at prices but a fraction of what 
 they were before this 1 tremendous system was form- 
 ed and all its thousand economies effected. Kero- 
 sene selling from 12 to 16 cents a gallon should 
 make any one blush to "kick" at the Standard 
 Oil Company as a monopolist. Its product is 
 carried hundreds of miles, highly refined, and then 
 sold to the consumer at a lower price per gallon 
 than milk, which the farmer a mile away brings 
 you daily. 
 
 In our consideration of the "trusts," there is 
 one thing to be remembered, your Honors, and 
 that is that the great majority of them are very 
 conservative business institutions and that they 
 represent capital secured by bonds which must 
 earn interest, and stock upon which dividends 
 should be paid; and that they are limited to those 
 methods which give the surest returns both to the 
 bondholder and the stockholder. Now, your 
 Honors, to secure a proper return for these ob- 
 jects, besides a sinking fund for betterments and 
 repairs, these "trusts" require that their hold on 
 the market shall be steady. Knowing this and 
 what it means to pass dividends or default inter- 
 est, these "trusts" have a sort of horror for shrink-
 
 237 
 
 ages in sales; and the thing most likely to shrink 
 sales is a higher price, which often means a shrink- 
 age in sales out of all proportion to the increase 
 in price. Perhaps there is nothing more unjust 
 than to charge the "trusts" with arbitrarily rais- 
 ing prices. For prices are never raised, except 
 from necessity, arising from increased cost of ma- 
 terials, labor, or running expenses; or, under ex- 
 traordinary circumstances in which demand un- 
 reasonably and perhaps speculatively outruns sup- 
 ply, to check gales and preserve stocks for regular 
 trade. In order to bring proper returns on the 
 great body of capital tied up in their business, 
 above all things the "trusts" need stability and 
 reliability of income; and these things never could 
 be secured by constantly sharpshooting with the 
 public in the matter of prices. 
 
 Your Honors, we should not forget one thing 
 which works against the voluntary making of high 
 prices by the "trusts" ; and that is that prices which 
 leave an extraordinary margin for "trust" divi- 
 dends, cause competition and the loss of some por- 
 tion of the regular trade, so necessary to the peace 
 of mind of the "trusts," in the manner just de- 
 scribed. 
 
 What does counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, say, your Honors? That with the 
 tariff-dike raised high the American "trusts" throt- 
 tle competition within the country by freezing out 
 the small fry and buying in the large fry among 
 thier competitors, and then fix prices to suit them- 
 selves? It seems, your Honors, that counsel for 
 the wily plaintiff will not take our theory of the 
 deadly effect which high prices have upon the in- 
 come of the "trusts." Then, your Honors, we re- 
 ply that the result he speaks of has never yet fol-
 
 238 
 
 lowed; and we have been having protective tariff- 
 dikes in this country for a hundred years and more. 
 It is not true to-day, that in any branch of produc- 
 tion, the "trusts'" have played the octopus. Every 
 "trust'* in this country now has strong competition 
 in the shape of effective plants entirely beyond its 
 control and ready to take advantage of any mistake 
 it makes either in production or in marketing its 
 product. If the "trusts" were making a greater 
 profit than they ought to make, these independent 
 competitors would jump in and force the "trusts" 
 to divide profits with them and the public. 
 
 There is another fact, your Honors, which the 
 wily plaintiff tries hard to keep in the shade; and 
 that is that the tariff-dike is a great importer of 
 foreign capital, if not a great importer of foreign 
 goods. For you all know that there is no tariff 
 on capital, on the one hand, or on labor on the other. 
 The only thing the tariff-dike requires is that capi- 
 tal doing the work of the country shall largely do 
 its work within the country and employ the labor 
 found in the country. That is, that a fair share of 
 the property-production for the country should help 
 wage-production within the country. But this 
 market, thus partially protected for it is by no 
 means fully protected, as our rising imports prove 
 is like a blackberry bush loaded with blackber- 
 ries, such as we found in the pastures when we were 
 boys; and as we boys all flocked to the same bush 
 to get all the berries 1 we could before they were 
 gone, so both capital and labor, the one anxious to 
 benefit by partially-protected prices, the other by 
 partially-protected wages, come flying into this 
 country to produce property on the one hand and 
 wages on the other. But capital conies faster than 
 labor, and by the competition of the inflowing capi-
 
 230 
 
 tal '"the trusts'' are forced to lower prices much 
 faster than labor, by the inflowing tide of immigra- 
 tion, is forced to lower wages. "Why, your Honors, 
 capital has come in so fast in this way and has 
 bucked the "trusts" just American Production, 
 your Honors so strongly that it is startling to see 
 how in this country prices of all manufactured 
 things have fallen in the last fifty years. Formerly 
 England was a monopolist of our market here in a 
 thousand articles 1 ; and she charged us very high 
 prices ; but the tariff-dike brought capital in so fast 
 and the competition between American plants was 
 so sharp that now-a-days, except to a limited extent, 
 England cannot sell here the kind of goods which 
 have been long protected by the dike, because the 
 cost of passing the dike cuts off her profit. On the 
 other hand our wages have risen very much over 
 what they were when England ruled our market; 
 because the immigration of labor is comparatively 
 slow and the increasing demand for labor from im- 
 migrant capital has more than absorbed the immi- 
 grant labor supply. Counsel for the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, may laugh as he pleases and 
 say, in his stage whisper, "Prices fall and wages 
 rise, what a miracle!" But it is no miracle, your 
 Honors; it is merely from the fact that the tariff- 
 dike makes such strong competition here that prop- 
 erty-producers bid against each other on the one 
 hand for labor, and so increase wages; and on the 
 othsr hand for customers, and so reduce prices. 
 And, as we have often said before, this process will 
 keep on, your Honors, and would go on much faster 
 with a dike which, unlike the Dingley fiasco, really 
 protected the market as a whole. But the good 
 work will go on, if the Dingley dike is not "revised" 
 downward but gradually built upward, until prop-
 
 240 
 
 ertyi-prod'ucers have divided between the public 
 and the wage-producers the last cent but the one 
 necessary to keep property-producers here still in 
 business. And there is one thing to take special 
 note of, your Honors; and that is that this immi- 
 grant capital becomes 1 fixed here in plants represent- 
 ing thousands of millions' of dollars ; and, in order 
 to save it, the property-producers will not run away 
 as long as the tariff-dike returns the cost of their 
 materials and labor in this market, together with 
 as great an interest on their invested capital as they 
 could get abroad. For, they will stand by their 
 guns as long as their plants can be saved as going 
 concerns at a value greater than the loss they suf- 
 fer from low prices and high wages. But "revise" 
 the dike downwards, expose them to competition 
 with cost-20 from abroad as against cost-100 at 
 home, and the loss of their capital fixed in plants 
 will be small as compared with the loss of their 
 fluent capital; and they will abandon their plants, 
 gather their fluent capital, fly to lands of cost-20, 
 go into business there and send their wares back 
 here. 
 
 But, your Honors, it does not seem to us 1 rational 
 that our people should overlook the fact lying right 
 before their eyes, that the tariff-dike, not shutting 
 out capital but shutting out goods, is the greatest 
 possible importer of capital, such importation being 
 directly in proportion to the effectiveness of the 
 dike in protecting our home market from foreign 
 competition; and that, in this way, the tariff-dike 
 offsets its crime of being "the mother of Trusts," 
 and so far as opportunity to "extort" and "exact" 
 high prices is 1 concerned leaves the "trusts" in no 
 better shape than they were before. Isn't it singu- 
 lar, your Honors, that, if it is real honest in want-
 
 241 
 
 iiig our "trusts'" to have plenty of competition, the 
 wily plaintiff should so hate our innocent dike? 
 Why, your Honors, with a high-tariff dike, our 
 "trusts" are sure to have competition with all the 
 unfixed capital in the world, down to the level of 
 prices where our property-producers work without 
 salaries and merely get the world-rate of interest 
 on their plants'. Then, where is the trouble and 
 what is it that torments the wily plaintiff so? Sim- 
 ply here, your Honors, that the dike strains out the 
 most of the goods made abroad and lets only capital 
 come freely through. If the capital alone comes 
 through, the competition with our "trusts" is 1 as 
 great; but in that case the commissions of the wily 
 plaintiff are left asoak in the sea of foreign surplus 
 products outside the dike and never rind their way 
 to its strong box. Just a little inspection shows 
 that, as all roads led to Home in olden times, all 
 execrations upon the heads of the "trusts" no mat- 
 ter how the evil thought is disguised, lead to com- 
 missions' in the pocket of the wily plaintiff. 
 
 When all is said and done, your Honors, there is 
 a certain vulgar lawlessness in all this sitting in 
 judgment on the question of whether somebody is 
 charging too high prices. We think we have shown 
 you where it conies in from the point of view of 
 legal right. But when it is placed under the examin- 
 ing glass of cold business analysis, to cry down an- 
 other's prices' on the ground that that other is "ex- 
 torting" and "exacting" a higher price than he 
 should, proves to be simply howling to make some- 
 body give up a portion of his profit to the one mak- 
 ing the kick. Because, your Honors, nobody would 
 buy anything at all, if he did not think it would 
 be more profitable for him to buy it than not,. For 
 in order to make a trade, two minds must meet
 
 242 
 
 that of the buyer with that of the seller. The price 
 fixed between them must be that at which it is more 
 profitable for the buyer to purchase than not ; and 
 at which it is more profitable for the seller to sell 
 than not. Each party must be the judge as to 
 whether the trade will profit him. Now the fact 
 that goods at a given price, whether called high or 
 low, are currently salable, is proof that those who 
 buy are buying at a price which profits them; and 
 if that be the case, when a person sets up a howl 
 at a certain price because he thinks it high, and it 
 is yet the price at which the goods currently sell, 
 what he is trying to do, your Honors, but scare the 
 seller out of his profits? We think this is a correct 
 analysis of the whole situation, your Honors. The 
 only test of whether a price is too high is whether it 
 is so high that the seller can't sell, there being in 
 the trade at that price no profit for the buyer. And 
 when the price reaches that point, the final glut of 
 goods in the market will make the price tumble. 
 Goods are worth what they will bring. To com- 
 plain that prices are too high is to plead the baby 
 act. The fact that you buy them proves that they 
 are not too high for you. It amounts to this, your 
 Honors, that when any fellow cries out against the 
 "trusts" because of their high prices, he is merely 
 trying to get the public to increase his private 
 profits by frightening the other fellow out of a part 
 of his. 
 
 And it is just so with regard to all persons or 
 organizations who, to smash prices, are rooting for 
 tariff "revision" ; they are only trying to make the 
 public grind their private axes. For they are mak- 
 ing a good profit already; or there would be no cur- 
 rent market price of the sort they are raving about ; 
 but they want the other fellow to lower his price
 
 243 
 
 in order that their own may be raised. That, in 
 a pint measure, is the whole philosophy of the rage 
 about "extortions" and "exactions" on the part of 
 the "trusts.' 7 
 
 Your Honors, there is another question we must 
 ask in passing. Why do not all our clergymen, 
 our philanthropists, and our honest political econo- 
 mists throw away all their other plans for the better 
 distribution of wealth and stand for work at liv- 
 ing wages; and to that end root like sensible men 
 for a dike so high that the last pennyworth of work 
 to be done for our people here shall be done by our 
 own wage-producers? Why, your Honors, in the 
 way we have said, from competition of capital with 
 capital for the market on the one hand, and for 
 labor on the other, prices or cost of living will fall, 
 and wages, or the means of living, will rise, until 
 practically, in proportion to their work, the entire 
 product of the country will be distributed among 
 our workers. Would not this secure that wide dis- 
 tribution of wealth, your Honors, for which all 
 these good men sigh, and weep, and pray? What 
 other channel is there but work through which 
 wealth can be thus distributed? If it were distrib- 
 uted arbitrarily it would not stay put, but would 
 find its way back again into the hands of "certain 
 malefactors of great wealth," who have been born 
 with the faculty of making and keeping money. 
 But when people get money by work, they at least 
 have some idea of its value. And with such a sys- 
 tem as we suggest, confining all our country's 
 work to our country's workers, more and more of 
 our people, from decade to decade, would become 
 educated in the management of money and by de- 
 grees we would become a practically homogeneous 
 people, where everybody would be well-fed, well-
 
 244 
 
 clothed, well-housed ian<3 we^l-entertained, and 
 diverted from the sorrows and cares of life, but 
 where nobody could live without work, because peo- 
 ple would be all so well to do that each would have 
 to work for himself, and there would be no loafers 
 and lazybones on the one hand or servants and 
 human chattels on the other. 
 
 Break your dike, compel us with cost-100 to com- 
 pete with cost-20 and fall to the sea-level of wide- 
 world service, and the rich among us would become 
 richer and the poor poorer, until all our land had 
 been left with a few grandees who, like the feudal 
 lords of old in their castles, would practically own 
 the poor. But build your dike to heaven ; shut out 
 the degradation contained in goods the price of 
 which does not return to the worker the fibre that 
 he loses in his work, and your rich will become 
 poorer and your poor richer, until wealth has been 
 evenly distributed throughout your whole popula- 
 tion and there are no 400 rotting in wealth at the 
 top, and no million rotting with poverty at the bot- 
 tom; but all are a brotherhood equal in bodies, 
 minds, souls, and estates. 
 
 Another thing, your Honors, with regard to the 
 civilizing effect of opportunities to work. We ap- 
 peal to the followers of the gentle man of Galilee to 
 help us baffle the powers of darkness which these 
 wily plaintiffs ha,ve so many times let loose upon 
 us and which by means of tariff dike "revision" 
 they are trying to let loose upon us once more. For 
 nearly two thousand years the Christian clergy 
 have been preaching, and, to a reasonable extent, 
 practicing the example of the lowly Nazarene in 
 doing good to those that curse them and despite- 
 fully use and persecute them. But something has 
 been lacking in the program. After all this long
 
 245 
 
 time the world is no better than ever it was before. 
 There are more heathen in the United States to the 
 acre than there are in darkest Africa. The trouble 
 is that all this talking, talking, talking ends only in 
 talking. AYhat we need is good habits. Good talk 
 is too cheap altogether. Good habits are the most 
 valuable things in the world. And good habits can 
 only come from plenty of well paid work. And 
 it seems to us that we remember hearing somewhere 
 in our wanderings an expression something like 
 this: "Faith without work is dead." We do not 
 suppose any of the essay-readers in the pulpits will 
 agree with us that we heard it in just this form. 
 But the form is all right. Faith without work is 
 worse than unborn. It is work that makes habit. 
 And if it is good work it makes good habit. If the 
 Christian ministers could only get it into their 
 heads that there is more sound conversion in an 
 hour's well-paid work honestly done than in a year's 
 sermonizing, they would be on the road to some- 
 thing better for humanity than tent-meeting re- 
 vivals and collections for the missionary field. 
 
 Some of these good gentlemen are getting some- 
 thing in their heads at any rate. They are begin- 
 ing to feel that there is a screw loose somewhere. 
 For instance, a few days ago Bishop Ingram of Lon- 
 don, then at Trinity Church in New York City, said 
 this : 
 
 "Have you ever thought why there are any rich and 
 poor at all? That is the question I have had to face 
 in London. They have asked me how I reconciled the 
 belief in the good God loving all his children with the 
 wretched million in East London who seem abandoned 
 by both God and man. I had to face that question and 
 I have had to face it ever since. There is but one answer 
 the rich minority have what they have merely in trust 
 for all the others. Stewardship, not ownership, is God 'a 
 command to every one of us."
 
 246 
 
 This good man felt there was a screw loose some- 
 where, but he put his finger on the wrong screw. 
 Ownership is ownership, not "stewardship.'' The 
 decent poor do not ask alms, but work. 
 
 And here is another good fellow hunting for that 
 same screw. It is Kev. Johnston Myers, pastor of 
 the Immanuel Baptist Church in Chicago. He 
 says : 
 
 "Sermons and discourses from the pulpit belong to the 
 passing order; they are out of date. Like the crusades, 
 they have had their day in the religious world and now 
 must give way before a new era in the manner of getting 
 people into close association with the church. * * * 
 Mere preaching ceases to hold a large place in the work 
 of the church nowadays. People are tired of it. * * * 
 This is not the age of the sermon. Ours is the age of 
 personal work. * * * The real reason sermons are 
 going out is because we fail to get definite results from 
 the sermon. * * * I do not know of a single member 
 of the church made through the conversions of "Gypsy" 
 Smith, who held a revival here last winter. The soul- 
 winning of the Twentieth Century must be by personal 
 work." 
 
 And he missed the screw, too; but by a narrow 
 margin. If he had meant "personal work" done by 
 and not for the sinner, and had said, "The soul-win- 
 ing of the Twentieth Century must be by giving the 
 sinner plenty of well-paid work," he would have 
 gotten his grip on the very screw to blame. 
 
 Well, your Honors, here is the point: Why is 
 not a high-tariff dike the best means of converting 
 the United States to honesty, temperance and broth- 
 erly love? Why, your Honors, wickedness flows 
 from brain-cells which were arranged in accordance 
 with a certain environment, and wherever that cer- 
 tain environment is present that same arrange- 
 ment of brain-cells follows, and we say the 
 man is wicked. But make such an environment 
 that the wicked arrangement of brain-cells does 
 not follow, and the same man is said to be good.
 
 247 
 
 Now the environment necessary to correct an ar- 
 rangement of brain-cells which makes a man steal, 
 is one where it is just as easy and at least as 
 safe to work as to steal. People who steal be- 
 cause they love stealing are very very few com- 
 pared with those who steal because they have to 
 in order to live. Now from our long observation 
 of the tariff-dike, we believe that the higher your 
 dike the lower your tide of crime; and the lower 
 your dike, the higher that same tide. It is plain 
 to see why this is so. Dike out of the country 
 work already done in the form of goods, and your 
 balance of work needing to be done in the coun- 
 try is larger. There are more jobs for our work- 
 ers and Satan does not find so much mischief 
 still for idle hands to do; but on the contrary the 
 workers find more ways' to earn a living than to 
 steal it, and they earn it. Men love life more than 
 laws and when laws get in the way of life they 
 get broken. No laws would get in the way of life 
 if honest labor were quite as well rewarded as 
 necessary crime. Make crime unnecessary to life 
 and it will naturally fall off. Now, your Honors, 
 it may be that if all the jobs necessary to be done 
 for us were divided among us somebody would 
 still be without a job; but if only a part of the 
 jobs ueessary to keep us were divided among us 
 and the rest were divided among job-hunters 
 abroad, as the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 wishes, it is certain that many of our workers 
 would be without jobs, and more stealing would 
 be necessary. Therefore, we repeat, the ther- 
 mometer of crime in this country should fall with 
 a high dike and rise with a low one. Now, your, 
 TTonors, if our Christian ministers would but join 
 us against the Importing Trust, one of the wily
 
 248 
 
 plaintiffs herein, we feel certain that, at last, they 
 would be on the right track. Prayer is a good 
 thing in its way, your Honors, but it is a pretty 
 poor way to form good habits, which simply mean 
 an arrangement of brain-cells making our actions 
 automatically good; and, in making good habits, 
 dike-building would beat praying to death. It is 
 our firm conviction, your Honors, that if all the 
 jobs necessary to be done for us were distributed 
 among us every day, there would be enough to 
 go 'round handsomely; and that if this process 
 were repeated from now on forever, the people 
 of this country would all finally become so good 
 from the removal of temptation and the substi- 
 tution of honest habits for dishonest ones, that 
 all any of our brotherhood would need to get past 
 St. Peter at the gate, would be his American citi- 
 zenship papers. 
 
 Your Honors, this matter of morality in the 
 tariff-dike seems so important to us that we can- 
 not leave it without rubbing it in well. It seems 
 to us that it points to all that is necessary to be 
 done to reform us all and to solve every problem 
 of commercialism and socialism we shall ever dis- 
 cover. Why, look, your Honors, how work along 
 our pet line would put these wily plaintiffs and 
 the socialists but of business! 
 
 On the one hand, the old-line socialists say that 
 by some contrivance, all the wealth of the coun- 
 try should be automatically shared equally by the 
 whole people. On the other hand the wily plain- 
 tiffs say that we need no tariff dike, because we 
 have such a lovely climate, such a heap of rap- 
 turous soil, such "natural wealth" and such an 
 ecstatic genius for making the most of it. It is 
 the soil and these other jokers that give us the
 
 249 
 
 trick. It is these dead things that, almost against 
 our will, have made us great; and they will give 
 us "the markets of the world" without a tariff- 
 dike and we shall all be happy. But we say 
 your Honors, that our old-line socialists and these 
 wily plaintiffs are both wrong. It is not the soil 
 that has made us great or its equal division 
 among us that will make us greater still. Soil is 
 nothing; sky is nothing; rain and shine are 
 nothing; free division is nothing, unless a man 
 will dig. And we believe in making it an object 
 for him to dig. We believe in conjuring a coin 
 at the end of every shovelful ; but we would make 
 it impossible for him to get the coin unless he 
 dug. We are not the other sort of a socialist 
 with his equal division and his premium on shirk- 
 ing. Men should dig; but we would make digging 
 a hopeful proposition by a sky-high-dike, with its 
 coin at the bottom of every digging; and, having 
 done that, the order of life should be "Dig!" If 
 we want to perpetuate this Republic, we must dig, 
 every mother's son of us. That is what makes 
 mind and muscle healthy; and nature's law is 
 "Dig or die!" But the difference between digging 
 with a sky-high dike and digging with no dike at 
 all would be this: With the dike, we would dig 
 or die. Without it, we would dig and die. Dig- 
 ging with a coin at the end of the digging would 
 make us all happy; and that means a good deal; 
 for although some say, "Be good and you will 
 be happy," we say, "Be happy and you will be 
 good." We add, "Give men good work, and they 
 will be both happy and good." For without re- 
 gard to "race, color, or previous condition of" 
 want and desperation, the very great majority of 
 men, including women, prefer hard work to kill-
 
 250 
 
 ing and robbing. It is safer and saner. It means 
 longer life and greater enjoyment of its sweets. 
 Men are natural Epicureans. They want the 
 greatest enjoyment possible to the square minute. 
 And being a hunted robber or assasin does not 
 fill the bill. We believe this to be the universal 
 feeling. What men want first of all is good work. 
 A number of years ago the London workless poor 
 formed a great procession, and, tens of thousands 
 strong, marched through the streets, in all their 
 poverty and rags, hunger and hopelessness, to 
 give the English Importing Trust an object les- 
 son in the sort of goods that its raids on the Eng- 
 lish work-supply were turning out from year 
 to year. The Importing Trust, heard that these 
 poor men and women, so grievously defrauded of 
 their natural rights, were going to make a demon- 
 stration, and some of its wealthy members said, 
 "Lo, there are such hard times in London, wo 
 must give these people alms." But what reply 
 did these people make? Did they cry for the 
 blood of those who had sold them out of the hope 
 of life? Did they scream, "Down with the Im- 
 porting Trust ! Death to the rich !" No, bless their 
 true hearts! they simply inscribed on their ban- 
 ners, "We do not ask alms. We demand work!" 
 Was not that grand! They merely asked to have 
 restored to them their right to work, to work 
 for Englishmen. They were true to Anglo-Saxon 
 instincts. They would rather work than beg, bor- 
 row, or steal. If these people were made happy 
 with work, they would be good. Some of us are 
 pretty bad. We inherited it. Our fathers were 
 bnd ; thev inherited it. Their fathers were bad; 
 they would lit 1 and cheat and kill and rob; and 
 thev became bad because it was be flbad OP be
 
 251 
 
 dead; and coffins did not appeal to them. But 
 the Importing Trust in one country or another 
 for all countries have Importing Trusts went 
 on selling so much domestic work at auction 
 among outside peoples' that our wretched grand- 
 sires never could struggle to their honest feet. 
 So they got the habit; and their dishonest feet 
 did the most business. And so some of us, as we 
 have said, are even now pretty bad. Some of us 
 ought to be hung and others jailed for life, in or- 
 der that good people may not be endangered by 
 us. That is the way of the world. Now many of 
 us have brain-cells all arranged for badness; and 
 goodness would be a hard proposition for us. But 
 in time the proper environment would rearrange 
 our brain-cells in the line with what people now 
 call "goodness," or "righteousness," as Mr. Roose- 
 velt calls it. Now, make this proper environment ; 
 soak the land full of good work by putting the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust out of com- 
 mission; and by sending the wily plaintiff, the 
 Exporting Trust, to the rear; crowd it full of do- 
 mestic products, good things to eat and drink and 
 wear, all awaiting us, at the lowest prices pos- 
 sible to our level of latitude and life, and we 
 real bad ones would begin to work some of the 
 time, even if we stole the rest of the time. Our 
 children might still steal some of the time, but 
 they would work most of the time. And ten to 
 one our children's children would work all the 
 time and steal none of the time and perhaps for- 
 get the art of stealing. Then the good work 
 would have been accomplished. The steady pull 
 of an environment that tied honest work fast to 
 the good things of life would have been the mas- 
 ter, and our brain-cells would be found all right
 
 252 
 
 and we would be "happy all the day." Your Hon- 
 ors, put these wily plaintiffs in chains for a cen- 
 tury; crack the back of foreign trade; give us 
 the chance to do all our own work ourselves 1 ; to 
 make all we have and have all we make; and we 
 could celebrate our centennial of freedom from 
 these wily plaintiffs by burning all our churches 
 and schoolhouses ; for they never would be missed; 
 because by that time having plenty of good work 
 would have made our people so happy and hence 
 so good and so wise that to send them either to 
 church or to school would be to insult their good- 
 ness and their wisdom. 
 
 Yes, your Honors, we suspected counsel for the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, would have 
 something to say just about now; and he says 
 that our delightful little digression over the whole 
 of Christian conduct from Palestine to the Golden 
 Gate of St. Peter, has nothing to do with the case; 
 and the fact still is that, with the tariff-dike keep- 
 ing foreign surplus products from competing 
 with our "trusts," no matter how much capital 
 came into the country, it would all have to join 
 the "trusts" or be put out of business; and the 
 "trusts" would collect from the people by high 
 prices what it cost the "trusts" to buy up this 
 foreign competition. Your Honors, it would take 
 a power of money to buy up the world's unfixed 
 capital, rolling in here to share our market with 
 the "trusts." That same kind of capital would 
 keen right on accumulating in the world at large; 
 and the world at large is a pretty large world. 
 Even if our "trusts'" represented all the capital 
 in this country, which they don't, by a long shot, 
 how could the capital of this country, from now 
 on, buy into silence all the unfixed capital of the
 
 253 
 
 rest of the world? For, if profits were too large 
 here, in order for counsel for the wily plaintiff 
 to ring true in his statement, that is what our 
 capital would have to do. 
 
 At any rate, your Honors, for a "trust" to buy 
 up competitors is to add just so much to the cost 
 of its plant; and the ways in which the "trusts" 
 can get interest back on such an investment are 
 just two: First, by making the plant purchased 
 or the capital absorbed work and earn its own 
 dividends; second, by leaving it idle and raising 
 the price of present output to cover returns for 
 idle capital. In the first case, to increase supply 
 without increasing demand is to depress price, in 
 the interest of the public. In the second case, to 
 increase price is to handicap the "trust" plant in 
 its quarrel with competitors who have not bought 
 up competition to the same extent. The absorbed 
 plant or capital becomes a dead weight on the 
 back of the "trusts." And buying up competi- 
 tion once all around would not end it. In fact, 
 its end would not be in sight. "Buying up com- 
 petition," to be successful, would have to continue 
 the handicap to the advantage of competitors 
 which would become larger and larger all the 
 while. In short, your Honors, those who know 
 anything about this trick of "buying up competi- 
 tion" know that it is suicide for bona fide indus- 
 try and that the only ones who ever benefit by it 
 are promoters who dazzle five public with pros- 
 pectuses, sell out their stock, and stand from un- 
 der the crash. As a matter of fact, your Honors, 
 all this Importing-Trust talk about the "extor- 
 tions" and "exactions" of the "trusts" are mere 
 devils' dreams for the frightening of votes' into 
 the box of the Importing-Trust presidential and
 
 254 
 
 congressional candidates. There are no "trnsts" 
 in this country of the nature and power described 
 by the Importing Trust. They are bugaboos in- 
 vented with an eye single to the monoply of our 
 market by goods of the Importing Trust. All the 
 yarns of their extortions, of their combinations, 
 of their nefarious naughtiness, and of their satanic 
 power, are pure hobgoblin tales. The public not 
 only has never been harmed by these "trusts" but 
 there is not a single instance where a "trust" has 
 laid hold of a large section of trade, systematized 
 its production and the distribution of its pro- 
 duct, and enforced the economies within the power 
 of large capital, by which the public has not been 
 benefited by lower and steadier prices, a more re- 
 liable supply and a more regular distribution. 
 As to what dividends these "trusts" earn, it is 
 none of the public's business. If the public don't 
 like the prices it pays, it can build a "trust" itself 
 bigger than any "trust" ever built here yet, and 
 have the product for the bare cost of production. 
 Thus to compete in any field is a privilege of this 
 free country where there are no government 
 monoplies . And as to what profits these "trusts" 
 make, that will be none of the public's business 
 just as long as we have a constitution which as- 
 sures us all the equal protection of the laws, and 
 will not let us be deprived of life, liberty, or prop- 
 erty without due process of law. These "trusts" 
 are corporations; and in the eyes of the law, cor- 
 porations are simply individual persons working 
 together instead of separately to secure larger 
 capital and to have perpetual life, a quality which 
 IK absent in partnerships and in separate individ- 
 ual enterprises. In no way can their property be 
 confiscated in ways which would not apply to
 
 255 
 
 the property of individuals. We may be sure, 
 your Honors', that all laws against "combinations 
 in restraint of trade," as well as all those which 
 put it in the power of the State to destroy corpor- 
 ations have sprung from lawlessness and an itching 
 for plunder on the part of those who made such laws. 
 There is not now and never has been any reason for 
 such laws, except the itching palms of people who 
 happened to be in a position to make laws for their 
 own pecuniary profit. But none of these laws has 
 ever dared to give the public any greater right to 
 regulate the profits of individuals doing business as 
 a private corporation than it has to regulate the 
 profits of individuals doing business separately. 
 Even the itching palm has stopped there. Now, 
 your Honors', counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, has entertained us with a list 
 of what he is pleased to call the American "trusts" 
 and has declaimed against them as "conspiracies 
 for extortions" and "in restraint of trade." As 
 it was the priestcraft of old that, to destroy a 
 great prophet, inflamed the rabble to cry "cru- 
 cify him!", so to-day it is this wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, that, to destroy its rival in this 
 market, organized American Production, fires the 
 American rabble to cry out, "Down with the 
 trusts! Down with the oppressors of the helpless 
 'consumer' !" This wily plaintiff, your Honors 1 , 
 is the only oppressor in sight which the American 
 people have to dread. Its 1 influence is all-perva- 
 sive. Its bribe-givers and bribe-takers, its lobbies 
 and wire-pulling cabals, infest this country like 
 a pestilence. It reaches up to the highest planes' 
 of our government and places its profane hands 
 on the most sacred offices in the gift of the people. 
 It fills the land with frenzy against its own Savior,
 
 256 
 
 well-paid employment in our Holy Temple of Pro- 
 duction. It swells the rabble with its paid 
 claquers, who scream loudly and yet more loudly, 
 "Crucify him!" and in order to enfuriate the peo- 
 ple to their own undoing, it invents this goblin's 
 story of the "trusts," and repeats it so solemnly 
 and so frequently, and with such increasing em- 
 phasis, that every covetous citizen feels his palm 
 begin to itch; every nere-do-well, idler, and loafer, 
 dissipated back-number and has-been in the coun- 
 try, begins to pity himself the more for his bad 
 case and lay all his troubles to this wraith, the 
 "trusts," which has no more real existence than 
 the malicious animal magnetism of Mrs. Eddy. 
 The "trusts" are the bear story of the vicious 
 old nurse of this 1 young Kepublic, the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust. But a lot of our weak- 
 lings believe in the bear, nevertheless. Here is 
 one of them writing to an Importing Trust organ 
 in one of our large importing cities: 
 
 "But the chief cause that impels a man to take his 
 life is [to borrow from Robert Burns] "Man's inhuman- 
 ity to man. ' ' Oppression of the poor by the rich, the en- 
 slaving of the masses by the select few, the control of 
 the country's resources by the small minority, and the 
 faulty distribution of wealth. It is lamentable in a 
 country like ours, with its widely boasted civilization, its 
 multiplicity of laws and institutions for the protection of 
 the weak and the succor of the oppressed, that 95 per cent, 
 of its resources, its soil, should be owned by 5 per cent, of 
 the inhabitants. These few capitalists wielding their 
 enormous power in an arbitrary and over-bearing manner, 
 are responsible for all our misery and wretchedness. 
 Verily the wonder 01 it all is that so few commit suicide. 
 Life under such conditions is hardly worth living; it is 
 bound to be wrecked on the shoals of commercial selfish- 
 ness. What makes this human tragedy all the more dis- 
 mal is the enormous number of children kept at work in 
 the mills, mines, and factories." 
 
 Your Honors, there is scarcely a statement in 
 this 1 deliverance against the wicked rich but what
 
 257 
 
 is as far from the truth as is the zenith of the 
 celestial sphere from its nadir; but it is a fair 
 specimen of our Importing-Trust inflamed popular 
 mind with regard to our client, American Produc- 
 tion. 
 
 There are no rich, as a class 1 , no poor, as a class, 
 and no masses, as a class, in this country. The 
 resources of this country are not its 1 soil, any more 
 than its people, without whom the soil would be 
 worthless. The number of children at work in 
 factories, mills, and mines in this country is small 
 compared with the number at work abroad, popu- 
 lation for population; and the industries in which 
 our children are at work are those wnose goods 
 sell at the lowest prices 1 , largely because of for- 
 eign competition. But the Importing Trust and 
 its retainers in their campaign for tariff "revi- 
 sion," make our workers compete with countries 
 like Japan, whose mills are almost entirely ran 
 by women and children working for from 7c to 
 12c. a day of eleven hours, and, by the help of 
 American machinery, doing the s'ame work which 
 male adults do in this country. Such writers as 
 this think we have a "faulty distribution of 
 wealth," because money is not distributed gratis 
 to such as he. You have to work for money unless 
 you inherit or steal it. But that does not seem 
 to suit those of us who would rather s^renm "Down 
 with the trusts!" than build a higher tariff-dike 
 and then earn money and save it; which is 1 the 
 only respectable way to correct our "faulty dis- 
 tribution of wealth." After all, your Honors, 
 which should we naturally fear the most? The 
 crowd who have no property to be injured by 
 anarchism and who use such wild language in de- 
 scribing bugaboos which do not exist? Or the
 
 258 
 
 "trusts" who give hostages lo fortune and bonds 
 for their good behavior in the billions of dollars 
 worth of plants in which they employ hundreds 
 of thousands of us? If "the trusts" steal, or mur- 
 der, or commit arson or high treason, we can pinch 
 their property very quickly and make them pay 
 for their crimes. They are so heavily loaded with 
 immovable property that they can't get away ; and 
 there seems to be no reason for this hue and cry 
 against them; this frenzy of excitement; this 
 mounting upon, the outer wall to the blare of 
 tocsin and trumpet; this hullabaloo and alarm as 
 for the repelling of a sudden and slippery inva- 
 der. Thes'e"trusts" are tied down by their belong- 
 ings. They must stay put. And if perchance they 
 have broken the laws so that it hurts, if some 
 one who is hurt will make the hurt known, quiet 
 and orderly process may be begun to punish the 
 "wrongdoers" and "malefactors of great wealth," 
 without inflaming the rabble and appealing to in- 
 cendiary hate. This might not make as many 
 votes but it would make a more orderly citizen- 
 ship and not disturb our civilization. 
 
 But how about us who are trying to excite to 
 insurrection the irresponsible rabble? If we suc- 
 ceed and, doing the work of the Importing Trust 
 in destroying its competitor, American Produc- 
 tion, destroy "the trusts" and all their property, 
 what sort of hostages to fortune have we given? 
 Where is our bond for damages done? Does it 
 not seem to you, your Honors, as though the irre- 
 sponsible hoodlum running with the gang and 
 breathing threatenings of slaughter against "male- 
 factors of great wealth," would be more likely to 
 "extort" and "exact" things than these "male- 
 factors of great wealth" whose tenure to property,
 
 of which they have a plenty, depends upon their 
 being quiet, law-abiding citizens? At any rate, 
 it seems so to us, your Honors. 
 
 And it also seems to us, your Honors, that a 
 person, saying bad words about the "trusts," 
 "predatory wealth/' and "malefactors of great 
 wealth," and deciding that it is better that ninety- 
 nine innocent colored men should be punished 
 rather than that one guilty one should escape, 
 has his justice and equity brain-cells so arranged 
 that his word that the "trusts" are such bad peo- 
 ple should not be taken without a grain of salt; 
 especially when he has the ear-marks of a chattel 
 of the wickedest trust in the world, the combina- 
 tion made by the consolidation of these wily plain- 
 tiffs. 
 
 And it occurs to us, your Honors, tha.t we do 
 not recollect that the big Homestead riot and the 
 riot in Chicago, of some years back, and the riots 
 in other cities, where property w r as destroyed, 
 were led by "certain malefactors of great wealth" 
 or that the parties pilloried by the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, as being the leading 
 spirits of our American "trusts" applied torches 
 or threw bombs or anything of that sort during 
 these various entertainments. Rather, as far as 
 our recollection goes, the people who did all these 
 things were a part of the holy company of saints 
 who are now crying, "Down with the Trusts!" 
 But, in a case like this, good behavior seems to 
 rais'e no presumption in favor of an accused per- 
 son nor bad behavior any presumption against the 
 accuser. 
 
 Your Honors, the only possible way in which 
 the nefarious "trusts" can be curbed is by mak- 
 ing a law^ a minute to fit their ever-varying crimes.
 
 260 
 
 Their chief crime, just now, seems to be that they 
 manage their affairs so wisely that these Import- 
 ing-Trust banditti think the profits of the "trusts" 
 too large; that is, too large for those whose mid- 
 night oil has made them, but only about right for 
 these pious grafters of the Importing Trust to 
 take away. To our notion no cry would ever 
 have been raised against the "trusts" if the Import- 
 ing Trust had not wished to destroy American 
 Production and seize our domestic market; and of 
 those joining in the cry who think they have a 
 real grievance against the "trusts'," not one has 
 any idea that the "trusts" are entitled to be paid 
 a cent for their services in effecting such organi- 
 zations that the public now get the products of 
 the "trusts" for half the price formerly paid there- 
 for; but on the contrary they all seem to think 
 that the whole earnings' of all the inventive and 
 organizing brains that have joined in such sur- 
 prising economies belong to the gentlemen who 
 have been set on fire by the spoutings of the Im- 
 porting Trust against American Production. 
 
 In looking over this list of the "crimes'" of the 
 "trusts" which counsel for the wily plaintiff, the 
 Importing Trust, has laid before your Honors, we 
 are reminded of one crime which counsel for the 
 wily plaintiff has made no mention of. We refer 
 to the fact of the employment of several hundreds 
 of thousands of workers and the payment to these 
 same workers of several hundreds of millions of 
 wages annually. We also recognize these"trusts" 
 as purchasers' of "raw materials" from other 
 American industries to the amount of several hun- 
 dreds of millions more a year; and a rapid calcula- 
 tion shows us that if these "trusts 1 " suddenly 
 ceased thus to purchase "raw materials" of other
 
 261 
 
 American industries, these latter industries would 
 employ many thousands of hands less in turning 
 out those same "raw materials." We also recog- 
 nize thes'e "trusts" as drawing upon our railroads 
 for freightings to such an extent that if this draft 
 should cease, the railroads would be compelled to 
 discharge as superfluous many thousands of their 
 men. 
 
 Your Honors', we think we can give these peo- 
 ple who sing "Down with the trusts!" cards and 
 spades and then beat them. They call "crime" 
 the quiet pursuit of every industry which does 
 not voluntarily divide its profits with them. We 
 will not use "crime" in this loose way. To do so 
 makes loose morals and leads to myopic ethical 
 vision. But what sort of an act is it, that, without 
 a shadow of a cause that would hold in a court of 
 law, methodically attacks, decries, and embarrasses 
 a group of industries such as is represented by 
 these "trusts," upon whos'e employment hang the 
 lives of hundreds of thousands of our citizens and 
 the prosperity of dozens of other industries 1 em- 
 ploying thousands more? For these industries 
 have committed no crime and have broken no law 
 upon which their detractors can place a finger. 
 The only charge made against them amounts 
 merely to a declaration that the property of these 
 "trusts" belongs rather to those who denounce the 
 "trusts" than to these latter who have earned it 
 by superior organization. At least, your Honors, 
 this is' a mooted question. If the chattels of the 
 Importing Trust who make this charge really be- 
 lieve they have a grievance, let them lay it before 
 some court having jurisdiction of the matter, and 
 then abide the decision like decently honest men. 
 But, your Honors, the onslaughts upon vested
 
 262 
 
 constitutional rights by these chattels of the Im- 
 porting Trusts, if the interest of the latter in the 
 ease were not so plainly seen, would cause dis- 
 interested people to think that these foamers at 
 the mouth and frenzied pounders of the "trusts" 
 desired the whole case to be settled by intimida- 
 tion in advance of court proceedings, without a 
 decision upon the merits of the case, in the man- 
 ner in which all other blackmailing jobs are set- 
 tled; and this all for the reason that the black- 
 mailers knew that their case had no merit and 
 would be thrown out of court at the close of the 
 reading of the complaint. 
 
 Your Honors, sober-minded people should call 
 a halt upon this lawless denunciation of large cor- 
 pora taions under the name of the "trusts;" this 
 use of implied threats of mob violence, for the pur- 
 pose of political blackmail. Especially does this 
 concern the business men of this country, your 
 Honors', whose profits come over their counters in 
 the money they get for the goods they furnish to 
 the public. The business-volume of any country 
 is its wage-volume; and the wage-volume coming 
 into their hands from the pay-rolls of these "trusts" 
 is large enough alone to keep the whole business 
 of the country on even keel. Such corporations 
 should be encouraged rather than persecuted in 
 behalf of the Importing Trust and the substitu- 
 tion of imported goods in our markets for the out- 
 put of the "trusts." Far more than could be done 
 by small organizations, these great organizations 
 insure steadiness 1 in the production and distribu- 
 tion of their goods to the public, and a like steadi- 
 ness of employment to their workers; and, there- 
 fore, an equally steady and reliable demand upon 
 our merchants for the necessaries and luxuries of
 
 263 
 
 life, practically to the full value of the aggregate 
 pay-roll of the "trusts." Surely, your Honors, here 
 is a great force for steadiness and rhythm in 
 American business such as American business men 
 should not ignore. 
 
 XXII 
 
 IN THE INTERESTS OF, RIGHTEOUSNESS, THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN CHURCH SHOULD AID IN THE EXORCISING 
 OF THE DEVIL, THE IMPORTING TRUST, THE OPERA- 
 TIONS OF WHICH BREED POVERTY, VICE, AND 
 CRIME. 
 
 Your Honors, we cannot turn our attention 
 from the influence of the wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust, towards the degradation of all our peo- 
 ple, without recurring again to what we think, 
 irrespective of denomination, is the duty of the 
 Christian church in the premises. 
 
 Faith which only nails credence to a supersti- 
 tion is worse than dead. But if it is a step to- 
 wards nailing a brain-cell to a good habit, it is 
 that which will one day be abundantly justified 
 in her children. You can preach, pray, and sing 
 through all eternity and. if you stop there you 
 will never save a soul, for you will never reform 
 a sinner, no matter how much you convert him 
 to faith alone; for conversion and reformation 
 arc two different horses and unless your chin mu- 
 sic crystallizes into good habits in the sinner, 
 you might as well save your wind. When a sin- 
 ner comes to the altar all melted to tears of con- 
 trition, you may think you've got him; but with- 
 out a proper readjustment of his brain-cells in
 
 264 
 
 the manner we have just described, you have only 
 converted his sinning from the frankness of the 
 brute to the hypocrisy of the human; and even 
 that poor conversion wears thread-bare very soon. 
 The trouble seems to be that our evangelists fire 
 away at sin and sinners, without any idea of what 
 sin and sinners are. They may not know it, but 
 sin, after all, is merely the unlawful satisfaction 
 of a lawful desire; and you have only to substi- 
 tute a lawful satisfaction for the same desire, and 
 you have resolved a crime into a very proper act, 
 a vice into virtue, an ugliness into a beauty. For 
 no natural human desire is bad in itself; because 
 all human desires 1 are the urgings of nature to- 
 wards pleasure rather than pain, towards life 
 rather than death; and every being is naturally 
 entitled to live not only without pain, but also with 
 all the pleasure his sesnory nerves are capable of 
 reporting to his sensorium. So much for "sin." 
 Now, as to the sinner, be is not such a fool as to 
 be "in rebellion against God." For would he re- 
 bel against thunder and lightning; against earth- 
 quakes, hurricanes, prairie fires, and such things? 
 Wouldn't you think him daft if he did? Well, 
 God is something like an earthquake to rational 
 people. You can't "rebel;" you can't get into any 
 revolt about the situation. If you do, it is a sign 
 you are daft. It is not because the sinner is "in 
 rebellion against God," or "his better self," or 
 such nonsense, that makes him act so. It is be- 
 cause he is a piano played upon by rough hands 
 that can't get music out of him. His desires, like 
 blind kittens, for their mother's breast, are reach- 
 ing out for satisfaction, and they are laying hold 
 of the first thing in reach that appears likely to 
 fill tho bill. Now if what they lay hold of is
 
 265 
 
 somebody's watch, people call his pinching it 
 theft and him a pickpocket. But if the first thing 
 within reach is a good job, within his mental and 
 physical powers to do, and he does it and for do- 
 ing it gets wages equal to the value of the watch, 
 had he stolen it, they say he honorably earned his 
 bread in the sweat of his brow; and they call 
 him a good citizen. Now what the poor fellow 
 wanted in the first place was 1 neither to steal nor 
 to get a watch ; what he wanted was something 
 to eat, Therefore, what we stand for and what 
 we call upon our good brethern in this ministry 
 to assist us in doing is the casting out of the Im- 
 porting Trust and making honest jobs so plenty 
 in this land that when a poor fellow is hungry 
 he can pinch good wages instead of watches to 
 exchange for bread and meat. We think the sal- 
 vation of every man's soul depends upon his 
 stomach. The stomach is' the great gateway 
 through which all insruction in piety reaches the 
 goal of the understanding. Believing a dogma 
 touches no hearts and saves no souls. A man may 
 not believe that Jonah swallowed the whale; but 
 if he does' right he is a good enough Christian for 
 most of us to associate with. But if he believes 
 the toughest yarn that ever a sky-pilot told, and 
 does wrong, most of us gnther up our skirts when 
 he passes and put our silver in the safe when he 
 sleeps at our house. So belief does not go very 
 far in making a man comfortable, reforming his 
 ways, or filling hi s sad stomach. And unless you 
 can do something practical for a man, he is not 
 goinjr to believe in vou very long. It is because 
 there is too muoh faith and too few works which 
 make srood solid hnbits in righteousness that, as 
 we think, the Christian churches', if thev want
 
 266 
 
 full pews will, before long, have to adjourn to 
 the ball-grounds and picnic groves. We should 
 think a church choir would be less apt to waste 
 its accomplishments on Old Hundred between 
 innings at the Polo Grounds and the minister's 
 preaching and praying would be better appreciated 
 on the Coney Island beaches than in his own 
 church with its empty pews and gloom and damp. 
 The proof that we are right about this joining of 
 physical good to spiritual healing as the way of 
 success* to the Christian Church is the success that 
 various religious camps have already had march- 
 ing that way. Look at the Salvation Army! The 
 fellow who helps in a Salvation Army camp gets 
 a good breakfast at any rate; and many a poor 
 fellow out of a job and not knowing where to turn 
 for help, has been soundly converted to its mili- 
 tary life and meandering ways and had real piety 
 impressed upon him by an environment of square 
 meals and fair to middling mattresses. And the 
 Salvation Army flourishes as the green bay tree. 
 Then they tell us that some of our latter-day mis- 
 sionaries who have added the medicine chest to 
 the Bible in their outfit have made more progress 
 with the natives, have cheered more sad hearts 
 and saved more souls in a shorter time than half 
 a regiment of miss'ionaires who only had and 
 preached their glowing faith alone. Then look at 
 Mother Eddy's success! Her church has sprung 
 up like a mushroom but seems to have the life of 
 a turtle. And what is the secret of it? Nothing 
 in the world except the fact that to faith in the 
 faith that there is no such thing as sickness, she 
 adds the solid promise to heal all your diseases 
 and she makes you think she has done it. And then, 
 t.x>, aftor you have shown your faith by coughing
 
 267 
 
 up |300 she adds the further works of a diploma 
 which sends you forth with her blessing and with 
 nothing but thoughts in your medicine chest, to 
 "heal" at, say a dollar a treatment, and by the 
 present or absent route, as the patient prefers, 
 and as your own convenience may require, it being 
 sometimes necessary to be present in the flesh in 
 one sick room and in spirit in another, at one and 
 the same time but not for one and the same fee. 
 This contrivance for making a practical use 'of 
 faith rather beats anything we had in mind to start 
 with, your Honors', but it illustrates how we hope 
 to see preaching yoked in some way to practice, 
 such as would follow the shipping of the Import- 
 ing Trust to the Cannibal Islands and keeping our 
 own jobs for doing by our own people. 
 
 To sum up our reflections upon sin, your Honors, 
 since every natural desire has a natural right to 
 be satisfied, it is only in the means or measure 
 of that satisfaction that sin can occur. But the 
 moral rule is that no one should satisfy his desires 
 by injury to the person or property of another; 
 and it is this injury which constitutes all there 
 rationally is of sin. It follows, therefore, that the 
 way to convert a sinner is to make it easier for 
 him to satisfy his lawful desires in a lawful than 
 in an unlawful way. His brain-cell batteries may 
 bo all right, as they stand; but their wires may 
 bo badly crossed in passing through the clearing 
 house of reason on their way to public action; 
 so that their public action may be what is known 
 as "sin," or, as we have just said, some injury 
 to the person or property of another. And here 
 vo foo the bearing of our recommendation that 
 ilio Tninortinir Trust should be sent packing. For 
 in order that tho satisfaction of a lawful desire
 
 268 
 
 itself be lawful and injure neither the person nor 
 the property of another, the sinner must have 
 enough property of his own to satisfy his desires; 
 and seeing that the great majority of us are not 
 born rich but have to earn what we have in the 
 way of property, in order to change people from 
 sinners to saints, opportunities for getting prop- 
 erty by labor should be strewn thickly through 
 every community. It therefore falls out that em- 
 ployment in working for others is the foundation 
 of morality and that to increase such employment 
 is to increase morality and vice versa. And it 
 is on this account that we want a high-tariff dike 
 with its flowing instead of a "revised" tariff-dike 
 with its ebbing tide of morality; and that we be 
 lieve that the building of a high-tariff dike, and 
 the confinement of home demand to home supply 
 and of home supply to home demand, is to build 
 an untakable fortress for the American army of 
 righteousness. 
 
 Yes, your Honors, we hear the wily counsel for 
 the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, saying 
 "But you never can get the Christian ministry to 
 believe that morality is religion or that it will 
 save a soul without belief in the Apostles' Creed." 
 This is aside from the question, your Honors, but 
 we pause long enough to say that we do not believe 
 God cares what a man thinks as long as he is a 
 good fellow, good to his wife and children, good 
 to his neighbors, faithful to his country, and to 
 himself. We know many a believer in lots of hard 
 religious stunts: many a believer who believes the 
 Bible is insnired from cover to cover, with the 
 cover and the s?ilt title on the back thrown in, but 
 so sour and uglv, so forlorn of face and so crabbed 
 in disposition that we could not live with him and
 
 269 
 
 we do not believe that God could or would of His 
 own free will. Everybody loves a hymning sin- 
 ner better than a howling saint ; and a wise sinner 
 instead of a foolish saint is immensely to be pre- 
 ferred as a friend and adviser. If belief is the 
 article that we have seen in the faces of some peo- 
 ple who were said to be very pious, we would 
 much prefer it to vinegar for cucumber pickles 
 and would recommend it to housekeepers for the 
 preserving season. And if a different article of 
 faith is what makes some faces we know so bright 
 and happy, so like a glimpse of the angels, even 
 though they tell us the belief back of those faces 
 is rather risky, we must confess to a timid long- 
 ing for that brand of belief. And this we say with 
 all due reverence for the faith of the unhappy 
 Christian and with the hope that when he wakes 
 up on the other side he will find God a good deal 
 better sort than some of His alleged people here 
 describe Him. 
 
 Not only in the matter of morality, your Honors, 
 but also in the matter of education, will the pres- 
 ence of plenty of opportunities honestly to earn 
 our bread send us singing on our way. The rea- 
 son why we are compelled to support schools and 
 universities now is because the Importing Trust al- 
 ways did and still does dissipate among the alien 
 races of the earth such a large collection of our 
 opportunities' to work for fair wages that there 
 are not enough left to go 'round in the way they 
 should and otherwise would and finally reach 
 down into our deepest slums and gradually wash 
 them clean. But build the tariff-dike sky-high; 
 keep every opportunity to earn a good day's pay 
 right at home; and very soon the people would be 
 so generally well to do that they would have their
 
 270 
 
 own ideas as to the best way to educate them- 
 selves and learning would be placed upon a bet- 
 ter footing than it now is. For education, like 
 religious belief, is of no account unless it fits the 
 educated one to make a better showing in this 
 world than he could make without it. With plenty 
 of good jobs in sight education would be but a 
 tool in the hand of the worker. Workers know 
 that education is of use only as it helps them to 
 more comfortable lives; and, given an abundance 
 of employment, they would provide their own 
 schools. In a few words, to point the moral to our 
 tale: If there is work to do behind a tall dike, 
 education will follow naturally, by the initiative 
 of the people. With no work to do behind a "re- 
 vised" dike, education technical or otherwise, 
 would be as superfluous as a tail to a toad ; and that 
 tail would soon be sloughed off. 
 
 As we have hinted in regard to this very same 
 matter, the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 has cute ways of taking attention from the tariff- 
 dike, when the prosperity of the country is slowly 
 leaking to emptiness 1 through a thousand different 
 breaks which, by one or another of its devious 
 ways in politics and diplomacy, the Importing 
 Trust has made therein; and one of these cute 
 ways, as we believe we have also already hinted, 
 is 1 to teach our people to hitch their carts before 
 their horses. One of these carts is "technical 
 schools" or "technical" or "commercial education," 
 and "a study of the needs of foreign markets and 
 the best methods of securing their trade." And 
 at this very moment, while practical eyes should 
 see nothiim but our domestic market slipping from 
 u.s through the operations of the Importing Trust, 
 the wily plaintiff thrums on all its harps the song
 
 271 
 
 ''Technical Education the Key to the Markets of 
 the AVorld !" Your Honors, this is like the scheme 
 of the robber gang who hired a great brass band 
 to play, just after nightfall, patriotic airs in the 
 public square of a back-country town, and rob- 
 bed the houses of the innocent citizens while the 
 latter were away at the entertainment. It is like 
 the present manoeuvre of the German Kaiser, 
 tickling American tourists under the chin, while 
 his merchants are robbing American industry un- 
 der the Koosevelt-Root agreement. You can afford 
 to feel wondrous good-natured and stroke your* 
 victim very gently while you are reaching for his 
 watch that is if you are a pickpocket. We should 
 beware of free treats and shows in the public 
 squares. Thieves are not far away from the spot 
 where some kindhearted man is giving away some- 
 thing for nothing. 
 
 Isn't the wily plaintiff cute, your Honors? By 
 its matter-of-course manner of saying that our 
 only hope of glory lies in foreign trade, hypnotiz- 
 ing the people to look at foreign trade as the great 
 goal of all effort; and, without arousing the hyp- 
 notic sleepers, passing to the suggestion that the 
 only way for our people to be industrially great 
 is by "technical education ;" ignoring the fact that 
 we may always be great industrially if we do no 
 more than our own work through the sheltering 
 power of the tariff -dike, to which end no "tech- 
 nical education" is required farther than we are 
 getting by actual experience! Yes, your Honors, 
 the wily plaintiff, with studied purpose, ignores 
 the fact that the higher we build the dike the 
 more nearly our own domestic trade approaches in 
 volume the entire trade of the world outside; and 
 that "technical education" follows the competi-
 
 272 
 
 tion between bodies of capital here at home as 
 naturally as the invention of new processes and 
 new machines follows the offering of additional 
 profit therefrom in a secure and steady market. 
 Yes, your Honors, to make "technical education" 
 the condition precedent of getting a market is to 
 put the cart before the horse. With no market in 
 sight and no apparent field for the profitable use 
 of a new machine, do men with capital go ahead 
 and lay out large money in experiments and con- 
 trivings? No, your Honors, you must prove to 
 them first that their dollar laid out in machinery 
 will come back to them leading a part of another 
 dollar by the halter, before they will put their 
 hands in their pockets for machinery. And it is 
 so with the wage-producers also. Unless they see 
 a return for their pains awaiting them they will 
 waste no time in technical education. And a 
 level-headed business man in a cost-100 country sees 
 no certain return from trading with a cost-20 
 world. The reason why technical education has 
 advanced in Germny is because Germany is a cost- 
 30 country and, by technical drill, Germans have 
 merely to lay aside their handicap of clumsiness 
 in order to bring to bear against our cost-100 coun- 
 try and cost-50 Great Britian the full force of 
 their lower pay-roll. The right scent for both 
 Great Britian and us to follow against German 
 cheapness, which threatens both countries like a 
 pestilence, is prohibitive tariff-dikes. But the wily 
 plaintiff, fearing we will "catch on," is leading 
 us off with feverish impressment upon the false 
 scent of "technical education" and "study of com- 
 mercial requirements abroad!"
 
 273 
 
 XXIII 
 
 THE PRETENSE THAT THE "TRUSTS" COULD IN ANY 
 WISE HARM THE PEOPLE, EVEN THOUGH NO GOODS 
 OP ANY KIND WERE EVER IMPORTED, IS A GREAT 
 FRAUD. 
 
 Your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, is playing Foxy Grandma with us. It says 
 if we don't let in foreign goods to compete with 
 the "trusts," these latter will swallow us like alli- 
 gators. But, your Honors, the "trusts" are never- 
 theless composed of men and they must be a ma- 
 jority of us to do it; and would a majority of us 
 vote that we should swallow us? No other na- 
 tion ever swallowed itself in that way; and really, 
 your Honors, we do not think our nation differs 
 from other nations in this respect. And then when 
 it gives us advice the wily plaintiff may be mis- 
 taken again because it has many, many times, rec- 
 ommended a dose of foreign production for our 
 disordered national liver and after taking its pre- 
 scription the nation has nearly died from an empty- 
 stomach; and we all voted that a heap worse than 
 bad liver. Any way, your Honors, does it seem 
 reasonable that, if left to itself, we would swallow 
 us? Because, before nations were formed, there 
 were tribes, and we never heard of any tribe swal- 
 lowing itself in this way. And there have always 
 been "trusts" even in savage tribes; and we never 
 heard of the "trusts" in any tribe swallowing all 
 the rest of the people, as the Importing Trust says 
 our "trusts" will do if we don't watch out. Why, 
 it seems to us, your Honors, that if there had been 
 any of this self-swallowing virus in our veins we
 
 274 
 
 would have all swallowed us ages ago and have 
 left by this time nothing but the animals and the 
 fishes. Instead of us all swallowing us, however, 
 we have kept right on ciphering on the face of the 
 earth, as we believe the Good Book says. And now 
 look at us! We are a billion and a half or more 
 and still coming ! 
 
 Now it don't seem to us, your Honors, as if we 
 had left a very good record for the health of any 
 crowd, call them "trusts" or what not, that has 
 tried to swallow us. In the first place, we were 
 a lot of small nations called "tribes;" and we got 
 tired of having so many small bosses called 
 "chiefs," and we just stored a lot of them in the 
 garret and then had only a few big ones instead, 
 which we called "kings." Then we got tired of hav- 
 ing so many kings and we sent a lot of them to 
 the scrap heap and gave the job of several of them 
 at once to a fellow we called an "emperor." Then 
 after a while some few of us, at any rate, got tired 
 of the royal shooting match and put both kings 
 and emperors in our rummage sale and elected 
 Teddy. This don't look like going towards the 
 little end of the horn, does it, your Honors? It 
 don't look much like our letting any boss do us 
 much harm before we showed him the door, does 
 it? Now it don't make any difference whether your 
 boss is a king with a whole lot of colored goods on 
 his back, or a "trust" or anything else, the temper 
 of our blood is not made to stand any back talk 
 for long from anybody whose rule is against fair 
 play and not according to contract. You see, your 
 Honors, we have here in this country a contract 
 between all the people called the "constitution" and 
 according to that every fellow has a right to earn 
 all the money he can and when he has earned it
 
 275 
 
 lie has to give np some of it in taxes for schools 
 and a few other things and the rest is his to keep 
 or to buy something with; and if he buys some- 
 thing, he can keep what he buys as long as he 
 pleases and then sell it if he wants to ; but he need 
 not sell until he gets what he asks for it, and it 
 is nobody's business what he asks for it; and no 
 matter what he asks for it, if it is worth more to 
 you than to him at his price and you buy it, he is 
 not "extorting" or "exacting" more than he has 
 a perfect right to according to this agreement 
 called the "constitution." Now it seems to us, your 
 Honors, that, as long as these "trusts" are only 
 doing just what the agreement gives them a right 
 to do, nobody has a right to squeal. We have no 
 right to say their prices are too high any more than 
 they have to say our prices are too high. We can- 
 not take their things by force and pay them only 
 what we want to, any more than they can take 
 our things by force, and pay us only what they 
 want to. If this way of doing things is wrong, 
 then it is our own fault for making such an agree- 
 ment as we did in the constitution; and the way 
 to make things better is for us all to get together 
 and make another agreement or constitution in 
 which we agree not to be "trusts" but that each of 
 us shall work alone by himself ; and after that new 
 agreement is made if a lot of fellows get together 
 and make a "trust," then we can light on them 
 and take their things at whatever price w r e have a 
 mind to give. If this was all agreed to in this 
 way, then the "trusts" would have no kick coming 
 if we took their goods away from them and gave 
 them anything we wanted to for them; but until 
 we do this and people who are now "trusts" have 
 had notice that everything has been changed and
 
 2T6 
 
 that we are going to run our autos on a different 
 road than the one they have been running on for 
 a thousand years, we have no right to say the 
 "trusts" "extort" or "exact" from us when they 
 just fix the price they want to on their goods. Be- 
 cause we agreed in the contract that they could; 
 and if we kick, we are a lot of poor hoodlums and 
 deserve to be punished; and the "trusts" would 
 only give us what was coming to us if they shut 
 us up a while and made us eat the constitution 
 for each meal. For that is what we would de- 
 serve. We are chewing our own words when we 
 go back on the constitution and say the "trusts" 
 must sell their goods to us by one rule which we 
 make as we go along; but that we can sell our 
 goods' to them by the constitution rule, which lets 
 us fix our own price. 
 
 Now it seems to us, your Honors ,that, before 
 we plead the baby act and bawl "No fair" and say 
 we didn't know exactly what we were about when 
 we made the constitution contract, and blubber 
 away about being strangled by the "trusts," unless 
 we break the dike and drown the whole country to 
 get rid of a few field-mice before we make a holy 
 show of ourselves and get sent to the insane ward 
 for observation, we might better wait until this 
 "trust" strangulation strangles some. It has not 
 begun yet, with our savings-bank deposits running 
 towards four billions of dollars and increasing by 
 the minute. But when it begins to strangle us 
 some, no matter how little, let us all remember 
 that, in this country, we have ballots' that are bet- 
 ter than brick-bats. Let us remember one thing, 
 which the Importing Trust, through its red-hot 
 newspaper allies, is trying to make us forget, and 
 that is that we the people, by a majority, are the
 
 277 
 
 bosses of this country; that the President and his 
 cabinet are our most humble servants, and that 
 Congress is our hallboy, or, at any rate that is what 
 we hired him for; and if either of these servants of 
 ours gets a swelled head and they some times do 
 and do not do what we want, we can dismiss 
 him and choose another. And if we don't like our 
 national contract, the constitution, if there are 
 enough of us who think the same way about it, 
 we can scratch it out and write a new one; and 
 we can make it just to suit ourselves. Now in this 
 state of matters, your Honors, the fellow who goes 
 up and down the country firing people's ire against 
 "predatory wealth," "malefactors of great wealth'' 
 or any group of people, who are handling their 
 property in accordance with their constitutional 
 rights, is simply a public nuisance who ought to 
 be suppressed for breach of the peace. By the fact 
 that he does not enter complaint against them un- 
 der some statute, he proves that these people 
 against whom he declaims are obeying the laws. 
 The good Lord knows he would "have the law on 
 them" if he had half a chance. But he proves that 
 he himself is the real malefactor by his seditious 
 talk and his trying to make the morally weak tram- 
 ple on their own contract, the national constitu- 
 tion. The thing that should inspire us, your Hon- 
 ors, to quiet and orderly conduct under all circum- 
 stances, in spite of the ravings of "gluttons of the 
 lime-light," is the great fact that we are the sov- 
 ereign people and that in our hands, by lawful and 
 decent means, with "malice towards none but char- 
 ity for all," is the power to remedy any evil what- 
 ever that can be remedied by human hands. The 
 laws are ours, based on our constitution. We made 
 them all; and we can change them all to meet any 
 requirement of modernity. The Constitution is
 
 278 
 
 ours. We made it and break it as we please by 
 amendment, all in regular course of law and of jus- 
 tice. Why should we fume and fret, your Honors, 
 against the "trusts" or "predatory wealth," or 
 "malefactors of great wealth," or "predatory cor- 
 porations," or people with "swollen fortunes," or 
 anything at all? If the doings of any one do not 
 seem in accordance with the public good, let us 
 look up the law and see if he is breaking it. If he 
 seems to be breaking it, let us in a quiet and 
 orderly manner file our complaint, without fum- 
 ings and threatenings or lime-light pirouettings, 
 gyrations, or gesticulations. In preserving pub- 
 lic order, let us not let our right hand know what 
 our left hand doeth. Let us do good by suppress- 
 ing evil under the law for the good of our common 
 country and not for personal glory. But if we 
 find on inquiry that what we thought was an evil 
 was nevertheless according to law; if we thought a 
 "trust" was asking a price higher than we thought 
 we could afford to pay, and it seemed to us against 
 the law, but, on looking the matter up, we found 
 there was no law to prevent the "trust" any more 
 than an individual from keeping its property until 
 it got its price, then it would not be the "trust" 
 that would be in the wrong, but the law; and all 
 our red-fire should be burned at the impersonal 
 law; and public opinion should be molded in such 
 a way as to bring about an amendment to the con- 
 stitution and a new law based on that which would 
 compel the "trusts," and us and you, your Hon- 
 ors, for the "trusts" are only collections of people 
 like us, to sell our property in accordance with 
 some new rule or law such as we had agreed upon. 
 But we have no right, your Honors, to froth at 
 the mouth and veil ourselves hoarse and shake our
 
 270 
 
 fists at anybody for doing exactly what the law al- 
 lows him to do. That is to teach the people not 
 to consider laws as the safeguards of rights ; but in- 
 stead to make of every individual his own law- 
 maker; and then by necessary sequence, his own 
 law-enforcer; and there you have anarchy. And 
 that is just the direction our country would take, 
 your Honors, under the unbridled lead of our 
 "Glutton of the Lime-Light." 
 
 But, your Honors, not even our "glutton of the 
 lime-light" trots except in the harness of the Im- 
 porting Trust. The fine Italian hand of this wily 
 plaintiff can be seen in every insurrectionary at- 
 tack on American Production, whether called 
 "trusts," "criminal corporations," "criminal rail- 
 roads," "predatory capital," or "certain malefac- 
 tors of great wealth." Just now the wily plaintiff 
 has more than cause to be content with the "Gov- 
 ernment" which makes German Agreements, Cu- 
 ban Treaties, and schemes for free trade with the 
 world through the Philippine Hole in the Wall. 
 But usually when the Importing Trust, through its 
 newspapers, alludes to the "Government" as "ex- 
 acting" taxes from the many for the benefit of the 
 few, it means that the tariff-dike is interfering with 
 its profits and should be removed; and it wishes 
 to give to ignorant people the impression that the 
 "Government" here is some despotic thing against 
 which we should revolt, as foreign countries revolt 
 against kings and their divine rights ; and that the 
 tariff-dike is simply a king's extortionate taxation. 
 It seems strange that even the wily defendant 
 should thus speak of our "Government;" because 
 "Government" with us is a structure made by the 
 people, and one which from time to time and with- 
 out revolutionary fury, the people remodel to suit
 
 280 
 
 themselves. But we imagine, your Honors, that 
 the wily plaintiff, in thus referring to the "Govern- 
 ment" as an alien antagonist, distinct from the 
 people, and representing a royal line that preys on 
 the people, is depending upon the fact that a large 
 number of us have come so recently from govern- 
 mental oppression in the old country that we don't 
 quite understand the new situation and do not 
 realize as we should that we ourselves are the "Gov- 
 ernment," and therefore the habit of responding to 
 the word "Government" with a rush of hate to our 
 heads is still with us; and the wily plaintiff im- 
 agines that the quickest way of making us aid the 
 wily plaintiff in any plot for the rape of this coun- 
 try's savings account is to give out that it is only 
 operating "agin the Government." 
 
 In all its machinations, and especially in order 
 to rouse the blind fury of our people to their own 
 undoing and to its vast enrichment, in applying the 
 word "trust" to American Production, the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust has shown itself of 
 great resourcefulness and great cunning; but, your 
 Honors, it is not the means to the end which 
 stamps this wily plaintiff with its true character; 
 it is rather the end itself and the repeated and piti- 
 less accomplishment of and profiting by the accom- 
 plished end. Your Honors, no army of trained cut- 
 throats at any period of the world's development, 
 when sacking and burning cities in its path, has 
 ever shown more love of havoc than has this wily 
 plaintiff, in the starvation, despair, and untimely 
 death under which its success against our life-pre- 
 serving tariff-dike has so often buried our devoted 
 country. Not once alone, your Honors, but many, 
 many times has this wily plaintiff scarred our land 
 as bv fire and left behind on everv hand worse
 
 281 
 
 things than smoking ruins of happy homes. Lan- 
 guage would fail to describe the lively horrors of 
 its every triumph. It is not bloodthirsty, your 
 Honors. It does not slay for the horrid lust of 
 killing. It slays for the same reason that pirates 
 have always taken human life for plunder. And 
 its descents upon our homes are always made with 
 the same swoop and swirl with which the cattle- 
 stealers in olden times raved down from the moun- 
 tains to the smiling plains, only soon to be off and 
 out of sight with their spoil until flocks and herds 
 had been replenished and the lowland farms were 
 left unguarded once more. The wily plaintiff 
 knows that, with its breath of destruction, it can- 
 not rule us for long; because if it did we should 
 be utterly consumed and leave no sign. It knows 
 that we, a cost-100 country, cannot live long with- 
 out a high tariff-dike against a cost-20 world. The 
 most it hopes for is to fool our people to smashing 
 the dike, through which it can rush like a Niagara 
 flood, soak up our savings and all the wealth that's 
 movable and be gone. It knows that after each 
 raid upon the dike; after each all-destroying de- 
 luge and exterminating inundation of foreign 
 goods, the people always have and always will 
 awaken to their horrible folly, throttle all opposi- 
 tion, and build the dike anew and higher than ever ; 
 but for the momentary plunder, with the purpose 
 of scooping up a small portion of the wasting heap 
 of our wealth unseated by the deluge, it fills this 
 land periodically with its sonorous crusade against 
 the American "trusts" and ends by the destruction 
 of billions of American property. It is the looter 
 who sets fire to the King's palace in order to run 
 away with the crown jewels under cover of the 
 smoke. It recks not of the destruction of life, by
 
 282 
 
 sheer starvation and despair, which its success is 
 sure to bring, and which it has itself often seen 
 follow its forays upon our tariff-dike. For neither 
 the wail of the orphan, the sob of the widow, nor 
 the groan of the strong man who sees his wife and 
 children, from a want he cannot meet, fading be- 
 fore his eyes into the very shadow of the grave, has 
 pathos to check the wily plaintiff in its work of 
 death ; and unheeding the havoc which it unfailing- 
 ly scatters over this fair land of ours, in a country 
 where there are no classes, it continues from gen- 
 eration to generation inflaming the people by its 
 appeal to class hatred, in which it preaches a gos- 
 pel of enw and covetousness, which, for hypocrisy 
 and hellishness would even make Lucifer redden 
 with shame. 
 
 Your Honors, who shall have aught of reproach 
 for us if we declare ouce more that, judging from 
 their contempt of the lives of men, these wilv plain- 
 tiffs are the wickedest "trust" in the world! 
 
 XXIV 
 
 THE WILY PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS A 
 TEACHER OF CANNABALISM TO AMERICANS WHO 
 ATTEND ITS SCHOOL. 
 
 If your Honors please, counsel for the wily plain- 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, in his dread assault upon 
 our humble client, American Production, pointed, 
 Avith a brow dark with awful reprobation, at some 
 dozen or so so-called reciprocity treaties sleping the 
 sleep of the unjust in the Senate pigeon-holes. But 
 what are these so-called "reciprocity treaties," your 
 Honors? Mere bills of sale to the Cannibal Chief,
 
 283 
 
 International Commercialism, of the American 
 conscience and the American compassionate heart, 
 and, to the wily plaintiffs, of the precious souls 
 and bodies of millions of our wage-producers ! Alas 
 for poor human nature! Alas for the land of the 
 free and the home of the brave! For we are not 
 supposed to be the Cannibal Islands, but a gener- 
 ous, a noble, a never-to-be-excelled country, of 
 which the State of Massachusetts is the brightest 
 star in our national constellation and the City of 
 Boston its shiniest ray. Oh, what means the clam- 
 or from the Pilgrim-Father State for the execution 
 of this bunch of bills of sale of human flesh? Only 
 that where stomachs are concerned and pocket- 
 books interested, the whole earth is a Cannibal Isl- 
 and and the City of Boston its hub! No wonder 
 our cautious Senate lets those treaties sleep in its 
 pigeon-holes! And alas and alack again for poor 
 human nature if it does not soon etherize the 
 whole batch of them! For they are merely com- 
 pacts with foreign countries, executed at the in- 
 stance of our select band of Cannibals, by which 
 the American people, through its President and 
 Senate, strip one group of citizens of their last 
 fibre of flesh and present it to other American citi- 
 zens, who. for some reason unknown to decency, 
 have a better hold on the affections of our Presi- 
 dent and the Senate than have the devoted victims 
 of this cannibalism. Look at it, your Honors J It 
 is proposed, for instance, to rob our woolen manu- 
 facturers of the whole home market, in order that 
 our steel manufacturers, for instance, may not only 
 have the whole of the home market still protected by 
 tlio tariff-dike, but a large slice of some foreign 
 market also, purchased with the proceeds of the 
 aforesaid robbery! Alas again and again for poor
 
 284 
 
 human nature, when its itching palm can thus be 
 stretched out to receive the coin made from the 
 very bones and breath of its brothers in toil ! 
 
 Your Honors, those who are thus willing to coin 
 their brother's blood and make money from the 
 hunger-pangs which torture his family, do not 
 come from any one of our States exclusively; but 
 what horrifies us so much is that any of them at 
 all should come from the moral and intellectual 
 State of Massachusetts; and that, too, your Hon- 
 ors, when the Massachusetts industries who join 
 this cruel campaign for reciprocity treaties and 
 "free raw materials," are doing well, nay are tran- 
 scendentally prosperous because of the tar iff -dike, 
 whose kindly protection they desire taken away 
 from many of their sister industries, in order that 
 they themselves may be more than extravagantly 
 prosperous. Not only are they rolling in the wealth 
 which has come their way within the years since 
 the Dingley Dike took the place of the Wilson 
 Ditch, but, from the steady pull of our American 
 demand, braced to the utmost by the biggest and 
 best-paid army of wage-producers ever fed under 
 a single flag, an infinite measure of more is even 
 now in sight. But yet the cry of the Puritans is 
 "More!" And to get more, they are demanding 
 with all their Boston arrogance that, by means of 
 these reciprocity treaties, they be allowed to feed 
 into the hoppers of their mills the very bodies and 
 souls of wage-producers of other industries, to 
 come out molded into the shape of additional for- 
 eign trade for the feeders. Oh, Massachusetts! Oh, 
 Boston ! How have the Puritans deteriorated, even 
 since the davs of Salem!
 
 285 
 
 XXV 
 
 MOTHER ENGLAND IS A DREADFUL PICTURE OP THE 
 HAVOC WHICH THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS, IF UN- 
 BRIDLED, WILL FINALLY WORK UPON OUR OWN 
 DEVOTED COUNTRY. 
 
 Your Honors, as far and wide as human nature 
 is the presence and the influence of these wily 
 plaintiffs. They represent the cunning, the deft 
 ness, the alertness, and the pitilessness which char- 
 acterize all beasts of prey. The Importing Trust is 
 nothing but unalloyed rapine. It has not a single 
 redeeming feature. Its sole function is, by the 
 finesse of trade, to get wealth which others have 
 labored to create. It never creates wealth itself; 
 but without a moment's hesitation, without a re- 
 gret or a pang of conscience, without a syllable of 
 compassion, but merely in order to stride across 
 the ruin it has wrousrht and lay its untrembling 
 hands on a comparatively insignificant spoil, it 
 often destroys great masses of values. We have 
 merely to point to Mother England to prove the 
 worst we have ever said about the Importing Trust, 
 which, everywhere, yesterday, to-day, and forever 
 is the same. Here is a bit of its hideous history: 
 In the early 40s of the last century there was great 
 distress among English workers in various of her 
 mills. The true cause of this was the fact 
 that the American tariff of 1842 had cut 
 off England's best customer, and England's 
 laborers, having theretofore been huddled toirether 
 upon those trades which supplied the American 
 as well as the British market, were hit by Ameri-
 
 286 
 
 can protection and were often out of employment; 
 and of course there was distress distress di- 
 rectly traceable to the English Exporting Trust, 
 which for generations had warped and distorted 
 English industry from a development in which it 
 would have taken the whole output of each branch 
 to supply the demand of the English people, to a 
 state in which almost entire industries relied on 
 foreign markets to buy their outputs. Of course 
 those out of employment in these industries found 
 bread high. It would have been high for them at a 
 farthing a stone. And they starved. But the Eng- 
 lish Exporting Trust hid the true reason by say- 
 ing it was dear bread and not dear work that 
 starved the workers, and that the English tariff 
 was the cause. Then the English Importing Trus, 
 and the English Exporting Trust put their heads 
 together and caused the destruction of the English 
 tariff-dike, the Corn Laws, which were repealed in 
 1846. The American Importing Trust says the Re- 
 peal of the Corn Laws was followed by increased 
 employment of English wage-producers and greater 
 happiness in England. Does it remember that the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws in England in 1846 was 
 almost synchronous with the smashing of our 
 tariff-dike here by the notorious Walker Tariff, of 
 unholy memory, a measure for the destruction of 
 Northern mills for the benefit of Southern plan- 
 tations ; and that, on that account alone, England's 
 mills were started again at high speed and starv- 
 ing workers given employment anew? The Import- 
 ing Trust also says the famine in Ireland about 
 that time was caused by English protective tariffs. 
 Your Honors, the Importing Trust is saintly in its 
 love of truth. Ireland's famine came then and all 
 her famines have since come from her colonizing by
 
 2*7 
 
 England and, through rmnjuilsory free trade with 
 the English Industrial (Jiant, the destruction of 
 her wonderfully diversified system of industries 
 which forced Ireland, without wages to buy other 
 things, largely to live on potatoes; and when the 
 potato crop rotted, poor Ireland starved to death, 
 although "only across the channel are people wjho 
 roll in gold.'' No, your Honors; it is not English 
 protection that starved Ireland, but English free 
 trade with her unhappy colony "across the chan- 
 nel," on the greenest and richest and yet because of 
 free trade, the unhappiest island on the globe. It 
 is not land or water, or mines or forests alone that, 
 make people rich, your Honors. It is the sacred 
 right to labor for decent wages. 
 
 But what was the early effect upon England of 
 the abandonment of her tariff-dike, your Honors? 
 It was a dreadful slaughter of English men and 
 women, which forms a chapter of horrors worse 
 than that which is written by the sacking by sav- 
 ages of a great city. England's workers were ex- 
 ploited by two enemies then, both the Importing 
 Trust and the Exporting Trust. The Exporting 
 Trust had already congested English workers too 
 much on a limited number of industries, leaving 
 them to depend for their lives on a foreign export 
 trade which was always affected by wind and 
 weather, war and diplomacy, and was often at the 
 mercy of the American Congress, which, at one 
 session, would build a tariff-dike against English 
 goods and dispense starvation to English workers 
 thus made idle; and at the next, perhaps, when the 
 English lobby in Washington was strong enough, 
 with the aid of our Importing Trust, the wily plain- 
 tiff herein, to make Congressmen shut their eyes 
 to the death they were dealing among their own
 
 288 
 
 countrymen, would tear down the dike again and 
 renew hope in English hearts. But now, in addi- 
 tion to the havoc made by England's Exporting 
 Trust, her Importing Trust, by exploring and 
 exploiting every land where goods could be 
 made more cheaply than in England, del- 
 uged her with foreign goods and drowned 
 out of their employment forever thousands 
 upon thousands of England's cleverest workers. 
 Whole industries were wiped off the English map. 
 Thousands of farmers were beggared by the impor- 
 tation of American wheat, and her farming lands 
 were abandoned to pasture by the hundreds of 
 thousands of acres; while in the vilest of quarters 
 in her large cities, the unemployed festered in 
 heaps. And everywhere in Great Britain laboring 
 humanity became so cheap that none was so poor 
 as to do it reverence. 
 
 This exploitation of the English pay-roll, on the 
 one hand by the Exporting Trust and on the other 
 by the Importing Trust, rapidly gathered the en- 
 tire wealth of the British Islands into the hands 
 of the members of the Importing Trust, the great 
 merchants, and the Exporting Trust, the manu- 
 facturers and the nobility who patronized manu- 
 facturing industries. England's industrial history 
 is the history of the machinations of the British 
 counterparts of these wily plaintiffs to enslave 
 British wage-producers and grow rich from their 
 bartered bodies and souls. In the face of such a 
 history, what a mockery is the national boast of 
 England, to wit, "No slave can live under the Brit- 
 ish flag!" Why, your Honors, England has done 
 nothing else but enslave her wage-producers for 
 generations. For centuries she led English indus- 
 tries along the lines in which, in the form of spe-
 
 289 
 
 cial products, her manufacturers could pawn her 
 stores of coal and iron with the Loan Uncles of 
 the Importing Trusts of all the foreign-trading 
 countries in the world, thus, while impoverishing 
 the many, enriching the few who could purchase a 
 title to her mines, by allowing them at bargain 
 prices, and in a comparatively short time, to scat- 
 ter all over the world the natural stores which if 
 used alone for her own people, should have lasted 
 her ten thousand years; and with an insanity which 
 surely did not come from the good gods, placing 
 herself in a position where she would be at the 
 mercy of the outside earth for these things. Thus 
 England's Exporting Trust has sold out the Eng- 
 lish nation in the world's public auction-room and 
 left English wage-producers at the mercy of the 
 ebbing and flowing tide of foreign trade and for- 
 eign dike-building which has barred out English 
 goods, except on terms which English wage-pro- 
 ducers have had to pay in lower wages. 
 
 So England has become industrially lop-sided. 
 Great in mineral wealth, but only entitled to a me- 
 diocre position as a producer of her own food, her 
 Exporting Trust cashed in her mineral wealth and 
 piled up power in that form fifty-fold greater than 
 her natural strength in population and land entit- 
 led her to have, and thus pawned at a low competi- 
 tive figure England's power to live long and sober- 
 ly. A natural dwarf, England's Exporting Trust 
 at that time England herself desired to be a giant, 
 and, for a time, became a giant in manufacturing 
 while she shrank to a pigmy in farming. Then the 
 Importing Trust came to its own; and with free 
 trade proceeded to convert both English farmers 
 and English factory hands into coin for its till. 
 And this thing has gone on until England is a land
 
 290 
 
 of starving workers and of people whose only ex- 
 cuse for not leaving her inhospitable shores is the 
 lack of the price of the passage across. With her 
 impoverished population and her prostrate agricul- 
 ture she is at the mercy of foreign markets wherein 
 to unload her manufactures in exchange for bread. 
 And after all these years of riotous living by the 
 counterparts of these wily plaintiffs, what is she 
 facing? The alternative of going back and repair- 
 ing her tariff-dike against foreign goods coming in, 
 and building a tariff dam against her own pro- 
 ducts going out; or industrial and political anni- 
 hilation. Her fate is 1 written large on the wall. 
 She never was entitled to be larger than her power 
 of growing food for her own people ; and back again 
 to the size to which she was originally fitted to 
 grow, she must shrink. Aye, your Honors, and to 
 as much smaller dimensions as her natural resour- 
 ces have been squandered in foreign trade. The 
 usurer with which she has pawned her future for 
 her present will soon demand back his principal 
 together with his interest. With her mineral 
 wealth fatally reduced to secure those advances 
 with which she has paid for her inflated grandeur, 
 she will be compelled to raise a huge tariff dike 
 against grain, turn her pastures to plow lands, 
 clear her forests, confiscate her gentlemen's parks, 
 and raise her own food; and, failing in her foreign 
 markets, now being shut to her by dike-builders, 
 rely only on the market made by her own people at 
 home. Thus she will shrink to her own natural 
 size by the exorcising of the two devils, who are 
 counterparts of the wily plaintiffs in this suit; 
 but she will stand on a more healthy and secure 
 footing. 
 
 Why, your Honors, is so little known or said
 
 201 
 
 of the havoc wrought in our good Mother England's 
 happiness by the first cousins of these wily plain- 
 tiffs? Merely because these very wily plaintiffs 
 hide the English ruin by every means in their 
 power, to the end that our good people may not look 
 upon these wily plaintiffs also with aversion. Yes, 
 your Honors, the facts of England's misery are 
 carefully suppressed. Only the good figures leak 
 out to this country. The English Exporting and 
 Importing Trusts work together with these wily 
 plaintiffs to keep our people ignorant of the re- 
 sults of their sale of English wage-producers into 
 bondage. Whole English industries have been 
 wiped out and hundreds of thousands of British 
 wage-producers have been crowded from their 
 trades and have died in the deepest misery because 
 of free trade and its pestilential competition, but 
 these facts are never mentioned in the doctored fig- 
 ures pretending to show the condition of English 
 industry. No your Honors, these English statis- 
 tics do not show the frightful congestion of British 
 labor upon a narrowed field of employment. They 
 do not tell of the overrunning of their country with 
 foreign goods; the immigration of English indus- 
 tries to the mainland of Europe ; or the invasion of 
 English wage-producing fields by foreigners and by 
 women and children, paid even less than the star- 
 vation wages of the English adult male. Probably 
 the chapter of horrors in the English free trade his- 
 tory will we might say "can" never be written. 
 Language is too weak to describe the degradation 
 of body and soul, the mental and physical anguish, 
 and the starvation-slaughter scattered among Eng- 
 lish wage-producers by the counterparts of these 
 wily plaintiffs, even if every possible detail of these 
 horrors were not strenuously suppressed by this in-
 
 292 
 
 ternational guild of Exporting and Importing 
 Trusts. But we of this land have nothing to say. 
 Again and again these wily plaintiffs have wrought 
 a ruin among our own wage-producers for the mo- 
 ment as terrible as that wrought in an equal time 
 by their cousins in England. All unrest among our 
 wage-producers here; and all disquiet among those 
 of other countries are the direct fruit of the tilling 
 and sowing of these wily plaintiffs and their foreign 
 kinsmen. Wherever move our own wily plaintiffs or 
 their counterparts abroad, the goal of their efforts 
 is the undetected conversion of broad national pros- 
 perity into narrow individual fatness for the mem- 
 bers of these destructive "trusts." Yea, as para- 
 sites to a bleeding host these wily plaintiffs attach 
 themselves to the nations at a loss of national blood, 
 which, were it all known, w T ould "stagger human- 
 ity." 
 
 Paralyze the right arm of these wily plaintiffs, 
 your Honors, and of all their foreign confreres, and 
 an ideal socialism would pervade the earth; a so- 
 cialism which would not impair individual initia- 
 tive, but would reach all the highest aims of our 
 current socialism. Pure socialism is the pure doc- 
 trine of human brotherhood; but the form usually 
 advocated does not take note of the fact that indi- 
 viduals are often as far apart as the poles in nat- 
 ural gifts; and it therefore would deprive the com- 
 munity of the benefit of its aggregate strength by 
 throwing away the power of each individual in ex- 
 cess of a certain average. But, your Honors, if by 
 a prohibitory dike you shut out foreign goods and 
 by a prohibitive dam you kept in domestic goods, 
 the aggregate production of the community would 
 be divided among its members in proportion to pro- 
 ductive merit as expressed by individual ability.
 
 For the whole of the community's demand being 
 directed to its whole supply, and wages rising or 
 falling according to the ratio between demand for 
 and supply of wage-production, both wages and 
 prices would come to an equilibrium in a given in- 
 dustry at the point at which supply exactly equaled 
 demand for the given product; and profits of prop- 
 erty-producers then would have been reduced to the 
 point where a lower profit would cause the migra- 
 tion of capital ; which would also be the point where 
 profit would be merely the wages of the property 
 producer, fixed also by the ratio between the de- 
 mand and the supply of the given form of prop- 
 erty-production. Wages would now be mere coun- 
 ters showing the extent to which each wage-pro- 
 ducer was entitled to draw upon the common sup- 
 ply of the community; and the wages of a given 
 wage-producer would be large or small, according 
 to his energy as a producer. But foreign trade, in 
 which the wily plaintiffs live, destroys this equi- 
 librium and frequently returns to a wage-pro- 
 ducer wages not proportioned to his ability, his em- 
 ployment being as a rule a mere matter of chance, 
 determined by the fact whether the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust, has sold abroad the country's 
 demand which otherwise would have come to our 
 wage-producer. Furthermore, the wage-producer's 
 wages should be his title to a portion of his product 
 in merchandise commensurate, not arbitrarily with 
 the money he earns, but with the amount of energy 
 he applies to his work, which is supposed to be 
 represented by his wages at the time he does his 
 work. But by the work of the Exporting Trust, 
 the purchasing power of his wages may be reduced 
 between the date of his earning and the date of 
 his spending, from the fact that a part of the sup-
 
 294 
 
 ply he assisted to make has been reduced by export, 
 without a synchronous and automatic reduction of 
 the demand, which causes an increase in price, or, 
 a reduction in the purchasing power of his wages. 
 
 In these ways the wily plaintiffs cause an uneasi- 
 ness among our wage-producers ; for, cut off by low 
 wages on the one hand and by high prices on the 
 other, industrious spirits do not receive an equita- 
 ble reward. Honesty and personal integrity "cut 
 no ice." Physical and mental ability to do work 
 well are not in it with foreign-trade trickery. And 
 what turns the thoughtful to socialism and the 
 thoughtless to anarchy is the grievous injustice of a 
 situation, where a man is held good enough to pay 
 taxes and help bear the other burdens of communal 
 life, nay, is held to a strict accountability therefor, 
 but is not good enough to be given his pro rata of 
 all the employment furnished by providing for the 
 country's wants. The Importing Trust sells our 
 demand abroad and the Exporting Trust our sup- 
 ply, destroying the equilibrium here between sup- 
 ply and demand which otherwise would soon make 
 life a stable thing in this fair land of ours, cut off 
 gambling in stocks and crops, and put a premium 
 on steady morality. 
 
 The socialism we believe in your Honors, is such 
 as we have described, which would make the domes- 
 tic market the property of those whose supplies 
 were offered to it as their liquidated demands, call- 
 ing for the supplies offered by their fellow wage- 
 producers in this country. And we have already 
 said that what creates current socialism in this 
 country is the fact that this property-right in the 
 market "cuts no ice;" since these wily plaintiffs 
 are allowed to appropriate our wage-producers' 
 market made at wage-100 and sell its consequent
 
 295 
 
 demand-100 to any bidder in the cost-20 world they 
 please, and at any price they can get, thus killing 
 the demand for American wage-producers. We do 
 not see, your Honors, why the wage-producers who, 
 by their association in a community create a mar- 
 ket there, should not be considered to own their 
 common market as much as they own their wages. 
 And if this is socialism, your Honors, the learned 
 counsel for thes'e wily plaintiffs will have to make 
 the best of it. Not only would this kind of social- 
 ism, by rewarding it to the limit, keep individual 
 initiative alive but it would also take care of all 
 the weaklings. There would be no "survival of the 
 fittest," in the sense that the unfit would perish and 
 leave the fit them surviving. It would rather be 
 "The leadership of the fittest and the followership 
 of the unfit." The unfit would not perish but they 
 would be improved. In the general employment 
 which would prevail at high wages, there would be 
 room for all workers, no matter of what grade. 
 Ami if any foil by the way, they woud be kindly 
 fared for; because the human heart is not hard 
 where it is not necessary to the life of the owner of 
 the heart. And there would be enough to feed, 
 clothe and shelter the weak in the abundance pre- 
 vailing where everv penny's worth of demand in 
 the domestic' market was reserved for the supply 
 furnished by its wage-producers. 
 
 We have held up Mother England as an example 
 of what follows from a doctrine different from ours, 
 a doctrine which does not admit the exclusive right 
 of the wage-producer to his domestic market and 
 .nil 'the opportunities of employment which it crives 
 him. P.v takinir Ihe yoke of the cousins of these 
 wily plaintiffs, she has experienced what these wily 
 plaintiffs are, viz., the agents of the back-track
 
 296 
 
 movement in human development, of involution to- 
 wards the narrower individualism of the old feudal 
 times instead of evolution towards the broader na- 
 tion. For as against a broad nationalism, these 
 wily plaintiffs, both in effect predatory, aliensi, 
 stand for a narrower individualism; as against a 
 wider and wider distribution of wealth, they stand 
 for the gathering of wealth into fewer and fewer 
 hands, as a swarm of self -asserting and strenuous 
 individuals first drive the nation asunder into frag- 
 ments and then absorb the fragments, the larger 
 individuals finishing by swallowing all the smaller 
 ones, until we have retraced our steps to the time 
 of the earl and the duke, the fortified castle and the 
 dungeon-tower, and the ragged and hungry retain- 
 ers, huddled in the barracks, about the kitchen gar- 
 den and in the quarters of the horses, cows, sheep, 
 goats, and asses. This would surely come from fol- 
 lowing the rule, "Every man for himself; the devil 
 take the hindmost." There is no brotherhood in 
 this rule. It is a spear which knows no brother. 
 It is the rule of the Big Stick. Broad intelligence 
 is out. Brawn and cunning are in full command. 
 It is a burrowing with mole eyes for the little dol- 
 lar just ahead in the dirt, and a missing of the vis- 
 ion of the concrete nation, upright, happy and 
 wealthv, moral and strong, which would surely rise 
 from following the rule, "All for each; each for 
 all," and recognizing the sacred risrht of each citi- 
 zen to do as much work as would fall to his lot by 
 dividing among all the citizens of the nation, ac- 
 cording to their varied powers, the opportunities to 
 work caused by the necessities of the nation ; and to 
 share in the fruit of this united production by a 
 like division according to merit, of all the supply 
 matte by the nation at work. These wily plaintiffs
 
 297 
 
 stand not for the success of the industrious, the 
 honest, the willing, and the true; but for the suc- 
 cess of him whose talents are greatest in contrast- 
 ing and playing the necessities of one human being 
 over against the like necessities of another, with 
 an incidental stab in the direction of making the 
 necessities of each as dire as possible through the 
 withholding of his food by intercepting his employ- 
 ment. They represent the marauding elements in 
 human nature. They browse upon the misfortunes 
 of the weak. They block the avenues by which one 
 wage-producer may exchange his products with an- 
 other; while they take toll from both on pain of 
 starvation to the one who refuses to be levied upon 
 by these brigands of international trade. They 
 make success depend upon the same qualities which 
 they impersonate. The one who is the most dili- 
 gent peddler, the most adroit bargainer, the cun- 
 n ingest hawker and hood-winker, is the one whom 
 thev decorate with their highest honors. So they 
 chaffer, and dicker, and huckster, and hunt the 
 earth around to find the weakest and the most mis- 
 erable producer, in order to get his product at the 
 weakest and most miserable price and stand be- 
 tween the strongest and best producer, the man 
 with the hammer in his hand and a hope in his 
 heart, and the market upon which his activity and 
 liis hope depend. Thev play misery against happi- 
 ness and coin the difference between the happy 
 man's happiness and his misery into a profit on an 
 importing or exporting deal: and thev call this 
 "Bnvincr in the cheapest and soiling in the dearest 
 market." Arid so with the old "Devil catch the 
 hindmost" rule in operation, it is the most violent, 
 the most cunninsr. the most unscrupulous, and the 
 most strenuous who, by playing poverty, distress
 
 298 
 
 aud harrowing necessity against poverty, distress 
 and harrowing necessity and pocketing the differ- 
 ence between various degrees of misery, gather the 
 fat of the earth into their store-houses, and so get 
 the farthest on the road to riches. Quiet worth and 
 industry do not count, except to offer a larger booty 
 to these wily plaintiffs. If there is any value in 
 these virtues shown by wage-producers, these plain- 
 tiffs alone get it. And since as compared with the 
 industrious and patient, honest and plodding wage- 
 producers, the members of these wily plaintiffs are 
 few, to give a free hand to these wily plaintiffs, is 
 slowly but surety to gather the wealth of the earth, 
 wherever in any wise now equitably distributed, 
 back into the hands of the pushers and pullers, the 
 jostlers and shovers, the members of these wily 
 plaintiffs, and bring back the days of vassalage and 
 feudal tenures under barons and chiefs and bear- 
 shooters as violent and harsh as those of old. But 
 reverse the progress; cut off the international car- 
 nage of these wily plaintiffs, take away from the 
 T.ig Sticks and the "Gluttons of the Lime-Light," 
 their power to coin violence and cunning, and the 
 quiet and the industrious will bring their virtues to 
 a ready market; industry and honesty will come to 
 be the "coin of the realm'' which will purchase for 
 their possessors a full share of all the good things 
 \vhich they assist in producing. There will be no 
 pushing or pulling of mobs of unemployed; but the 
 whole country will go rhythmically forward to 
 higher planes of civilization and refinement, and 
 wo shall become the most moral, just and humane, 
 as well as the most powerful of all nations, a nation 
 which no longer sacrifices the good of the smallest 
 to that of the greatest number, as the Cannibals of 
 the South Sea Islands do, but which first gives to
 
 200 
 
 each all the work he needs and then secures the 
 greatest happiness of all by securing for each all 
 the fruits of all the toil to which he turns a willing 
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE ASSAULT OP THE WILY PLAINTIFFS COUNSEL 
 UPON THE NEWSPAPERS OF THE COUNTRY WAS 
 WHOLLY WITHOUT WARRANT AND UNJUSTIFIA- 
 BLE. 
 
 May it please your Honors, in their lengthy argu- 
 ments before you, counsel for both these wily plain- 
 tiffs, the Importing Trust and the Exporting Trust, 
 accused our newspapers, in behalf of the "extor- 
 tions" of the "trusts," of being in league with the 
 alleged "trusts" to maintain the tariff-dike without 
 "revision." It is evident that learned counsel have 
 not read the newspapers of late. If they had, they 
 would observe that practically all the newspapers, 
 of our great seaboard cities where "boards of trade" 
 owned by these wily plaintiffs are located, and 
 many of those inland, with one voice favor an early 
 "revision" of the dike. We do not attack them on 
 this account. Newspapers' must, according to cir- 
 cumstances, take care of the interests of their con- 
 stituents or their stockholders. They are neither 
 to praise nor to blame for anything they print. 
 They fill somebody's "long felt want," because fill- 
 ing it is money in their pockets. If newspapers are 
 run. by stock companies and these stock companies 
 are formed to pay dividends, the newspaper so run 
 must take that side of this battle between American 
 Production and these wily plaintiffs which will pay
 
 300 
 
 the largest dividends. Now, wherever the "trusts," 
 that is to say, some branch of this defendant, 
 American Production, have the greater interests 
 and furnish the larger constituency, the newspa- 
 pers must stand by the "trusts." On the other 
 hand, in our large seaboard importing cities, where 
 the greater part of newspaper constituencies is 
 made up of importing houses and their clerks and 
 employees, the newspapers necessarily stand by 
 these wily plaintiffs. And this is also true of many 
 inland newspapers with Importing and Exporting 
 Trust connections. Newspaper editorials in either 
 direction should be totally discounted by all 
 thoughtful citizens; and the latter should look the 
 whole ground over and think and determine for 
 themselves as to whether logically, a man should 
 expect more for the country and its people from an 
 organization like the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust, for instance, that never produces a penny's 
 worth of wealth in this country, but merely awaits 
 the time when there is wealth enough to skim off, as 
 cream from our milk pans, while, through its news- 
 papers it roots against high prices and the "trusts;" 
 an organization that never employs a dollar's 
 worth of American labor, except for the purpose of 
 storing and trucking our dollars out of the coun- 
 try; and whose whole campaign against this de- 
 fendant, American Production, is carried on with 
 the aid of the covetousness, envy, and hatred of our 
 thoughtless and often ignorant citizens ; or whether 
 a man should expect more for his country from an 
 organization like this defendant, American Produc- 
 tion, which, although stigmatized by the name of 
 the "trusts," employs millions of Americans in its 
 mills, pays them the highest wages in the world, 
 maintains this as a wage-100 country against a
 
 301 
 
 wage-20 world, creates billions of dollars worth of 
 wealth every year from our natural stores, and lays 
 out every penny of its earnings in further oppor- 
 tunities to American wage-producers to realize 
 their brightest hopes of a happy and care-free old 
 age. 
 
 The newspapers, your Honors, follow a very nat- 
 ural course in speaking well of those who advertise 
 the most liberally in their columns; and when these 
 advertisers are German Steamship Lines, it is very 
 natural that they should speak well of German 
 Agreements that make the German Steamship 
 Lines carry heavier cargoes into pur markets here, 
 even though these same cargoes silence our own 
 factories and snuff out like sickly candles the homes 
 and hopes of thousands of our citizens. It is also 
 very natural for such newspapers to speak earnest- 
 ly for "revision" and for "reciprocity," and for any 
 other device for increasing the gains of these wily 
 plaintiffs, their exacting masters. We say that this 
 is a very natural course, for the selfish course is 
 the necessary course and therefore the most nat- 
 ural. And yet we would not advise our people to 
 throw away their Bibles just yet and pin their faith 
 to newspapers who are compelled to pin themselves 
 to the interests of the Importing Trust, or those of 
 the other w r ily plaintiff, the Exporting Trust. 
 
 And in this connection, although we have touched 
 before upon the same topic, we cannot neglect the 
 opportunity once more to expose in our own way 
 this cruelly treacherous claim that higher prices 
 are due to the vicious and malicious combinations 
 in restraint of trade called the "trusts," otherwise 
 our client, American Produtcion, the suffering 
 host of its deadly parasite, the Importing Trust. 
 
 Tour Honors, thoso wily plaintiffs 1 are well
 
 302 
 
 aware that the rise in prices, to which, to fire our 
 people's hatred and cause them to aid in their 
 own destruction, they so cunningly point, is world- 
 wide, is not the work of American "trusts" and 
 cannot be remedied here except by making the 
 "price of coals too high, and of flesh and blood 
 too cheap." These wily plaintiffs know that the 
 rise in prices of the present industrial era is the 
 same sort of rise in prices that always follows 1 the 
 general employment of all the people here at good 
 wages. When labor is in such good demand it 
 becomes dear as compared with money ; and money 
 being therefore 'relatively cheap and products 
 made by labor dearer because of the dearer labor 
 that makes them, it takes more money to buy 
 goods. We might produce a formula stating the 
 rase in few words and short sentences, like this: 
 
 When labor is dear, money is cheap; prices are 
 high. 
 
 When labor is cheap, money is dear; prices are 
 low. 
 
 We could also reach the same point in another 
 way, like this: 
 
 When wages are high, demand is stronger than 
 supply, and prices rise. 
 
 When wages are low, demand is weaker than 
 simDly, and prices fall. 
 
 There is one peculiarity in the case, however, 
 which should be noted, and that is when labor is 
 in demand, wages rise more rapidly than prices; 
 but when labor is not in demand, wages fall more 
 rapidly than prices. This is because the wage-pro- 
 ducer or laborer stands between the property- 
 producer or capitalist and the product. When 
 demand for products springs up, the property-pro- 
 ducer must make terms with his wage-producer
 
 303 
 
 before lie can get at the profit iii the product, and, 
 measuring the profit ahead, and desiring to get 
 into the market with his goods ahead of his com- 
 petitor, he offers wages which will immediately 
 tempt the wage-producer to do his work. On the 
 other hand, when demand slackens, before the 
 glut in the market is apparent and prices have 
 had to fall also, it is the wage-producer who is 
 first made to pay for the lessening demand by 
 lower wages' or total idleness. It therefore hap- 
 pens that it is the wage-producer who is first bene- 
 fited when a higher tariff dike strengthens demand 
 and the first injured when "revision" has spilled 
 the American demand over the earth and drawn 
 it away from our client, American Production. 
 
 We hear the respectful chuckle of counsel for 
 the wily plaintiffs and their soto voce exclamation 
 of surprise that from our declaration that the 
 rise in prices has been world-wide we should so 
 inconsequently turn to an explanation of how the 
 tariff -dike causes prices to rise in this country. 
 But, your Honors, we are not so inconsequent as 
 we look. High wages in this country affect wages 
 all over the world. For it must be remembered 
 that, since we are a cost-100 country against a cost- 
 20 world, the two billions' worth of goods which 
 we are now annually importing, has as great a 
 stimulation upon the call for labor in the outside 
 world as the call for ten billions' worth of goods 
 from our client American Production would have 
 upon the call for our wage-producers; and that 
 would mean an increased demand for goods by 
 workers in the outside world equivalent to an in- 
 creased demand by our workers upon our domes- 
 tic market of ten billions of dollars annually. Is 
 it surprising then that there should be a world-
 
 304 
 
 wide increase in prices as a direct result of the 
 Dingley Law which so increased the consuming 
 power of our country that it annually lodges in 
 the shops of foreign nations the equivalent of a 
 ten-billion-dollar order? 
 
 One cannot help reflecting on the great loss in 
 true civilization and in refinement in the better 
 sense we are suffering now by the escapage yearly 
 to other countries of this two-billion-dollar demand 
 which could easily be responded to by our own 
 wage-producers. And another thing should give 
 us wholesome pause in this prodigality: We our- 
 selves are feathering the arrow which will one day 
 drink our blood. By sending abroad this ten-bill- 
 ion dollar annual stimulus to foreign enterprise, 
 we are refining their processes and reducing their 
 industrial system more and more to such a per- 
 fect bit of machinery that they will be able soon 
 to do what they have never yet done, viz., avail 
 themselves to the limit of the great difference be- 
 tween their wage-scales and ours and bring their 
 cost of production into scientific harmony with 
 their opportunity; which would soon make us 
 choose between national annihilation and the to- 
 tal exclusion of foreign imports competing with 
 our own products. 
 
 Your Honors, alluding again to combinations 
 in restraint of trade, the greatest combination in 
 restraint of trade, that is our domestic trade, in 
 this whole world is this wily plaintiff, the Import- 
 ing Trust. For the wily plaintiff has existed in 
 this country so long and has been identified so 
 much with its own hypocritical crusades against 
 the "trusts" and high prices, otherwise as we have 
 shown, high wages, that, by a sort of tacit sym- 
 pathy, a wireless telegraphy of sordid sentiment,
 
 305 
 
 it has made part of itself all the pompous doc- 
 trinaires in the country, so that each of them, in 
 tearing down American prosperity and building 
 up foreign prosperity, is just as anxious to do the 
 work of the wily plaintiff as if he also shared 
 directly in the division of that part of the Ameri- 
 can savings-bank fund which, by its anti-"trust," 
 "tariff -revision" crusades, the wily plaintiff every 
 now and then snatches from our wage-producers. 
 One of these doctrinaires came off of a European 
 steamship the other day, probably warm from the 
 affectionate embrace of the German Kaiser and 
 his hypnotism of the Sternberg brand; and said 
 doctrinaire had no sooner left the gang-plank 
 than an Importing Trust newspaper got hold of 
 him and drew from him these wise words : 
 
 "I think that the present temper of the people will 
 demand not merely the usual conventional platform 
 pledges, but something definite in the way of constructive 
 legislation. 
 
 "I think that, in the first place, the time has come 
 when the Dingley tariff has got to be revised, in the in- 
 terest of business itself, and not in any sense as an attack 
 on business or as a disturbance to business. It seems 
 to me clear that the vast majority of the people of the 
 country of all parties virtually accept the protectionist 
 principle, but financial and commercial developments of 
 the last decade make it necessary to face without delay a 
 revision of the existing tariff, and this revision not to be 
 up as some people are insane enough to suppose but 
 down. This can be accomplished without the s-ightest 
 injury to business if it is done in a fair-minded and 
 scientific fashion. The expanding business of the coun- 
 try needs every dollar to be a circulating medium, and 
 the collection in tariff taxes of a larger surplus, which is 
 withdrawn from the normal course of business, and offers 
 a constant temptation to legislative extravagance, is un- 
 statesmanlike and uneconomic. In my judgment, there- 
 fore, the Eepublican Party will be held by the voters and 
 all the best sentiment of the party itself to a definite 
 pledge of tariff revision." 
 
 Oh, your Honors, when will these scholastic 
 gentlemen, who don't know a yard-stick from a
 
 306 
 
 peck measure, learn that a mortar-board hat, a 
 student's gown and a dip don't give them any li- 
 cense to "dip" into business matters. Fools rush 
 in where angels fear to tread, your Honors, and 
 here is this scion of a great college, who never had 
 anything to do with the drafting of a tariff law in 
 the world and knows nothing about the complex 
 construction of the Dingley Dike, saying that the 
 Dike can be "revised" downwards "without the 
 slightest injury to business," "if it is done in a 
 fair-minded and scientific fashion," when men who 
 have labored over the question for years and years 
 and have some idea of the sort of a job a man 
 has to tackle when he tries to make the same 
 stream flow up hill and down hill, at the same 
 place, and the same moment of time, tremble at 
 the mere thought of it and know as they know 
 they are living that they never can approach that 
 Dike with the declared purpose of "revising" it 
 downward without bringing our whole business 
 building down about our ears in a single night! 
 But the hypocrisy of the claim of this chattel of 
 the Importing Trust, that he believes in protection 
 or in any tariff-dike that will save American in- 
 dustry from drowning, appears from a compari- 
 son of his words just quoted with those of the 
 Democratic Party, the open and frank enemy of 
 Protection, as set out in its national platform in 
 1904: 
 
 "We denounce protectionism as a robbery of the many 
 to enrich the few and we favor A TARIFF LIMITED TO 
 THE NEEDS OF THE GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC- 
 ALLY, EFFECTIVELY AND CONSTITUTIONALLY 
 ADMINISTERED." 
 
 Thus 1 , the Democratic Party, the Party of abso- 
 lute free trade. Now listen to Dr. Nixie Butter,
 
 .307 
 
 President of the great Columbarium College, as 
 just quoted: 
 
 "The expanding business of the country needs every 
 dollar to be a circulating medium, AND THE COLLEC- 
 TION IN TARIFF TAXES OF A LARGER SURPLUS, 
 WHICH IS WITHDRAWN FROM THE NORMAL 
 COURSE OF BUSINESS and offers a constant temptation 
 to legislative extravagance, is unstatesmanlike and un- 
 economic." 
 
 Both the gentleman of the cap and gown and 
 the old free trade donkey, the Democratic Party, 
 the political cats-paw of these wily plaintiffs, 
 are in accord in the statement that the tariff 
 should be no larger than sufficient for the "needs 
 of the Government economically administered." 
 And the gentleman with the dip thinks the sur- 
 plus in the Treasury should be dipped out by 
 drowning American industry with a downward 
 "revised" dike just like the Importing Trust ex- 
 actly although "revising" the dike upward would 
 prevent a surplus more surely than a "revision" 
 downward. Isn't it rather a singular coincidence, 
 your Honors, that, if this gentleman is a truly and 
 really protectionist, to cut off the surplus he 
 should demand the sort of a treatment of the dike 
 which will surely throw our savings bank fund 
 into the clutch of the Importing Trust, instead 
 of a treatment which would as surely cut off that 
 horrid surplus and at the same time double 'our 
 savings bank fund in a few years? Are you a 
 good protectionist of your garden when you take 
 down the fence which already is so low that the 
 cattle reach over and crop the ears out of your 
 sweet corn, rather than build it up so high that 
 the cattle cannot steal any of your vegetables at 
 all. If you did not see the face of the man who 
 said it but only heard him say through an opaque
 
 30& 
 
 screen, that the fence of such a garden should be 
 taken down to improve the drainage, would you 
 not think it was the owner of the cattle or his 
 man Friday who spoke, rather than the owner of 
 the garden, your Honors? We think you would 
 think it was the party, whoever he was, who 
 wanted the cattle to steal more corn and caU- 
 bages, if he said that, to give the garden better 
 drainage, the fence must be "revised" downwards 
 rather than upwards, when the fence had nothing 
 at all to do with the drainage. And this is what 
 this Dr. Nixie is your Honors, simply the man 
 Friday of the Importing Trust, which will get 
 our whole industrial garden the moment we "re- 
 vise" downward the Dingley Dike. 
 
 But the case against this man Friday of the wily 
 plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is still worse, 
 either for his information or his frankness, when 
 the fact is known that there is 1 no surplus 
 in the Treasury "withdrawn from the normal 
 course of business;" and for the reason that, 
 through the medium of the banks who deposit 
 bonds to secure them, these surplus treasury funds 
 are sent into circulation again and the "business" 
 of the country does not suffer at all, from there 
 being such a surplus; for "business" uses it. Fur- 
 thermore, your Honors', the surplus in the Treas- 
 ury, even if it were not actually in business circu- 
 lation in the way described, being less than $100,- 
 000,000, is not a circumstance to the reserves held 
 constantly out of circulation by our savings 1 and 
 other banks. If keeping money from circulation 
 were the only fault to find with this tariff-dike 
 which is the life and soul of all American busi- 
 ness, why do we not contrive some way of first 
 getting back into circulation the savings' bank and
 
 300 
 
 other reserves, which aggregate ten times as much 
 as the Treasury surplus which is really in circu- 
 lation? Your Honors, when there are so many 
 better and surer ways of keeping the treasury sur- 
 plus in circulation than drowning out American 
 industry through a "revised" dike, and yet the 
 downward "revision" of the dike is said to be the 
 only thing for the case, this being too the only 
 method by which the dipping out of the treasury 
 surplus will at the same time dip out the people's 
 savings into the till of the wily plaintiff, the Im- 
 porting Trust, it does look as if the real object of 
 thus 1 dipping out the treasury surplus was the 
 turning over of our savings fund to the Importing 
 Trust. We do not believe college presidents are 
 fools, your Honors. We would far rather believe 
 they are knaves in this kind of tariff "revision" 
 talk, and we frankly do. There is some selfish 
 interest somewhere in their horizon, which they 
 think will be better served by standing with the 
 Importing Trust than with the American-Produc- 
 tion party, whether that interest be social or finan- 
 cial ; whether it be the fact that their liberal back- 
 ers in their educational ambitions are members 
 of the Importing Trust, or they merely want their 
 backs comfortably scratched by some of the sa- 
 vants, chattels of the Importing Trust, whose 
 laudation is grateful to their senses' such senses 
 as we are permitted to suppose they have, after 
 having demonstrated to us that they think the in- 
 dustries of this country can be drowned dead by 
 a tariff-dike downward revision and at the same 
 lime be built up higher by a tariff-dike downward 
 revision. To think of it, your Honors! A man 
 trusted to teaching the young ideas of this country 
 how to shoot, who does not honestly know that,
 
 310 
 
 by a lower tariff, to increase competition between 
 a cost-100 country and a cost-20 world is to destroy 
 civilization in the cost-100 country by exactly the 
 increase in competition! Do you wonder, your 
 Honors, that we charitably said this man did not 
 know a yard-stick from a peck measure? And yet 
 this is the kind of an impressive Buttinsky which 
 the Importing Trust is always employing to stalk 
 American industries with. He is a large bass- 
 drum but he is little music. He may impress the 
 boys of business; but the grown-ups don't see any- 
 thing but bombous pomposity in his sonorosity 
 and in his cap and gown; and as for his dip, it 
 isn't worth in business as much as a single one 
 of the other kind of dip made of good tallow. 
 
 Have you ever noticed, your Honors, how these 
 wily plaintiffs and their chattels loftily ignore 
 profits as the mainspring of business when they 
 are snaring in the people? You would not think the 
 Importing Trust, or its wily associate in this case, 
 the Exporting Trust, would ever stoop to so "sel- 
 fish" a thing as a profit. For when an American 
 industry objects to "revision" downwards, or to 
 a reciprocity treaty because either would surely 
 take the profits out of its business, the wily plain- 
 tiffs, by their newspapers, say it is "selfish," it 
 is "narrow," and it would set back a great good to 
 the whole country just to save its own contracted 
 "interests." If an American industry is not sel- 
 fish in the direction of a profit, it is as good as 
 a dead industry, your Honors. And the American 
 industry that, being a cost-100 industry, did not 
 object to being exposed by "revision" or "recipro- 
 city" to competition with a cost-20 world would 
 be worthy of its fate. Yet these wily plaintiffs 
 make believe the world is not so made up that
 
 311 
 
 the first business of any one, man or mouse, is to 
 see that there is no interruption in the current 
 of food into his stomach ; and these wily plaintiffs 
 are so elusive, appearing now as a missionary, now 
 as a clergyman, and again as a college president, 
 or a professor of economics, and again as a board 
 of trade, or a manufacturers' association, with all 
 the art and address of a Mephistopheles, that they 
 often deceive the elect themselves and cause other- 
 wise sound and sensible people to fall in with the 
 idea that our business men are very wicked to be so 
 "selfish" as to stand in the way of "the greatest 
 good of the greatest number" and incidentally to 
 the flowing of our savings bank fund into the pock- 
 fsts of these wily plaintiffs. But, nevertheless, 
 your Honors, it is our idea that this whole question 
 as to our tariff dike is a simple business question, 
 for business men to settle. It is upon the shoulders 
 of business men that the destinies of this whole 
 country rest. And we understand a business man 
 to be any one, man or woman, who is directly inter- 
 ested in our great client, American Production; 
 and this covers every wage-producer, every prop- 
 erty-producer, and every adjunct-producer in this 
 country ; and these embrace our whole active popu- 
 lation. And the country's pay-roll, your Honors, as 
 we think we have said before, is not merely the list 
 of our wage-producers who are employed in our 
 various industries, but it is the entire list of all our 
 active people covering everybody who works for a 
 return, whether you call it wages, salary or profits. 
 And our wage-fund is the entire volume of money 
 \\-liich changes hands 1 from day to day, exchanged by 
 our own people for American goods or for American 
 services of whatever kind. From this standpoint 
 of ours the wage-volume is the business-volume of
 
 312 
 
 the country. Now, your Honors, you cannot "re- 
 vise" our tariff-dike downwards against the cost-20 
 world and oppose its raging flood of surplus cost-20 
 with our cost-100 products without supplanting the 
 services of millions of our workers by the services 
 of workers abroad, to the abrupt contraction of our 
 pay-roll, our wage-fund, and our business-volume. 
 And, on the other hand, to save your lives, you can- 
 not build our tariff-dike to heaven without shutting 
 out foreign goods, employing our own people at 
 higher wages, and increasing the wage- fund, the 
 wage-volume and the business-volume at the same 
 time. From circumference to centre, from bark to 
 pith, and from pith back to bark again, this Ameri- 
 can forest monarch is a business tree and the dead- 
 liest woodsmen in our whole horizon, who threaten 
 with the sharpest of axes, to reduce our tree to com- 
 mercial logs, are these wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
 ing Trust and the Exporting Trust. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 THE OBJECT OF THE PRESENT SUIT IS NOT ONLY TO 
 ENJOIN THE PLAINTIFFS AGAINST THE FUETHER 
 PROSECUTION OF THEIR NEFARIOUS TRADE BUT AS 
 WELL TO DETERMINE AN INTELLIGENT PLAN OF 
 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 May it please your Honors, we are loath to trench 
 further upon your valuable time in this matter; but 
 we feel that, in passing upon the merits of the di- 
 verse contentions here adduced, all we have said 
 would be of small value to this Court unless we at 
 least made an attempt to formulate some system
 
 313 
 
 according to which we may live in the future. Your 
 Honors, the desire of every nation, considered as a 
 concrete entity, must be to go forward to a more 
 prosperous condition; and to put away from na- 
 tional experience as far as possible all those vicissi- 
 tudes which in the unripe past have now and again 
 brought the nation to weakness, despair and in- 
 ternal woe. But the nation, as a nation, seems to 
 have no memory, your Honors; and no matter 
 through what dreadful experience it may have 
 passed, and no matter how obvious 1 are the causes 
 by avoiding which such experiences never could 
 have taken place, or could take place again, the na- 
 tion as a nation sees them not. Considered as a 
 nation, it has no association of ideas 1 , no recording 
 brain-cells. And that accounts for the fact that, 
 knowing their book and their role, after having 
 cast the country into the depths of distress as they 
 have done many times, and after having plundered 
 our people so cruelly that at last they have arisen 
 in their blind might, cast out the plaintiffs, or 
 either of them, and once more built the broken 
 dike anew, these wily plaintiffs, particularly the 
 wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, await with 
 such certainty and serenity the lapse of a few brief 
 years ere renewing their assault upon the people's 
 citadel, the tariff-dike, knowing full well that, when 
 a comparatively short time has passed, those who 
 took part with most pangs and heart-wrenchings 
 in the last industrial funeral will have passed away 
 or have left but a minority of their like behind ; and 
 others, young and foolish, with no recollection of 
 the vivid destruction which attended the last suc- 
 cess of these wily plaintiffs, will have come into the 
 places of power to control the fate of this devoted
 
 314 
 
 land ; and that upon these fresh and fervid young 
 uiinds, largely suffering from megalocephalus 
 adolescens, they can make anew the warm impres- 
 sion of enviousness and covetousness, by pointing 
 to the "trusts," our client, American Production, 
 as the source of the greenness of our new and suc- 
 culent crop of voters, and the condition which com- 
 pels them to earn their money before spending it 
 for lollipops. It is in this way, because the nation 
 has no memory, and because men with memories 
 must dwindle and die, that these fell disturbers of 
 our happiness and wreckers of our homes are en- 
 able to get one inning after another before our 
 people, and knock the ball over the fence. They 
 have reduced the operation to an exact science. 
 They know just how long to lie low after the last 
 robbery; just when to crawl into view again, and 
 just when and how strongly to turn on the cam- 
 paign for tariff "revision"; just how many college 
 professors and other heavy intellectual guns they 
 need to have interviewed, with their portraits in the 
 papers, emitting fire, smoke, lava, and red-hot cin- 
 ders against the "exploded fallacy of protection;" 
 just when to turn on the full newspaper chorus 
 against the "trusts" and the psychological moment 
 at which to say, "The people are sternly demanding 
 an early revision of the tariff," a Ja Dr. Nixie But- 
 iusky. President, etc. And it is because we older 
 fry must soon pass from the scene and leave our 
 youngsters to be preyed upon and victimized, as 
 we ourselves before them were preyed upon and vic- 
 timized, by this brace of arch bunco-steerers and 
 green-goods men, the Importing and Exporting 
 Trusts, that we desire to inaugurate a system where- 
 by th<> younger generation may be uniformly in-
 
 315 
 
 structed in this most momentous matter and avoid 
 falling into the net of these century-old conspira- 
 tors, these wily plaintiffs, the only remaining slave- 
 traders of the world, against whose lust for trade 
 even our cradles are not safe. 
 
 To this end, your Honors, we desire to formulate 
 such a statement of the true conditions' of trade in 
 this world as will appeal to the understanding of 
 every fairly intelligent person, of whatever sex, 
 color, or previous condition of ignorance and con- 
 ceil. And this is the direction our efforts shall 
 take. 
 
 The one thing needful for national prosperity is 
 a plenty of opportunities to produce at wages in 
 order to consume at prices. In fact, these oppor- 
 tunities to work are the only condition of our exist- 
 ence. But, fortunately, the natural desires and 
 necessities 1 of humanity furnish these opportunities; 
 jiml the opportunities arising in every community 
 from this cause are sufficient to furnish the people 
 of the communities all the opportunities necessary 
 <o -enrn the livelihood of that community. All 
 that takes' place is, by means of money or wages, the 
 exchange among the people of the opportunities to 
 work furnished by the people. In producing a cer- 
 tain form of goods, each worker works for himself 
 directly and for all the rest of the community by 
 proxy. In other words, each worker is the active 
 si gent of production of the entire community. If 
 all communities had attached to them a sufficient 
 amount of soil and of forest and mining land, to 
 produce the food and the basic materials of produc- 
 tion for the community, and if no part of the prod- 
 uct were squandered in foreign trade, and no draft 
 on local labor were cancelled by an invading for- 
 eign supply nothing could prevent each such com-
 
 316 
 
 munity from being forever in the midst of plenty 
 and happiness. There would not be excessive 
 wealth on the one hand nor great poverty on the 
 other. The trouble with us is we did not know 
 enough to begin this way. We are away off the 
 track ; and to get on the track will cost a good deal 
 of steady work. To get on the track would need a 
 prohibitory dike against incoming foreign supply 
 and a prohibitory dam against outgoing domestic 
 supply. That would bring us around automatically 
 and in a. jiffy to the ideal condition of which we 
 have just spoken. Let us see why from a very cold 
 business point of view we need that dike against 
 foreign supply. 
 
 We have to have property-producers employing 
 wage-producers, do we not? And property-pro- 
 ducers will work in our country if they can make 
 as good a profit there as elsewhere, or a little 
 better, will they not? Well, what would happen 
 to their capital if, having settled among us we 
 by a low dike exposed them for their cost-100 
 goods to cost-20 foreign competition? Would not 
 their capital go abroad in the form of payments 
 for goods sold our people by the wily plaintiff, 
 the Importing Trust? At any rate, in competi- 
 tion with cost-20 goods the capital laid out in cost- 
 100 goods would not get back to our property-pro- 
 ducers. That part of their capital represented 
 by the labor-cost in their goods, would be spent 
 in our markets by our wage-produr-ers for Im- 
 porting Trust cost-20 goods, and would go out of 
 the country to the property-producers abroad, 
 whose capital and whose profits would thus get 
 back to them in the shape of the capital of our 
 own property-producers which had been spent as 
 wages; and the cost-100 goods made by our prop-
 
 sir 
 
 erty-producers would either remain unsold or be 
 sold at cost-20 also, and so at a loss of 80% of the 
 actual cost. But in any event, a tariff-dike down*- 
 ward-"revision" would end with the lodging of 
 our capital in the cost-20 world outside. For 
 what our sensible property-producers would do, 
 the moment a downward "revision" by Congress 
 was certain, would be to close all their factories 
 and take what capital they could *?ave and go 
 abroad with it in to the cost-20 world, build plants 
 there and join the general assault upon our sav- 
 ings-bank fund; then when our people had awak- 
 ened from their hypnotic slumber and realized 
 that our "trusts" were American Production as 
 a whole; and had once more driven the money- 
 changers of these wily plaintiffs from the Tem- 
 ple of American Industry and banged the door 
 shut with a tariff-dike higher than ever, our ex- 
 iled property-producers, having saved some of our 
 money for us by joining the Importing Trust in 
 its looting of our treasure house, could come back 
 and open their American factories again. 
 
 As wo have said before, there is no doubt that 
 many of our property-producers have already 
 started factories abroad, both to get inside the 
 ta riff -dikes of foreign countries, and to be ready 
 for a "revision" of our dike and to share in the bene- 
 fit of joining the Importing Trust. It seems to us, 
 vonr Honors, as if we had clearly shown that capi- 
 tal cannot work in a cost-100 country in competi- 
 tion with a cost-20 world. And it also seems to 
 us that unless capital settles in the place 'of the 
 lowest cost of its 1 goods, it will be in danger of be- 
 in o- scattered in the way we have described in our 
 own case. We, therefore, submit the folowing prin- 
 ciple as the first of our general system :
 
 318 
 
 1. Capital desiring a given market for its output must 
 finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production for 
 that market. 
 
 It would seein to us, your Honors, that any na- 
 tion looking for the philosopher's stone of pros- 
 perity, would be attracted by the principle just 
 stated. For a nation's prosperity must surely be 
 directly in proportion to the proportion, distribu- 
 ted among its own workers, of the opportunities 
 to work caused by the needs of its own people; 
 and to have such opportunities to work, it must 
 have within its borders enough busy capital en- 
 gaged in property-production to employ the great- 
 est possible number of its wage-producers. But 
 to have such busy capital some steps must be 
 taken to protect it against imports from countries 
 whose cost is lower, whether from climate, from 
 greater industrial maturity or from cheap wage- 
 producers. The device which has been generally 
 adopted to take away from foreign property-pro- 
 ducers their advantage in lower cost, is that of a 
 tariff-dike, such as our own. But whether the tar- 
 iffs of other countries, by being so high as to 
 make the home country the area of lowest cost 'of 
 production, have answered the principle or not, 
 our own tariff-dike has never risen to that height 
 of common sense; for its only obiect, as declared 
 bv leading lights of the Republican Party, is to 
 oqualize the foreign wage-cost with the American 
 and not to give the American a better chance in 
 his own market. The American has been too hos- 
 T>itable: he has stood up so straight in his hospi- 
 talitv that he has leaned over backward and been 
 foolishly and at least not humanely unjust to 
 himself. There is no good reason whv the people 
 of a country should not be best entitled to their
 
 319 
 
 own country and the to al wealth represented by 
 its domestic market. But our property-producers, 
 and through them our wage-producers, by fixing 
 our tariff-dike only high enough to give Ameri- 
 cans as good a right to their own market as peo- 
 ple abroad, are left exposed to a destructive com- 
 petition from a cost-20 world. The fine Italian 
 hand of the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff 
 herein, is 1 visible in this, your Honors. It never 
 slumbers or sleeps; and its lobbies in Washington 
 fight every inch of the ground which American 
 Production tries to wrench from it, even though 
 our client struggles for but the merest justice to 
 our property and wage-producers. And so our 
 tariff -dike is built so low that every improvement 
 or economj" in methods of production abroad is 
 reflected in a great deluge of foreign goods bound- 
 ing over the dike and sowing the seeds of idleness 
 and hard times among our workers. A merely 
 protective tariff of this nature can have no place 
 in a scientific system aiming at continued pros- 
 perity. For since it is only a set-off for the time 
 Iming against lower wages abroad, without leav- 
 ing any margin against advantages to foreign pro- 
 ducers in more compact organization or cheap- 
 er materials, it may leave our market exposed to 
 a frightful inundation within any given twenty- 
 four hours. An inundation of this sort is going 
 on now, even while our college presidents are opin- 
 ing that the tariff-dike should be "revised" down- 
 wards 1 . Yea, your Honors, we have truly spoken 
 in -saying that the wily plaintiff, the Importing 
 Trust never slumbers or sleeps. It never for a 
 single second in the year takes its eye off of our 
 savings-bank fund. It is a burglar that never for- 
 gets its burgle.
 
 320 
 
 The principle we have just stated, jour Honors, 
 as to the necessary location of capital where it can 
 get the lowest cost in production, applies universal- 
 ly; but it does not hint to us any rule to follow 
 in determining whether its operation at any given 
 point would be harmful to capital located there. 
 We know as a fact that captial cannot remain 
 fixed at any point except where other capital can- 
 not undercut its market. It must graviate, as 
 a matter of course, to the area affording the lowest 
 cost of production for its market. But, as a final 
 proposition, where must these areas of lowest cost 
 be? Why, your Honors, where else than the places 
 where cost of subsistence is the lowest? Of course, 
 your Honors, there is subsistence and subsistence. 
 There is subsistence for the man and subsistence for 
 the mouse; and our profound political economists 
 tell us that it pays better to feed the large, intelli- 
 gent, active man than it does' the smaller and more 
 ignorant one, even though the latter eats but a frac- 
 tion as much; because the larger and better man 
 does enough more work to pay for the difference in 
 the food bill. But then, your Honors, we may dis- 
 count differences in individual workmen and say 
 that, when we say that his cost of subsistence is 
 the cost of his production, the workman to whom 
 we refer is the perfect workman in his craft, when 
 the last word has been said and the last deed done 
 towards making the workman just muscular, skil- 
 ful, and intelligent enough to do the greatest 
 amount of work on the least subsistence, a greater 
 amount of muscle, skill, or intelligence being of no 
 advantage and a subsistence better either in qual- 
 ity or quantity being of no avail. This being grant- 
 ed, then, our next step is to inquire how to deter- 
 mine where these favored places of lowest cost of
 
 321 
 
 subsistence are. Of course, the answer must be, 
 Those places where soils are the richest and deepest, 
 where suns are the kindest and most constant, and 
 where agriculture is most mature. Now, as to the 
 specific localities where these soils and suns are to 
 be found, we can only make a broad general rule. 
 We know that soil is simply animal and vegetable 
 mold; that is, the remains of organic life; and nat- 
 urally such mold will be the deepest and richest 
 where organic life is and for a long time has been 
 the most abundant. But these localities must also 
 be where suns are kind and constant; for the sun's 
 heat is at the root of all organic life, and might 
 almost be said to be its creator and sustainer. 
 
 Aside from food, the sun's heat, too, whether 
 greater or less, figures in the cost of subsistence; 
 for the cost of clothing and shelter vary with it. 
 Here, then, is a clue for us to follow; and if we 
 find where the sun is the kindest and most con- 
 stant, we will know where the cost of subsistence 
 is naturally the lowest; and to do this in a broad 
 general way is the easiest thing in the world. For 
 if we are north of the equator, all we have to do is 
 to travel towards the south to learn that, as we go, 
 the sun becomes stronger and stronger, summer 
 longer and longer, and, as a matter of course, win- 
 ters become shorter and shorter, until we have 
 passed the tropical line and come to a land of per- 
 petual summer. If, on the other hand, we should 
 turn about and go northward, we would find shorter 
 and shorter summers and longer and longer winters 
 until we arrived at a point of perpetual ice and 
 snow. Now remembering that degrees of latitude 
 are counted from 1 at the equator to 90 at the poles, 
 we can easily state the rule, cost of subsistence 
 varies directly with the latitude between the poles
 
 322 
 
 and the tropics. This is a very- broad, general rule 
 which we may use later, remembering in connection 
 with it that, within the tropics, at least theoretic- 
 ally, there is a uniformity of solar heat and of fer- 
 tile soil. 
 
 But we are still very imperfect in methods of 
 production. We are unripe industrial creatures; 
 and w r ages the world over vary in the degree to 
 which they return to wage-producers the muscular 
 and nervous fibre consumed in producing; this in- 
 equality arising from the w r ay in which our present 
 system abandons helpless workers to the results of 
 that withering competition between merchants, 
 which plays one man's worst necessities against an- 
 other's; and because of these things we must no- 
 tice that pay-rolls vary, not uniformly according to 
 cost of subsistence, but according to the degree of 
 congestion of wage-producers upon the various 
 fields of industry, and the degree to which foreign 
 competition has been added to crowd wage-produc- 
 ers to a point where they are gradually being de- 
 fibred and exterminated; which, as the result of 
 Free Trade, is the case of so many British workers 
 at the present time. It is very plain that before the 
 industrial world has fought out its battle and all 
 methods of production become the same and wage- 
 producers have been brought to a uniform condi- 
 tion, there will be a long time in which cost of sub- 
 sistence will not correspond to the pay-roll, and 
 that, as far as the property-producer is concerned, 
 it would be nearer the truth to say, The cost of the 
 pay-roll is the cost of production, than to say, Cost 
 of subsistence is the cost of production, although, in 
 the fullness of time, the latter statement will be uni- 
 versally true. For the present, therefore, it will be 
 correct to say that the pay-roll represents the cost
 
 323 
 
 of subsistence; that is, such subsistence as the wage- 
 producer may enjoy. Now, inasmuch as it is the 
 wages paid to producers and spent by them in the 
 market which exactly determines the volume of 
 "business," the pay-roll is the measure of a coun- 
 try's business. We are now ready to draft the next 
 section of our rule or "law" indicating the move- 
 ment of capital, something in this form: 
 
 2. Cost of subsistence is cost of production and is 
 represented by pay-rolls, which are the measure of what 
 is called "business." 
 
 And from what we discussed together a few mo- 
 ments ago, we may add another section, like this : 
 
 3. Outside of the tropics, naked cost of subsistence 
 varies directly with latitude; while within the tropics it 
 is uniform and lowest. 
 
 Ah, your Honors, we hear once more the sneer- 
 ing yet musical titter of counsel for these wily 
 plaintiffs; and again comes the stage whisper of 
 counsel for the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 saying that, because the enervating climate of the 
 tropics kills energy, the tropics never have com- 
 peted and never can compete with the temperate 
 zones. This is only a continuance of the tickling 
 tactics of these wily plaintiffs by which they try to 
 make us so pleased with ourselves and them that 
 we will tear down our tariff-dike and add to their 
 private fortunes. But we have a few remarks to re- 
 ply to this tickle which we beg humbly to submit. 
 
 In the first place, what man has done, man can 
 do. Massive ruins long buried in the tropics cause 
 us to wonder why, if man did I hat sort of work in 
 the tropics in times past, he cannot do as well or 
 better now. Is the sleeping sickness any worse in 
 the tropics now than then?
 
 324 
 
 In the second place, there are now living in the 
 tropics 1 many, many millions of strong, industrious 
 and intelligent workers, upon whom the torrid heat 
 makes no apparent impression for the worse. They 
 are called coolies. They do anything in the world 
 you ask them to do and do it well. And they do it 
 for from 2c. to lOc. a day. 
 
 In the third place, it is found that it is not the 
 heat but bad insects, miasmas, and habits, which 
 make the tropics worse for whites than blacks ; and 
 that all these things can be so corrected as to make 
 the tropics as healthful for the Caucasian as the 
 temperate zones. On this subject, Col. William C. 
 Gorgas, of our boys in khaki, spoke, in June, 1907, 
 at Cornell University, as follows: 
 
 "I think that sanitation can now show that any popu- 
 lation coming into the tropics can protect itself against 
 disease by measures that are both simple and inexpensive; 
 that life in the tropics will be more healthful than in the 
 temperate zones; and that gradually within the next two 
 or three centuries tropical countries, which offer a much 
 greater return for a man's labor than do the temperate 
 zones, will be settled by the white races, and that again 
 the centres of wealth, civilization and population will be 
 in the tropics, as they were in the dawn of history, rather 
 than in the temperate zones as at present." 
 
 In his report on health conditions upon the Isth- 
 mus for July, 1907, dated August 14, at Ancon, the 
 same gentleman says: 
 
 "There has been no quarantinable disease of any kind 
 originating on the Isthmus. The last case of yellow fever 
 in the city of Panama occurred in November, 1905, 
 twenty months ago; the last case on the Isthmus in May, 
 1906, fourteen months ago." 
 
 And this report in spite of the fact that there 
 were there on the Isthmus 38,000 men digging the 
 Big Canal, exposed to those terrible tropical suns 
 of which, when it pooh-poohs our dike as a protec-
 
 325 
 
 tion against tropical production, the Importing 
 Trust makes so much. The same report says that 
 the death rate among the Canal employes for 1907 
 was but 16 per thousand, a mortality but a little 
 over one-third as high as that of Shreveport, Louis- 
 iana, in this land which turns up its nose so high at 
 the sickliness of the tropics. 
 
 So much for this expert's opinion and for his offi- 
 cial report on this subject; but can we not add 
 something from our own experience? Even now, 
 without any special measures to improve tropical 
 health, can the worst tropical countries in the world 
 be much worse than our own climate, with its siz- 
 zling heat in summer and its wizzening cold in 
 winter? Will not our heat prostrations, our chol- 
 era morbuses and general debility of summer, and 
 our throat and pulmonary diseases of winter run 
 tropical fatalities pretty close? 
 
 In the fourth place, all tropical countries of any 
 extent can show us high table-lands, where even 
 Caucasians, without any acclimatizing, can work 
 with the greatest comfort and safety; and, in the 
 tropics as a whole, there is a total of such table- 
 lands large enough for all the factories on earth 
 at the present time, with enough such lands left 
 over to accommodate the world's growth for a thou- 
 sand years ; and these factory sites are only a half- 
 hour's trolley ride from levels where food is grown 
 in true tropical cheapness. 
 
 In the fifth place, with the tropics remaining as 
 unhealthful as counsel for the wily paintiffs now 
 say they are, tariff-dike "revision" would compel 
 wage-producers to look for work in such countries. 
 For here and there the tropics would be exploited 
 by industrial captains from the temperate zones 
 where competition had become sharp, who would
 
 326 
 
 cut into temperate-zone markets and throw wage- 
 producers out of employment; and these wage-pro- 
 ducers thus made idle and without hope of re-em- 
 ployment at home, even though the chances of long 
 life in the tropic's were against them, would wander 
 in greater or less numbers into tropical countries 
 and take up work there. For even in this and 
 other non-tropical countries, people work in sugar 
 refineries, in steamship holds, at needle grinding, 
 and steel puddling, and in other deadly employ- 
 ments, well knowing that their work will kill them 
 soon. And why would not desperately idle wage- 
 producers risk the tropics? 
 
 So much for the littleness of the tropics as an 
 adversary of temperate climates. 
 
 But again the quiet cackle of the learned counsel 
 for the Importing Trust. He whispers that to be- 
 lieve wha.t we say about cost of production varying 
 directly with latitude would make the South in our 
 country the early ruler of us all. And so it will 
 prove, your Honors; in wealth and population. But 
 the population will go there from abroad,, as it is 
 going now ; and from the North, as it is also going 
 now. Let the tariff-dike be raised higher instead of 
 cut down lower, and our own Sunny South will 
 bloom as never before. She can coin her climate 
 into shining ducats and, if the dear girl pleases, with 
 her golden stores, soon purchase the whole bleak 
 North at auction. 
 
 And the gravitation of our Northern capital and 
 population to the South will keep on until the South 
 is the centre and hub of all the wealth, intelligence, 
 and beauty of this country; and the tide will never 
 turn until, population becoming over-dense there, 
 the price of land will rise and so raise the cost of 
 production in the South that the portions of the
 
 327 
 
 country nearest its confines can produce as cheaply 
 as there; whereupon population will become dense 
 also in the new region ; and so margin after margin 
 next to the densest population will be taken up and 
 made as dense, until the whole country will have be- 
 come homogeneous in wealth and population. With 
 a higher tariff-dike and the cutting off of Cuban, 
 Porto Rican, Hawaiian, and Philippine competition, 
 this must be the natural course. But cut down the 
 dike ever so little and tropical cheapness will over- 
 shadow our South as it does our North and its day 
 of glory will be indefinitely postponed. 
 
 And, your Honors, "revise" downwards the tariff 
 dikes of all countries, and you make the whole trop- 
 ical belt the "Sunny South" of the earth, and all the 
 capital of the world would gravitate thither and 
 all the movable population would follow. Unless 
 la riff-dikes were universally restored as against the 
 tropics, the destruction to life and to property val- 
 ues in the temperate zones would be cataclysmal. 
 The mortality among the young and the adult weak 
 would bo like a continuous massacre. And the mi- 
 gration on the one hand and the slaughter on the 
 oilier would go on until nothing was left of the tem- 
 perate /cones but wildernesses inhabitaled by sav- 
 ages, with faint traditions of civilization; and the 
 wildernesses would be owned by absent grandees 
 and ruled by hired cut-throats from medieval for- 
 tresses and castles. This is a sure thing, your 
 Honors; and what can wo think of our people, if, 
 at the command of the Importing Trust, and to 
 take refuge from our client. American Production, 
 they consent to go a single inch along that down- 
 hill road! 
 
 To return now to the construction of our system, 
 wo are a ware, vonr Honors that what wo have said
 
 328 
 
 is a broad generalization. Cost of production cer- 
 tainly must vary with latitude in the average case ; 
 but we shall anticipate the next chuckle of wily 
 plaintiff's counsel and say that as between any given 
 area in the tropics and a similar area outside of the 
 tropics ; or between similar areas, one in a lower and 
 the other in a higher latitude, other circumstances 
 than latitude, which we shall call "handicaps," 
 might even give the higher latitude the advantage. 
 And we are also aware that, as to countries some 
 of which have high and others low wages, because 
 of one circumstance or another, those of the high 
 wages may produce some kinds of goods more cheap- 
 ly than those of the low. Now, your Honors, in 
 view of what has been said, there seem to us to 
 be three general cases in which capital must gravi- 
 tate from one country to another, or, even in the 
 same country, from one place to another. These 
 three cases are where the competing countries are 
 in the same latitude; where they are in different- 
 latitudes ; and where there is a tropical area in one 
 or both countries. But considering the fact that 
 there are "handicaps" which may rob latitudes and 
 low pay-rolls of their advantages, before stating 
 these three cases, we must provide for exceptions 
 to our rule. This we do by this paragraph : 
 
 4. If differences between pay-rolls or latitudes in com- 
 peting areas of production be not offset by handicaps, the 
 following will be true: 
 
 And we will follow this saving clause with the 
 three cases described. And the first one is this : 
 
 A. If such areas are in the same average latitude, capi- 
 tal will gravitate towards the lowest pay-rolls. The 
 higher pay-rolls will contract, while the lower will expand, 
 until pay-rolls and their incident business have become 
 equalized throughout the competing areas,
 
 329 
 
 As we have said before, this migration of capital 
 may take place within the boundaries of a single 
 country, as well as between two separate countries, 
 trading freely with each other. This rule accounts 
 for the movement of factories away from cities, 
 when city pay-rolls get too high, pay-rolls in distant 
 country districts often being so low as to offset 
 added freight costs and leave a balance to the credit 
 of the country mill. Of course it is true as between 
 two nations ; and it has often been illustrated under 
 free trade or low tariff -dikes in this country, dur- 
 ing some momentary success of the Importing 
 Trust. Our capital has moved regularly to Great 
 Britain and other countries during low-tariff eras; 
 and the only thing which prevented the final level- 
 ing of our pay-roll to the plane of the British or 
 worse pay-rolls was the downing of the Democratic 
 Donkey here and the casting out of the Importing 
 Trust from our council halls. Such movements of 
 our capital outward through tariff-dike "revision" 
 always introduce what we call here "hard times" 
 or "recessions in trade." 
 
 The second case is this : 
 
 B. If such competing areas lie in aopreciably different 
 latitudes not in the tropics, capital will gravitate towards 
 the lowest latitudes; and pay-rolls and their deuendent 
 business will be destroyed everywhere, except in that area 
 of lowest average latitude large enough to furnish pro- 
 ducts eoual to the weakest consuming power of the com- 
 bined areas. 
 
 The working of this rule is shown in our own 
 country by the migration of Northern capital into 
 the South. Great blocks of capital have gone there 
 and been put to work in the iron mills of Bir- 
 mingham and other places and in the cotton mills 
 throughout the South. We have already described 
 the manner in which this movement must continue
 
 380 
 
 and what the result will be unless the tariff-dike 
 is "revised" in favor of still lower latitudes. The 
 Cuban Treaty was a sad blow to our Sunny South ; 
 and another blow is in sight in free trade between 
 us and the Philippine Islands. Our South is a 
 glorious country, but it cannot compete with the 
 tropics. Free trade between our own North and 
 South will cause a change so gradual in the locality 
 of capital that it will probably not be violently 
 felt in the North. The assimilation will be slow 
 and benevolent; whereas "revised" competition be- 
 tween our people as a whole and the Philippine 
 Islands or Cuba would be marked by the rapid 
 destruction of industrial values all over the coun- 
 try. 
 
 The third case is this: 
 
 C. If tropical areas are included in the competition, 
 capital will gravitate thither and monopolize production, 
 to the utmost combined producing capacity of such areas. 
 Pay-rolls, business, and the higher civilization will be 
 ^ extinguished everywhere in such competing areas, except 
 .-? in the tropical parts, and in whatever area of lowest aver- 
 age aMMMfe outside may be necessary to make good any 
 shortage of the tropical parts in yielding products equal 
 to the weakest consuming power of the combined areas. 
 
 This rule has long been well illustrated by the 
 movement of our own capital into Porto Rico, Cuba, 
 Mexico, Hawaii, South America, and the Philip- 
 pine Islands; the reason being that the cost of 
 production is so much loss in these tropical areas 
 than in our own country that the tariff "handicap" 
 does not sufficiently offset their advantage of lat- 
 itude; and therefore our capital "gravitates" south- 
 ward. As an instance of this migration, we give 
 the following from a New York newspaper: 
 
 "CHIHUAHUA, Mexico, July 21. The concession 
 which was recently granted by the State Government to
 
 331 
 
 Col. W. C. Green of New York for the establishment of 
 various kinds of industrial enterprises in this State has 
 just been ratified by the Legislature. The concessions call 
 for the investment of more than two million dollars in 
 gold." 
 
 And at a later date, we read in the editorial 
 columns of the same newspaper, under the caption, 
 "Secretary Root's Journey to Mexico," the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 "Our relations with Mexico are close and cordial. The 
 Secretarv's visit will strengthen the bonds. Development 
 across the Bio Grande during recent years has been al- 
 most marvellous. This country is deeply interested in 
 that development" 
 
 that is, the Importing Trust is "deeply interested" 
 in the profits in the development, your Honors. It 
 is a frightful menace to our wage-producer. But 
 the article continues: 
 
 "This country is deeply interested in that development 
 and has contributed towards it and shared in it in abund- 
 ant measure. It is reported on good authority that not 
 far from $750.000.000 of American money is employed 
 across the border" 
 
 Yes, your Honors, to take employment from our 
 wage-producer and to send delegations to Washing- 
 ton to lobby for a reciprocity treaty or a German 
 Agreement with Mexico for the free admission of 
 their goods to snuff out industry here. 
 
 It needs but half an eye, your Honors, to see 
 how badly our domestic business is being under- 
 mined by the gravitation of our capital to lower 
 cost-levels and the withdrawal from our own funds 
 of what might otherwise have come into our own 
 pay-rolls. Rut this is not all, your Honors ; for in 
 addition to this indirect loss to our business, this 
 emigrating capital goes out with no other purpose 
 than t<> nial\e goods at these foreign wage-levels and
 
 332 
 
 bundle them back over our tariff-dike, and thus 
 cause a direct loss to our pay-roll and therefore 
 our business, equivalent to the domestic produc- 
 tion supplanted by the goods sent in here by our 
 expatriated capital in Mexico and otherwheres. By 
 this expatriation of our capital, the destruction of 
 our prosperity, your Honors, and therefore of our 
 civilization, refinement and general virility, is al- 
 most by geometrical progression. Instead of wid- 
 ening we should close altogether the breach be- 
 tween the quantity of work we are doing now, and 
 what we should and would do if we did all our 
 people required for their needs. If we closed our 
 ports and kept at home the from 2 to 5% of our 
 goods which we now export; and ourselves made 
 the goods we now import, the gain in our domes- 
 tic business would offset many times over our loss 
 in foreign trade. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS NO BUSINESS 
 WITH TROPICAL COLONIES, OR WITH TROPICAL TER- 
 RITORIES TO BE LATER MADE INTO STATES. THE EF- 
 FECT OF SUCH A POLICY WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE 
 OUR WHOLE WAGE PRODUCING POPULATION TO THE 
 AVARICE OF THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS. 
 
 And right here, your Honors 1 , it may be well to 
 inquire what business we, a benevolent Republic, 
 have with subject possessions. We must not for- 
 get that we are neither a Roman Republic nor "a 
 Roman Emjpire that is, not yet. We have no 
 right, by taxes or tribute of any kind to "milk" our 
 subject-provinces. We have no right to exploit
 
 333 
 
 them as the private graft of our Exporting Trust, 
 as England for the benefit of her Exporting Trust, 
 exploited us when we were English colonists. As 
 far as we can see, however, it is in the interest 
 alone of our Exporting Trust, as to exports to, and 
 of our Importing Trust, as to imports from those 
 islands that we should keep them at all. On the 
 one hand all these tropical islands, which are a 
 part of us, and Cuba, our adopted daughter, are a 
 menace to us; and on the other hand we are a 
 menace to them. As long as we hold them or have 
 any right to interfere in their affairs, our Export- 
 ing Trust will be turning every stone, no matter at 
 what cost to home production, as instance the 
 $66,000,000 a year we are giving up by the Cuban 
 Reciprocity Treaty, to get the inside track in sell- 
 ing goods 1 to these islands, and to postpone the day 
 when they will found their own manufactories and 
 develop their own natural treasures; and in this 
 way we are assisting to exploit them against their 
 own best interests which lie in their shutting out 
 our goods and in their consequent symmetrical de- 
 velopment of industries and the creation of an in- 
 dustrial population in those islands which, for all 
 their products, will make for them a sure and per- 
 petual market. On the other hand, unless we cut 
 adrift from our tropical possessions and aggres- 
 sions, our Importing Trust will rack its head sick 
 contriving hard luck stories as to these "poor little 
 struggling peoples," the upshot of which will al- 
 ways be the same appeal to Americans to take 
 down the tariff bars and give the unhappy little 
 colored people a "much needed market;" and the 
 American people, forgetting that they have no right 
 whatever, under the Constitution or under the law 
 of God, to bo generous before they are just and
 
 334 
 
 to give these little colored people alms by picking 
 the pockets of countless American wage-producers, 
 will enter into some fool treaty, like the one with 
 Germany, or the one with Cuba, which, by giving 
 this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, a chance 
 to sell here in our own domestic market cost-10 
 goods from the tropics, in competition with our 
 own cost-100 goods, will kill off hope, health, hap- 
 piness, and often life among our fellow citizens 
 here. And while these wily plaintiffs are getting 
 more wealthy from forcing those islands into an 
 abnormal development and its later misery for the 
 islanders, they are filling our newspapers with their 
 lamentations at the "selfishness" of our beet-sugar 
 makers, who object to being sacrificed to the trop- 
 ical philanthropies of the wily plaintiffs. This is 
 all according to the arrangement of their brain- 
 cells, your Honors, which merely comes from their 
 peculiar environment, a part of which is the pres- 
 ence here of a crowd of tender-hearted people like 
 us who are always willing that health-giving boils 
 should grow on our neighbors' necks and that our 
 neighbors' pockets should furnish the alms for the 
 giving of which we expect to get credit. We are 
 a lot of wretched hypocrites, your Honors; we be- 
 lieve in fasting and prayer for our spiritual up- 
 building if we but be allowed to do the praying, 
 by the absent-treatment route; while the other fel- 
 low does the fasting. 
 
 Very seriously, your Honors, we have no right 
 to exploit our colonies. The only decent course to- 
 wards them is to cut them out of exporting goods 
 to us and ourselves out of exporting goods to them ; 
 by raisins our tariff-dike very high against all the 
 world, them included; and raising their tariff-dike 
 nsrainst all the world, ourselves included. If we
 
 336 
 
 do less than this, we shall make them the victim of 
 our two parasites, the wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
 ing Trust and the Exporting Trust. Our tropical 
 islands will be the object of continual exploitation 
 by these destructive agencies; and we ourselves 
 shall suffer from the distortion of our industries 
 and the congestion of our wage-producers upon man- 
 ufacturing alone. Because of the destruction of our 
 agricultural industries' from competition with these 
 tropical colonies and their endless summer; and, 
 because of the superior organization of our manu- 
 facturing industries, they will suffer, though only 
 for a time, by a like congestion of their wage-pro- 
 ducers upon agricultural industries alone. And 
 thus both our wage-producers and theirs, practic- 
 ally the entire population in both competing areas, 
 would be more or less abjectly enslaved to their 
 bodily necessities. But for us the end of it all 
 would be, either a dike excluding their goods alto- 
 gether, or the total destruction of our entire indus- 
 trial system, for a cost-100 country would finally be 
 underbidden all along the line by cost-10 colonies, 
 gifted as our colonies are with all the natural ma- 
 terials for manufacturing of every kind. 
 
 Your Honors, we rejoice in our good Mother Eng- 
 land. We have had a couple of set-toos with her 
 since we cut her apron-strings; but that was only 
 natural. Who would blame her for trying to bring 
 back to her heart such a likely kid as we are? But 
 Mother England is afflicted with brain-cells also. 
 She does not do as she will but only as she can- 
 considering her peculiar brain-cells. And so she 
 has given us good examples of the sort of mis- 
 takes that we, her children, forty-six sovereign 
 states, ought not to make in this matter of subject 
 colonies. She has grown mellow and sweet and
 
 quite adorable in her advanced age; and, at this 
 day, when we see with what a mild motherliness 
 she manages her colonies in Canada and Australia, 
 we take off our hat in sincere veneration. But it 
 was not always thus; nor has she corrected her 
 mistakes in Ireland and India, the dire results of 
 which are still mighty for the unhappiness of the 
 people of those countries. Both Ireland and India 
 are chronic famine countries since Mother Eng- 
 land compelled them to have free trade with her; 
 snatched from them the opportunities to labor aris- 
 ing from their own peoples' wants; and made of 
 them the mere spoil of her Importing and Export- 
 ing Trusts. The yeast is working in India. The 
 causes of India's famines and her general wretch- 
 edness are rising to the surface. Her wise men see 
 that it is because their country is systematically 
 plundered by her Importing and Exporting Trusts, 
 that her people are congested upon a narrow field 
 of employment; that her industries are therefore 
 not diversified, and that the crops failing upon 
 which they must exclusively rely, there is nothing 
 left for her people but starvation. These facts are 
 welling up from the deeply stirred depths of East 
 Indian life, and the remedy must be at last the 
 extermination of the counterparts 1 of these wily 
 plaintiffs in India. Here is what Mr. Francis H. 
 Skrine says in our North American Review for 
 August, 1907 : 
 
 "The jute traffic has poured a flood of wealth into 
 Bengal, whose down-trodden masses chafe under Brahmin 
 despotism and crave for a larger measure of social recog- 
 nition. But the distribution of wealth is as defective as it 
 is in Europe. An increasing percentage of the Indian 
 population is always on the verge of famine. Railways 
 have equalized the price of food, and maintained it at a 
 far higher level than in the days of native rule. Foreign 
 commerce is indeed advancing by leaps and bounds; but 
 from an Indian point of view, it does not conduce to the
 
 337 
 
 general well-being. The great bulk of its profits is spent 
 in Europe, America, and China. Exports consist mainly 
 of raw materials; imports of manufactured goods which 
 might readily be produced by organized labor within the 
 Empire. INDIGENOUS INDUSTRIES HAVE BEEN 
 KILLED BY FBJEE TRADE, AND THOSE WHO HAVE 
 PURSUED THEM HAVE BEEN RELEGATED TO AN 
 OVERBURDENED SOIL. NINETY PER CENT. OF 
 THE POPULATION ARE AGRICULTURISTS, MOST 
 OF WHOM ARE PACKED INTO THE ALLUVIAL 
 AREAS. Early marriages and large families are incai- 
 cated by religion. Thus the preventive checks enunciated 
 by Malthus are at wor& on a gigantic scale. Warfare and 
 famine are prevented by the British Government, but it is 
 powerless against cholera and plague. The pressure of 
 population on the soil is feit by all classes with increas- 
 ing stringency; and they blame alien riuers lor the con- 
 sequences of their disobedience to nature's laws." 
 
 Your Honors, India's "indigenous industries have 
 been killed by free trade," in very truth; and all 
 for the benefit of the Importing and Exporting 
 Trusts of that unhappy country. Wherever you 
 find a despotism approachable by any sort of a 
 bribe, or open to any kind of corruption, there you 
 find such as these wily plaintiffs in supreme power. 
 For they represent the nomadic and marauding 
 merchant princes of the world, with all kinds of 
 money to burn for the privilege of plundering the 
 common peeople both ways, viz., on the one hand 
 through the Exporting Trust, by the congestion of 
 indigenous industry upon a few special industries, 
 the exploiting of which offers the richest and speed- 
 iest returns to the Exporting Trust, and the conse- 
 quent enslaving of the people by low wages; and 
 on the other hand, through the Importing Trust, by 
 depriving native industry of employment because 
 of labor-supplanting imports, and thus aiding the 
 congestion of labor upon the same employments 
 exploited by the Exporting Trust. Is this the point 
 towards which we of the United States are drift- 
 ing under Cuban Reciprocity Treaties and German 
 Agreements, and for the same reason, viz., the in-
 
 338 
 
 fluence of these powerful and wily plaintiffs at 
 court? And will the injury already inflicted by 
 the methods named be later supplemented by free 
 trade with the Philippines and, through this "hole 
 in the wall," with all the rest of the world? 
 
 And what is true of the Indian colony is true 
 of the Irish Colony, just across the channel from 
 the place where the people "roll in gold ;" and these 
 latter "roll in gold," your Honors, because they 
 represent England's Exporting Trust and her Im- 
 porting Trust who, with free trade, exploit poor 
 Ireland unto her death. In short, it is through the 
 avenue of free trade alone by which these incarna- 
 tions of rapine in Great Britain uniformly turn 
 English colonies to account as they have done ever 
 since we, in this country, were colonists; and this 
 too is the only way, except through excessive taxa- 
 tion for the maintenance of governments in our col- 
 onies, represented by barnacles, bloodsuckers and 
 spoils-sharing favorites of our Administration at 
 Washington, that Porto Kico, Hawaii, or the Phil- 
 ippines can ever be of any profit to us; since our 
 generous people would never tolerate the collection 
 of open tribute to our Government, after the man- 
 ner of the Empires of old towards their subject 
 provinces ; and after the manner of Mother England 
 even at this day in Egypt. For we read in a late 
 New York newspaper: 
 
 "There are several points of resemblance and of differ- 
 ence in the situations presented respectively in Egypt and 
 in Corea. The suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire over 
 the Nile land is not disputed by any European Power and 
 is formally recognized by Great Britain in the payment 
 of an annual tribute." 
 
 What is this annual tribute, your Honors? Sim- 
 ply blackmail. It was formerly paid by Egypt to
 
 339 
 
 Turkey to buy Turkey's abstinence from the violent 
 taking of Egyptian property; and by the force of 
 circumstances England is compelled to be a party 
 to this brigandage by paying the "tribute" from 
 Egyptian taxes, or getting a recoupment through 
 the Egyptian Exporting Trust, which sent us 
 120,000,000 of raw cotton last year, and probably 
 made us pay that tribute to Turkey; while the Im- 
 porting Trust, one of the wily plaintiffs herein, 
 still succeeds through its Washington lobby in pre- 
 venting the tariff-dike from sheltering our South- 
 ern cotton-growers. So in this round-about way we 
 enlightened Americans pay tribute to Turkey ; that 
 is, blood-money, a payment for not murdering 
 in Egypt. 
 
 As we have said, poor Ireland also is unhappily 
 an appendage of a Government where free trade 
 has free course and her industries like those of In- 
 dia "have been killed by free trade, and those who 
 have pursued them have been relegated to an over- 
 burdened soil." Here is an article from the New 
 York Times of September 20, 1907, under the title 
 "Is Ireland Asleep?" which illustrates Irish con- 
 ditions: 
 
 "Mr. Michael McKenna, an Alderman of Chicago, has 
 returned from a tour of Ireland strong in the conviction 
 that something ought to be done for the mother country. 
 There is plenty of Irisn American capital in this country, 
 Mr. McKenna thinks, 'begging for channels of invest- 
 ment,' and he suggests the manufacture of Irish lace, the 
 development of Irish market gardens and fancy dairies as 
 excellent channels for it to seek. The Alderman saw 
 acres and acres of Irish land lying waste for the lack of 
 that kind of energy and push Irishmen lend to the affairs 
 of Chicago. He also noted that the persistent report of 
 the pig dwelling under the same roof as the family is ut- 
 terly false. He traveled all over Ireland and never once 
 saw the pig in the parlor. So the too familiar Irish pig is 
 proved a myth like William Tell and the Chinese play 
 that requires a year or so in the acting. Ireland, the Al- 
 derman declares, is asleep. While the British Parliament
 
 340 
 
 is in session the world frequently notes that the sleep of 
 Ireland is restless. But the Alderman is right. What 
 Ireland needs more than all else is some of the energy 
 her sons exert in other lands. Undoubtedly some of the 
 capital Irishmen so easily accumulate elsewhere could be 
 put to good and profitable use in the mother country.'' 
 
 The sleep of Ireland, your Honors 1 , is the sleep 
 that follows total exhaustion, after a long wrestle 
 with the angel of death from whom escape has final- 
 ly been made "so as by fire." During the dreadful 
 famines that visited her in the first century after 
 she was forced to abandon her leading industries 
 in favor of the English Exporting Trust, free trade 
 with England starved Irishmen by thousands and 
 thousands. Her population fled from her shores 
 as from a burning ship and the number of Irish- 
 men living on the Emerald Isle was reduced from 
 8,000,000 to 5,000,000; and the hope of life went 
 out from hundreds of thousands of those kept at 
 home by lack of the price of a steerage berth. Thus 
 Ireland, the home of one of the most gifted and 
 generous of peoples, and of the most unflagging in- 
 dustry; the home of the keenest mother wit of 
 which the world has 1 knowledge, of fervent patriot- 
 ism, deep learning, and loyal affection for hill and 
 dale, lake and heath, was swept by the angel of 
 death, scarred and broken by famine and disease, 
 and abandoned by millions of her sad-hearted sons 
 who were compelled to choose between home-love 
 and starvation; all because of congesting upon her 
 soil the greater part of her population, through the 
 destruction of her magnificent industries at the 
 hands of the British Parliament, which was almost 
 synonymous with the British Exporting Trust. 
 Conditions remain the same now as decades 1 ago. 
 "The Alderman saw acres and acres of Irish land 
 lying waste for the lack of that kind of energy and 
 push Irishmen lend to affairs," when free trade
 
 does not enslave them and put (he fruits of their 
 toil in the till of some Importing or Exporting 
 Trust. "Undoubtedly some of the capital Irishmen 
 so easily accumulate" where they are given a fair 
 share of the results of their industry "could be put 
 to good and profitable use in the mother country;" 
 but no sensible Irishman from this country will 
 put a penny in an Irish industry as long as the 
 British Exporting Trust, through free trade with 
 Ireland, stands with open maw to swallow his prof 
 its and his business. Ireland, like India, is a poor 
 helpless and cruelly exploited colony of Great Bri- 
 tain. Do we want such colonies, your Honors? No 
 your Honors, wherever they may be, we do not 
 want such colonies. So long as we hold them, they 
 will furnish only just so many more sleight-of-hand 
 tricks whereby these plaintiffs, by sacrificing $10 
 of solid domestic business for each $1 of exports 
 to or imports from their trading regions, can turn 
 our national wealth into their own pockets. Wo 
 do not want to starve our colonies or have them 
 starve us ; but any trade between us in either direc- 
 tion is to the injury of wage-producers there or 
 here. Considering the height we occupy in the mat- 
 ter of wages, we particularly shall be injured at 
 every step. We cannot afford to have our indus- 
 tries made fewer under any circumstances. To 
 diversify industries into the greatest possible va- 
 riety, is to elevate your wage-producer and give 
 him the best chance for advancement in the world. 
 The greatest diversity in production gives the great- 
 est diversity in exchanges, which helps each wage- 
 producer to the greatest variety of other products 
 
 in exchange for his own. His product, wages, is 
 divided into as many different parts as there are 
 
 parts to his needs; and he offers these parts to
 
 342 
 
 people who need what he offers and offer what he 
 needs. That this is done through money as a go- 
 between does not alter the facts. His working for 
 wages and offering money for each thing he wants 
 is a good deal more convenient but it amounts to 
 the same thing as if, being a shoemaker, he went 
 to the hatter and made him a pair of shoes in ex- 
 change for a hat; then to the clothier to do the 
 same thing for clothes; then to the grocer, to do the 
 same thing for groceries, and so on. The purpose 
 of our work is to exchange it for the work of others 
 in this way. Now, unless we who, considering our 
 climate and soil, are people to whom life is about 
 equally expensive, exchange between ourselves ex- 
 clusively, there will be no necessary correspondence 
 between the energy and fibre which we put into the 
 work we do and the energy and fibre represented 
 in the wages which we receive back in exchange. 
 That is, if we had worked a week and had laid out 
 energy which could only be restored to us by re- 
 ceiving a certain price for our work, covering, say, 
 a week's food, clothing, shelter, and recreation, but 
 by a leak in the dike were compelled to take a price 
 for our work which would only pay for food, cloth- 
 ing, shelter, and recreation for three and a half 
 days, we would have to go without food, clothing, 
 and shelter for three and a half days in every week. 
 Now this shows what happens when people living 
 in one set of conditions are compelled by free trade 
 or a "revised" tariff-dike to compete with people 
 living under a different set of conditions. A given 
 amount of labor in one country will buy either 
 more or less than in another. The cause of this 
 may be that one country lies in a region of longer 
 summers and richer soils than the other, where in 
 order to live comfortably people need to get less
 
 343 
 
 wages out of their employment. Or perhaps the 
 workers in one country live in poorer circumstan- 
 ces than those of another country, so that, while 
 making just as much product in a day, in order to 
 get back the human fibre they have put in it, they 
 need to be paid less for their product. And so, if, 
 instead of being compelled by a tariff-dike, to buy 
 his week's supplies of the people who might have 
 just paid him for his week's work, a wage-producer 
 should buy that week's supplies of the Importing 
 Trust, at the price which would only return to the 
 foreigner abroad the cost of his cheaper week's liv- 
 ing, he might find that he had in his own pocket 
 the difference between the cost of a week's living 
 at home and a week's living in a cheaper country; 
 but, in the first place, he would have stopped the 
 ready sale, at the home price, of a week's work 
 done by some one of his countrymen to whom he 
 had been the anticipated medium of exchanging one 
 week's cost of domestic living for another. And. in 
 the second place, he would have compelled that 
 same fellow worker either to <ro without food, cloth- 
 ing, shelter, and recreation altogether, or to tnke 
 for his week's work a price which would pav for 
 loss than a week's supply of these necessary things. 
 That is, he would find, in the end. that the cram in 
 his pocket, that is, the balance left there after buy- 
 ing his week's supplv of the Import ins: Trust, would 
 exactlv correspond to the shortage in the pocket of 
 his fellow worker, diminished bv the commission 
 appropriated bv the Importing Trust upon the 
 "^ods which had passed throusrh its warehouse here. 
 That is, again, this wa ire-producer who had boucrht 
 his week's supplies of the Importing Trust, would 
 have sacrificed a fellow workman, in order to di- 
 vide with the Importing Trust the difference be-
 
 JH4 
 
 tween his fellow workman's weekly pay and the 
 weekly pay of some workman in a cheaper country. 
 But the American wage-producer who votes for an 
 Importing-Trust Administration here, such as the 
 Roosevelt-Sternburg combination, soon gets the 
 profit of such transactions taken away from him by 
 similar Importing-Trust bargains made by his fel- 
 low wage-producers; and the result is a general 
 lowering of the plane of American living to that of 
 the countries from which the Importing Trust gets 
 its goods. 
 
 We cannot repeat too often that the sole business 
 of these wily plaintiffs is to search everywhere to 
 find places where either the climate and soil or the 
 low social condition enables people to sell their 
 day's labor for less than the pay received by some 
 worker in another country ; and then to buy the 
 cheap day's labor and go to that other country and 
 undersell with it the worker who must get more for 
 his labor in order to live ; and so compel the latter 
 to go without food at all or accept a price for his 
 labor which will not return to him his outlay in 
 blood and muscle ; in other words, accept starvation 
 wages. Your Honors, it is because of this piratical 
 and vicious character of the business of these wily 
 plaintiffs that we have appealed their case to this 
 High Court. The heinous wrong which the Import- 
 ing Trust does to the workers of this country is 
 done by the Exporting Trust to the workers of 
 other countries. They are both the worst possible 
 enemies of civilization and morality that exist upon 
 this round globe. Wherever they go and whatever 
 they do in the line of their business is to the de- 
 gradation and destruction of wage-producers. They 
 are low and sordid in spirit; for they care not 
 whence they draw their profits or on what innocent
 
 345 
 
 babes they feed. For their fiendish operations are 
 carried on against the very babe in arms; they are 
 the destroyers of happy family life. Base, ignoble, 
 sordid birds of prey, their members as remorse- 
 lessly consume the very flesh of their fellow men 
 as the eagles the lambs of the hillside flock. They 
 make no profit in anything that does not reek of 
 death. Ay, your Honors, every penny they put in 
 their pants is the coined blood of some honest toiler 
 somewhere on this globe! 
 
 Oh, your Honors, for but a glimpse at the brain- 
 cells of these wily plaintiffs! We know that we 
 should find them the same size, mass, shape, and 
 relative position as those which figure in the brains 
 of highway robbers, burglars, pickpockets, and 
 sneak thieves. For they all pursue their respective 
 callings, heedless and regardless of the dreadful 
 want they bring on innocent wage-producers. They 
 are all of a kidney, your Honors, however much 
 they may differ in the churches they attend and the 
 clothes they wear. They are the national leeches 
 and bloodsucking parasites against which we have 
 always contended. They are gamblers and adven- 
 turers, knights of fortune. It is they who make all 
 the uncertainties of life; they make it a naked 
 gamble from day to day; for, because one of these 
 wily plaintiffs may have discovered some wage-pro- 
 ducer more wretched than he and therefore ready 
 to work for less bread by the day, nobody can tell 
 at what hour one of them may appear to snatch 
 from the honest worker his job and make him sit 
 in hunger and tears with his starving children dis- 
 tracting his heart with cries for bread. We can- 
 not look kindly upon these wily plaintiffs, your 
 Honors, even though they did not arrange their 
 brnin-cells, or choose the unhappy environment
 
 346 
 
 which has forced them to such close kinship with 
 the hyenas, the foxes, the wolves, and all the rude 
 and blood-thirsty children of savagedom. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 THE LAW OF ECONOMIC GRAVITATION WHICH WE HAVE 
 HERETOFORE OUTLINED IS THE BUSINESS LAW AC- 
 CORDING TO WHICH ALL CAPITAL IS NOW MOVING, 
 AND A RECOGNITION OF THE PRINCIPLES IT IN- 
 VOLVES MUST LIE AT THE FOUNDATION OF HAPPI- 
 NESS OF EVERY NATION. 
 
 Your Honors, we have already outlined to you 
 what we think are the principles according to which 
 all capital now moves, locates and participates in 
 production, to the employment of the property-pro- 
 ducer, the wage-producer, and the adjunct-produc- 
 er, who comprise all the active population of every 
 civilized country. So far as the observed facts 
 which it states are concerned there is nothing new 
 in this law of economic gravitation. We take no 
 credit except for having put it in this orderly form 
 and shown the relation which so plainly exists be- 
 tween capital, climate, and pay-roll. Since we built 
 it up with such interpolated explanatory comment 
 as to separate the parts rather inconveniently, for 
 convenience of reference we will state the law here 
 as a whole and in close sequence. It is as follows : 
 
 BENEDICT'S LAW OF ECONOMIC GRAVITATION 
 
 1. Capital desiring a given market for its output must 
 finally locate in the area of lowest cost of production for 
 that market. 
 
 2. Cost of subsistence is cost of production and is rep- 
 resented by pay-rolls, which are the measure of what is 
 called "business."
 
 347 
 
 3. Outside of the tropics, naked cost of subsistence 
 varies directly with latitude; while within the tropics it 
 is uniform and lowest. 
 
 4. If, in competing areas of production, differences be- 
 tween pay-rolls or latitudes be not offset by handicaps, 
 the following will be true: 
 
 A. If such areas are in the same average latitude, 
 capital will gravitate towards the lowest pay-rolls. The 
 highest pay-rolls will contract, while the lower will ex- 
 pand, until pay-rolls and their incident business have 
 become equalized throughout the competing areas. 
 
 B. If such competing areas lie in appreciably differ- 
 ent latitudes not in the tropics, capital will gravitate 
 towards the lowest latitudes; and pay-rolls and their 
 dependent business will be destroyed everywhere, ex- 
 cept in that area of lowest average latitude large 
 enough to furnish products equal to the weakest con- 
 suming power of the combined areas. 
 
 C. If tropical areas are included in the competition, 
 capital will gravitate thither and monopolize produc- 
 tion to the utmost combined producing capacity of such 
 areas. Pay-rolls, business, and the higher civilization 
 will be extingished everywhere in such competing areas, 
 except in the tropical parts, and in whatever area of 
 lowest average latitude outside may be necessary to 
 make good any shortage of the tropical parts in yielding 
 products equal to the weakest consuming power of the 
 combined areas. 
 
 Your Honors, we have already called attention to 
 the fact that even for a given amount of work, pay- 
 rolls may vary from country to country. Of course, 
 whether a lower pay-roll will sustain the wage-pro- 
 ducer without loss of fibre, depends upon how much 
 of the necessaries of life his wages in his country 
 will buy. We might call that pay-roll a full pay- 
 roll which returned to the wage-producer his fibre 
 and a savings fund. We also might call a pay-roll 
 naked when it returns the wage-producer's fibre but 
 nothing more. And we might call it degenerate, 
 when the pay-roll returns less than the wage-pro- 
 ducer's fibre. Our own pay-roll is probably the 
 only full pay-roll in the best sense, in the world. 
 Some European pay-rolls are barely naked; while
 
 348 
 
 others are flatly degenerate. England's pay-roll, in 
 the average is flatly degenerate, because she now 
 does and long has allowed her Importing and Ex- 
 porting Trusts to coin the bodies of her wage-pro- 
 ducers into profits for these evil geniuses of Eng- 
 land. It is not too much to say that England's 
 entire industrial population has been approaching 
 identity with her pauper class for over a generation. 
 To save themselves from such a fate, English wage- 
 producers are emigrating to other lands by the 
 hundred thousand; and those who remain at home, 
 congested on fewer and fewer industries, are en- 
 gaged in a constant trade-union war with their em- 
 ployers against reductions in wages. At the mo- 
 ment there is a better tone in English industry ow- 
 ing entirely to the great leak in our Dingley Dike 
 which allows hundreds of millions of English com- 
 peting goods to invade our market here every year. 
 Your Honors, we believe the law just detailed in 
 your hearing is that according to which capital 
 must always move. If it does not move, it must be 
 because of some "handicap" offsetting either a 
 lower pay-roll or a lower latitude. We are aware 
 that these wily plaintiffs, and especially the Im- 
 porting Trust, will utter their loudest "pooh-pooh" 
 at the notion that the tropics can ever have any 
 drawing power for capital. But, your Honors, we 
 believe that, as strong as the law of physical gravi- 
 tation upon matter, will henceforth be the pull of 
 the tropics upon capital. Glacier-like in its move- 
 ment, it will be as irresistible, except for the con- 
 struction of "handicaps" in the form of strong tar- 
 iff-dikes to stop utterly the influx of tropical goods ; 
 and the temperate-zone nation which lowers or "re- 
 vises" downward its present dike, or scorns to build 
 higher that already built, will begin to be forced
 
 349 
 
 down by the glacier from the very hour of its scorn. 
 If, in our case, by "revision" or by neglect to build 
 our dike higher, we should expose ourselves, a cost- 
 100 country, to the competition of the cost-10 trop- 
 ics, the movement of our capital outward would be 
 glacial in its resistless power but avalanchial in 
 its speed. Standing high, we would fall far and 
 swiftly. In our hemisphere we point to Mexico and 
 Brazil, both largely tropical, as certain, unless wo 
 "handicap" them with prohibitory dikes, to exterm- 
 inate our industries in the next half century. And 
 what shall we say of Cuba, at our door, entirely 
 tropical, the island which our wily plaintiffs long 
 to annex to us intact, with a capacity for all forms 
 of production and at such costs as to paralyze the 
 industries of our entire Atlantic States! Why, 
 your Honors, look at that part of the earth which 
 is all in lower latitudes than our United States! 
 Two-thirds of South America; all of Central Amer- 
 iVa and the West Indies; about all of Mexico; about 
 all of Africa; three-quarters of Australia; all of the 
 Malaysian Archipelago; and a large slice of Con- 
 tinental Asia! Your Honors, as S 1 /^ is to 20 so is 
 the area of our United States to that of the tropical 
 and sub-tropical world combined. We have asked 
 you the question before, but we ask it now again : 
 Under "revision'' or even under a failure to build 
 our dike far higher, what show would our one- 
 seventeenth of the earth's area, population, capi- 
 tal, and raw materials have against the remaining 
 sixteen-seventeenth* and their bare bargain-coun- 
 ter, auction-sale surpluses? What show would a 
 .> 1 o area in the "bleak north" have against a 20 
 area, all in the world's Sunny South ! Can we swim 
 up Niagara Falls, your Honors? Can we walk up 
 Washington Monument at right-angles, like a fly,
 
 350 
 
 but without suckers on our bare feet? For the hap- 
 piness of these wily plaintiffs, are we to try and 
 stein the tropical tide? Do "the laws of commerce" 
 make it necessary for us to prostrate ourselves be- 
 fore the Juggernaut of cheap production? Oh, we 
 know that the wily plaintiffs say, and especially 
 our pet enemy, the Importing Trust, that the little 
 yellow men, the brown men, the black men, and all 
 the rest, are no good against white men. We whites 
 have a demnition corner on excellence. The rest 
 were made to wait on us, bring us 'our smoking 
 jacket, our slippers and our pipe, and stir up the 
 fire in the grate. But what is this, we see! Here 
 is what the New York Sun said on September 24, 
 1907, under the caption, "Is China Producing Her 
 Own Steel?" 
 
 "According to a letter from Shanghai published on 
 September 22 by the Philadelphia PUBLIC LEDGER, the 
 Chinese will soon be able to supply all the materials 
 needed for the extensive railway systems which have been 
 planned for their country and before the end of 1908 will 
 compete with Western nations in the market for steel 
 products afforded by Japan, the Philippines and other 
 parts of the Far East. 
 
 "The development of the iron and steel industry in the 
 interior of China has taken place so suddenly and so 
 silently that it seems to have attracted very little atten- 
 tion in Europe, though in July of this year the United 
 States Steel Corporation ordered a trial shipment of some 
 2,500 tons of pig iron from the Chinese works." 
 
 We wonder, your Honors, if the tariff -dike for 
 iron ought to be "revised." Our tariff on pig iron 
 is 1 |4 a ton, but that does not phaze China, where 
 wages are but a few cents a day. Then, besides, 
 we thought we had "unexampled supplies of raw 
 materials" and that we were "without a. peer in 
 our natural resources." It looks as if nature was 
 doing something for China also. But we continue:
 
 351 
 
 "The Chinese iron and steel factories are situated at 
 Han-Yang on the Yangste River about seven hundred 
 miles from its junction with the Shanghai River" 
 
 Which, your Honors, is a region close to the 30th 
 parallel of latitude, about the same as Galveston, 
 Texas. 
 
 "Owing to the abundance of ore and coal procurable 
 at no great distance and to the UNLIMITED SUPPLY 
 OF CHEAP LABOR, iron and steel products can be 
 turned out there in less time and at lower prices than 
 must be paid for imported articles. The ore is brought; 
 from the mines in steel barges carrying from 500 to 800 
 .tons apiece, and delivered at a wharf in Han- Yang, 
 whence it is conveyed in steel cars to the works. 
 
 "It appears that many bessemer and many open heartli 
 Siemens furnaces, together with twenty sets of rolling 
 mills for rails, are already in running order. The plant 
 is being increased continually. According to statements 
 made by foreign engineers employed on the Hankow- 
 Pekin Railroad, the rails provided for this line by the 
 iian-Yang Company are actually better than could have 
 been procured in Europe. By the utilization of the 
 Siemens furnaces an entire elimination of the phosphorus 
 in the ore has been attained. Flat and round steel, bent 
 over again and doubled under a steam hammer, show no 
 sign of traction. All tests for torsion, elongation and 
 ductility prove the Han- Yang product to be of the highest 
 quality. 
 
 "We are told that during 1908, when the projected 
 mills will be in full swing, their aggregate output of rails 
 will be from 5,000 to 8,000 tons a month. Most of these 
 rails will be used in China itself, as by a decree of the 
 Pekin Government all Chinese railways must buy their 
 materials, so far as this may be possible, from the Han- 
 Yang establishment, which is looked upon as a national 
 concern. As yet many of the things indispensable for 
 railway construction and operation are not obtainable in 
 China, but an immense plant for supplying passenger and 
 freight cars, bridge steel and structural steel, is to be 
 erected at Han- Yang in 1908. 
 
 "Many years ago the well known explorer Baron von 
 Richtofen announced after a prolonged investigation of 
 the mineral resources of the interior of the Middle King- 
 dom that he had found there larger deposits of true coal 
 and high grade iron ore than were known to exist any- 
 where else upon the surface of the globe "- 
 
 And, your Honors, the Importing Trust is all 
 the while telling us we are the "peerless ones,"
 
 352 
 
 when it comes to raw materials we have got "em 
 all beat ! But back to our reading : 
 
 He expressed the conviction that China would one day 
 become the chief purveyor of those articles to the rest 
 of the world." 
 
 Why, your Honors, we thought we were elected 
 to purvey everything to everybody, always, and al- 
 ways ! 
 
 ' ' Nothing but the lack of adequate means of transpor- 
 tation has deferred an energetic exploitation of China's 
 iron and coal mines." 
 
 % 
 
 Ah, the Importing Trust is smoked out at last. 
 It thought we never would find out about those 
 Chinese iron and steel mills; that we would "re- 
 vise" the dike and let in steel and such things free; 
 and it then could tote in Chinese steel at a great 
 big profit. It is bringing in Chinese pig iron now, 
 right over the top of the dike. Let us drown our 
 own steel "trust," your Honors, by taking down 
 our dike, put 100,000 steel people out of their jobs 
 here, and turn our whole steel business over to the 
 Importing Trust. We move the Court to that 
 effect. More of the reading, however: 
 
 "}Tow that the work has been fairly started, there is 
 reason to believe that early in the twentieth century 
 Chinese coal, as being far superior in quality, will drive 
 the Japanese combustible out of the Far Eastern market, 
 and that much if not most of the steel products used on 
 the Pacific coast of Asia will be manufactured in the 
 Middle Kingdom." 
 
 And the writer might have said, your Honors, 
 "much if not most of the steel products used in 
 the United States of America will be manufactured 
 in the Middle Kingdom," unless the American tar- 
 iff-dike is doubled in height.
 
 353 
 
 Stil more of this confession against the Import- 
 ing Trust: 
 
 "A dozen years ago it seemed probable that the un- 
 sealing of China by means of railways would be per- 
 formed by foreigners and that its incalculable mineral 
 wealth would fall into their hands. Of late, however, a 
 striking change has taken place in the industrial policy 
 of the Pekin Government. Not only has the Empress 
 Regent decided that the construction and management of 
 railways must be undertaken by natives, but also that the 
 materials needed for those purposes must be produced at 
 home. The revolutionizing spirit is likely soon to spread 
 from industrial to political affairs, if it is true that the 
 Council of State, which was reorganized the other day, 
 has been directed to examine the feasibility of giving 
 China a constitution at an early date." 
 
 How can these intolerable things be, your 
 Honors? Here is the yellow man in a hot country 
 daring to kick over the traces and make things 
 out of steel, in addition to making things already 
 out of cotton and other things, when neither 
 the yellow man nor a hot country was to do such 
 things. We thought the Chinaman might push us 1 
 pretty close with textiles of the coarser kinds; but 
 never as to metals. But here is the little yellow 
 scoundrel in a sub-tropical spot jumping with both 
 feet on our iron and steel flower beds. He never 
 was "ordained" to do such things. It is against his 
 native genius. He was to raise rice and cane and 
 do up our collars. He w r as to let all these higher 
 things alone for us to do. Because he never, never, 
 no never would be able to do them without mak- 
 ing a mess of it. He was to do the things he could 
 do" the cheapest and exchange them with us for 
 things we co.uld do the cheapest that was 1 the com- 
 mand of the Importing Trust here. We now see 
 a very good reason why our war fleet should go 
 around the "Horn" to the Pacific. Water is run- 
 ning up hill in China! And who'd a thunk it!
 
 354 
 
 What in the world is to become of us white trash ! 
 And our long-cherished assurance that we were 
 the whole show! We weep large, round 'tears, 
 your Honors, at the thought of our disgrace. The 
 Chinese would not stay put. The "Orient" and 
 its great "trade"' are no more. Oh, trade, where is 
 thy Orient! Oh, Orient, where is thy trade! Go- 
 ing, going, going, gone! And like a decent tub 
 we ought to try and stand on our own bottom, 
 your Honors. Why not stop dreaming about suck- 
 ing the blood of the "commerce of the world?" 
 Why not sit down and earn our own living instead 
 of hoping to "exchange" it out of the heathen? 
 
 Your Honors, we have an idea that, before ly- 
 ing down quietly and admitting that the law of 
 economic gravitation which we have contrived has 
 any thing in it, by their goods and chattels among 
 the newspapers and college professors active and 
 emeriti, these wily plaintiffs will try to show that 
 it has so many exceptions that it will not draw at 
 any point worth mentioning. When we say, "If 
 differences between pay-rolls or latitudes be not 
 offset by handicaps," certain things will follow, 
 we are aware that the word "handicap" can cover 
 a great many conditions adverse to the truth of 
 the law in some particular, cooked-up case. But 
 what we stand for is this broad fact that, taking 
 any two considerable areas of the earth, compet- 
 ing against each other under absolute freedom of 
 trade, capital in operation within them will surely 
 move in exact accordance with the law; perhaps 
 slowly at first, but as surely as the continued ebb- 
 ing and flowing of the tides, the final speed of 
 the gravitation of capital to be determined by the 
 size of their differences in the determining condi- 
 tions and varying directly with that size. We
 
 355 
 
 would especially caution you, your Honors, not to 
 be taken unawares by any criticism of this law 
 which the wily plaintiffs, or either of them, may 
 hereafter make. We do not doubt that they will 
 cite a very long and formidable list of exceptions 
 in cases which ought to demonstrate the truth of 
 our proposition. But you will soon observe that 
 any of the conditions which they will claim would 
 take a case out from the list of those proving the 
 law, are merely transient conditions, some of them 
 entirely within the control of man, and others, 
 though not in his control, likely to become modi- 
 fied with time and no longer prevent the migra- 
 tion of capital. 
 
 In order more fully to anticipate all the un- 
 fair arguments of the wily plaintiffs' counsel, let 
 us ourselves examine into this word "handicap" 
 and the sense in which it is used in this connec- 
 tion. 
 
 "Handicap," as we have used the word, means 
 any circumstance offsetting a profit otherwise pos- 
 sible in trade; and this circumstance may exist 
 in either of two countries or localities which 
 otherwise would buy and sell together. And it 
 would still be a "handicap," whatever its size as 
 compared with the profit; that is, whether larger, 
 equal to, or less than the profit. But in using 
 the word "offset" in the law, we mean such an 
 "offsetting" as would prevent the capital from 
 moving to a different area of production. Further- 
 more it is plain that a "handicap" is an "advan- 
 tage," or an "advantage" a "handicap," according 
 to your point of view; as, for instance, a tariff 
 which acts as a handicap against the Importing 
 Trust, acts on the other hand as an advantage to 
 the domestic industry threatened by the Import-
 
 356 
 
 ing Trust with competition. Again, a "handicap" 
 may be a natural one, or one presented by nature; 
 or it may be artificial, or one made by man to 
 offset a natural advantage held by another. Of 
 course, handicaps made by nature in the line of 
 large land-masses, ocean and air-currents, latitude, 
 longitude, altitude, soils, water supplies, mines, 
 forests, and the like, are things for which we have 
 to trust nature, and, as far as relates to their orig- 
 inal quantity or quality at the moment of dis- 
 covery, are not alterable by human means; 
 though of course w r ater-courses might be changed, 
 wells and irrigation plants constructed, forests cut 
 away and soils exhausted or enriched. On the 
 other hand, handicaps arising from labor condi- 
 tions, volume of capital, machinery, methods, sani- 
 tation, transportation, and the like, as well as tar- 
 iffs and other regulations, are alterable handicaps 
 or advantages, which may be changed at will 
 Keeping in mind these various kinds of handicaps, 
 we may construct a table covering as many as we 
 can think of and group them according to their 
 inherent qualities. For instance, we can make two 
 general groups for the alterable and unalterable 
 handicaps; and we may subdivide these groups, 
 separating the alterables into governmental handi- 
 caps, or those made by the government; and local 
 ones, or those arising from local circumstances; 
 and the unalterables into limited handicaps, or 
 those which are fixed as to locality; and universal 
 handicaps, or those which may be found anywhere. 
 According to this arrangement, our table reads 
 thus :
 
 357 
 
 HANDICAPS. 
 
 ALTERABLE. 
 
 Governmental. 
 
 Local. 
 
 in which are in- 
 cluded all govern- 
 mental regulations 
 or devices to hin- 
 der imports or ex- 
 ports, whether tar- 
 iffs or other arbi- 
 trary regulations 
 and limitations; 
 and all regulations 
 which actually 
 hinder trade with- 
 out being made 
 for that purpose. 
 
 such as inhere in 
 wage-scales; capi- 
 tal ; labor and 
 health conditions; 
 machinery; organ- 
 ization; methods ; 
 freights; transpor- 
 tation, and the 
 like. 
 
 UNALTERABLE. 
 
 Limited 
 
 Universal. 
 
 such as inhere in 
 latitude ; 1 o n g i- 
 tude; ocean cur- 
 rents ; air cur- 
 rents; land-masses; 
 altitude, and the 
 like. 
 
 such as soils; wa- 
 ter - supplies; 
 mines; forests, and 
 the like. 
 
 Your Honors, this table will be of use in testing 
 the strength of the arguments of counsel for the 
 wily plaintiffs against our theory that the final 
 position of a nation is irrevocably fixed in the 
 cost of its production ; and 'that it is scientifically 
 possible to determine the index-number for each 
 nation and by a comparison of numbers determine 
 to a certainty, if free trade prevails between them,
 
 358 
 
 which of any two nations is destined to indus- 
 trial annihilation. Our friends, the enemy, deal 
 constantly in glittering generalities; we might say, 
 your Honors, in "dazzling generalities," which put 
 the intellectual sight of the unwary out of com- 
 mision and make them an easy prey to these wily 
 plaintiffs in their stage fury against our "trusts," 
 otherwise our client, American Production. And 
 it is the purpose of this little table to rip off some 
 of the isinglass and other tinsel from the glitter- 
 ing phrases of counsel for the wily plaintiffs and, 
 if that be possible, get some sort of a rational line 
 on them. For example, if you will remember, 
 your Honors, somewhere in the argument of coun- 
 sel for the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff here- 
 in, as near as appears from our hasty notes, he 
 said something like this: 
 
 "Our superiority over any other people in the world 
 in manufacturing has been attained during the last thirty 
 years through the following factors: 
 
 "First: The energy and enterprise of our people. 
 
 "Second: Our inventive talent and the marvelous 
 increase in labor-saving machinery. 
 
 "Third: The bountiful supply of food and raiment 
 for the support of workmen, and the unlimited stores 
 of iron, copper, lead, and other minerals as the raw 
 material of manufacturing. 
 
 "Fourth: Low tax rate, as compared with our chief 
 competitors in manufacturing, thereby lessening the 
 burdens of industry." 
 
 Before analyzing this list of wonders whereby 
 we are the natural "workshop of the world," wo 
 pause to remark that it was in part this very list 
 of wonders, prepared by England's Exporting 
 Trust, which during much of the nineteenth cen-
 
 359 
 
 tury, was put forward as the reason why England 
 was destined to be to the end of time "the work- 
 shop of the world ;" and we wonder why this great 
 honor has now been transferred to us. England 
 had passed through centuries of protection and, 
 oxpressly because of protection, had become the 
 wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. 
 We have likewise passed through a long period of 
 at least partial protection and in our turn have 
 become the wealthiest and most powerful nation 
 in the world. But England had congested her 
 working people upon manufacturing industries 
 and had neglected to balance her food-production 
 with her textile and metal-production; and because 
 of her weak home market and the vibrations of 
 Ihe "States" between free trade and protection, 
 which alternately opened and shut her greatest 
 foreign market, England's manufacturing em- 
 ployees were at times in straights from what is 
 railed "overproduction" but which was, in fact, 
 uiider-cousumption. Therefore, taking advantage 
 of n. period when English factory hands were in 
 distress because of our shutting English goods 
 from this market by our tariff of 1842, and also 
 of the famine in Ireland, which served as a bogus 
 object lesson for the orators of the English Ex- 
 porting Trust, said Exporting Trust, under the 
 pretense of securing a "cheap loaf," prevailed up- 
 on the English people to sweep away their Corn 
 Laws, or laws protecting English agriculture; and 
 because of their great accumulation of capital, 
 machinery, and skilled labor, through something 
 like six hundred years of progressive protection, 
 believing themselves destined to be "the workshop 
 of the world" the English manufacturers, that is, 
 the said English Exporting Trust, looking only to
 
 360 
 
 its enrichment, and recking not of the degrada- 
 tion of its employes, also conceded the abolition 
 of import tariffs upon manufactures. Then this 
 same English Exporting Trust busied itself to per- 
 suade the nations that England was destined by 
 nature to be "the workshop of the world ;" that the 
 interests of the rest of the world required all other 
 nations also to take down all tariff walls against 
 English manufactures, which they thus could se- 
 cure at lower costs than by their production at 
 home; in the same manner that England had cut 
 down all tariffs on "raw materials," which she 
 could import more economically than she could 
 produce them. Then it was, in England's hey-day 
 of trade, before other nations had developed their 
 own manufacturing resources, that our Importing 
 Trust, taking its cue from its English end, the Eng- 
 lish Exporting Trust, began to teach our people 
 that England was the natural "workshop of the 
 world," because she enjoyed above all other nations 
 the advantages numbers 1 and 2 in the list just 
 cited from counsel for these wily plaintiffs. Has 
 free trade been good for England, your Honors? 
 If it has, how is it that in less than a century we, 
 who in our ignorance have stood fast for at least 
 a small measure of protection for manufactures, 
 have beaten England from her position as "work- 
 shop of the world" and are now listening to the 
 claim that we are "the workshop of the world," 
 for the same reason that England was the same 
 thing but a short time ago? And if we follow 
 English example into tariff "revision," what earn- 
 est have we that we shall not share her fate and 
 drop, as she is dropping, towards the tail of the 
 world-procession in production and civilization? 
 We have not yet emerged from the protection
 
 361 
 
 period which made her great. Should we be eager 
 also to enter upon the "revision" or Free Trade 
 period, which is 1 making her so small? 
 
 We said a moment ago, but ironically, "We won- 
 der why this great honor (that of being 'the 
 workshop of the world') has now been transferred 
 to us." We think we know. These wily plain- 
 tiffs are but the foreign ends of England's Export- 
 ing and Importing Trust respectively. That is, 
 our Importing Trust is the foreign end of Eng- 
 land's Exporting Trust while our Exporting Trust 
 is but the foreign end of England's Importing 
 Trust. These "trusts" have no heart, no soul, no 
 nervous system, and no patriotism. They are gla- 
 cial in their emotions. They are the only destruc- 
 tive "trusts" in any country; and they go indiff- 
 erently from country to country in search of the 
 richest spoil. As long as England offered the best 
 returns, they patted her on the back and called 
 her "the workshop of the world;" and adjusted 
 her by their cryptic influences to that condition 
 best fitted for her uttermost spoliation. Now that 
 they have about finished England; now that the 
 Bishop of London can say "They have asked me 
 how I reconciled the belief in the Good God lov- 
 ing all his children with the wretched million in 
 East London who seem abandoned by both God 
 and man;" now that such fearful conditions exist 
 in England; now that England, by her free trade 
 practices, abandons a million people in one city to 
 starvation, giving to a million workers in other 
 lands 1 the work, the wages for which should feed, 
 warm and clothe this sad and hopeless million in 
 London; now that the English orange seems to 
 be sucked dry, these international wily plaintiffs,
 
 362 
 
 whose sole business is the spoliation of wage-pro- 
 ducers the world around, have passed to the Ameri- 
 can orange, which, by dint of the same flattery, the 
 same thrusting forward as "the workshop of the 
 world," the same specious announcement of eter- 
 nal superiority, they hope to suck as dry as they 
 have sucked the English citrus. And after that, 
 what? Next! We think we see who is next, your 
 Honors. We are already being introduced to the 
 new candidate for the flattery of these wily plain- 
 tiffs*. The new hero, the new "workshop of the 
 world" is Germany. Already these wily plaintiffs, 
 through Roosevelt diplomacy, have effected the 
 Gorman Agreement, which virtually levels our tar- 
 iff-dike towards Germany; and already the psalm- 
 singers of these wily plaintiffs are draping the 
 shoulders of German skill and genius with the same 
 mantel of superiority with which they first draped 
 England's and then ours 1 , as they led us in suc- 
 cession to industrial slaughter. And thus these 
 wily plaintiffs will go on in their cruel career, 
 despoiling one nation after another, until modern 
 intelligence and humanity put an end forever to 
 their havoc. 
 
 And now, your Honors, let us take up this list 
 of wonderful virtues, four in number, offered by 
 counsel for these wily plaintiffs but a short time 
 back, and compare each one of them with our list 
 of handicaps, also offered to you a little while 
 ago, and test their validity as 1 bases upon which we 
 may rest as the superlatively superlative in pro- 
 duction through all the countless ages hence, un- 
 til the sun hangs a black moon in the sky and our 
 planet has been gathered to its fathers, "Where 
 the wicked cease from troubling and the weary 
 are at rest."
 
 Making this comparison of the wily plaintiffs* 
 list of wonders and our own list of handicaps, we 
 observe that counsel's reason No. 1 for our 
 terribleiiess as world-beaters is a local and alter- 
 able handicap, as it is included in "labor and 
 health conditions;" and is a mere trap s'et for the 
 unwary. If we ventured out on ice as thin as that 
 in the "conquest of the world's markets," we would 
 be certain to fall in. By the way, "our people" 
 are practically all European people, except those 
 of African descent; and whatever "energy and en- 
 terprise'' we may have is a rill which rises no 
 higher than its source. Now as to reason No. 2 
 for our almighty almightiness as food for the Im- 
 porting Trust, that reason also falls in the same 
 subdivision as No. 1 in our table, both as to 
 machinery and as to "inventive talent," which lat- 
 ter is all imported and therefore not peculiar to us. 
 
 Taking up counsel's reason No. 3 for our pe- 
 culiar peculiarness as all-conquerors of the 
 "worlds markets," that, according to our 'table, 
 is an unalterable universal handicap, which exists 
 against us in the cost-20 world about sixteen-fold 
 as* much as it exists for us in our own cost-100 
 country. 
 
 Passing to counsel's breath-taker No. 4, we find 
 it an alterable governmental handicap. If we lean- 
 ed on that reed alone, in face of the great handi- 
 cap which the whole world holds against us in a 
 pay-roll but one-fifth as high as ours, it would let 
 us down and we surely would fall to our own 
 hurt. 
 
 And so, your Honors, in every case in which the 
 b.'mdmon of the wily plaintiffs, the Importing 
 Trust, sound the cymbals of triumph over the 
 "unexampled'' or "inexhaustible" muchness of our
 
 364 
 
 exceeding great much, a comparison of our alleged 
 specific "corners" with those named in our table 
 will show that, as bases upon which to build our 
 national fortunes, they are as unstable as water 
 and at best could serve only as fleeting pretexts 
 for damaging the dike and pouring water on the 
 Importing Trust mill. 
 
 We would especially put you on your guard, 
 your Honors, against certain superficial assaults 
 which we are certain counsel for the w r ily plain- 
 tiffs will make upon the law we have explained. 
 They will tell you, for instance, that latitude is* 
 not always connected with climate in such a way 
 as to give the colder to the higher and the warmer 
 to the lower latitude. They may tell you, for in- 
 stance, that, latitude for latitude, our whole Atlan- 
 tic coast is colder than our Pacific coast; that, 
 say, England is as far north as our Labrador and 
 yet has earlier springs than New England; and so 
 on, in order to prove that cost of subsistence does 
 not vary directly with latitude. It is true, your 
 Honors, that here and there ocean currents running 
 close to the land affect its temperature; and that 
 certain localities thus affected may have either a 
 higher or lower temperature than places in the same 
 latitude but far removed from the neighborhood of 
 such ocean currents. It is also true that places in 
 the same latitude, but at different heights or alti- 
 tudes above sea-level, will have different climates. 
 We all know that the high table-lands of the tropics 
 have climates very much like our own, although 
 down the hill a little way it may be much hotter 
 and the style of dress of Mother Eve would be very 
 burdensome. Then again, they say that, in a gen- 
 eral way, distances from the oceans also govern 
 temperature and that the larger and heavier the
 
 365 
 
 land-mass, the more slowly does its temperature 
 change from season to season. Nevertheless, your 
 Honors, latitude after all is the strongest factor 
 among those affecting climates, and, taking the 
 earth around, it will be fouud that, comparing any 
 two considerable areas of the earth together, the 
 average temperature of the area in the higher lat- 
 itude will be lower than that in the lower latitude; 
 and that, the greater their differences in average 
 latitude, the greater will be their differnces in aver- 
 age temperatures, the higher latitude uniformly 
 showing the lower and the lower the higher tem- 
 perature. Take our own country, for instance: 
 The higher temperature of our Pacific coast is re- 
 duced to the common world's average, from latitude 
 to latitude, by the lower temperature of our At- 
 lantic coast. 
 
 Therefore we say that, when all is said and done, 
 your Honors, and any two large areas of the earth's 
 surface are considered as competing under "re- 
 vised" tariff-dikes, differences in latitude, provid- 
 ed that they are worth noticing at all, are the only 
 things which finally count The greater number of 
 possible "handicaps," as the word is used in our 
 law, l>olong, as our table shows, among the alter- 
 ables; that is, any one of them can be altered at 
 any lime, a country desires; and if such alteration 
 Avas all that stood between any country's Exporting 
 Trust and our market, with its 80% higher cost 
 of production than the world's average, all the 
 wealth of that Exporting Trust would be brought 
 to bear upon that country's rulers to effect the al- 
 teration. Our position is so extraordinary with re- 
 gard to wages and so with regard to the absolutely 
 necessary cost of production, that, with our tariff- 
 dike low, to an ve our domestic market to the Tm-
 
 366 
 
 porting Trust here, the alteration on the part of 
 other countries would need to extend to but one 
 or two of the alterables in our list. In the matter 
 of the alterable of wage-scales, they are already so 
 low abroad that no alteration there will be neces- 
 sarj- to take our market, if only, as Mr. Taft and 
 Dr. Butler so strongly urge, our governmental al- 
 terable, the tariff-dike, is suitably altered. But 
 even if our dike is not "revised" to fit the case, if 
 foreign countries 1 materially alter their local alter- 
 able of machinery, unless AVC in turn build our dike 
 higher to meet the change, they will take our do- 
 mestic market. As we have before stated, the Ger- 
 man Government has secured the alteration of our 
 governmental alterable,, the administration clause 
 of the Dingley Law, in such a way that the Ger- 
 mans now practically have a great part of our do- 
 mestic market, about the same as they would if 
 there was no dike at all. Our swiftly increasing 
 imports from Germany since that alteration was 
 made by Mr. Koosevelt to please Herr Von Stern- 
 burg, prove the fickle character of these alterables. 
 Even without this lift, Germany's eost-30 produc- 
 tion was fast making our tariff-dike ineffective to 
 shut out German goods. 
 
 So it will be found that nearly all the handi- 
 caps which the Importing Trust declares are in our 
 favor and would give us the "the markets of the 
 world," even with the dike merely "revised" in any 
 way but uniformly upward, are such that, if such 
 handicaps w r ere then all that stood between any 
 nation and its desire, they would be quickly dis- 
 counted with appropriate alterations at home by 
 such nation. 
 
 And it will be further found that the handicaps 
 credited to us which are not alterables and so too
 
 367 
 
 tickle to be trusted, are universal unalterables, and 
 therefore, cannot be depended upon at all in "re- 
 vised" tariff competition even with single nations 
 of any large areas of soil, to say nothing about their 
 sustaining us in a struggle with the whole world 
 outside. 
 
 So much for the "handicaps" which the Import- 
 ing Trust, playing spider to our fly, says are so 
 perennially in our favor that we need fear nothing 
 from "revision." 
 
 Now what of the handicaps against us, the trump 
 cards in the hands of our competitors? In the 
 first place, their alterable governmental handicaps 
 fully offset ours, with the exception of benign old 
 Mother England, who is always generous before she 
 is just and favors 1 all creation before she favors her 
 own children. She has no governmental alterables 
 to oppose us with; and she is dying by inches be- 
 cause of her generosity. As to local alterables, the 
 world beats us hollow in wage-scales; it has as 
 much capital as we have and a lot of our capital in 
 the bargain, about a billion of our dollars having 
 left us in the last few years to build foreign fac- 
 tories and join our Importing Trust in its attack 
 on our dike. The world's labor and health are, on 
 the average, just as good as ours. Its machinery is 
 looking up, either from buying ours or making its 
 own. It seldom buys our dear stuff more than once 
 unless it is patented. It usually copies our ma- 
 chinery after a few purchases. As to freights and 
 transportation, England and Germany are building 
 canals; and the steamship lines arc making for 
 them through rates from Europe to Chicago lower 
 than those we pay from New York to Chicago; and 
 their organization and methods are in their own 
 hands and would be brought up to standard in a
 
 368 
 
 moment if their lagging behind us in such matters 
 was the only thing which kept them from, our mark- 
 et; but the great advantage in their wage-scale, as 
 they say themselves, makes modern machinery and 
 organization unnecessary to capture our domestic 
 market, if our tariff-dike is not too high, or if Ger- 
 man Agreements are in full swing. If weakness in 
 any one of these points really limits their markets 
 with us they attend to it quicker. Now setting off 
 the universal unalterables which we have against 
 those which they have, there are left the most im- 
 portant of all, viz : the limited unalterables; and a 
 glance shows 1 that we are hopelessly licked by 
 20,000,000 square miles of the earth's surface in 
 every limited unalterable, and that in this group 
 stand the greatest factors in the world for cheap- 
 ness of produtcion. We have already indicated the 
 portions of the earth which "lay over" us in these 
 respects and we will not repeat. But the fact alone 
 of our hopeless position in regard to the limited un- 
 alterables should make us all join in a grand "shut- 
 up" antiphonal whenever the choir of the Import- 
 ing Trust intones its anthem "Revision of the 
 Dike." The only direction in which the dike should 
 be "revised" is skyward; and get there as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS, LIKE GREAT SPIDERS, HAVE 
 SPUN THEIR ENTANGLING WEB OVER THE WHITE 
 
 HOUSE. 
 
 We think we have explained, your Honors, the 
 nature of these w r ily plaintiffs. They are mere
 
 301) 
 
 groups of braiii-cells developed by an environment 
 which compelled unremitting acquisitiveness. No 
 conscience has ever been identified among these 
 brain-cells. They have been gathered by centuries 
 of circumstance. In this country, they are an an- 
 achronism. Thy never open their mouths except to 
 bleat ''foreign trade." None of their newspaper 
 contingent ever mentions any foreign country with- 
 out mechanically stating its importance in "trade." 
 This peculiar vein in these wily plaintiff's is in- 
 herited by them from their English ancestors. Eng- 
 land has long been a ridiculous country. She is 
 about the size of New York State; but she has 
 kicked up more bobbery than any other country in 
 the world far more than we ever have ; and we are 
 about seventy times its size. How has she done 
 so? By foreign trade. By pawning her patrimony ; 
 by auctioning off her natural deposits of iron and 
 coal in the competitive "markets of the world." 
 England is like a woman, who, attiring herself 
 with a richness beyond her income sufficient for 
 temperate living, pawns her household furniture 
 piece by piece. Thus she has caused to be advanced 
 to herself great loans on her furniture, putting up 
 as a pledge with the World Uncle her title to long 
 life. She has sold herself for power and wealth ; and 
 foreign trade has been her instrument of sale. Of 
 course "trade" is the first thing Englishmen think 
 about. That is what they are always spilling their 
 blood for; because foreign trade is the only means 
 by which England can maintain herself in any size 
 comparable to that of her continental contempor- 
 aries; like a poor little frog, inflated to ten times 
 its natural dimensions by the wind of foreign 
 trade ! This is true because every country's actual 
 size in trade is fixed by the consuming power of its
 
 370 
 
 own population. In other words, a country, nor- 
 mally, is as rich as its own domestic market. That 
 tells the story of national health. The foreign mark- 
 et of a nation tells the story of the accumulation 
 of wealth in the hands of a country's Importing and 
 Exporting Trusts; of the pawning of the natural 
 stores of the nation for the benefit of its foreign 
 trading class. By dissipating her natural wealth in 
 the most wanton way, and by congesting her wage- 
 producers on narrower and narrower lines of em- 
 ployment, England has anticipated by centuries the 
 legitimate income from her resources. Her own 
 people were too few to buy enough of her products 
 to result in the wealth to which she aspired. There- 
 fore foreign markets became to her the conditions 
 of her remaining the proud Brittania which so long 
 has ruled the wave. A little country naturally, for- 
 eign trade was used to make her great artificially. 
 Now, your Honors, as we have said before, these 
 wily plaintiffs are not of sudden growth. They 
 came to us from England. They are mere English 
 replica of English editions of English traditions. 
 In this noble country they are not a drop in the 
 bucket of us. We are a great country by nature 
 and do not require the artifice of foreign trade 
 maintained by these plaintiffs. But it is they who 
 live by foreign trade and it is they who have con- 
 trol especially of our great seaboard cities, and 
 have studiously made it the fashion of the country 
 to speak of foreign trade as if foreign trade were 
 that wherein we lived and moved and had our be- 
 ing. We are merely hypnotic subjects, your Hon- 
 ors. We, the great people of this country, have no 
 need of foreign trade but are burdened and cursed 
 by it for the private benefit of these wily plaintiffs. 
 They take their tolls from us at every turn. We
 
 371 
 
 pay iiiglier prices than we should because of our 
 Exporting Trust, which sends our products abroad 
 and out of our reach. Why, your Honors, we send 
 over two hundred and twenty-five millions of 
 dollars' worth of meat of various kinds abroad 
 every year, instead of keeping it at home to 
 lower the price to ourselves. And so it is with 
 wheat and corn, cotton, petroleum and other things. 
 And so on the other hand, we get lower wages than 
 we ought, because of the Importing Trust bringing 
 in nearly two billions of dollars' worth of goods 
 a year and extinguishing our employment to that 
 extent; for we could make every cent's worth of 
 these goods ourselves, or equally satisfactory sub- 
 stitutes, if it were not for our leaking tariff-dike. 
 
 But a mere handful of our people, by this con- 
 stant hypnotism, this assiduous suggestion through 
 the newspapers, keep foreign trade before us as the 
 only thing to hope for. Why, your Honors, the 
 whole thing is too absurd to talk about. For 
 every penny's worth of foreign trade we do, 
 we do nearly sixty cents' worth of domestic 
 business, as shown by our bank clearings. And 
 every cent's worth of foreign trade we do de- 
 stroys at least ten cents' worth of business by 
 blocking exchanges which otherwise would have 
 come from a like amount of business having been 
 done here. The whole thing is of incalcuable dam- 
 age to us ; and yet it is our one hope of glory ! We 
 know who thus sets it up, do we not? We know for 
 whom it is profitable to increase exports to Cuba 
 by a few millions; even though by the same Reci- 
 procity Treaty our imports increase so much that we 
 are scoring a national net loss of $66,000,000 a year. 
 W T hy, your Honors, it would be much cheaper for us 
 to pay our Exporting Trust f 10,000,000 a year clean
 
 372 
 
 money out of the national treasury, and abrogate 
 the Cuban Treaty, than to continue the Treaty in 
 force and buy business for our Exporting Trust at 
 such a tremendous loss. But, your Honors, it is 
 too plain for talk that, just as Mother England does 
 for her great parasites, we, too, both for our Im- 
 porting Trust and our Exporting Trust, buy foreign 
 trade at an enormous 1 price. And just as England 
 does in keeping a great navy for her parasites, we 
 too pay for ,it all out of the treasury of our national 
 wealth and compromise our progress ; but these wily 
 plaintiffs put the whole proceeds of their trading 
 in their pockets. Foreign trade is their business. 
 It is the only thing in sight for them. Therefore 
 they industriously work the newspapers to make us 
 think it is the only thing in sight for us also. 
 Aren't our brain-cells of a very unsophisticated 
 sort, your Honors, that we should thus keep on driv- 
 ing fish to the private nets of these wily plaintiffs ! 
 Your Honors, using our vocabulary with the 
 same discreetness with which Mr. Roosevelt uses 
 his, we aver that these wily plaintiffs are indeed 
 "malefactors of great wealth" and that together 
 they form what is easily the wickedest "trust" in al' 
 the world. We are aware, however, your Honors, 
 that both of these wily plaintiffs are highly elusive 
 as well as illusory. We do not say that they are 
 formally incorporated. We do not even say that 
 they have any definite organization as a whole. It 
 is true that powerful trade organizations, such as 
 the Association of National Manufacturers, as 1 ex- 
 ample, seem to work together for the destruction of 
 our tariff-dike with a harmony that is miraculous 
 if it be not intelligently concerted. It is true that 
 "boards of trade" and similar bodies move towards 
 the destruction of our tariff-dike with a rhythm
 
 373 
 
 that suggests conspired as well as inspired action. 
 It is also true that the professors of our colleges, 
 and generally the presidents of our colleges also, 
 strike one and the same chord upon the matter of 
 tariff "revision''; and throughout the length and 
 breadth of this country, the same people, at the 
 same intervals, join in a swelling chorus of maledic- 
 tions against the "robber tariff" and say that "this 
 protective tariff system has distorted the functions 
 of a free government into tools of greed and vehicles 
 of oppression," * or words to that effect. They are 
 souls with but a single thought and hearts that beat 
 as one. And yet, your Honors, there is no outward 
 and visible sign of any connection at all between 
 all these different kinds of people who detest 
 American Production. But we account easily for 
 the choral nature of their attack by the fact that 
 from time immemorial, there have been among us 
 people who have not thought themselves directly 
 benefited b3' American Production, as well as peo- 
 ple, notably members of the Importing Trust, who 
 have felt themselves directly aggrieved by American 
 Production, for the reason that the greater the vol- 
 ume of the latter's output the smaller their chance 
 to peddle foreign goods in this market. And, your 
 Honors, these people have arrived at a telharmon- 
 ical coincidence of emotion upon this subject. They 
 have so long sung in the same choir, that, if any 
 member of the choir so much as hums a measure of 
 their old anthem, the entire host raises its voice in 
 unison in one prolonged scream against the "trusts" 
 that "screw up prices at home even when they screw 
 them down abroad," and from that moment until 
 the tariff-dike has been wrecked and the wily plain- 
 
 * Governor Folk.
 
 374 
 
 tiff, the Importing Trust, has carried away the last 
 cent of the Amercian savings bank fund, sometimes 
 still in chorus, sometimes in sonorous antiphonal, 
 but always with sevenfold hellish din, the goods 
 and chattels of these wily plaintiffs continue to 
 damn the dike. Why, your Honors, it is surprising 
 how few in numbers, compared with our whole 
 people, these creatures of the Importing and Ex- 
 porting Trusts are ! And yet their concerted shriek 
 sets the whole country pell mell for the exit. It is 
 like the cry of "Fire" ! by one little cup-full of wits 
 in a crowded theatre. Bless your hearts! there is 
 no fire, but merely a glint of calcium light on the 
 curtain, which the jay is unaccustomed to; but it 
 does the job; one group of sickly yellow brain-cells 
 jumbles five hundred blood-red ones and a hundred 
 people crushed to death is the harvest. And it is 1 the 
 same with these sordid mischief-makers, the wily 
 plaintiffs herein; only they hire the jay to holler 
 "Fire!" and then pick the pockets of the stamped- 
 ing crowd and even of those slain in the crush. 
 
 Your Honors, would it be possible for there to be 
 such a thing as a tacit conspiracy; a sort of con- 
 certed action which took place from a species of 
 thought-transference? It seems to us that such a 
 thing is possible; nay, your Honors, such a thing 
 has happened; either a tacit conspiracy or a trans- 
 action which might be called by an uglier word. 
 For, your Honors, these wily plaintiffs have ubi- 
 quitous power. It bobs up everywhere. And there 
 seems to be such an affinity in graft that one touch 
 of graft-emotion makes a whole political world kin. 
 
 So we have long been pained to think, your 
 Honors, that somehow, by a sort of tacit conspir- 
 acy, these wily plaintiffs have possession at this 
 moment of the National Government; and that the
 
 375 
 
 present inmate of the White House was placed 
 there by them and its press bureau. At any rate, 
 Mr. Roosevelt seems to be suffering from a sort of 
 conspiracy obsession, as if, himself the product of a 
 conspiracy a tacit conspiracy, your Honors 
 knowing his own origin as a White House incum- 
 bent, the spirit of conspiracy haunted him like 
 Banquo's ghost. For you will remember, your Hon- 
 ors, how quickly he scented out the conspiracy of 
 rich men, with their $5,000,000 pool to beat him and 
 "my policies," when Mr. Harrinian's genius good 
 or evil, your Honors? published the "practical" 
 letter from Mr. Roosevelt to this "malefactor of 
 great wealth," asking for assistance to secure the 
 vote of New York State, and that too almost the 
 night before election day, when money could find 
 but one use to help the Republican candidate. Then 
 you will remember how, in his Provincetown speech 
 on August 20, 1907, he seemed to be haunted with 
 ]>anquo's conspiracy-ghost again, for he said: 
 
 "On the New York Stock Exchange the disturbance 
 has been particularly severe, most of it I believe to be 
 due to matters not particularly confined to the United 
 States, and to matters wholly unconnected with any 
 governmental action, BUT IT MAY WELL BE THAT 
 THE DETERMINATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, IN 
 WHICH, GENTLEMEN, IT WILL NOT WAVER. TO 
 PUNISH CERTAIN MALEFACTORS OF GREAT 
 WEALTH, HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME- 
 THING OF THE TROUBLES, AT LEAST TO THE 
 EXTENT OF HAVING CAUSED THESE MEN TO COM- 
 BINE TO BRING ABOUT AS MUCH FINANCIAL 
 STRESS AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN IN ORDER TO 
 DISCREDIT THE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT 
 AND THEREBY SECURE A REVERSAL OF THAT 
 POLICY SO THAT THEY MAY ENJOY THE FRUITS 
 OF THEIR OWN EVIL DOING. 
 
 "That they have misled many good people into be- 
 lieving that there should be such reversal of policy, is 
 possible. If so, I am sorry, but it will not alter my atti- 
 tude. Once for all, let me say that, as far as I am con- 
 cerned, and for the eighteen months of my administration 
 that remain, there will be no change in the policy we 
 have steadily pursued."
 
 376 
 
 Your Honors, don't the Good Book say some- 
 where, "He who accuses another of conspiracy, un- 
 less he prove the same, shall himself be accused of 
 conspiracy?" We think it does, or words to that 
 effect; but at any rate, there is an old-fashioned 
 saying somewhere something like this, "It takes a 
 rogue to catch a rogue." 
 
 Now, your Honors, we are not going to accuse 
 any one of conspiracy, lest we come under the 
 stress of the passage from the Good Book just re- 
 ferred to; but we wish to call particular attention 
 to the fact that Mr. Roosevelt, ever since he became 
 President with a free hand, has been doing exactly 
 what these wily plaintiffs, or either of them, would 
 have done itself if President of the United States, 
 viz., he has been using every means, fair or foul, 
 to discredit and destroy American Production, our 
 client, for the express benefit of these wily plain- 
 tiffs, the misappropriation of the American savings 
 bank fund by the Importing Trust, and the conver- 
 sion of Congress into a sort of directorate of Ameri- 
 can manufacturers, in the interest of the Exporting 
 Trust, to sacrifice our producers of s'o-called "raw 
 materials" to the increased profit of said wily plain- 
 tiff in its export trade 
 
 It looks to us, your Honors, also, as if Mr. Roose- 
 velt, in saying, "Once for all, let me say that, as far 
 as I am concerned, and for the eighteen months of 
 my administration that remain, there will be no 
 change in the policy w r e have steadily pursued," 
 merely passed the word to these wily plaintiffs that 
 they might pursue their own "policy" of scream- 
 ing down the "trusts" with the perfect assurance 
 that he would do his part and continue to discredit 
 our client, American Production, to the limit.
 
 377 
 
 It also looks to us, your Honors, as if these wily 
 plaintiffs were at the bottom of the wild insistence 
 with which Mr. Roosevelt was nominated to the 
 vice-presidency in 1900 on the McKinley ticket; 
 and that the press-agency of these wily plaintiffs 
 was at the bottom of the wide advertisement of Mr. 
 Roosevelt's trust-busting virtues which led to his 
 re-election, to the profound grief of American Pro- 
 duction, in 1904. For it was well known that Mr. 
 Roosevelt was the open enemy of American Produc- 
 tion, in that he was a graduate of a notorious Free 
 Trade College and a member of the celebrated Cob- 
 den Club, and that he looked upon "protection" 
 merely with the tolerant eye of the temporizing poli- 
 tician, as shown by the following extract from page 
 67 of his life of Benton : 
 
 "Free traders are apt to look at the tariff from a 
 sentimental standpoint, "but it is in reality purely a busi- 
 ness matter, and should be decided solely on grounds of 
 expediency. Political economists have pretty generally 
 agreed that protection is vicious in theory and harmful 
 in practice; but if the majority of the people in interest 
 wish it, and it affects only themselves, there is no earthly 
 reason why they should not be allowed to try the experi- 
 ment to their heart's content." 
 
 It is evident from this quotation that Mr. Roose- 
 velt never had any convictions on the protection 
 issue which would have seemed to these wily plain- 
 tiffs objectionable in their representative at the 
 head of the Government. Mr. Roosevelt, in fact, has 
 strong convictions adverse to our client, American 
 Production. Ever since his independent attach- 
 ment to the presidential hitching post he has been 
 champing the bit to be freed from the bridle of pro- 
 lection. On this point, we quote Mr George Gris 1 - 
 wold Hill in the August number, 1907, of the North 
 American Review, in an article evidently inspired 
 bv Mr. Roosevelt himself:
 
 378 
 
 "No feature of the President's policies is more widely 
 misunderstood than his attitude on the tariff. He has 
 long believed that the time has arrived when revision of 
 the Dingley tariff act is advisable. True, there have 
 been evils which he has regarded as of paramount im- 
 portance as, for instance, the granting of railway re- 
 bates, overcapitalization, etc.; but on a number of occa- 
 sions he has summoned the leaders of his party and sought 
 to impress on them the advisability of tariff readjust- 
 ment, only to learn that the determined opposition of 
 Speaker Cannon and his associates in the Horse consti- 
 tuted an insuperable obstacle. On one occasion, in his 
 annual message of 1904, he went so far as to give notice 
 of a special message in which he would urge tariff re- 
 vision. He wrote, 'On the subject of the tariff I will ad- 
 dress you later.' But the earnest representations of the 
 leaders of his party that tariff revision would be impos- 
 sible at a short session and that notice given so far in 
 advance of a special session to be called for this purpose 
 would seriously unsettle business led him to order the 
 line quoted to be stricken from the message after the 
 advance copies had been furnished to the press. In Janu- 
 ary, 1905, he secured the assent of the Senate leaders, not 
 excluding Senator Aldrich, who has long been known as 
 'the high-priest of protection,' to a special session for 
 tariff revision to be called soon after March 4th; but the 
 continued opposition of the Speaker and a few other 
 leaders of the House demonstrated the futility of such 
 a course. Mr. Roosevelt is now of the opinion that ?.t 
 would be unwise to attempt tariff revision in the coming 
 Congress, but he will exert his influence to commit irre- 
 vocably the Republican party, in its next national plat- 
 form, to the programme of summoning Congress in special 
 session to revise the tariff, immediately after March 4th, 
 1909." 
 
 We exclaim in passing, with deep reverence and 
 thankfulness, "God bles's that iron- willed Speaker 
 for so staunchly standing between his country and 
 the deluge of Rooseveltian ignorance!" Please 
 mark, your Honors, we did not say "Rooseveltian 
 servility to the Importing Trust." 
 
 We also remark in passing that, if the Repub- 
 lican party follows Mr. Roosevelt in framing its 
 platform in 1908, it will "march through a slaugh- 
 ter house to an open grave," and it will richly de- 
 serve its fate. 
 
 We think we have shown Mr. Roosevelt's entire 
 harmony with these wily plaintiffs in their purpose
 
 379 
 
 of destroying the tariff-dike and raping our sav- 
 ings-bank fund. 
 
 But again we protest that we do not say that 
 there is even a tacit conspiracy between Mr. Roose- 
 velt and 'these wily plaintiffs. We only say that if 
 these wily plaintiffs had raked the world over for 
 a bettor instrument for their purposes', they could 
 not have found one. Mark, your Honors, the va- 
 rious things that followed Mr. Roosevelt's elevation 
 to the presidency, in as rapid succession as the slow 
 procession of national events would permit: 
 
 1. Mr. Roosevelt dismissed as a "disturber" Hon. 
 Wilbur F. Wakeinan from the General Appraiser- 
 ship at the port of New York, where this gentleman 
 "stood like a stone wall" between the wage-pro- 
 ducers of this country and the flood of foreign sur- 
 plus products which undervaluation would have 
 invited over our tariff-dike. This dismissal was at 
 the express instance of the New York wing of the 
 Importing Trust and certain Republican politicians 
 to whose campaign contributions the Importing 
 Trust had been wont to contribute. In addition to 
 the removal of Mr. Wakeman, as a "disturber" of 
 the quiet in which the Importing Trust otherwise 
 would have been permitted to filch the savings of 
 the wage-producers of this country, various equally 
 watchful and faithful officials were transferred by 
 Mr. Roosevelt's order to remote parts of the coun- 
 try, where they could not longer "disturb" New 
 York importers. Please note, your Honors, that 
 these were acts directly hostile to our client, Ameri- 
 can Production. 
 
 2. As soon as possible after his coming to the 
 presidency, Mr. Roosevelt forced the Cuban Treaty
 
 380 
 
 through Congress with his Big Stick. This was in 
 direct violation of the Republican Platform, a most 
 treacherous abandonment of the policy of protec- 
 tion, and a wanton sacrifice of the Western Farm- 
 ers, and, generally, an act of "perfidy and dis- 
 honor" unparalleled in American politics. It was 
 done at the direct behest of the New York wing 
 of the Importing Trust, to the infinite damage of 
 our client, American Production, and at an actual 
 net cash loss to this country of $66,000,000 last 
 year, with the figures likely to double in the next 
 year or two. This was 1 a decisive step in the direc- 
 tion of free trade for the benefit of these wily plain- 
 tiffs. So far from responding in kind, the Cubans 
 take the $66,000,000 in cash which we pay in the 
 balance against us, and buy goods' of Europe. 
 
 3. In his message to Congress in December, 1906, 
 Mr. Roosevelt recommended Free Trade with the 
 Philippine Islands, saying: "Free Trade with the 
 Philippine Islands can do no harm to any American 
 industry." This recommendation was made at the 
 request of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, 
 and Mr. Taft, Mr. Roosevelt's proposed lineal suc- 
 cessor to the presidential office. Free Trade with 
 the Philippines would be for us Free Trade with 
 the whole world through the Philippine Hole in the 
 Wall. 
 
 4. Mr. Roosevelt, evidently through the influence 
 of the Importing Trust, surrounds himself with 
 members of the Importing Trust. His Secretary of 
 State is Mr. Root, who pus'hed the unsuspecting Mc- 
 Kinley into Free Trade with Porto Rico, a direct 
 blow to our client, American Production, and a step 
 which one day will be responsible for the starvation
 
 381 
 
 of many an American wage-producer. His Secre- 
 tary of War is Mr. Taft, an unmitigated Free 
 Trader, as proven by his Columbus speech, in which 
 his reasons for fervently advocating "tariff revi- 
 sion" were none other than reasons for Free Trade. 
 His Secretary of Commerce and Labor is Mr. Oscar 
 S. Straus, a New York importer and notorious Free 
 Trader, who is entirely out of sympathy with 
 our client, American Production, and is 1 committed 
 Avithout reservation to the increase of American im- 
 ports through a cutting down of the tariff-dike. 
 Aiid Mr. Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury is 
 Mr. George B. Cortelyou, a Democrat, and a nat- 
 ural sympathizer with the Importing Trust. 
 
 Your Honors, we submit that these members' of 
 the Importing Trust were not assembled by chance 
 in the Cabinet of a Harvard graduate, a member 
 of the more than notorious Free Trade Cobden 
 Club and a concocter of German Agreements; and 
 we do not think that their presence in the Cabinet 
 is reconcilable with the Republican Platform, if 
 the deliverance of that platform on the subject of 
 protection was meant for anything but political 
 buncombe ; at any rate, such a cabinet is not recon- 
 cilable with the good faith of the President and his 
 intentions witli regard to our client, American Pro- 
 duction. 
 
 5. Mr. Roosevelt instigated, approved and pro- 
 mulgated the German Trade Agreement, which 
 turns over to the Germans the power to fix their 
 own tariffs on vast volumes of goods which they 
 send into this country. For the agreement permits 
 them to fix an "export" price by simply changing 
 the label on their goods ; and the "export" price so 
 fixed can be so low as to destroy all the protection
 
 382 
 
 in the Dingley Law for the makers of similar goods 
 here. This agreement also provides 1 that our spe- 
 cial treasury agents shall be certified to the German 
 Government. This means that they are acceptable 
 or rejectable by the German Government. These 
 special agents are our attorneys or representatives 1 
 in guarding our interests in the valuation of Ger- 
 man exports to this country. To give the German 
 Government the power to accept or reject these 
 agents is the same as to give a criminal at the bar 
 the power of selecting his own judge and jury from 
 among his companions in the crime for which he is 
 to be tried. For in any contest relative to exports 
 to this country, which we may have with that Gov- 
 ernment, it gives the German Government power to 
 {.elect our attorney and the judge who sits on the 
 case. This is plainly the work of the Importing 
 Trust, operating through its' employe, Mr. Roose- 
 velt. It is said that Mr. Root negotiated this agree- 
 ment. If he did, it must have been as the repre- 
 sentative of the German Government; for our peo- 
 ple seem not to have been represented, so far as the 
 interests of our client, American Production, are 
 concerned. 
 
 The knitting mills of Chemnitz, Germany, were 
 for many years the deadly antagonists of our knit- 
 ting mills in the Mohawk Valley, and the Germans 
 practiced every trick by which to cheat our tariff 
 laws and destroy our knitting factories. At last, 
 we believe during the incumbency of the General 
 Appraisership of the Port of New York by Mr. 
 Wakeman, so ignominiously removed by Mr. Roose- 
 velt for simply doing his duty, these Chemnitz peo- 
 ple were reduced to some kind of order and onr 
 knitting mills flonris'liecl as never before. We wish 
 to inquire, whether or not, to square the old grudge
 
 383 
 
 which he had against Mr. AYakt'inau aud anything 
 he did to help our client, American Production, Mr. 
 Roosevelt took special delight in leveling our knit- 
 ting mills by the German Agreement? We ask be- 
 cause contemporaneously with the appearance of 
 figures showing the great increase of our imports 
 from German knitting mills permitted by the Ger- 
 man Agreement, we read the following in the New 
 York Globe of November 11, 1907 : 
 
 "Amsterdam, N. Y., Nov. 11. The knitting mills of A. 
 B. Morris & Son, Yunds, Kennedy & Yunds, and Gradner, 
 Waring & Co., employing about forty-five hundred hands, 
 have closed down. Salesmen on the road have been un- 
 able to make a sale for four weeks. It is feared that 
 many other knitting mills in the Mohawk Valley will 
 have to shut down." 
 
 This is a result which was prophesied by intelli- 
 gent people the moment the terms of the German 
 Agreement were made known. And this is but the 
 beginning of the deadly work which either the 
 ignorance or something worse of the most reckless 1 
 and ruthless Chief Executive with which the Ameri- 
 can people were ever afflicted executed in the dead 
 of a dark-lantern night. 
 
 Ever since Mr. Koosevelt's coming to full power, 
 under cover of attacking the railroads and the 
 "trusts," he has 1 waged relentless war on American 
 Production. In doing this work of destruction, no 
 theory can account for the venom which he has 
 shown against American Production, except one 
 which points to the Importing Trust as the moving 
 influence. 
 
 Your Honors, we repeat once more and protest 
 that we do not charge Mr. Roosevelt with conspir- 
 ing directly with the wily plaintiffs, in the first 
 place, to secure his nomination on the Republican
 
 384 
 
 in 1900; in the second place, to secure his 
 renomination and election in 1904 ; and, in the third 
 place, to secure the election in his own place and 
 stead, in 1908, of Mr. Taft, his friend and fellow 
 laborer for the destruction of our client, American 
 Production ; and we do not say that Mr. Roosevelt 
 is anxious to have his bosom friend made President 
 in order that he himself through his 1 presidential 
 appointee, may still retain a hold on Federal pat- 
 ronage and Federal favor in the State of New T York, 
 large enough to force his own election as a Senator 
 from New York to the National Congress; and we 
 reiterate that we make no charge of this kind; but 
 we also reiterate that if Mr. Roosevelt had been 
 hired by the New York Importing Trust to do exact- 
 ly what the Importing Trust wanted him to do, in 
 doing all the matters and things we have enumer- 
 ated, he certainly would have earned his money, 
 and, in case of a dispute on that point, a fair jury 
 would give him judgment. But, your Honors, why 
 should we expect a different record from this on the 
 part of Mr. Roosevelt? 
 
 An inspection of his brain-cells does not justify 
 a different expectation. For those cells in the 
 region of sympathy are scanty and weak ; and this 
 is proven by his passion for shedding the innocent 
 blood of his four-footed brothers and his careless- 
 ness of the consequences to the lives of his victims 
 following such action as he took in the Tyner mat- 
 ter, the Brownsville matter, the Long matter, and 
 the matters of the dismissed coachman and the sus- 
 pended pilot Nicholls. In this respect Mr. Roose- 
 velt is very much of a savage. 
 
 Again, his brain-cells which have to do with op- 
 position, with fighting, and violent action, are very 
 fat and healthy and are innocent of race-suicide.
 
 385 
 
 Considering the weakness of bis sympathy brain- 
 cells, the strength of those last described make 
 Mr. Koosevelt a man rather liking the sight of blood 
 than otherwise. He likes to shoot; and when he 
 shoots, he shoots to kill; whether he is potting 
 bears in Louisiana or "trusts," otherwise American 
 Production, in Washington. 
 
 Furthermore, the brain-cells that should compel 
 prudence, discretion, deliberate and well-thought 
 action are also weak; and this accounts for his 
 headlong manner in employing the telegraph to dis- 
 miss a Mississippi pilot, without judge or jury, and 
 against the testimony of expert eye-witnesses that 
 the deposed pilot was altogether blameless. Mr. 
 Roosevelt supposed the poor fellow to have ap- 
 proached his own boat too irreverently, that was all. 
 In this Mr. Koosevelt is a good deal of a Kaiser. 
 He forgets there are courts and orderly processes 
 to punish real offenders. He rolls up his sleeves 
 and dips into the bloody job himself; as he did on 
 Kettle Hill, when he threatened himself to shoot 
 any fellow that ran away from the enemy, although 
 none of those soldier boys had any more idea of 
 running away than he had. 
 
 And this suggests another group of brain-cells 
 belonging to Mr. Roosevelt, which are very robust; 
 and that is the group that, when large, causes vain- 
 gloriou&ness, a longing for the lime-light; an indul- 
 gence in swagger and bluster and a general aspira- 
 tion to be the whole show. And this group, so 
 large, round and rosy in Mr. Roosevelt, will not let 
 him decline a third term. Nay, it is causing him 
 this minute to listen to the entreaties of these wily 
 plaintiffs to carry out the good work he has so 
 well begun in their behalf, still keep his grip on the 
 Republican press-agency, through which he has
 
 386 
 
 filled the country with a fictitious echo for tariff 
 "revision," and himself conduct the "revision" 
 which the inspired article of his in the North 
 American Review says he is and has been so anxious 
 to effect. For, your Honors, we verily believe that 
 Mr. Eoosevelt himself, in the service of these wily 
 plaintiffs, the Importing Trust and the Exporting 
 Trust, and through his "cuckoo" press, is at the 
 very root of all the whispering we hear with regard 
 to the country's desire for "tariff revision." We 
 believe this sentiment is altogether fictitious, man- 
 ufactured by Mr. Roosevelt, through his servile 
 press agency, in obedience to these wily plaintiffs. 
 And we believe, also, that Mr. Roosevelt is himself 
 the real utterer of the "tariff-revision" sentiments 
 given air to by Mr. Taft at Columbus; and we be- 
 lieve that Mr. Taft is really Mr. Roosevelt in dis- 
 guise.* 
 
 We believe that Mr. Taft is Mr. Roosevelt's stalk- 
 ing horse for the presidential nomination, and that 
 it was through Mr. Taft that Mr. Roosevelt wanted 
 to "smoke out" the country as to the state of its 
 mind on "tariff revision," the same as Mr. Dickin- 
 son, ex-member of White House "Cuckoos," said 
 Mr. Roosevelt, by himself starting the Taft boom in 
 Washington, "smoked out" the opposition to Mr. 
 Taft. If having sprung the trap with Mr. Taft's 
 speech at Columbus for a bait he finds the public 
 
 * "In the judgment of men, of whom I am one there was a 
 mistake in that change. In the light of history, I think it 
 would have been better to have left the Presidential term of 
 seven years with an accompanying ineligibility. [Applause.] 
 If that were the provision we should not now have the spec- 
 tacle of our strenuous President playing a game of hide and 
 seek with the American people." [Laughter.] 
 
 Mr. Justice David J. Brewer, of the Supreme court of the 
 United States, speaking before the Civic Forum at Carnegie 
 Hall, New York City, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1907, as reported 
 in the N. f. Sun.
 
 387 
 
 indulgent towards "tariff revision/' Mr. Roosevelt 
 purposes to work the Republican Convention so it 
 will stand on its hind legs and howl for him; then 
 his friend Taft, with a deep salaam, will gracefully 
 and graciously withdraw in favor of his chief, Mr. 
 Roosevelt, and Mr. Roosevelt will be nominated by 
 acclamation, and the leaders of the Republican 
 party will complete their performance of acting 
 like little wooden monkeys running up and down 
 little wooden rods in the hands of Mr. Roosevelt, in 
 which phase they have been figuring for the last five 
 or six years. All this will have been cut and dried 
 before hand, and then Mr. Roosevelt will shy his 
 castor into the ring and rush in as the champion of 
 tariff "revision'' all as these wily plaintiffs have 
 planned and conspired for, lo, these many long 
 moons. 
 
 And this brings us to another group of brain- 
 cells, also large, round and rosy, which gives Mr. 
 Roosevelt the ability to contrive mi-ses en scene, 
 nominations by acclamation, ovations from the pop- 
 ulace and all the other fixings necessary to a success- 
 ful demagogue's career; the same group which led 
 him to rig Mr. Fairbanks with the "cocktail" 
 episode, which made the papers contrast the water- 
 wagon Roosevelt with the sinful cocktail Fairbanks 
 and report how the Water- Wagon in the Louisiana 
 swamps, pot-shooting bear, "carried a noon lunch 
 and a bottle of water"! This invaluable group of 
 brain-cells, your Honors, invaluable above all to 
 those who hope to fool all the people some of the 
 time, is known in Phrenology as "secretiveness," an 
 indispensable piece of head-furniture for gods and 
 men, pickpockets and "Presidents who pull wires for 
 third terms. Put this robust group with that which 
 makes for vaiu-gloriousness and von have a combi-
 
 388 
 
 nation that is bound to fool a lot of innocent people 
 all the time. 
 
 There is another group of brain-cells, your Hon- 
 ors, which is weak, yellow, and puling in Mr. 
 Roosevelt's head-pantry that is "weak" only in 
 comparison with the mightiness of his ambition, his 
 war-thirstiness, and his secretiveness and that is 
 the group that if large would make him a philoso- 
 pher. That group is the one which gives people 
 an intuition of the relation of cause to effect. This 
 deficiency on the part of Mr. Koosevelt's head-fur- 
 niture, is a perfect godsend to his friends, these 
 tvily plaintiffs; because Mr. Koosevelt can carry 
 on his war against our client, American Produc- 
 tion, and not see very clearly what others see, and 
 that is that he is making people wonder if his think- 
 ers don't need oiling. It makes him a zealous 
 servant of these wily plaintiffs without quite real- 
 izing what a holy show he is making of himself to 
 people who have no bats in their belfry. 
 
 We know, your Honors, that this country is full 
 of simple-hearted people who don't know gold 
 bricks when all the gold is scraped off and the red 
 shows through; and we know that these good folks 
 would never believe that they had only been fooled 
 by a presidential press-agency into the silly no- 
 tion that Mr. Roosevelt is not the humble servant 
 of these wily plaintiffs; and they would never be- 
 ileve that to trust in him and follow him up hill 
 and down dale would be to dig a great pit for the 
 country's prosperity; to assure a greater or less 
 destruction of our faithful tariff-dike, and so a 
 greater or less destruction of the lives of our wage- 
 produeers. But Mr. Koosevelt's lack of natural 
 sympathy, the mood and make which stand behind 
 his thirst for the chase and its bloody goal, make
 
 389 
 
 him sceptical as to the suffering which his fooling 
 with the tariff-dike is sure to cause. We know that 
 our hero- worshippers, with their adoration fanned 
 to flame by a press-agency with Mr. Roosevelt him- 
 self working the bellows, will not listen to our hint 
 that there is more than a platonic friendship be- 
 tween their President and these wily plaintiffs ; but 
 whether or not he has such a friendship for these 
 wily plaintiffs, he has never shown the least sus- 
 picion of friendship for our client, American Pro- 
 duction. 
 
 But, we ask again, why should he have any sym- 
 pathy with American Production? He does not 
 know what it is to be compelled to produce or 
 die. He w r as born with an independent fortune and 
 has never needed to earn nor has he ever in his life, 
 earned a dollar, honest or dishonest, except as a 
 politician. He has landed in various offices as the 
 result of strenuous politics ; but he has never "need- 
 ed the money." He does not know what it is to 
 have his factory closed by the jabbing of a hole in 
 our anti-deluge tariff-dike, while his job "folded its 
 tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away," to 
 the music of a houseful of children crying with 
 hunger and cold and the sigh of a haggard and 
 hunger-haunted wife into whose lap he could no 
 longer toss his week's wages. Not having known 
 these things and not being of a sympathetic nature, 
 but rather of a nature that loves to hunt wild ani- 
 mals, themselves the heads of families and also 
 earning their daily bread, and cut them down with 
 bullets from magazine rifles and stain the sad earth 
 with their innocent blood, how could he be expected 
 to sympathize with men out of work or to take any 
 other view than the one he does take, viz., that the 
 tariff-dike is merely a political plaything to be
 
 390 
 
 tossed about as the interests of politics may re- 
 quire? 
 
 With such an origin, Mr. Koosevelt's natural 
 sympathies are all with the pomp and pageantry 
 and consequence of wealth and power. He has a 
 notion that he was born to rule and that the king 
 can do no wrong; for his course in the presidency 
 has shown that he thinks that what he does is right 
 for the reason that he does it. He has the impa- 
 tience under opposition that comes from the con- 
 sciousness of his aristocratic antecedents. And yet, 
 his servility to a flattering tongue, as, for instance, 
 Baron Von Stern burg's, shows a desire to accord 
 with those who praise him that betrays the sprink- 
 ling of plebeian blood with which his veins are 
 unhappily disgraced. Impetuous, praise-loving, im- 
 pulsive, his foresight often misses the target while 
 his hindsight seldom makes a bull's eye. His con- 
 stant longing is for popular clatter and applause 
 and his constant act is climbing to the platform 
 and parading himself in the lime-light. He is not 
 gifted with wisdom, but longing much for at lou<t 
 its appearance, he studies phrase-making and the 
 art of charming the vulgar ear with brave senten- 
 ces; therefore his speeches are but a string of cheap 
 and easy platitudes such as school-boys early com- 
 mit to memory from their copy-books. He would 
 have the public think that he had a monopoly of 
 the "square deal" pipe-line and that we were all at 
 the mercy of his turning the cock on or oft'. He 
 does not seem to remember that the courts are with 
 us to enforce a "square deal'' and that that is the 
 sole business of our judicial system. In fact, ho 
 seems never to realize the existence of the courts 
 at all except when they restrain him in some over- 
 strenuous act, and then his only remark on the
 
 391 
 
 situation is to express the hope that he can bring 
 the courts around to his way of thinking; or to 
 hint that future courts may be constituted so as 
 to coincide with him gently and with an ivory 
 hedged smile laying his hand on the sheath of his 
 Big Stick the while. 
 
 The qualities stimulated by the hunt and by his 
 strenuous life in controlling primaries are seen in 
 his public acts. He leaps with steel-shod feet on 
 the slim young body of the Spanish King; but 
 salaams politely before the erect and irate Mikado. 
 He cannot leave to the courts the guilt or innocence 
 of a Tyner; to the courts-martial the trial of an 
 alleged mutiny of colored troops; to the discrimin- 
 ating public the decision as to the story-writing 
 merits of a Long or to the proper board of inquiry 
 the fault of a pilot Nicholls, but in noble fury, leap- 
 ing single-handed to the centre of the stage he man- 
 fully tries, condemns, sentences and executes every- 
 body, holding it far better that ninety-nine inno- 
 cent men should suffer than that a single guilty one 
 should escape. 
 
 Your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt has a capacity for 
 serious mischief which, if he be not restrained by a 
 regenerated public sentiment, may lead him to do 
 as malevolent things to destroy our entire tariff- 
 dike as he did to damage it with the Cuban Treaty. 
 The capacity we refer to is that which makes him 
 prostitute constitutional power given him for a 
 public purpose to the forcing of reluctant legisla- 
 tors to do his will for a private object. You may 
 remember, your Honors, the circumstances under 
 which Mr. Roosevelt, right against the will and 
 purpose of the Republican majority in Congress, 
 succeeded in forcing through that body the Cuban 
 Reciprocity Treaty, with all its frightful damage
 
 392 
 
 to our own solid industrial development. You may 
 remember the current report at that time, which 
 was to the effect that, failing of the requisite num- 
 ber of votes to get the measure through the House, 
 Mr. Koosevelt sent for one after another of the 
 balking members and used his own personal per- 
 suasion to secure votes for the Treaty. He kept 
 this up assiduously until he had "seen" nearly the 
 whole list of recalcitrants. Meantime his press 
 agency was set furiously at work flagellating the 
 "insurgents," as they were ignomiiiiously called, 
 and pillorying their "selfishness" in setting the in- 
 terests of their own little congressional beet-sugar 
 districts over the "starving Cubans" otherwise 
 the New r York Sugar Refining Company, your Hon- 
 ors and their want of patriotism in not follow- 
 ing the great and good patriot in the White House. 
 These .poor Congressmen knew that to pass this 
 Treaty was merely to pass a bag of money out of 
 the pockets of their constituents and the United 
 States Treasury into the pocket of the Importing 
 Trust. And yet, one after another, after Mr. Roose- 
 velt had "seen" them, they fell in line and the 
 Treaty finally went through by a good majority. 
 Y"our Honors, what did Mr. Roosevelt say to these 
 recalcitrant Congressmen, whom he thus put 
 through the third degree? He got their votes, but 
 how? Not by logic, your Honors. Not by convinc- 
 ing those keen men that he was right and they were 
 wrong. They were eternally right and they knew 
 it. He was eternally wrong and his conscience, if 
 he had any, knew that too. He was smaller in men- 
 tal girth than they. He was and is and always will 
 be weak in his causal brain-cells; and he was 
 younger than they. They were keen reasoners, 
 backed by their absolute knowledge of the effect
 
 393 
 
 of this Treaty on the country's wage-producers ; and 
 many of them were gray-beards old enough to be 
 his father. What was it that conquered them, your 
 Honors? We do not say it, but some of the news- 
 papers said that he threatened these Congressmen 
 with political annihilation if they did not yield the 
 point. He would destroy them in their districts at 
 home by his press-agency ; and he would spoil their 
 records in Congress 1 by arranging with the Speaker 
 of the House never to recognize them on the floor 
 of Congress and thus to nullify their usefulness to 
 their constituencies. We do not care what he said 
 to them, your Honors. He had the power to injure 
 those men if they did not yield. He knew it; and 
 they knew it. He knew they knew it; and they 
 knew he knew it. What was this power? The 
 part of it not contributed by his press-agency was 
 the appointing power given him by the Constitu- 
 tion for the convenience and authority of public 
 business. It was not given him for the purpose of 
 effacing Congress; not for the purpose of forcing 
 Congressmen, in order to save their own heads, to 
 vote against the interests of their constituents. But 
 the fact that he could use this appointing power, 
 MS well as his press-agency, to effect the political 
 death of these men overawed them and deprived 
 this country of that to which it is entitled, viz., the 
 benefit, on every public question before it, of the 
 judgment of Congress as a deliberative body. When 
 Mr. Roosevelt sent for these Congressmen one after 
 another and "talked them around," he destroyed 
 Congress as a deliberative body. A man sensitive to 
 the 'delicate relation which must exist between one 
 who has power to do an injury and the person to 
 whom the injury can be done, would have scorned 
 to take the course taken by Mr. Roosevelt, But
 
 394 
 
 above all things be is a politician and in that role 
 be was, in the matter of the Cuban Treaty, a 
 usurper of the power of Congress by diplomatic 
 blackmail. For he forced Congressmen to give up 
 their liberty of thought, speech and action to 
 save their political lives. They ceased to be Con- 
 gressmen and became for the time political assets 
 of Mr. Koosevelt. There seems to be no doubt that 
 Mr. Roosevelt, in fact, when he has some pet meas- 
 ure which he wishes pushed through merely w r ipes 
 out Congress by intimidation and himself becomes 
 the whole show. It must be remembered that Mr. 
 Roosevelt made the Cuban Treaty a private and 
 personal measure of his own and secured for him- 
 self alone whatever reward was held out to him 
 as compensation for thus forcing the Cuban Treaty 
 through the House. It makes no difference what 
 the recompense was; whether it was the mere hope 
 of being scratched on the back by some portion of 
 the public for having done what the Importing 
 Trust press might call a magnificent act; whether 
 it was a certain prestige which would help some 
 later scheme; or whether it was a bribe in dollars 
 or doughnuts. The object for which this extraordi- 
 nary usurpation of the powers of Congress was 
 effected does not affect the fact that in this matter 
 we Americans were ruled by an unscrupulous Czar 
 and were not faithfully served by a constitutional 
 President, who in theory at least, is the mere ser- 
 vant of the people. As we have hinted, one power- 
 ful instrument employed by him to destroy Con- 
 gress as the deliberative body which the Constitu- 
 tion intends it to be, is the Press. We quote from 
 an article in Harper's Weekly of September 28, 
 1907, written by Mr. J. J. Dickinson, the ex-member 
 of White House "cuckoos" before alluded to.
 
 395 
 
 "A multifarious host of the phenomena of Theodore 
 Roosevelt, man and President, have been exploited and 
 heralded to the uttermost parts of the earth. The one 
 manifestation of him which is more potent and character- 
 istic than any of the rest has never been connectedly set 
 forth to the world. He is the greatest publicity promoter 
 among the sons of men to-day. Whether consciously or 
 unconsciously, he has formulated it, framed it, and hung 
 it upon the walls of his mental storehouse, the fact is that 
 his guiding motto is this: 
 
 . ."Let me have free access to the channels of publicity 
 and I care not who makes my country's laws or what the 
 other fellow does." 
 
 In writing of Roosevelt the Press-Agent no word of dis- 
 respect is meant, for no feeling of disesteem is enter- 
 tained. What shall be said will be based upon personal 
 experience of about a year as assistant press-agent under 
 the President, and close observation extending over the 
 entire period of his occupancy of the White House. To 
 be more specific and to give my simple narrative the vir- 
 tue of frankness, I shall make a confession at the outset, 
 to wit: For the greater part of a year I was what is 
 known in Washington as one of the President's news- 
 paper cuckoos. In the parlance of Washington, a cuckoo 
 is a journalistic bird that is permitted to make its prin- 
 cipal roost close to the Executive chamber and report for 
 the delectation of his editor, for the enlightenment of the 
 public and the accommodation of the President, such out- 
 givings or internal operations of the Presidential mind as 
 may suit the purpose or the whim of the nation's Chief 
 Magistrate. The cuckoo, or assistant press-agent, has an 
 extremely difficult and hazardous task. * * * 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt secured his popularity through pub- 
 licity. He has retained, extended, and strengthened it 
 through publicity. As before stated, above all the men 
 of his time he understands the power and necessity of 
 publicity if one would achieve great results. * * * 
 
 Rarely does the President communicate with more than 
 one cuckoo at a time. * * * In his handling of his 
 assistant press-agents he observes the Napoleonic method 
 of not entrusting the full details of a campaign to any 
 one of them. If the assistant press-agent be the repre- 
 sentative of a Washington newspaper Mr. Roosevelt may 
 impart to him a fuller mass of detail than to the repre- 
 sentative of a newspaper elsewhere. The reason for this 
 is obvious. The Washington newspaper is read by the 
 members of Congress and other public men in all parts of 
 the country. Thus, if it suits the President's purpose bet- 
 ter to plant the seeds first in the minds of the people's 
 servants preliminary to sowing the whole broad field, he 
 will employ his Washington cuckoo to make primary an- 
 nouncement, in a way somewhat cryptic to the popular in- 
 telligence, but sufficiently significant TO THE MINDS OF 
 THE EXPERIENCED POLITICIANS TO GIVE THEM 
 WARNING OF WHAT THEY WOULD BETTER DO IF 
 THEY DO NOT WANT TO GET HURT. If, thereafter, 
 the politicians display either obtuseness or perversity,
 
 the President then calls to his side the cuckoos of out of 
 town newspapers and through them inaugurates a cam- 
 paign of education that may be either nation-wide OK 
 CONFINED TO THOSE SECTIONS OF THE COUNTRY 
 WHERE HE HAS REASON TO BELIEVE THE PEO- 
 PLE SHOULD BE INFORMED OF THE INDISPOSI- 
 TION OF THEIR CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVES AT 
 WASHINGTON TO BEND WILLINGLY TO THE EX- 
 ECUTIVE PURPOSE. The best illustration of the em- 
 ployment of this method that comes to mind is found in 
 his propaganda of the Taft Presidential boom. It has 
 been more than a year since through his Washington 
 newspaper cuckoo the same being none other than the 
 contrite writer of these lines Mr. Roosevelt began pub- 
 licly to let the world know that he desired his able Secre- 
 tary of War to succeed him in the White House. Faith- 
 fully his desire in this matter was promulgated in a 
 Washington newspaper so that every member of Congress 
 who ran might read. In droves they ran when they did 
 read straight to the White House. There went Foraker, 
 almost bursting with suppressed wrath. Also followed 
 Foraker 's amiable colleague, Mr. Dick, his curiousity 
 whetted to a razor-edge. Precious little satisfaction did 
 either of them get on the main point, for the good and 
 sufficient reason that it is the prerogative of the Execu- 
 tive to envelop himself in vast, impenetrable silence when 
 he so wishes on any topic under the sun. * * * As 
 to why the President chose to impress first the Con- 
 gressional mind with his wish to pass the succession on to 
 Taft, that furnishes another interesting index of his 
 character as a sagacious press-agent. It was the skir- 
 mish fire in his line of battle to develop the location and 
 strength of the enemy "the other fellow." It brought 
 some of the enemy out of the brush and drove others 
 scurrying to the cover of stumps and dead logs. But he 
 marked them as they moved. Within a few weeks he 
 knew who and where the enemy was, and he proceeded 
 accordingly to deal with him. He waited six months, or 
 from May to October, before he set his out-of-town 
 cuckoos to work openly on the Taft boom. Then in a jiffy 
 the whole broad continent heard its reverberations. * * * 
 
 He [Mr. Roosevelt at Jamestown] began his address 
 thus: 
 
 "It is, of course, a truism to say that no other body of 
 our countrymen wield as extensive an influence as those 
 who write for the daily press and for the other period- 
 icals. ' ' 
 
 In saying this, the President was not "jollying" the 
 editors though be it known that when he wants to be 
 he is the most successful "jollier" between the two 
 oceans. * * * He has invited to Washington and en- 
 tertained at the White House a larger number of men who 
 write than have any half dozen of his predecessors. The 
 list of those he has thus singled out for distinction is a 
 long one and growing longer."
 
 397 
 
 Your Honors, ever since Mr. Roosevelt has been 
 President, he has been notorious as a successful 
 advertiser. AVe might call it by a no longer but 
 an uglier name, if \ve said "conspirator." For in 
 such ineauderings we can see nothing but con- 
 spiracy a conspiracy between his "cuckoos" and 
 himself to deceive the public into moods favorable 
 to his schemes, by allowing the public to think what 
 they read is mere current news matter, culled by 
 reporters from all sorts of sources and published 
 in good faith, instead of what it really is, an artful 
 nii8e en scene to further the private purposes of 
 the President. For, your Honors, the purpose is a 
 private and personal purpose of Mr. Roosevelt. He 
 is prostituting his high office to the ends of his 
 private ambitions. 
 
 Now, your Honors, if Mr. Roosevelt would thus 
 stoop to low intrigue in such matters as Mr. Dick- 
 inson has described, why should we not believe, 
 that, for whatever motive might seem him good, he 
 would do so with these wily plaintiffs? He con- 
 spired with the newspapers to launch the Taft boom 
 in the method best suited to his purposes; but 
 why is it not possible that the launching of the 
 Taft boom is but the rounding out of his conspira- 
 tor's contract with these wily plaintiffs? Mr. Taft 
 is already advertised widely as the instrument by 
 which "revision," the end "most devoutly to be 
 wished" by these wily plaintiffs, is to be accom- 
 plished. Our old lawyers' maxim, your Honors, 
 says', "Fahus in uno, falsus in omnibus;" and if 
 Mr. Roosevelt will so plainly conspire in one mat- 
 ter, why not in another? 
 
 As to measures which Mr. Roosevelt crushes 
 through Congress by using the newspapers to 
 "worn them [Congressmen] what they would bet-
 
 398 
 
 ter do if they do not want to get hurt/ 7 Mr. Roose- 
 velt knows that his one single opinion, his one sin- 
 gle stock of honesty, his one single cargo of patriot- 
 ism, or his one single group of brain-cells in the 
 chamber of intelligence, is not likely to be of a 
 better quality or quantity than the corresponding 
 article furnished as the residuum of debate and de- 
 liberation after an exhaustive threshing out of the 
 whole matter on the floor of Congress. He knows 
 that one man's wisdom is not likely to exceed the 
 boiled down sap and syrup of the wisdom of nearly 
 five hundred men, all intelligent, all educated, at 
 least in the great school of experience, and all sin- 
 cerely patriotic. And with regard to whom our 
 next President shoud be, he knows that the people 
 of the United States, acting through their conven- 
 tions, are more apt to choose the very man they 
 wish to represent the policies they want, than any 
 one individual citizen like Mr. Roosevelt, however 
 pure in motive or high in patriotism he might be. 
 
 Moreover, in all these matters, which properly 
 come before Congress, Mr. Roosevelt knows that he 
 is given the veto power by the Constitution, and 
 that no wicked legislation can smirch him or harm 
 the country, unless two-thirds of both Houses of 
 Congress are all wicked at once. He knows he can 
 s'ave his reputation by the stroke of a pen ; and he 
 knows the public would hold him guiltless even 
 though it held Congress guilty. Ah, your Honors, 
 we do not believe Mr. Roosevelt would want us to 
 think he thought himself superior to the concensus 
 of Congress or to our great people on any subject 
 affecting their interests. Remembering that Mr. 
 Roosevelt is an ambitious politician before he is 
 a patriot, it is far more reasonable to suppose that 
 lie is grinding some private axe of his ambition in
 
 399 
 
 his devious ways, than tliut lie is really furthering 
 or desiring to further the public good. And if that 
 is so, your Honors, do not all signs point to his 
 affiliation with these wily plaintiffs in their effort 
 to rape the lock of our national savings bank? 
 
 Considering the sinister use he constantly makes 
 of it, the great power for evil which Mr. Roosevelt, 
 through his Press-Agency, has gained over public 
 opinion, as described by Mr. Dickinson, is little 
 short of appalling. It is easy to see how he gets and 
 keeps this power. In a word, it is the old bread- 
 and-butter argument. Public opinion conforms to 
 the bread-and-butter necessities of the "cuckoos" at 
 the capital. Upon its flavor and smack hangs the 
 grub of the reporters. If they fill their papers with 
 certain "copy" indicated by the President, and that 
 copy gets in toothsome form to the public, the 
 "cuckoos" get their grub. Otherwise they may get 
 the sack empty. Mr. Dickinson tells us how this 
 is: 
 
 ' ' He who is cuckoo to-day may find his place upon the 
 perch taken to-morrow by another bird of fairer plumage; 
 for the cuckoo wots not at what hour he is to be divested 
 of his honors, his privileges, and immunities. It is as 
 much the President's prerogative to choose his assistant 
 press-agents as to select the members of his cabinet, and 
 it is as incumbent upon the one as the other to step aside 
 whenever the President indicates a desire for a change. 
 And when the deposed cuckoo nutters with broken wing 
 from his roost under the White House eyes he may find 
 that his editor has separated him from his salary." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt is the Mrs. Eddy of superlative 
 politics, and if you are a "cuckoo" and fail to pro- 
 duce in your home paper at the psychological mo- 
 ment the exact shading of Mr. Roosevelt's thoughts 
 and aspirations, you are evidently under the domin- 
 ion of malicious animal magnetism and "your editor 
 may separate you from your salary;" and all in
 
 400 
 
 the name of the dear people! Should any man re- 
 port his own opinion, or deviate in any material 
 way from the exact line laid down by Mr. Roosevelt, 
 the headsman winks for the unfortunate in the 
 near distance. When one reflects on the thought- 
 lessness of the average reader and the fact that 
 nine out of ten never rise above their newspaper, 
 the self-effacement of Congress before the Roose- 
 veltian frenzy is not hard to explain; and one can- 
 not help asking himself the question whether or 
 not our people after all are not of monarchical 
 pattern. Dearly do they love a one-man power. It 
 suits their hero-worshiping mood, and their lazi- 
 ness. So, under Mr. Roosevelt's careful leading 
 of his "cuckoo" flock with their seductive messages* 
 to the dear public, the most solemn and oracular 
 deliverances of our newspaper sancta sanctorum- 
 may be only the graphophonic repetitions of the 
 grand things poured into the "cuckoo's'' ear at the 
 White House; and yet, from the indolence of the 
 public and its willingness to swallow political pab- 
 ulum from popular people without a wink, such 
 effusions, the adroit suggestions of personal ambi- 
 tion, are sure to determine public opinion. For in- 
 stance, listen to this from the Pittsburgh Leader, 
 commenting upon the profits of the Standard Oil 
 Company, as divulged by the report of Mr. Herbert 
 Knox Smith, of the Bureau of Corporations : 
 
 " 'Profits' and 'earnings' are wrong words to use. 
 Loot or plunder would be better. * * * 
 
 "It is not a question of water or fictitious capitaliza- 
 tion with this company; it is simply a matter of down- 
 right robbery." 
 
 Your Honors, Mr. Roosevelt is directly responsi- 
 ble for these atrocious words. He has shown as 
 little regard or as little scruple for sacred property
 
 401 
 
 rights as it is possible to imagine; and here is the 
 echo of his cuckoo press! Your Honors, the only 
 "loot" and "plunder," the only "downright rob- 
 bery" in sight is being perpetrated by Mr. Roosevelt 
 and his cringing newspaper followers and cuckoos 
 against the reputations of people who, at any rate, 
 earn their living in faithful and hard work out- 
 side of politics. This paper was simply trying 
 to out-Herod Herod himself in its push for im- 
 perial favor; and the result is this hoarse-throated 
 anarchy, this clarion call to the jail-birds and slum- 
 gudgeons to rally for the plucking of this corpora- 
 tion against which no charge can be brought other 
 than the charge of a wise, far-sighted, sagacious, 
 and economical management of its business and a 
 solution of problems of production and distribu- 
 tion which have brought their no more than merely 
 just reward. This Kooseveltian obsession does not 
 seem to have spared such a high-class newspaper 
 as the Philadelphia Press, which says, in connec- 
 tion with the same political outrage, the rape of 
 the profit sheets of the Standard Oil Company and 
 their malicious exhibition, with anarchistic com- 
 ment to the public : 
 
 "When a corporation handles 90 per cent, of a ne- 
 cessity of life, as petroleum and its products are, its 
 operations have no right to be secret. * * * No man 
 can be trusted with the power in secret over the price of 
 a commodity necessary to all." 
 
 Your Honors, such talk as this is pure sedition, 
 in view of the fact that the law gives every person 
 or corporation the right to buy as much property 
 as it pleases, keep it as long at is pleases, and sell 
 it when it pleases, at any price it is willing to 
 take and the buyer is willing to give, rather than 
 go without the property. There is absolutely not
 
 402 
 
 a line of law anywhere fixing- a limit to the acquire- 
 ment, as objects of trade, of the "necessities of 
 life;" and what power but that of the people 
 through constitutional amendment can put the ban 
 of outlawry on him who controls "90 per cent, of 
 a necessity of life?" And in the meantime how 
 can such papers as the Philadelphia Press lend 
 themselves so far to anarchy as to say, "No man 
 can be trusted with the power in secret over the 
 price of a commodity necessary to all?" Why do 
 their Solons nod and entrust their columns to the 
 scribbling of callow sophomores? The law does 
 not limit rights of property in "commodities nec- 
 essary to all;" and until it does, and does it so 
 distinctly that every man will know just where he's 
 at and what his rights are, all harangues of this 
 nature are an invitation for each fellow to judge 
 for himself whether his neighbor's property is "a 
 commodity necessary to all," and so common prop- 
 erty, and, in regard to stealing from the "malefac- 
 tor of great wealth," to practice any form of casu- 
 istry which his ingenuity may furnish. Thus does 
 the dread form of anarchy loom up in the lurid 
 light of Mr. Koosevelt's fulmination against our 
 client, American Production ; and from that source 
 these wily plaintiffs draw their hope of soon crack- 
 ing our savings-bank safe again. 
 
 Bearing in mind the fact that everything rela- 
 tive to the President's movements, so anxiously 
 sought after by the press, must come only through 
 the cuckoo-chorus, and so with substantial direct- 
 ness from Mr. Roosevelt himself, a curious bit of 
 sagacious contrivance just now occurs to us. You 
 will remember, your Honors, how badly Vice-Presi- 
 dent Fairbanks fared at the hands of the press, 
 with regard to the "cocktail'' episode at his house
 
 403 
 
 hi Indianapolis; with what persistency it was kept 
 going the rounds of the press under one form or 
 another and never let die; how the Methodists of 
 Indiana were kept stirred up about it; and how a 
 certain bishop was reported to have said that it was 
 Mr. Eoosevelt himself who ordered the cocktails 
 for Mr. Fairbanks' reception, a report which was 
 afterwards denied ; and how at last the Methodists 
 of Indiana were alleged to have declined to send Mr. 
 Fairbanks as a delegate to the Baltimore confer- 
 ence because he had served cocktails at his house 
 on the occasion in question. But did you observe 
 in the press, only the day or so after Mr. Fairbanks 
 was turned down as a delegate, as before noted, the 
 following item in the daily papers? 
 
 "The President will ride on the boat Mississippi. The 
 great steamboat will be a literal floating WATER WA- 
 GON, for not a drop of liquor will be allowed on board. ' ' 
 
 And a day or so later did you remark this item in 
 your daily paper : 
 
 "NO COCKTAILS FOR THE PRESIDENT. Sherry 
 will be the strongest drink at the St. Louis luncheon" 
 
 following with the details of how, in spite of the 
 fact that "a host of Governors, including the Gov- 
 ernor of Kentucky would be present," "Bole" was 
 ordered "to cut out the cocktails?" 
 
 And a week or so afterwards, did you observe this 
 in a New York paper : 
 
 ' ' Stamboul, La., Oct. 7. Late this afternoon the Presi- 
 dent had failed to get a bear. 
 
 "A courier came into Stamboul this evening from the 
 camp and reported that the President had not returned. 
 The supposition therefore was that he had not been suc- 
 cessful, as the game would have been brought into camp 
 if he had killed anything. It is expected that he will 
 remain in the thickets until dark. He carried a noon 
 lunch and a bottle of water."
 
 404 
 
 Abstemious austerity to burn ! 
 
 And but little later the papers were hastening 
 to tell the country that Mr. Taft, at Manila, would 
 tolerate no liquors at his reception. 
 
 And under date of Nov. 4, 1907, it was piped from 
 St. Louis that 
 
 "President Roosevelt is greatly pleased with the State 
 wide prohibition feature of the Oklahoma Constitution 
 and that it will constitute one of the strongest reasons for 
 his approving the document." 
 
 Oh, your Honors, in view of our knowledge of 
 this "cuckoo" chorus in the White House, is not all 
 this cold-water nonsense sickening? Does not it 
 look like a Eoosevelt bid for the Prohibition vote? 
 Isn't it just a cut and dried program throughout 
 of this manufacturer of public sentiment? First, 
 we have poor Mr. Fairbanks pilloried for counte- 
 nancing cocktails. Then we have Mr. Roosevelt's 
 cold-water virtues rung in by contrast with a fee- 
 ble echo of "me too" from Mr. Taft, Then, at the 
 present writing, we have Mr. Koosevelt again made 
 illustrious by his prohibition tastes. Walk up, 
 gentlemen of the Convention, whether you choose 
 Roosevelt or Taft, you may be sure of the cold- 
 water vote! 
 
 Not only in the management of his press-agency 
 has Mr. Roosevelt shown his natural bias to cap- 
 ture public opinion in questionable ways and to 
 use as a Big Stick power placed in his hands ex- 
 clusively for a different purpose. The Constitution 
 did not intend that any President should use his 
 appointing power practically to snuff out Congres- 
 sional opinion; nor did it intend that what is 
 known as its "commerce clause" should be used as 
 a leverage to hoist any politician into meteoric pop- 
 ularity. The Constitution gave Congress power "To
 
 405 
 
 regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among 
 the several States, and with the Indian tribes;" and 
 it meant that the power of regulating commerce 
 "among the several States" should be of exactly the 
 same nature as that given to Congress with regard 
 to "foreign nations" and "the Indian tribes." 
 It meant merely that Congress might take note of 
 the physical character of the objects of such com- 
 merce; whether these objects should be exchanged 
 at all; or, if exchanged, whether they should un- 
 dergo inspection as to their character. There never 
 could have been any intention to give Congress 
 power to help a politician wring arbitrary tribute 
 from corporations within either of the States. The 
 "regulation" was for the purpose of giving Con- 
 gress power to provide for sanitary and law-observ- 
 ing-conditions in the goods themselves. Cut Mr. 
 Roosevelt notoriously construes this power "to reg- 
 ulate commerce * * * * among the several 
 States" in the same manner that he construes his 
 appointing power, viz., as a Big Stick wherewith 
 to club into quietness any one who does not bend 
 to his will in seeking some private and personal 
 end. For example, evidently for the purpose of 
 rousing the ignorant to a frenzy of admiration, he 
 desires to be able to get at the private accounts of 
 a corporation in order that he may show up its 
 profits and point to it as a "cormorant" and as "a 
 malefactor of great wealth" and thus make himself 
 "solid" with the "peepul." And accordingly, 
 through his officers and servants, lie < onnnnuds the 
 corporation to produce its books and papers in 
 court at a certain time and thereat and thereupon 
 to defend itself against indictment under the Sher- 
 man Law as a combination in restraint of trade.
 
 400 
 
 Now, your Honors, under the Constitution, Fourth 
 Amendment, 
 
 ' ' The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
 houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
 and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall 
 issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or af- 
 firmation, AND PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE 
 PLACE TO BE SEARCHED, AND THE PERSONS OR 
 THINGS TO BE SEIZED;" 
 
 and under this constitutional aegis any corpora- 
 tion, insisting upon its strict letter, could raise 
 a question which would defeat the power thus 
 usurped for the blackmailing of corporations; but 
 if it should simply insist upon its rights, Mr. Koose- 
 velt, using the Big Stick in the "commerce clause,' 7 
 would shut off from interstate commerce the goods 
 of such a corporation, perhaps to its ruin. That is, 
 unless a corporation will pay either in cash or pop- 
 ularity, tribute to an unscrupulous politician, it 
 can be destroyed by this false and wicked construc- 
 tion of a constitutional clause which never meant 
 to give Congress jurisdiction over the person of a 
 State corporation, but merely over its products and 
 then only when the subject of interstate commerce, 
 and by general legislation affecting in tlie same 
 manner all similar products. 
 
 For our part, we do not see why the interstate- 
 commerce clause of the Constitution cannot be 
 made to authorize inquisitions into the private af- 
 fairs of individuals as well as those of "trusts," 
 otherwise corporations. For, under that clause, 
 Congress has power "to regulate commerce among 
 the several States," and so far as appears from the 
 constitutional language, the word "commerce 1 ' is 
 quite unlimited in its application. It seems to us, 
 therefore, that if, by the threat of preventing a 
 corporation from doing interstate business, that
 
 407 
 
 corporation can be compelled to show up its 
 profits and thus furnish ammunition to the francs- 
 tireurs of our political mob, the same threat could 
 compel individuals to do likewise; and thus the 
 way could be opened to unlimited blackmail and to 
 all the deviltry from which we supposed we had 
 escaped by adopting a Constitution defining our 
 rights. We repeat, sauce for the goose is sauce 
 for the gander; the same compulsion applied to the 
 corporation can be applied to the individual. If 
 the regulation of interstate commerce is not ex- 
 clusively iii rein where corporations are involved, 
 it need not be where individuals, are involved. If 
 in determining whether certain goods made by a 
 corporation shall be admitted to interstate com- 
 merce, you need not confine yourself to the goods 
 themselves, and their effect upon the happiness of 
 users; but, ignoring the goods entirely as a physi- 
 cal proposition, you can go farther back and in- 
 quire who produced the goods and let their rights 
 in interstate commerce depend upon the moral char- 
 acter of their producer alone as that character 
 seems to you, there seems no good reason why the 
 goods of an individual also should not be put to 
 the same test and, as to their interstate rights, 
 s'tand or fall according as their maker was white 
 or colored, Jew or Gentile. Where would this 
 thing end, your Honors, if Mr. Roosevelt's position 
 were right? 
 
 In thus manufacturing popularity for future use 
 in line with his private ambitions, Mr. RooseATlt 
 resembles a messenger boy, who, sent to deliver a 
 package to some one, should hold the package as 
 his own property. The President is merely the 
 messenger of the people. He is sent with a par-k- 
 a"e of appointments to serve the people's interests
 
 408 
 
 and not his own personal ambitions; but he appro- 
 priates this commission as a means of disciplining 
 Congressmen who do not vote for a Cuban Treaty, 
 a measure which he imagines will add to his per- 
 sonal popularity. Or, he is the messenger of the 
 people under the interstate-commerce clause of the 
 Constitution, to regulate such commerce for the 
 purpose of governmental revenue, to prevent dis- 
 putes between States, or for some other common 
 purpose, note being taken of the fact that all such 
 regulations were meant to be in rcm and not in 
 personam, as our legal expression has it; and yet 
 the President twists this power into a Big Stick 
 to hammer a corporation into acquiesence in a bar- 
 barous inquisition of its books, for no other appar- 
 ent object than to continue his shadow dance for 
 popularity among thoughtless people; unless it 
 might be to frighten and discourage our client, 
 American Production, for the benefit of these wily 
 plaintiffs. 
 
 An illustration of this latter usurpation of power 
 is furnished by the prosecution, or, more properly, 
 the persecution of the Standard Oil Company. 
 There is no doubt whatever that this suit was un- 
 dertaken at the special instance of Mr. Roosevelt 
 and as a spectacular fulfilment of his fulminatory 
 menace against "malefactors of great wealth." Con- 
 sidered as a corporation having an army of inno- 
 cent employees and another army of as innocent 
 stockholders, the only offence of which this com- 
 pany had been guilty was that of being perhaps 
 the greatest in this country. This feature of size 
 however, was exactly what attracted Mr. Roose- 
 velt's attention. In the decalogue of the President 
 it is strictly forbidden to be either great or wealthy 
 unless as a tributory to the President. Now, by
 
 409 
 
 virtue of using tlie interstate-commerce clause of 
 the Constitution as a Big Stick, this corporation 
 was compelled to turn its book over to Mr. Roose- 
 velt's special agent for the prosecution and this spe- 
 cial agent hastened to lay before the country a 
 statement of the profit-account of the pilloried cor- 
 poration, for no other purpose in the world than 
 to excite the enviousness, covetousness, and primi- 
 tive malice of those of us whose brain-cells have 
 an arrangement somewhat like those of highway 
 robbers; for highway robbers also operate against 
 others because others have made money which the 
 "road agents'' want. But highway robbers, your 
 Honors, are not so shallow as to call "illegitimate 
 profits' 1 ' of "malefactors of great wealth" the money 
 they are reaching for. Because they seem to know 
 if others don't, that neither our Constitution nor 
 our laws fix a point beyond which may not go 
 profits made by selling your own property at the 
 price at which the buyer also sees a profit in it for 
 him. As far as we are concerned, for the robust 
 frankness of the highwayman, who, when he holds 
 up and robs a rich man, calls it just a plain hold- 
 up, and does not soil his soul with hypocrisy, we 
 have a greater respect than for the sneaks and 
 snivelers, whether in the pulpit, on the college lec- 
 ture platform, or in the editorial or the presiden- 
 tial chair, who salve their consciences and fan the 
 fire in their itching palms with the explanation 
 that they purpose to appropriate to themselves 
 merely the "illegitimate profits" of "malefactors of 
 great wealth;" although, after all, the highwayman 
 and these latter gentry are common criminals on 
 the same job. 
 
 In his attacks upon wealth as such, there is no 
 calculating the damage done by Mr. TvooseveJt to
 
 410 
 
 the every-day morals of hundreds of thousands of 
 our intellectual weaklings. It is impossible to de- 
 fend him on the ground that it is only wealth dis- 
 honestly gotten against which he launches his 
 Olympian lightning. His talk about inheritance 
 and income taxes, his deliverances as to "swollen 
 fortunes" and their proper limitation, and his ma- 
 licious 1 and mischievous exhibition to the country, 
 not of any wrong-doing, for not the slightest wrong- 
 doing has yet been shown, but of the alleged enor- 
 mous profits of the Standard Oil Company, prove 
 that, in his venemous persecution of this great com- 
 pany, it is not punishment for the violation of any 
 law which he aims at, but the destruction of our 
 client, American Production, and, as we believe, in 
 the interest of these wily plaintiffs, whose ally we 
 solemnly aver him to be; and in obedience to the 
 inspiration, of whatver kind, which he receives 
 from these wily plaintiffs, he fans to white-heat 
 flame among our countrymen all the narrow, mali- 
 cious, and vicious prejudices, all the enviousness 
 and covetousness of which simple souls are capa- 
 ble, and labors to stampede them to his assistance 
 in overwhelming our client, American Production, 
 by a "revision" of the dike or an approval of the 
 thrice-infamous German Agreement. Your Honors, 
 in reviewing all the facts that dove-tail into each 
 other so closely in this combined assault of these 
 wily plaintiffs and of Mr. Roosevelt upon Ameri- 
 can Production, would we not be more than justi- 
 fied in supposing something deeper than a tacit 
 conspiracy between them to this common end? 
 What more effective instrument could these wily 
 plaintiffs have selected for their purpose than Mr. 
 .Roosevelt? What action more favorable to these 
 wily plaintiffs could Mr. Roosevelt have taken than
 
 411 
 
 to discredit American Production by characterizing 
 its most powerful representatives as "malefactors 
 of great wealth" and by showing to the public the 
 profits of our greatest corporations and so anger- 
 ing the howling rabble against the rival of these 
 wily plaintiffs in our market, American Produc- 
 tion? And what action could Mr. Roosevelt have 
 taken which more clearly gave the true key to all 
 his violence against American Production than his 
 part in the German Agreement? Does it not look, 
 your Honors, as if, bound to these wily plaintiffs 
 by invisible but unbreakable ties, committed hea'rt 
 and soul to all their vicious purposes, working with 
 nil his power to put the people in a mood to give 
 the wily plaintiffs what they asked, the key to our 
 savings bank, yet fearing the effect of an open alli- 
 ance with these wily plaintiffs in their campaign 
 for "revision," upon his ambition for future favors 
 from his own political party, he saw and used the 
 Sternburg route to dike-destruction, which would 
 do everything possible to be done by tariff "revi- 
 sion," and yet leave him still the plausible cham- 
 pion of Protection? 
 
 But in spite of all his open and see-ret faults, his 
 sins of omissiou and commission, outrages against 
 decent conservatism and insults to the common 
 sense and often the consciences of his humble sub- 
 jects there are many, camp-followers and others, 
 who see in Mr. Roosevelt the fulfillment of the ages 
 for wisdom and integrity. But we cannot reconcile 
 his sayings and doings with common rationality, to 
 say nothing about reconciling them with the notion 
 that he is the wise of all the wise. 
 
 Particularly in his presto-changing of all our 
 unrighteousness to righteousness, our Chief Ma- 
 gician seems to forget, or rather he explicitly
 
 412 
 
 scorns our Antinian bonds to Mother Earth. Bus- 
 iness, industry, every road from the bakery to our 
 poor stomachs, must rather "go to the wall" than 
 that "My Policies" shall deviate one jot or tittle 
 from their ordained path.* And yet, if thou starv- 
 est out of commission our stomachs, O Great Ma- 
 gician, wherewith shall we assimilate thy Manna? 
 We don't think this method of attacking unright- 
 eousness shows wisdom. 
 
 But as to integrity, the case is just as bad; for 
 Mr. Koosevelt, according to his own definition, is 
 the greatest "Malefactor of Great Wealth" in the 
 world. Because he is the most powerful potentate 
 in the world, merely by virtue of his hold on pub- 
 lic opinion here, no matter by what inside "deal," 
 by what conspiring with poor bread-winning cuck- 
 oos of the press, or by what effacement of Con- 
 gressmen, who have learned "what they would bet- 
 ter do if they do not want to get hurt." Now, your 
 Honors, if wealth is power, as sure as we live, 
 power is wealth. Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt is the 
 wealthiest man on earth. Then, is the frightening 
 of the country into a panic a benefaction or a male- 
 faction? We think you will agree that it is "evil 
 doing" rather than "well doing." Well, that is a 
 malefaction and the fellow w r ho does* it is a male- 
 factor. And we submit that w r e have proved our 
 statement. 
 
 Then, again, as to this head of integrity, we 
 are sorely under stress for another reason. Mr. 
 
 * Mr. Roosevelt, in his Keokuk speech, used this language: 
 ' ' At intervals during the last few months the appeal has been 
 made to m not to enforce the law against certain wrongdoers 
 of great wealth, because to do so would interfere with the 
 business prosperity of the country. * * * In each case 
 the answer must be that * * * if righteousness con- 
 flicts with the fancied needs of business, then the latter must go 
 to the wall."
 
 413 
 
 Roosevelt calls some of us "Malefactors of Great 
 Wealth" and says we are "trusts'' of abhorrent de- 
 vices. But, through his press-agency and the inci- 
 dental powers of his office unlawfully used, Mr. 
 Roosevelt has "cornered" public opinion just the 
 same as s'oine of us wicked ones corner beef, to- 
 bacco, paper, kerosene oil, steel, cotton, and the 
 like. But public opinion is just as much a neces- 
 sary of business life as wheat is of domestic life; 
 and yet Mr. Roosevelt seems to hold about our 
 whole crop in the hollow of his hand and he is 
 squeezing the rest of us up to nominating him for 
 a third term as the price at which he holds it. In 
 other words, he is a great public opinion "trust." 
 He cornered it by just as dark ways as we ever 
 cornered wheat or anything else. And he is not 
 going to let go his 1 grip until he gets his price. Ac- 
 cording to Mr. Roosevelt this being a great big 
 "trust" with a swollen fortune, "exacting" and "ex- 
 torting" awful things of the dear public, is very, 
 very wrong; and we think he convicts himself of 
 being at any rate an active partner in "The Wicked- 
 est Trust in the World." 
 
 Now along back a. Avays wo read you a speech 
 from a New Haven gentleman who spoke right out 
 in meeting about Mr. Roosevelt; and to show that 
 he is not the only one who is crawling out from 
 under the general intimidation which Mr. Roosevelt 
 holds over the country, wo will read you a letter 
 printed in the Now York Sun on the morning of 
 November 14, 1007, as follows :
 
 414 
 
 ME. ROOSEVELT. 
 
 An Estimate of His Character and a Prayer for His 
 Conduct. 
 
 To the Editor of The Sun Sir: The business com- 
 munity revolts against inquisitorial investigations in sup- 
 port of "My Policies," however strenuous and lofty, in- 
 stituted by Mr. Roosevelt and prosecuted by his lieuten- 
 ants in the interest of or in vindication of them, rather 
 than of the "square deals" which he often misinterprets. 
 His best friends, those who personally have known him 
 from his youth, watched his career with pride and sat- 
 isfaction and have dared to advise him, agree that he is 
 absolutely honest but unwise, impulsive, shrewd, obstinate 
 and impatient of contradiction. Others who have come 
 into personal contact with him assert that he is deaf to 
 argument, many times unreasonable, self-opinioned, re- 
 sorting to invective with the ingenious skill of a lit- 
 terateur in clothing words with novel applications, in- 
 venting new epithets and misapplying old ones. 
 
 In his public utterances he deals in sounding phrases 
 which stimulate the passions of the popular majority 
 against the well-to-do classes. He does not so much look 
 forward to remedies as backward to faults and punish- 
 ments for errors of the past. No admirer of his person- 
 ality ever thought him a prudent statesman or a calm, ju- 
 dicious interpreter of the law. Dogmatic in his impulsive 
 judgments, dictatorial to courts, juries, legislature and 
 conventions, fond of oratory and popular apnlause, he 
 seems always to seek the glare of the limelight on the 
 public stage as well as in the retirement if he ever re- 
 tires of his home, where he submits to the camera and 
 has portrayed his skill as a horseman, a woodsman, a 
 hunter of beasts and birds and, as he is, a most excellent 
 father of a large family! 
 
 He is picturesque as a soldier in rough rider costume, 
 as a horseman leaping fences, a hunter following the 
 hounds, chasing lions and bears; in all manly sports 
 he is a spectacular example. 
 
 His courage no one doubts; in the field, council cham- 
 ber or on the platform he is ever the principal figure, 
 bold, emphatic, full of violent gesture, irrepressible, .it- 
 tractive to the multitude to the thoughtful unsafe! He 
 brooks no interference, seeks no advice, sends his chief 
 councillors abroad at critical times, surrounds himself 
 only by councils of young men who listen and are either 
 silent or meekly acquiesce in his determinations, or whose 
 murmurings of dissent are whispers or asides, of no 
 weight with him or the public. Indeed, he assumes to be 
 and is the "entire show." Those who differ from him 
 or do not approve all his methods he promptly classes 
 as "his enemies." 
 
 It is in a measure unjust to Mr. Roosevelt to assert 
 that he is the unique cause of it all; but it is undeniable
 
 415 
 
 that he has been and is an important factor in the grave 
 concern which pervades all honest business enterprises 
 and industries from one end of the country to the other. 
 He started the fire which has reached the condition of 
 conflagration; has added fuel to the flames, instead of 
 trying to confine them to proper limits, by reiterated 
 denunciations and unnecessary threats. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt may believe honestly that our national, 
 commercial and domestic sins can be expiated only 
 through suffering and distress and that he is an apostle 
 who is only fulfilling a mission. Will not a tired people 
 prefer more moderation and less absolutism for a few 
 years and cry out for rest? He is credited with being 
 instrumental in giving peace to warring nations of the 
 Old World; why should he stir up dissensions at home? 
 A pacificator builds a more enduring monument than an 
 agitator. Of the former we have too few, of the latter 
 too many. But a President-Agitator, however sincere, is 
 dangerous to every interest, great or small, to every 
 citizen, rich or poor. The dinner pail was full when he 
 came into power; will the owners of empty ones rise up 
 and accuse him for the emptiness when he appeals to 
 them again? That is the question his well wishers are 
 hoping he will, if possible, consider calmly, even though 
 he disregards the innocent victims of his crusade against 
 the comparatively few "wealthy malefactors." 
 
 For the moment Mr. Roosevelt is wisely silent, perhaps 
 astounded at the weight given his oratorical effusions at 
 home and abroad, and alarmed at their effect upon honest 
 enterprise and the strength they add to the schemes of 
 the turbulent dissatisfied or unruly elements of our com- 
 plex society. We cannot expect him to retract or recede 
 from "My Policies," but beg that he will not indulge in 
 renewed and unnecessary explanations of them. We fullj 
 understand him and them. That for a time he may keep 
 on the conservative side of silence and permit the country 
 to work out its own salvation through its courts and con- 
 stitutional methods, uninfluenced by his forcible rhetoric, 
 ex parte judgments and the opinions of youthful, inex- 
 perienced detective commissioners, is now the prayer of 
 the whole country. 
 
 AN ADMIRER OF MR. ROOSEVELT. 
 
 New York, November 13. 
 
 Now, your Honors, we submit that this is a fair 
 and just estimate of Mr. Koosevelt; and that all 
 those who have heads to think, after seeing him 
 illuminate the nation for the better part of 
 eight years, agree with this writer that he is "at- 
 tractive to the multitude to the thoughtful un- 
 safe;" and we cannot but wonder why it is possi- 
 ble that this sober nation, after all it has suffered,
 
 416 
 
 can listen to third term talk without downright 
 sickness at the stomach. AVhy, your Honors, the 
 woods are full of crooked sticks! Why should we 
 take just this one, rather than ten thousand others 
 that, though not exactly straight, are a good deal 
 more straight than the one we are leaning on? We 
 think the only thing which explains this 1 is the grip 
 the President has on Congressmen through his Big 
 Stick and his press-agency. They are all afraid 
 of him. At heart none of them loves him. 
 
 But, your Honors, why choose a crooked stick at 
 all? If the woods are full of crooked sticks, they 
 are also full of straight ones. It is not too much 
 to say that we have at least a thousand hank presi- 
 dents in this country, so broad, so intelligent, so 
 true, and so discreet that either of them would 
 make the most practical president in the world. 
 The same thing could he said of our great captains 
 of industry; and of our merchant princes, who have 
 not been corrupted by foreign trade and the finding 
 of treasures in foreign markets instead of our own 
 market here. 
 
 And yet the politicians are saying, "Mr. Roose- 
 velt can have the delegation from my State if he 
 wants it. If he does not, Mr. Taft is our second 
 choice." Why, your Honors, these people are the 
 chattels of the Roosevelt administration. When 
 they speak, it is a graphophone running off a Roose- 
 velt record. 
 
 How shrewdly, your Honors, has Mr. Roosevelt 
 joined his labors for these wily plaintiffs with la- 
 bors for himself! With the passage of time, your 
 Honors, this amazing alliance between business and 
 politics will be apparent. When the glint and the 
 gleam, the sparkle and twinkle, the sizzle and fiz- 
 zle, the swish and the boom, have died away and
 
 417 
 
 left only bitter smoke behind; when the glamour 
 has turned to gloaming; when the glory and the 
 glare have faded to tAvilight stars, the hour for 
 thought will have come, and the American people 
 will learn the truth of the saga, "Persistent adver- 
 tising pays;" and that "persistent advertising" 
 markets quack men as well as quack medicines. 
 They will then remember that w r e have had Presi- 
 dents who have lived and left their foot-prints on 
 the sands of time, without the agony of great pub- 
 licity; who "seen their duty and done it" with their 
 right hand without tattling to their left. They will 
 remember that all branches of our Government as 
 well as our private business have, in the main, al- 
 ways been run by honest men; and they will come 
 to know once more that honesty is a condition of 
 living at all, and that people are as honest or as 
 dishonest as their necessities, and that in Govern- 
 ment as well as in private life, their necessities 
 make the vast majority of men and women honest. 
 They will recollect, when the spell has passed, that 
 honesty is no curio ; that Mr. Eoosevelt did not dis- 
 cover it, and that if it is new to him, it is no nov- 
 elty to the rest of the world. They will recollect 
 that other Presidents, without sounding the bugle 
 horn for the advance, thought it a matter of course 
 to clean house quietly all the time; and if the ex- 
 ception to the rule of honesty was perchance dis- 
 covered and dishonesty in the Government or in 
 the act of some individual or corporation answer- 
 able to national law was found to rear its horrid 
 head, without any fury or fireworks, to let the calm 
 and non-flamboyant law take its orderly course. 
 There was no advertisement; no heroics; no red 
 fire. And then they will wonder how so simple 
 and natural a thing as the honest running down of
 
 dishonesty could have ever been used for an adver- 
 tising hullaballoo. They will be ashamed that they 
 ever should have seen morality in pyrotechnics. 
 And they will be struck by the contrast between 
 the ways of the sincere and single-hearted patriot 
 and other ways that they have noted; between the 
 smooth and noiseless apprehension of "wrong-do- 
 ers" and their proper punishment, whether they be 
 rich or poor, and the piff , bang, boom ! with which 
 dishonesty is laid low when the hearts of the faith- 
 ful need a new firing in fealty. And then will the 
 sobered second thought of the people think of this 
 
 MISE EN SCENE. 
 
 Act I. Store of advertising matter running 
 low. Great lack of a new sensation. The sum- 
 moning of the "cuckoos'." Conference of the only 
 just. Stage in sombre twilight Gotterdam- 
 erung! The awful hero approaches in all the 
 panoply of war, rough-riding the yieldless shards. 
 Stage sinks into the blackness of darkness. 
 Thunder in the distance. Flashes of oncoming 
 lightning. Away off somewhere a horn blows. 
 
 Act II. Stage brightens. Scent of dishonesty 
 thought to be found, while angels weep in the 
 flies. Cornet prelude. Rising animation. 
 Hose-colored calcium. Hope. 
 
 Act III. Combat deepens. The brave rush on. 
 Dishonesty seen in headlong flight for the tall 
 timber. Hounds in full cry. Rough Riders 1 
 trampling the grass everywhere. Stage in white- 
 light illumination. Trombone chorus. Great 
 expectations. 
 
 Act IV. Battle rages. Victory perches, and 
 unperches and reperches. Dishonesty brought
 
 119 
 
 to bay just this side of the tall timber. Delight 
 of the hounds. Transports of the Hough Riders. 
 Angels in flies laugh outright. Grand pell-mell 
 scrimmage. Great victory of The-Thousand-to- 
 One-Rough-Riding-Brigade. Dishonesty given the 
 coup de yrace, and Teddy the brush. Orchestra 
 thunders. 
 
 Act V. Grand looking-glass scene. Rough 
 Riders all admire themselves. More clouds and 
 darkness. Thunder rolls. Lightning forks 
 through the foreground. More awful majesty of 
 hero. Foodie-foodie of all the bass horns. A 
 million bass drums boom, boom, bum in earth- 
 quaking unison. Tom-toms crash. Cornets spit 
 crackling fire. Majesty of law vindicated. Daz- 
 zling triumph. Grand illumination in blood red. 
 Ready Teddy ready for another stumping tour. 
 The cuckoo chorus 1 diminuendo to curtain. 
 
 BEFORE THE CURTAIN. 
 
 THE POET: The glimmer, the glint and the 
 gleam. The twinkle and crinkle. The shimmer 
 and shiver and shine. The glow and the glare 
 and the glory. The red-fire, the white-fire, the 
 blue-fire. The red and the white and the blue. 
 The bing, the bang and the boom !!!!!!!!!!! 
 
 THE PEEPUL: Oh! Oh! ! Oh! ! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o 
 
 O Prince of Advertisers, with thy royal flush, 
 take the pot! Thou scoopest the deck! Compared 
 with thy shining talent, that of him who paints 
 "SAPOLIO" on Niagara's rainbow, or on the face 
 of the silver moon will be but a fire-fly's glow in 
 the sun's full noonday glare! 
 
 For putting the matter tin's way, we may !<>
 
 420 
 
 called by a shorter and uglier word. But, never- 
 theless, this is the way it seems to us. 
 
 But he did a lot of good, didn't he? What good, 
 your Honors? What good did he really try to do 
 except for himself? 
 
 He had a keen conscience, had he not? Ah, 
 your Honors, conscience often gilds golden the 
 blackest infamy. The burglar has conscience to 
 do his job thoroughly, to take the last coin from 
 the till; the last spoon from, the side-board. Con- 
 science, subordinate to self-glory and combative- 
 ness, is a hulking hypocrite. 
 
 He was humane, was he not? Not so you would 
 notice it ; not humane enough to keep his hunt from 
 Louisiana swamps and his dogs from the dooryards 
 of his four-footed fellow mortals; not humane 
 enough to spare the aged and innocent Tyner; not 
 humane enough to prevent the damning on thin sus- 
 picion of a whole battalion of blacks; not humane 
 enough not to jump on the offenseless and defense- 
 less Jehu; not humane enough to hold his ruthless 
 hands from private citizen Long; not humane 
 enough not to use his power to dismiss steamboat 
 inspectors to injure and disgrace a Nieholls, whose 
 innocence was protested by thirty eye-witnesses and 
 whose only accuser was the President; not humane 
 enough to leave undone a single act which might 
 swell his own glory from the leveling of his maga- 
 zine rifle at the hides of Louisiana bears to the 
 leveling of a German Agreement at the hearts and 
 homes of hundreds of thousands of his fellow citi- 
 zens. Humane, your Honors! Why, many a sav- 
 age sachem is just as humane. The Emperor of 
 Abyssinia is 1 just as much so. Mr. Roosevelt spares 
 neither man nor beast in his lust and riot for sen- 
 sational satisfaction, whether it be urged by his bat-
 
 421 
 
 tie-brain-cells or those which push a man towards 
 vain-glory. He mows down like grass men who 
 stand in his way. The industries of the nation have 
 no warrant for living against his desire to be tick- 
 led by the German Emperor. To sate his love of 
 praise, and without a qualm of conscience or of 
 sympathy, ho crashes into the industrial structures 
 which sustain the life of the people. He runs 
 amuck with swinging bludgeon among the crowd 
 of moneyed men upon whose shoulders our financial 
 and industrial welfare rest, yelling with each mur- 
 derous blow, "Malefactors of great wealth! Very 
 rich wrong-doers!'' while values melt oy the hun- 
 dreds of millions like ice in a July sun and hun- 
 dreds of thousands of small investors are despoiled 
 of their all. He breathes from his fire-belching 
 nostrils slaughter and threatenings 1 of slaughter 
 against all property rights, and rends the founda- 
 tions of the nation's whole business life. And all 
 in the name of righteousness ! Ay, your Honors, in 
 the name of righteousness he scatters withering 
 havoc like a pestilential blast and sounds the loud 
 summons of his Rough-Riding clans to the devo- 
 tion of a holy war. All in the name of righteous- 
 ness, your Honors! And is he righteous; and is 
 his war a holy war? He is as righteous as any 
 other fanatic, your Honors, who maketh his meat 
 by righteousness; and his war is as holy as any 
 other war waged to assemble a fanatical following. 
 His war is at least as holy as those of the whirling 
 dervishes and Mad Mullahs of the Orient just so 
 holy and no holier is the righteousness and the Avar 
 of this whirling dervish, this Mad Mullah of the 
 Occident. 
 
 Oh, idol of the people, clay-wrought by the very 
 mob which doth thee reverence! Oh, king of
 
 422 
 
 masquerades ! Usthiuks that oft behind thy mask, 
 with the inextinguishable laughter of the demi- 
 gods, thou chortlest softly to thyself, "Ah, indeed 
 and indeed, what fools these mortals be!" 
 
 [At this point iii counsel's argument a group of 
 cuckoos and Roosevelt Congressmen, perched on 
 the back benches, hissed, groaned, and cried "What 
 rot!" The Presiding Judge directed the court offi- 
 cer to arrest the "wrong-doers," but counsel for de- 
 fendant intervened in their behalf.] 
 
 DEFENDANT'S COUNSEL: We trust, your Honors, 
 that you will be lenient with these disturbers. They 
 had to do it. The "cuckoos" would have fluttered 
 from their White House perch with worse than 
 broken wings; and the Congressmen who hold their 
 official leases from Mr. Eoosevelt would have been 
 dispossessed, had they not gone on record here as 
 disapproving criticism of Mr. Koosevelt, profanely 
 connecting him with these wily plaintiffs. But, 
 your Honors, we think they will be good now, if 
 they remain. Having saved their respective records 
 and necks, they will have no further occasion for 
 disorder. 
 
 THE PRESIDING JUDGE : On the statement of coun- 
 sel, the offenders may remain without arrest. But 
 the disorder must not be repeated. Counsel will 
 please proceed. 
 
 DEFENDANT'S COUNSEL (Resuming) : Your Hon- 
 ors, what "malefactor of great wealth" could do 
 greater wrong to his country than has been done 
 and is yet being done by Mr. Roosevelt? With hiss 
 special appointees doing his will in pointing to the 
 profits of great corporations as evidence of crime; 
 with all this systematic persecution of those who
 
 423 
 
 have acquired property, because of its being ac- 
 quired, not by robbery, your Honor, but in the ways 
 which have always been and still are counted as 
 the usual and honorable ways of acquiring property 
 and which are never questioned when employed by 
 men who have not come under Mr. Roosevelt's con- 
 demnation or who are so fortunate as to be consid- 
 ered by him as "malefactors of little wealth ;" with 
 his ready appeal to the public against "a conspiracy 
 of ric'h men;" and his unceasing stigma upon prop- 
 erty as the mark and sign of depravity; with all 
 this and with the constant clatter of weak minds 
 in the newspaper world, denouncing as "robbery" 
 all large profits no matter how honestly or in what 
 orderly way acquired, what is to become of prop- 
 erty rights in this country, and how is a body to 
 know when he will be lauded as a "poor man" or 
 pinched as a "malefactor of great wealth?" Is there 
 any ear-mark, your Honors, by which property may 
 be known as "legitimate" or "illegitimate" and in 
 the one case retained for one's own use and in the 
 other abandoned to some politician's campaign 
 fund? Have all our rules of conduct been changed, 
 your Honors, and by the application of the Roose- 
 velt rule are we all now but a den of thieves? 
 
 Are we to suffer domieilary visitation by the tith- 
 ing man of any political party that happens to be 
 fit the head of things? Must we make humble con- 
 fession of all our doings in business, to let our 
 blackmailing tormentor judge whether or not our 
 profits have been "legitimate?" Are we to be 
 mulcted in our property whenever the Chief Magis- 
 trate has need of a little more public furor in order 
 to carry him into a second term of office? Are we 
 to be the goods and chattels of greatness in the 
 White House? Oh, your Honors, it really seems
 
 424 
 
 so, when judges can be appointed for the express 
 purpose of finding us guilty any way; of refusing 
 all testimony showing that we were ignorant of the 
 facts alleged as our crime and that we did not 
 know we were offending and had no intention of 
 doing so; of shutting our mouths when we protest 
 that we were only shipping goods at the same rate 
 at which we had shipped them over three competing 
 roads for more than a decade; of refusing our proof 
 that we had only been guilty of taking a railroad's 
 word for the fact of the legality of its rate ; and, to 
 crown all, of sending for all our books and figur- 
 ing out our profits for a dozen years to determine 
 whether we were of the size to be called guilty and 
 if guilty of what size should be our punishment! 
 Oh, your Honors, have these wily plaintiffs, our 
 century-old parasites, who suck our blood and do 
 nothing else but suck our blood, been so powerful 
 at Washington that they thus have the power of 
 life and death over us all! Is American Produc- 
 tion to be thus doomed and damned in behalf of 
 these wily plaintiffs? And is this the land of ref- 
 uge of the Puritans and the Pilgrims? Is this the 
 place to which we fled from injustice, from domicil- 
 iary visitations, from martyrdom for opinion's 
 sake, the whipping-post, the pillory, the rack, the 
 boiling oil, the gibbet and the stake! Is this the 
 land of the free and the home of the brave! To 
 this complexion has it come at last! Oh, Manes 
 of Magna Charta! Oh, shades of the Declaration 
 of Independence ! Oh, shape of the American Con- 
 stitution ! How hath your one-time mighty fallen !
 
 425 
 
 XXXI 
 
 THESE WILY PLAINTIFFS SHOULD BE CONSTITUTION- 
 ALLY RESTRAINED FROM FURTHER PREYING UPON 
 THE BUSINESS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 
 
 Your Honors 1 , it has hitherto been a haphazard 
 life our people have been living. Studiously have 
 these wily plaintiffs, through their great bureaus 
 of information, our colleges, our editorial rooms, 
 and our large publishing houses, cultivated among 
 us the doctrine of laissez faire, -or "every man for 
 himself and God help the hindmost." These sources 
 of authority have waved off with grimaces of pain 
 every suggestion that the profane hand of science 
 should be laid upon our economic affairs and from 
 the slip-shod chaos of our ideas should roll into 
 definite form a plan whereby our national progress 1 
 in the direction of universal happiness should be 
 made as permanent and unreversible as the path 
 of the sun in the sky. And in order to beat us in 
 detail and make us forever the Arcadian dolts' of 
 their deceptions, sheep to be sheared, cows to be 
 milked, geese to be plucked and turkies to be bled 
 for their profit, these wily plaintiffs, the Import- 
 ing Trust and the Exporting Trust, knowing that 
 a house divided against itself cannot stand, have 
 studiously tried to divide us; and have poured 
 our ears full of economic superstitions exhaling 
 such wraiths and bugaboos that our chief sens*a- 
 tion has been that of terror of each other, as if 
 some of us were rich, and others poor, some capi- 
 talists and others 1 laborers, some producers and 
 others consumers, some "the Government" and the
 
 420 
 
 rest "the common people;" with each class's in- 
 terests antagonistic to those of each of the other 
 classes. 
 
 On the contrary, your Honors, we know as we 
 have before agreed, that in the sense that any given 
 person can belong to but one of the classes 1 named 
 and to that irrevocably, there are no classes what- 
 ever in this country; and that nobody is rich or 
 poor by comparing his wealth w r ith that of others, 
 but only by comparing what he really has with 
 what he really needs. We know that all of us 1 act- 
 ive, business people are laborers, whether we labor 
 in producing property or wages, or whether we 
 labor in the transportation, distribution, and pres- 
 ervation of property; that, in varying proportions, 
 we all are capitalists, in muscle, mind, and money, 
 and we know, your Honors 1 , that we prosper and 
 are greatest and best in the direct ratio in which 
 our wants are supplied by American Production; 
 that in fact our progress and civilization are Ameri- 
 can Production and wax and wane with that Pro- 
 duction. For we know that in order that we may 
 honestly acquire a mass of goods which will evenly 
 fill our whole increasing measure of wants, we 
 must have distributed to us a volume of employ- 
 ment exactly equal to our volume of wants; for 
 it is our employment which earns the supplies 
 which meet our necessities 1 ; and we know that the 
 more of this mass of supplies we produce our- 
 selves, the less we shall be compelled to beg, bor- 
 row, or steal ; and the less of it we produce our- 
 selves, the more we shall be compelled to beg, bor- 
 row or steal; and that when, at last, we become 
 sufficiently civilized to make the volume of our 
 employment exactly equal to the volume of pro- 
 duction required to supply our needs, we shall have
 
 become sufficiently civilized never to beg, borrow, 
 or steal a cent's worth from anybody. 
 
 And by a short examination, we have learned 
 that the only condition upon which American Pro- 
 duction can live is one that will relieve capital 
 employed in this country from the dilemma where- 
 in it must either be dissipated among the cheap 
 nations of the earth, or must itself take time by 
 the forelock and leave for some land where the 
 index-figure of cost is 1 lower than 'ours; and we 
 have drafted a law showing under what conditions 
 capital must thus migrate or thus be dispersed 
 to the strong boxes of competing producers. By 
 a quick glance about us, we have learned that 
 ours 1 is a cost-100 country and that the world out- 
 side is a cost-20 country; and have realized that 
 unless we lay a firm hand upon our own affairs, 
 we shall be, to the end of time, the easy victim of 
 these wily plaintiffs and that by the exposure of 
 our cost-100 market to a cosrt-20 world, our wealth 
 will be snatched away as often as we are weak 
 enough to agree to such exposure by "tariff re- 
 vision." Now, your Honors, why should not we 
 act the part of rational beings? Why should not 
 wo, the real business men of America, the only ones 
 whose interests are identical with those of the 
 whole country, we, the wage-producers, the prop- 
 erty-producers, and the adjunct-producers, form- 
 ing but a single harmonious army under the ban- 
 ner of American Production, fighting the battles 
 of American Progress 1 and American Civilization 
 against a common enemy which ambushes us at 
 every point, the enemy which cuts off our lagging 
 columns, makes us captive and frequently sells 
 us into the bondage of idleness and poverty why 
 should not we lay down a definite course to be pur-
 
 428 
 
 sued fov our own protection? Why should 
 we, with a perfect knowledge of what ails us, and 
 with the power to cast out the ailment, continue, 
 like the lower animals, to suffer century after cen- 
 tury, without hope of betterment? 
 
 It seems to us 1 , your Honors, that our course is 
 very plain. And we therefore move this Court for 
 a perpetual injunction against these wily plain- 
 tiffs, constituting as they do the only "malefactors 
 of great wealth" which our country has to fear; 
 these devastators of our firesides, these slave-deal- 
 ers of the twentieth century, and of all the cen- 
 turies, your Honors, these allies against our 
 national and individual lives; these parasites, for 
 whom we have so long been the unhappy enter- 
 taining host sand who have consolidated into the 
 wickedest trust in the world their common inter- 
 est in our despoiling. 
 
 And, your Honors, in order that this injunction 
 may endure against all appeal by these wily plain- 
 tiffs; in order that the coming generation, misled 
 by ignorance of the wrongs inflicted upon us by 
 these wily plaintiffs, in its inexperience, its want 
 of memory, and its un-suspicion, may not be a vic- 
 tim of these wily plaintiffs', like as we have been, 
 we move that a period for thought, for wide-ex- 
 tended debate and investigation be placed between 
 our innocent posterity and the machinations of 
 the wickedest trust in the world. And the method 
 which we shall propose of compelling a long halt 
 between the first impulsive thrill of our after-com- 
 ers towards a yielding to the seductive whisper- 
 ing of the greatest liar, thief and murderer that 
 ever damned the earth, and the conversion of our 
 beloved country into a feeble fly to be eaten by 
 this horrid spider, the wickedest trust in the world,
 
 429 
 
 is that of a constitutional amendment, making it 
 the duty of Congress, by stage placed upon stage, 
 to build our tariff-dike to the very skies, as the 
 producing world outside ripens and becomes more 
 and more skillful, in all its length and breadth, 
 and brings more and more to bear upon produc- 
 tion those mighty economies which the prodigal 
 sun of the tropics' places within the reach of grow- 
 ing intelligence; but an amendment which cuts off 
 from Congress forever, except by unanimous vote, 
 the power to take from the dike a single brick once 
 laid there, while it gives the President a veto power 
 for every measure that might neutralize the effect 
 of the dike, and deprives him of veto power for 
 any measure which might further protect Ameri- 
 can Production; and gives to Congress power to 
 levy duties on our exports, and to each State and 
 every section of the country of a certain size the 
 power to constitute itself a zone of production, 
 whose products may not go out to other places, 
 and into which products from other places 1 may 
 not come except upon the payment of a certain 
 tax. 
 
 And, your Honors, our amendment should cut 
 off from our country all the tropical territory here- 
 tofore acquired or controlled by it, and prohibit 
 the annexation to it of any other territory what- 
 ever not a part of the United States prior to the 
 annexation of Porto Rico. 
 
 Our amendment should also make German 
 Agreements treasonable; strip from the President 
 the power of appointment to any public office what- 
 ever except to the cabinet, lodging the same in an 
 appropriate Commission ; make it impeachable for 
 the President to summon legislators to him for 
 private conference during the sessions of Congress
 
 430 
 
 or to use any influence whatever over Congressmen 
 or Senators; and lodge with the Supreme Court 
 the duty and the power to take cognizance of any 
 complaint against the President for any such con- 
 ference or such influence; to hear the evidence ad- 
 duced in support of such complaint and enter its 
 decree thereon and through the proper officers en- 
 force the same. 
 
 It should also enjoin the President, during his 
 term of office, from public speechifying and com- 
 munications to the public prints, except his annual 
 message to Congress; and limit his communica- 
 tions to Congress to such annual message and such 
 special messages thereafter as might be necessary to 
 explain the transmittal thereto of documents of 
 public interest. We should thus 1 , your Honors, try 
 and put an end to all buttonholing, bullyragging, 
 and intimidation on the part of a too strenuous 
 Executive. 
 
 But, your Honors, we would not imitate this 
 wickedest trust in the world, the only real male- 
 factor of great wealth among us, and do aught 
 suddenly to destroy values and embarrass cruelly 
 even this wickedest trust in the world; for this 
 would be but to follow the reckless and ruthless 
 example of this 1 wickedest trust in the world, which 
 by ia whirlwind campaign against American Pro- 
 duction as to the "trusts," "extorting" and "exact- 
 ing" from people at home higher prices than they 
 get abroad, destroys American Production upon 
 a single election day and in an hour sets hun- 
 dreds of thousands of our people moving towards 
 untimely graves. Xo, your Honors, all measures 
 for the destruction of this wickedest trust in the 
 world should bo taken decently and in order. Ex- 
 port tariffs? should gradually cut off entirely the
 
 431 
 
 wasting abroad of our substance in "raw mate- 
 rials/' whether in provisions, in grains, in fibres, 
 in ores, or other products; and, as gradually, and 
 pari passu, cut oft' entirely exports of all manufac- 
 tured products ; while an import tariff, gradually in- 
 creasing, should finally cut oft' all imports of what- 
 ever nature. Then at last, would our people come 
 by their own; then would our temptation to steal 
 be wholly taken away, and for every want we had 
 there would be given us an opportunity to earn 
 the price of its satisfaction with the labor of our 
 hands in the sweat of our faces and at wages so 
 high that our reward would be far greater than 
 the reward of stealing. And then the time would 
 have arrived, when, as we said some time ago, a 
 certificate of American citizenship would be a 
 ticket of admission which would pass the bearer 
 by St. Peter at the gate without the slightest cross- 
 examination. 
 
 Here, your Honors 1 , at the close of our argument, 
 we repeat what we began with, that sane people 
 do not do cruel things for the love of being cruel. 
 Even these wily plaintiffs are not moved in their 
 respective orbits by malice. They are looking for 
 pleasure and running away from pain just as 
 we all are trying to do. But unhappily they and 
 their connections in all countries and at all times 
 can live and flourish only by the despoiling of 
 those with whom they deal. Every country, for 
 instance, has its Importing Trust, that only can 
 thrive by selling the jobs of wage-producers there 
 to speculators in other countries; and its Export- 
 ing Trust whose welfare depends upon the exhaus- 
 tion of the natural stores of the country in which 
 it operates and selling them at low competitive 
 prices in other countries. The Importing Trust
 
 432 
 
 robs, workers of wages and stifles life; and the 
 Exporting Trust robs workers of natural stores 
 which would make life easier to bear. Let both 
 the Importing Trust and the Exporting Trust prey 
 upon a country at the same time, and for the wage- 
 producer you have let loose what General Sherman 
 said war was. The Importing Trust makes wages 
 fall and the Exporting Trust makes prices rise. 
 The Importing Trust makes work scarce and dear ; 
 and the Exporting Trust makes necessaries scarce 
 and dear. The one deprives us of work; the other 
 of goods. As the chances to earn money get fewer 
 and fewer, and a man must give more and more 
 of himself in exchange for them, the store of goods 
 gets smaller and smaller and a man gets less and 
 less of them for the money he earns. It is double 
 destruction your Honors, for the candle of your 
 life is burning away at both ends. You give more 
 and more of your blood and muscle, nerve and 
 brain, to get hold of a dollar, and more and more 
 of your dollars to get back what will restore your 
 blood and muscle, nerve and brain. The Import- 
 ing Trust leaves you with less and less of life; and 
 the Exporting Trust makes you give up, in trying 
 to save the remnant, still more of the little life that 
 is left you. 
 
 You can never come by your own until 
 you keep out the foreign supply and keep in your 
 own. But if you dam out foreign supply, you 
 down the Importing Trust; and if you dam in 
 American supply, you down the Exporting Trust. 
 But both of these trusts, these wily plaintiffs, 
 must be downed, if we, the wage-producers and 
 business men of this country, are to be less than 
 the slaves of the wily plaintiffs ; for both of these 
 trusts make their profits from selling our civili-
 
 433 
 
 zation, and by putting us more and more at their 
 mercy and making our lives and our forward march 
 secondary to their commissions. The evil of for- 
 eign commerce is becoming greater and greater 
 with the passing months. What does the great 
 Lusitania mean, your Honors? What do all these 
 great ocean steamships mean, your Honors? 
 What means the declaration that more Lusitanias, 
 or boats even greater than she, are soon to be built, 
 your Honors'? Merely that the wage-producers 
 of this country are to be put up at auction more 
 and more; that their jobs are to be taken from 
 them more and more, and more and more of those 
 jobs sold to people abroad who will bid more 
 blood and muscle, nerve and brain, for the same 
 number of dollars that the wage-producer here 
 now receives. It means that, while he is giving 
 more and more of his body and brain to earn a 
 dollar, he is going to get less and less goods for 
 his dollar. It means that both of these wily plain- 
 tiffs are going to let out another reef in their pirate 
 sails in order to overtake and pillage more quickly 
 the great ship American Prosperity. 
 
 This is what the English Importing and Export- 
 ing Trusts are now doing by English wage-work- 
 ers, your Honors. For the counterparts of these 
 wily plaintiffs in England, your Honors, own and 
 run that unhappy country. Wage-producers there 
 are slaves 1 of the English Importing and Export- 
 ing Trusts, who are the English Government, the 
 English nobility and landed gentry. The British 
 Islands are all whittled down to the fine point of 
 commercial profit for their grandees and wealthy 
 trading classes; while, the British wage-producing 
 people are bartered like cattle for the gain of their 
 commercialists. All skies are darkened with the
 
 434 
 
 smoke of British, ships carrying away the products 
 of those unhappy islands, made by the bloody sweat 
 of their workers, made by coining the bodies and 
 souls of ^English artisans, made by the sapping of 
 the vitals and the sucking away of the energies 
 of a once great nation, to pawn in foreign shops 
 for the , wherewithal to continue British nabobs in 
 their lives of wasteful pleasure; and with the 
 smoke of those same ships, bearing back to Eng- 
 land the goods which, destroy employment and the 
 manhood of British workmen by the tens of thou- 
 sands. To continue this process of appalling waste, 
 the English ,navy must be maintained to protect 
 her foreign trade, at an annual cost alone which 
 "staggers humanity." And just this, your Honors, 
 is what these wily plaintiffs will bring us Ameri- 
 cans to if we don't watch out. Ah, your Honors all 
 international trade is but ancient piracy in modern 
 clothes. But, your Honors, still with malice to- 
 wards none but charity for all, we say ,this thing. 
 These wily plaintiffs, you, and we, and all of us, 
 are merely phenomena of .nature; we are all the 
 outcome of environment, of sheer necessity. Even 
 our own property-producers are the offspring of 
 adamantine circumstance. They are with us be- 
 cause the soil for their growth here is kind. They 
 will not leave us if we fertilize the soil with con- 
 ditions 1 that make for profit to discreet and in- 
 telligent management. If we destroy our tariff- 
 dike, or even "revise" it at all downward, we will 
 lower wages and raise prices. But .if we raise it 
 higher and higher, we shall raise wages and lower 
 prices in the long run. If wages fall, it will 
 be because our wage-producers 1 are out of work 
 and so of money and so of power to patronize our 
 property-producers; and all this will be for the
 
 435 
 
 reason that our property-producers cannot em- 
 ploy our wage-producers because foreign imports 
 are taking away their domestic market; and when 
 this happens 1 , our property-producers too, must 
 show the same servility to circumstance which 
 rules 1 us all ; they must go away from us, in accord- 
 ance with our law, ,and seek the area of cheapest 
 production for this market; and that never can 
 be here. 
 
 But ,your Honors, to make here an environment 
 wholesome for the property-producer, upon whose 
 activities we all depend, lies 1 with our property -pro- 
 ducers themselves, with our wage-producers and 
 our adjunct-producers 1 ; with the .business men of 
 this country, the farmers, the merchants and manu- 
 facturers, the builders of railoads, bridges, and 
 houses, and those who furnish and fit them for our 
 wage-producers. For our property-producers', our 
 wage-producers and our adjunct producers, who are 
 the merchants who sell our wage-producers their 
 necessaries of life, and all the great railroads and 
 steamship and other lines that take care of the 
 carrying and delivering to our wage-producers of 
 the goods of our farmers, manufacturers, and mer- 
 chants, are in an overwhelming majority ; and they 
 are not only numerous enough to ordain here by 
 transient congressional enactments, an environ- 
 ment in which property-production must flourish; 
 but numerous enough to make the whole country's 
 business stable in perpetuo by the constitutional 
 amendments which we have heretofore hinted at. 
 They only need to take hold all together, and the 
 country will be saved from further spoliation by 
 these wily plaintiffs 1 . 
 
 And our President also, he who has wrought so 
 masterfully to further thes'o wily plaintiffs in their
 
 436 
 
 dire purposes against the savings fund of this coun- 
 try, is like the rest of us, a creature of environment. 
 He does as he must, pushed on by his 1 brain-cells 
 over which he has no control.. His conscience 
 brain-cells are large and promising, but still so 
 subordinate to the brain-cells that preside over 
 fighting and vain-glory that he thinks what he does 
 for his own glory is done from a high sense of duty ! 
 Oh, your Honors, "Wad some power the giftie gie 
 us to see oursels as ithers see us!" But with the 
 proper change of environment, there is hope for 
 the President also. And let us all hope and rev- 
 erently pray that the American people may see 
 their way clear to furnish that change ! 
 
 Finally, your Honors, the .gradual snuffing out 
 of these wily plaintiffs, composing this "trust" 
 whose tentacles, octupus-like, hold in their wither- 
 ing and wizzening grasp the production of the 
 world, would merge the great question of business 
 stability, the great question of the equitable dis- 
 tribution of wealth, the relation of capital and 
 labor, and the great issue of socialism into one and 
 would solve all these riddles at once. For with 
 the American , demand religiously confined to the 
 American supply; and the American supply as re- 
 ligiously confined to the American demand, busi- 
 ness would be as 1 eternally stable as the recurring 
 daily needs of all our people; work would be as 
 abundant as the flood of our wants requiring work 
 to satisfy them ; and by the rising of w r ages through 
 the competition of property-producers' for the wage- 
 producer, on the one hand ; and the falling of prices 
 through the competition of property-producers 
 for, our market, on the other hand, the whole pro- 
 duct of the wage-producers would be more and more 
 widely and equitably distributed, without ham-
 
 437 
 
 stringing initiative and ambition by an arbitary 
 sharing of the rewards of labor. 
 
 Yes, your Honors, all things coine to him who 
 works' for fair wages. Our gospel is that found 
 in the Holy Scripture of Work. The Gospel of 
 Work is more holy than that preached by any evan- 
 gel from the dark land of superstition; for it is 
 only in the soil prepared by abundant and well- 
 paid Work that Morality, Education, and true Re- 
 ligion can grow to their highest estate. 
 
 And if your Honors but grant to your petitioner, 
 the defendant in this 1 action, all the matters and 
 things enumerated and described herein, your peti- 
 tioner will ever pray. 
 
 Gentle Reader, we are not a "conspiracy of rich 
 men," and we have not back of us, to beat "my 
 policies," a five-million-dollar corruption fund. 
 We are only a humble citizen feeling many things 
 and saying but very few. For aught we know, 
 we are an undesirable citizen. 
 
 It seems to us that matters are a good deal mix- 
 ed up in the way we are doing things and let- 
 ting things and politicians do us. We ought to 
 stroke the fur the right way in this world; and 
 we ought to stroke a man in the direction of his 
 brain-cells. We ought never to expect a man to 
 do the right thing except we stroke his brain-cells 
 in the right direction. If we do we shall spoil 
 his fur and he will spoil ours.
 
 438 
 
 Now, gentle reader, it is wrong to worship our 
 own brain-cells any more than we worship the 
 brain-cells of others. For we are all just bud- 
 gets of brain-cells over which we have absolutely 
 no control. They will beat us every time and the 
 biggest bunch will always be on top. But other 
 people can mold our brain-cells to fit new environ- 
 ments; and we can mold other people's brain- 
 cells to fit new environments. Or, rather, just as 
 Jacob did with the heifers, we can shrewdly cook 
 up an environment that, in God's good time, will 
 mold the brain-cells of others so that they will 
 fit the new environment; and if we contrive that 
 environment to suit us, the new arrangement of 
 brain-cells will suit us, too, and the heifers will 
 be colored so that they will belong to us. Jacob 
 only anticipated our philosophy by some thousands 
 of years. He was the shrewd forefather of a shrewd 
 and careful race of business men who will surely 
 understand our philosophy, and, we think, help us 
 to inculcate it. 
 
 To point the moral and adorn the tale, we ought 
 to surround our public servants with environ- 
 ments that will move their brain-cells into harmony 
 with our interests. Now, an environment that 
 will make their honest brain-cells more powerful 
 than their dishonest ones, is one which would sur- 
 round them with such conditions that their pru- 
 dent brain-cells would tell them they could not get 
 away with the goods even if they tried. 
 
 This is plain common sense, as it seems to us. 
 But what have we been doing in this country for a 
 hundred years? Why, in spite of the fact that 
 Congress has no constitutional power to jeopard- 
 ize the life of an American citizen, except so far
 
 439 
 
 as to make him bear arms in the country's defense 
 or the enforcement of its laws, nevertheless our 
 Congressmen, and the President, have absolute 
 power in times of peace, in return for any bribe 
 to their ambitions or to their purses, to take the 
 lives of whole groups of American citizens. For 
 they have the power to make laws which will mow 
 flown the sources of employment and so the lives 
 of millions of our citizens at once, in order to 
 make way here in our market for foreign goods, 
 the manufacturers of which, as represented by the 
 great Importing Trust in this country, may, by 
 some means, have prevailed upon Congress and the 
 President : to abolish discrimination in favor of 
 American Production and allow a cost-20 world 
 to invade our cost-100 country with its goods. To 
 do this is and always has been just as surely to 
 destroy the lives of countless Americans as if there 
 had been passed a national law which marched 
 forth a million or so of our wage-producers to 
 face a wall and have their backs bored with bullets 
 from the muskets of firing files from a fort. It 
 matters not that this result has been brought about 
 by laws ostensibly made to regulate customs duties. 
 The efficient cause of such legislation was the pur- 
 pose to destroy American employment; and the 
 destruction of employment is the destruction of 
 life; and reasoning beings are chargeable with in- 
 touding to do exactly what their acts are the in- 
 evitable cause of. This domestic market of ours 
 is our most valuable treasure. It is more sought 
 after by foreign lobbies in Washington than gold 
 mines are sought after by the rest of us. And yet 
 we place this treasure, all uncounted, at the dis- 
 posal of our Inw-mnkevs! in Washington as freely as
 
 440 
 
 if it were a babbling spring on the Capitol grounds. 
 The Constitution prohibits Congress from depriv- 
 ing anybody of "life, liberty, or property with- 
 out due process of law'' and from taking pri- 
 vate property * * * * for public use without 
 just compensation." And yet we let Congress do 
 both of these things by merely whipping the devil 
 around the stump of tariff legislation. 
 
 But this is 1 not all. Not only have we placed 
 in the hands of Congress and the President abso- 
 lute power over the greatest treasure on earth, 
 but, by an inadvertence in our Constitution, we 
 have placed in the hands of the President alone 
 power, under certain circumstances, to efface Con- 
 gress as a deliberative body and use it as a means 
 of passing any law which carries grist to his mill. 
 We have done this 1 by giving him power, through 
 his agents and emissaries, to go into any congress- 
 ional district and control the local political 
 machine of an "insurgent" Congressman's 1 party 
 and destroy his political life for getting in the way 
 of the President's private schemes. 
 
 We have seen Mr. Koosevelt make use of this 
 power to effect the Cuban Treaty, and to pass the 
 Hepburn law, which latter was simply for the pur- 
 pose of burning incense to the idol in the White 
 House ; since, because of the Elkins Law, the Hep- 
 burn-Roosevelt law was wholly superfluous from 
 the start and known to be so by the President's ad- 
 visers; and in addition to these two iniquities, this 
 same power will probably be used to get congress- 
 ional approval of the infamous German Agreement, 
 and very likely to pass a measure for free trade 
 with the Philippine Islands. Three of these meas- 
 ures strike at the bread and butter of the country ; 
 for they are calculated to cut off employment of
 
 labor here at home, arrest property-production and, 
 both as to scope and period, depress business in- 
 definitely. 
 
 It is very plain that, to make Congress and the 
 President worthy custodians of the employment, 
 and so the lives, of all the people of these United 
 States, their brain-cells should be environed by 
 a constitutional amendment making lawful any 
 discrimination, by tariffs or otherwise, in favor 
 of American employment, and unlawful the with- 
 drawal of any part of such discrimination once 
 effected; and the power to make any treaty im- 
 pairing that discrimination in any way should be 
 taken away from the Senate. 
 
 It is unfair to Congress and the President thus 
 to leave at their mercy an uncounted and unin- 
 ventoried treasure as great as our domestic em- 
 ployment, a treasure, the marketable value of 
 which, in hard dollars' and cents, is too tremen- 
 dous for calculation. To carve it up in large or 
 small slices and sell it abroad in exchange for one 
 consideration or another, is a temptation greater 
 than our servants should be called upon to with- 
 stand. That our employment has 1 thus been carved 
 up and sold in the past is evidenced by the thou- 
 sand successes our Importing Trust has scored in 
 pilfering our employment for its intelligence office 
 abroad. Just now it is bribing our newspapers to 
 help it take away the employment of the wage-pro- 
 ducers in our paper mills. 
 
 We ordinary mortals, with half an eye, may see 
 the perils of this situation. The condition of our 
 Constitution in this respect, giving, as it does, 
 power to our national law-makers to sell to the Im- 
 porting Trust, either for cash or some other con-
 
 442 
 
 sideration, any portion of our employment or do- 
 mestic market they choose, puts a premium on 
 bribery and corruption and makes treason to 
 our national interests in this regard unpunish- 
 able. In the matter of faithlessness to our 
 employment, neither of our leading political 
 parties has an unpurchasable scruple. The Re- 
 publican machine is no better in that regard than 
 the Democratic, a fact which has been proved by 
 more than one betrayal. For instance, the ink 
 was hardly dry on the Republican Party's plat- 
 form pledge to our sugar-growers, before the Repub- 
 licans ratified the Cuban Treaty, which was a ruth- 
 less abandonment of all the sugar-growing inter- 
 ests of this country to tropical competition.* 
 And there seems little doubt that, under the heel 
 of the insistent Roosevelt, the same chameleon 
 party will follow up its Cuban treachery by free 
 trade with the Philippine Islands, which, combined 
 with Cuban, Porto Rican and Hawaiian competi- 
 tion, would, in ten years, absolutely destroy the 
 last sugar mill and sugar and rice plantation in 
 the United States. 
 
 Now, gentle reader, you may be assured that 
 there is a vulgar quid pro quo, in cash or votes, 
 for every lapse of tariff virtue on the part of the 
 G. O. P., just as much as there is for lapses by 
 the Democratic Party from its cardinal principles. 
 Xo political party is ever better than it is com- 
 
 *" In 1907 nine months * * * we imported * * * 
 of cane sugrar 4,733,000,000 * * * pouuds 
 an increase [over the corresponding nine months of 1906] of 
 600,000,000 pounds." N. Y. Sun, Thursday Nov. 21. 1907. 
 
 If the Cuban Treaty and free trade with Hawaii and Porto 
 Rico had not dampened the ardor of our sugar producers, at 
 least this additional 600,000,000 pounds of sugar would have 
 been produced in the United States by this date. Fd,
 
 443 
 
 pelied to be. The only way to make and keep it 
 good is to hedge its brain-cells all round about 
 with an environment that will put it in the peni- 
 tentiary if it does not tote fair; and the way to 
 make our employment safe against Congress and 
 the President, is to fence it in and put up signs, 
 "The President and Congress will please keep off 
 of this lawn,'' and if they don't obey the sign, 
 send the sheriff after them. 
 
 In tossing away our domestic employment for 
 this 1 or that consideration best known to himself, 
 Mr. Roosevelt, in the way that anybody of mature 
 mind should have expected, has met our Uncle- 
 Rube-like trust in the way that Uncle Rubes' 
 usually are met. Unless some one calls a halt on 
 him there seems no ground to believe that he will 
 not take a step nearer pleasure and farther from 
 pain by selling another section of our employment 
 market to some other foreign War-Lord. Our em- 
 ployment market seems to be about his best asset 
 for buying popularity of foreign potentates. 
 
 Now, we believe that we should nail the Presi- 
 dent and Congress by constitutional amendments 
 to such an environment that they cannot monkey 
 in any way with our employment market here at 
 home, any more than they can take any other prop- 
 erty of ours and sell it for their own benefit, "with- 
 out due- process of law;" or any more than they 
 can march any of us 1 up to certain execution at 
 the musket's mouth, except in defense of law and 
 order. 
 
 Thf next thing we should do should be to join 
 in arranging such an evironment here for us all 
 that, when our respective brain-cells had so per- 
 muted and combined themselves as to make the
 
 444 
 
 most 01 it, we should find that the very same things 
 led us all towards pleasure and away from pain, 
 at one and the same time, at least as far as em- 
 ployment, wages, and business were concerned. 
 How would we do this? Why, simply by fixing 
 it so all employment to meet American wants 
 should be divided among wage-producers within 
 the United States of America. But we should 
 swear in wage-producers in some way so they could 
 not imitate the Italians, Hungarians, Canadians, 
 and others, who come here over summer, get 
 all of our jobs they can, and then go back for the 
 winter to their foreign homes and, in the shape 
 of our cash, scatter our American employment all 
 over their own countries instead of here. That is 
 not the fair T)lay which we believe in. The square- 
 ness of the deal is above our reach. The dealer 
 to us all is our Maker in whom we still trust 
 nevertheless and we cannot go behind those re- 
 turns. But what we do believe in is fair play 
 amonsr those to whom Divine Providence has 
 alre^dv dealt more or less favorable hands. 
 
 We would so fix it that every wage-producer who 
 stayed with us here through thick and thin, whether 
 he was an immigrant of thirty days or of three 
 centuries' standing, for we are all immigrants 
 in various stages of baking had an equal right 
 with every other like wage-producer to get all the 
 errmlovment he could in this American domestic 
 market. We would calk up so tight every leak 
 in our boat, however beaten upon by foreign seas, 
 that we would have no foreign -trade bilge- water 
 in our hold. It would be impossible to "cuss out" 
 class legislation then. Every gander would have 
 the samp s-nnre as every goose. Nobodv could taunt 
 the protective tariff protective in very truth
 
 445 
 
 with taking money out of the pocket of one citi- 
 zen and putting it in the pocket of another. For 
 the same dike would stand between all and the 
 foreign deluge. We would all be standing on the 
 same plateau, above foreign countries both in 
 wages, prices, and level of life. And if any man 
 failed to find a market, at the American price, for 
 his own muscle, mind, or goods; in other words, 
 if, in the higher wages or prices caused by the 
 dike, he failed to get back his higher cost caused 
 by the dike, it would be because he was too lazy 
 to work in our industrial hive. If he preferred to 
 be a drone, that would be his funeral. He should 
 furnish the corpse and not we. 
 
 Why, gentle reader, the only way in which we 
 can have here a sound industrial body (let's call 
 it an "Industriuin" for short, and to distinguish 
 it from "Imperium") is to cut off foreign trade 
 and convert our international peddlers into use- 
 ful, honest, patriotic citizens. They are only 
 wandering birds of prey now. They really have 
 no abiding city. They peddle abroad a country's 
 produce or its employment in any way they find 
 most profitable until they have peddled it dry; 
 and then they fling away the empty orange skin 
 and find an orange somewhere else. But we should 
 make them a part of us; make them peddle among 
 our people at home our goods made at home; for 
 they cannot live without peddling. It is born in 
 them; and we hate the cruelty which would make 
 them work for a living. We should draw their 
 claws and make them nice purring little helpmates 
 to us 1 all. 
 
 Wo would utterly kill foreign trade by benevo- 
 lent degrees. For our American Tndustrium is
 
 446 
 
 like our bodies. We cannot jab it full of holes 
 with foreign trade and have it healthy and happy 
 any more than we can jab our bodies full 'of holes 
 and be healthy and happy. And so we say, "Set 
 these Importing and Exporting Trust peddlers at 
 s'onie other job than jabbing our Industrium full 
 of holes." Xo matter how much they chatter and 
 clatter about it or what kinds of money they arm 
 their congressional lobbies with, we ought to cut 
 them out. 
 
 Let us look at this Industrium business a mom- 
 ent, gentle reader. 
 
 Every civilized country has its Industrium in 
 a greater or smaller degree of perfection. Sup- 
 pose we merge all the Industria of foreign coun- 
 tries into one and call them the "Foreign Indus- 
 trium," as compared with our own, which we will 
 call the "Domestic Industrium." Now, in order 
 to study closely their relations, let us build these 
 two Industria right near each other and take a 
 good look at them. Like this: 
 
 DOMESTIC INDUSTRIUM. 
 
 f Property- ~j |" Property- 
 
 J Capital V_^_J Production. I J Preservation. 
 V t * " ] Wage- f~ ~ ] Wage- 
 
 ^ Labor J ^ Production. J I Production. 
 
 Transportation J C Distribution, or 
 
 Wage- r=^J "Business. 
 
 Production. "1 Wage- 
 
 ^ Production.
 
 447 
 
 FOREIGN INDUSTRIUM. 
 
 (Same as preceding.) 
 To explain the terms used in these schemes: 
 
 Property-Production embraces manufacturing, 
 mining, and farming. 
 
 Wage-Production is what the worker is doing. 
 Wage-Production is the factor common to all these 
 divisions of the "Industrium." 
 
 Property-Preservation takes in the work of all 
 people engaged in things which directly or indi- 
 rectly maintain property. 
 
 Transportation takes in every means of taking 
 goods or people from one place to another. 
 
 Distribution is storing and delivering goods by 
 whatever means. 
 
 Now you will observe that both in the Domestic 
 and the Foreign Industrium, Capital and Labor 
 are the basis of it all. This is so everywhere. These 
 two factors are the drivers of the whole tandem 
 represented in our scheme. You cannot have act- 
 ive capital without having active labor; and act- 
 ive labor indicates active capital. Any condition 
 which will keep capital flowing into Property-Pro- 
 duction will keep this merry tandem in motion. 
 But shrink your capital and you have shrunken 
 every member of this procession. 
 
 The main thing, however, to which we wish to 
 call your attention is the universality of Wage- 
 Production and so of Wage-Producers throughout 
 this scheme. The whole thing, in fact is wage- 
 production; and every human being that works 
 anywhere in this combination is a wage-producer, 
 whether he is a ditch-digger, a trolley-driver, a
 
 448 
 
 bank president, or the head of one of our horrid 
 "trusts." And all wage-producers depend for their 
 lives upon the comparative volume of the capital 
 which flows into Property-Production, which is 
 nothing more or less than the great job provided 
 by the country's doing its own work. Make this 
 job smaller, and you make proportionately smaller 
 the volume of capital flowing into Property-Pro- 
 duction, and so into Property-Preservation, so into 
 Transportation, and so into Business, and all along 
 the line you throw out of the ranks of wage-pro- 
 ducers people who must faint and fail the moment 
 their wage-production ceases. 
 
 Property-Production, animated by capital seek- 
 ing investment, is the mainspring which moves 
 every other division in our scheme; and the de- 
 gree of its activity is directly proportioned to the 
 percentage of the work for the country which is 
 done by the country. 
 
 To be sure we get the idea, let us analyze each 
 of these divisions a little, and see how each one 
 of them contributes 1 to "Business" by the main- 
 tenance of our great army of wage-producers, all 
 of whom buy from "Business" their necessaries 
 and luxuries, paying therefor the wages they have 
 produced in the various divisions of our "Indus- 
 trium," which, after all, is the same as "Employ- 
 ment." 
 
 Starting with Property-Production, what are 
 wage-producers doing here? Why, they are manu- 
 facturing property for use, not only in Property- 
 Production but in Property-Preservation, Trans- 
 portation, and Business 1 itself; all of which prop- 
 erty, as fast as made, is being delivered by Prop- 
 erty-Production to Distribution, or "Business," 
 in exchange for the very wages which Property-
 
 449 
 
 Production has previously paid wage-producers, 
 who have bought with them of "Business" stores 
 which Property-Production had previously lodged 
 with "Business." 
 
 In the division of Property-Preservation, again, 
 the whole thing is run by wage-producers, who are 
 taking care of property in various ways. In this 
 division belong our army and navy, our police and 
 constabulary, and our militia. Our doctors, law- 
 yers and ministers also belong here, the doctors 
 preserving lives and therefore preserving the pre- 
 servers of property; the lawyers preserving prop- 
 erty titles and property-rights; the ministers 
 inculcating morals and making both life and prop- 
 erty safer. And in this 1 division, too, belong all the 
 wage-producers in insurance companies. And all 
 these wage-producers, too, carry their wages to 
 "Business" to exchange for the work done by 
 Property-Production. 
 
 In the division of Transportation, we have 
 another great swarm of wage-producers 1 , who also 
 depend for their jobs entirely upon Property-Pro- 
 duction, since their business is moving the output 
 of Property-Production. A glance at the employ- 
 ment lists of our railroad, telegraph, express 1 , and 
 steamship companies, to say nothing of the great 
 crowd of small proprietors of hacks, express- 
 wagons, and messenger routes, would give some 
 idea of how great a figure Transportation cuts in 
 the country's 1 employment and the host of wage- 
 producers which it is daily sending to "Business" 
 for supplies. 
 
 In the division of Distribution, commonly called 
 "Business," the wage-production is also colossal. 
 A count of the clerks, salesmen, foremen, buyers, 
 packers, and the like, employed in a single great
 
 450 
 
 department store would give a clear notion of the 
 gigantic proportions of this wage-producing 
 branch of our Industriuiu. There is this to be said 
 further about this Division that it is the clearing 
 house of Property-Production. It is where pro- 
 ducts are liquidated by the wages of our great 
 Wage-Production, made up as it is from contri- 
 butions from the millions of workers in the various 
 divisions of our Industriuin. As the whole coun- 
 try's active industrial life rests firmly upon Prop- 
 erty-Production, so Property-Production depends 
 upon "Business" to make its product fluid and, by 
 the purchase of its product, to return to it the capi- 
 tal without which it could not proceed. Any break- 
 ing of the return current of capital from "Busi- 
 ness" to Property-Production, strangles Property- 
 Production which strangles 1 wage-production, 
 which strangles "Business" in the large national 
 sense, which strangles people to physical death. 
 
 Now, we, a wage-100 country, therefore a cost- 
 100 country, and therefore a life-100 country, are 
 surrounded on all sides by a world in which wages 
 average 20, costs average 20, 'and life averages 20. 
 And here is the great opportunity for the inter- 
 national peddler, the destroyer of national life. 
 Naturally enough, he wants to put the difference 
 between our cost-100 and the foreign cost-20 in 
 his pocket, or as much of it as he can get, say a 
 commission of about 78 points. He puts up a con- 
 siderable money to do it, either in maintaining a 
 bureau of education, to touch people's hearts 1 with 
 the sufferings of the poor Cubans or the little 
 brown men; or in maintaining a straight lobby to 
 snare in the President and Congress. Suppose he 
 succeeds and gets a Cuban Treaty, German Agree- 
 ment, a French Reciprocity Arrangement, or an
 
 451 
 
 out and out "revision"- - what then? Well, here 
 is where the Foreign liidustriuin comes in. Our 
 peddler is the direct agent and commission repre- 
 sentative of the entire Foreign Industriuni. There- 
 fore, right alongside of our Domestic Industrium, 
 he sets up his branch office representing the For- 
 eign Industrium, in the form of a booth crammed 
 with goods "Made in Germany," "Made in France," 
 and so on, and baits his trap with advertisements 
 cutting under American cost-100 by, say, a couple 
 of points. Now like shortsighted children of 
 mature our wage-producers come along and see 
 these attractions in price and immediately proceed 
 to feather the arrows which a little later drink 
 their own heart's blood; for they fall into the in- 
 ternational peddler's trap and buy goods the price 
 of which does not go back to our own Industrium 
 division, Property-Production, but scoots off across 
 the water and swells the Property-Production of 
 the Foreign Industrium; and just exactly in the 
 measure that our wage-producers patronize the in- 
 ternational peddler, does the stream of our capi- 
 tal returning to Property-Production diminish, 
 and so diminish the stream flowing through Prop- 
 erty-Preservation, Transportation, and American 
 Business. The moment this stream begins to 
 slacken, wage-producers begin to be laid off all 
 the way from Property-Production, through the 
 entire tandem of our Industrium to and includ- 
 ing "Business ;" and hard times are beginning, just 
 as 1 they are now because of the German Agreement, 
 the Cuban Treaty, free trade with Porto Rico and 
 Hawaii and the general slackness and deviltry in 
 our customs service, aided and abetted by the Roose- 
 velt Administration in discharging Mr. Wakeman 
 and exiling other customs officials who were faith-
 
 452 
 
 ful to their stewardship of the great American Tar- 
 iff anti-Deluge Dike. And just as our Industrium 
 waxes weak and weary by the operations of our 
 international peddler and our German Agreements, 
 the Foreign Industrium becomes inflated with rich 
 red blood, and, beginning with Great Britian and 
 going east to the eastern shores of Japan, you 
 hear across the water the increasing whirr and 
 clatter, rattle and hum of the shops and factories 
 abroad. And now the world chucks us under the 
 chin and says we are such fine fellows, just as the 
 German War-Lord did Dr. Nicholas Murray But- 
 ler, of Columbia College, who came home so 
 warmed with the cordiality of royalty that, in 
 order that this cup of cordiality might remain for- 
 ever full, he wanted the tariff-dike tumbled down 
 some more right away. 
 
 After this sort of thing goes on a while, we be- 
 gin to sicken from "over-production" in foreign 
 Industria. Millions of our wage-producers are out 
 of employment, and hard times of the hardest- 
 boiled kind engulf the country. The strong weaken 
 and the weakened die all around us, just from the 
 tightening of the grip of this international ped- 
 dler on our industrial throats; and we are broken 
 out all over with the small-pox of over-produc- 
 tion ; that is, with the monoply by the Foreign In- 
 dustrium, employing foreign labor, of the terri- 
 tory naturally belonging to the Domestic Indus- 
 trium employing domestic labor. But it is a good 
 ways to the next congressional election; and still 
 farther, perhaps, to the next presidential election, 
 when, may be, the people will be wide awake enough 
 to the source of their trouble to displace a com- 
 placent Roosevelt, a rollicking Taft, or a Gennan- 
 Agreement-making Root. And so the country wal-
 
 453 
 
 lows on in the deep mire of misery year after year. 
 Panic after panic sweeps the country, as it sinks 
 deeper and deeper in the poverty puddle. Not weak 
 little, so-called "Roosevelt" panics, caused by cur- 
 rency-hoarders, but real deep-down ague spasms 
 caused by the chill of dissolution creeping closer 
 and closer to the patient's heart. 
 
 The cost to the country of supplanting its own 
 Industrium by the Foreign Industrium in this way 
 is too great for calculation; because it is paid not 
 only in almost uncountable money-heaps but also 
 in the lives of whole armies of our people; in the 
 degradation of yet greater armies; and in the cur- 
 tailment of vitality of the entire national life. 
 
 And yet we have experienced this many times 
 and shall experience it in the future just as often 
 as the campaign of the Importing Trust, with its 
 studied slanders and libels against our "trusts," 
 American Production, our "Malefactors of Great 
 Wealth," and our "Very Rich Men," enfuriates our 
 wage-producers to the point where they smash the 
 porridge pot from which they are feeding. 
 
 The trouble at this present writing is that we 
 have been so flippant in our choice of a President, 
 so much given to hero-worship rather than the wor- 
 ship of cold common sense, that we find on our 
 hands a President who, whether he has intended 
 it or not, has played right into the hands of our 
 international peddlers, and, in addition to his 
 Cuban Treaties and foreignizing of our custom 
 house, to say nothing of his 1 German Agreements, 
 has joined the regulation hue and cry of our Im- 
 porting Trust against American Production and 
 has done his very best to make it more perilous to 
 do American business than to scale the Wetter- 
 horn.
 
 454 
 
 Now, gentle reader, don't you agree with us 
 that we should all join in building in this country 
 an environment too strenuous for the brain-cells 
 of the Importing Trust to flourish in? Or, at 
 any rate, one in which all its members may be 
 turned to good account in adding to the red-blood 
 corpuscles of our Domestic Industrium? We 
 think there should not be two opinions about this. 
 
 Now, gentle reader, in making the nation do all 
 its own work and itself taking the pay therefor, 
 and honestly paying its own workers, there is a 
 panacea for national ailments, if it is dili- 
 gently used. We all need the money; for unfor- 
 tunately we have to eat, drink, wear clothes, and 
 sleep and, in this climate, sleep under cover. This 
 is the medicine that poor little Porto Rico needs; 
 and so does Cuba; and so do the Philippine Islands. 
 No other dose goes to the spot. Why, you know 
 they said that if we would only give poor little 
 Porto Rico our domestic market, she would blos- 
 som as the rose. She got our market; and to pay 
 for it, in some things we are getting it in the neck. 
 But even at that cost to us, it did not help poor 
 little Porto Eico. She did not blossom as the rose. 
 She is hollering all the time that she is dying of 
 something on her inside. But, if Congress would 
 only build a coffer-dam around about that poor 
 little island, a good high tariff-dam, and then pump 
 out all the water of foreign competition, so Porto 
 Ricans could get their breath and build their in- 
 dustries, being sure at least of their own market 
 in which to sell things, she would begin to be happy 
 over a single one of her lovely tropical nights. 
 She would begin in a humble way, to be sure ; but 
 in as large a way as she would be entitled to, a 
 way just as large as the market furnished by her
 
 455 
 
 own people for her own products. That is all any 
 of us are entitled to. But Porto Rico certainly is 
 entitled to that; and we are a mean lot of petty 
 robbers to keep taking it from her by forcing her 
 to free trade with us, which to the enslavement of 
 her common people, merely gives a handfufl of 
 coffee and sugar planters a chance to exploit her 
 eternally, just as England exploits Ireland, India 
 and Egypt, and would, if she dared, Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, and the ancient Boer Republic. 
 
 To return to our own case, the first thing to 
 be done is to control these international peddlers 
 who constitute the Importing and Exporting 
 Trusts; and the way to do that is to control Con- 
 gress. And, with a little organization and deter- 
 mination, that is "dead easy." Our wage-produ- 
 cers, property-producers, and distributors, or 
 "business" men, should form a league in each con- 
 gressional district, the motto of which should be, 
 "This country must do every cent's worth of its 
 o\vn work and pay its own people the wages there- 
 for;'' and the practice of which should be the in- 
 dorsement of the congressional candidate of any 
 party that would work for the league in Congress 1 . 
 
 If no candidate for Congress could be found who, 
 in exchange for its indorsement, would accept the 
 commission of such a league, the league should 
 advance its own candidate. 
 
 There should be as many such leagues as there 
 are congressional districts in the United States; 
 and, as fast as formed, the district leagues should 
 become members of the National Business League, 
 an organization having the same motto as the con- 
 stituent leagues, through which the district leagues 
 could act as a unit, to pass any congressional act 
 favorable to any industry represented in the league
 
 and to defeat any such act of the contrary char- 
 acter. "All for each and each for all," should be 
 the rule of league action. 
 
 At presidential elections, the National Business 
 League should indorse and work for any candi- 
 date who would accept the commission of the 
 league to protect American wage-producers; pro- 
 vided that the platform of the party to which such 
 candidate belonged, contained the motto of the 
 league, "This country must do every cent's worth 
 of its own work and pay its own people the wages 
 therefor." 
 
 If no party would adopt the motto of the cen- 
 tral league, it should nominate its own candidate. 
 
 The final goal of the national league should be 
 a constitutional amendment covering the points 
 noted in our argument before the Court of Appeals 
 to which this is an addendum ; and with this would 
 come the final elimination of raids on the "trust^ 
 "malefactors of great wealth." and all the other 
 tricks by which international peddlers steal our 
 savings. 
 
 We cannot afford to forget that, at the back of 
 all business, stands the wage-producer, whether he 
 pushes a quill in an office or a pick in a sewer ditch. 
 He is 99% of us all. He is the country. He con- 
 sumes nearly ten times as much as the average 
 consumer in the outside world. There are some- 
 thins: over 80,000,000 of him, equivalent to about 
 300,000,000 of the average wage-producer in the 
 outside world. Why, gentle reader, if we corraled 
 him here with a sky-high tariff dike and a similar 
 tariff dam, and let goods neither out nor in, as a 
 consumer, in a few years he would be worth as 
 much to us business men as a thousand millions of 
 the half-employed and half-fed denizens of the
 
 457 
 
 "markets of the world." We could do this so 
 easily; and yet, following the beck of the inter- 
 national peddlers and the direction their dollars 
 take with congressional lobbies, we go on passing 
 the hat like beggars' around among the outside na- 
 tions, getting a few dollars of trade here and a 
 few dollars more there, and thinking we are doing 
 great wonders. The patronage of this wage-produ- 
 cer of ours is the only hope of all domestic produc- 
 tion and business ; and on the other hand, his only 
 hope is this domestic market consecrated to him 
 alone. Why not put these destructive interna- 
 tional peddlers out of their cruel business forever; 
 make them hammer their swords into ploughshares 
 and pruning hooks, take out citizens' papers, marry 
 American girls, stop Mr. Koos'evelt's anxiety about 
 race-suicide, and pull with us forever and forever 
 in keeping this domestic market exclusively for 
 our own wage-producers. The wage-producer is 
 our game. Let us multiply him, but never divide 
 or subtract or distract him. Let us keep him for- 
 ever busy, increase his pay at every possible jump, 
 and make him a better and better buyer of our 
 goods. If we do this, we business men who sell 
 things to this crowd of wage-producers will have 
 the softest cinch in steady business, steady finan- 
 ces and steady fortunes rolling our way that ever 
 was dreamed of. 
 
 Then, again, by thus casting out foreign trade 
 with its unmanageable balances and our etern"' 
 dependence upon "crops" for business stability, 
 we would solve 'once and forever the perplexing 
 currency problem. 
 
 Such a consummation, so devoutly to be wished, 
 would hitch all us real domestic business men to* 
 gether with hooks of steel, even if we had to buy
 
 458 
 
 the hooks' of the United States Steel Corporation 
 and oil the chain-joints with oil from the Standard 
 Oil Company. Why, gentle reader, we would soon 
 find that these monster "trusts'* would not bite 
 us. Bless your dear heart, they couldn't! Thoy 
 would have to work as hard for us as we did for 
 them. Do what they might; get as big and r 
 rich as they pleased; gather all the power they 
 could, they would still be our servants. For, after 
 all, all 'their wealth would be but part of the 
 common wealth of the country, driving our great- 
 est industries, paying the longest pay-rolls, and 
 sending more and more wage-producers with fat 
 wages to our shops and stores', where it would be 
 no trouble to show goods and where if our cus- 
 tomers did not see what they wanted they would 
 only have to ask for it. And all at a margin for 
 us. 
 
 We would s'oon learn that all Malefactors of 
 Great Wealth, whose total Avickedness was only 
 being wealthy, whether they liked it or not, were 
 our greatest friends; for they could not get, keep, 
 and add to wealth Avithout helping us do exactly 
 the same thing. 
 
 We American business men should all get to- 
 gether on the platform of "All American Business 
 for American Business Men." We ought to let 
 nil our old party ties go. They make us* no money; 
 but the new business ties Avould make it for us 
 and plenty of it. 
 
 In this matter of loyalty to American business 
 there should be no North, no South, no East, no 
 West; and in it there should be no Republican, 
 no Democrat, no Prohibitionist, no Labor man, no 
 Socialist, no Anarchist, and no stnlker of Male-
 
 459 
 
 factors of Great Wealth. In this combination there 
 would be wealth enough for every one if he earned 
 it. In fact, this sort of a combination would make 
 all the reasons' for the old political divisions melt 
 like mists at summer's midday. Our brain-cells 
 would all be set to the same music by our happy 
 environment. We would all be pulling in perfect 
 rhyme and time in the same direction ; that is 1 , we 
 would all be pulling away from pain and towards 
 pleasure and most of us would get there. We 
 would be wealth-shy no longer. We would be get- 
 ting so rich ourselves that none of us would like 
 to hear Jeremiads' against "very rich wrongdoers." 
 And all the time we would be gettting more and 
 more persuaded that wealth gained by hard work 
 never could hurt anybody. We would get it out 
 of our heads that Malefactors of Great Wealth 
 were any different from the rest of us. We would 
 find they were not monsters, but on the contrary 
 were very human. We would find blood in their 
 bodies. We would notice that, when we cut them, 
 they bled the same as other folk. We would also 
 find that some of them had larger and some smaller 
 hearts than ours ; and that the most of the greatest 
 of them had hearts as large and as warm as their 
 fortunes; for we would realize that, after all, sym- 
 pathy makes for success in dealing with ones fel- 
 low men and making large masses of interests 
 march in harmony, the harmony which makes great 
 wealth. If we reflected a little, we would realize 
 that the great majority of Malefactors of Very 
 Great Wealth do lots of good with their money, 
 and that it is they who endow colleges', build hos- 
 pitals, orphan asylums, libraries, and in other 
 ways do the very best thing with their money that 
 possibly could be done for broad humanity, but
 
 460 
 
 never would be done except for so much money 
 coming under the control of a single owner and 
 his having so much of it that anxiety for his own 
 outcome is laid aside and his 1 nobler impulses given 
 a chance to flourish. 
 
 But it will take some cold calculation and some 
 hard work for us to get started on this road. In 
 the first place, we have a presidential election just 
 ahead and we want to make sure and not commit 
 the same blunder we did four years ago. The last 
 man in the world to be President of these United 
 States is a man who knows nothing about hard- 
 headed business, the science of markets, and the 
 necessities of domestic trade, and who thinks he 
 can barter away the American domestic market 
 in sections, as if it were sections of his own kitchen 
 garden, giving to a favorite here one section and 
 to a favorite there another section, and generally 
 showing no more real intelligence about the coun- 
 try's absolute dependence upon domestic prop- 
 erty-production than a five-months' Louisiana bear 
 cub. What we need for a President of this coun- 
 try is a sound-headed, careful business man, whose 
 heart is too large to ignore the connection between 
 a man's employment and his stomach, and the con- 
 nection also between a man's stomach and his life; 
 and whose simple common sense is strong enough 
 to understand that you cannot give away the coun- 
 try's employment to the Cubans, the Germans, the 
 French, the Philippine Islands and other people 
 and at the same time keep it for wage-producers 
 in the United States. And rather than a politician 
 for such a place, we would prefer a man who had 
 had head enough to make a fortune of his own, 
 head enough to keep it after it was made, and
 
 461 
 
 nevertheless head enough not to lose his head be- 
 cause he had power, as the people's servant, even 
 great enough to control the press and to efface 
 Congress 1 . In short, than such a politician, we 
 would far rather see go to the White House some 
 level-headed Malefactor of Great Wealth.* 
 
 * A practical question is what candidate business men and 
 wage-producers should back in 1908 for President. Mr. Roose- 
 velt, Mr. Taft, or any one chosen by Mr. Roosevelt should he 
 out of the question. Of those who would be certain to do 
 nothing to harm American business, we mention the following 
 in their order of desirability: 
 
 SENATOR FORAKEE: He has proven himself a statesman of sin- 
 gularly fine poise and breadth. His belief in the pre- 
 sumption of innocence until guilt proven, is finely illus- 
 trated by his inquiry into the Brownsville affair. His 
 cool, logical, and patriotic defense of the Constitution in 
 the matter of the Hepburn rate-law made him many ad- 
 mirers : and his devotion to the American wage-producer 
 as against wage-producers abroad is a matter of common 
 knowledge. Altogether, Mr. Foraker would make an ideal 
 candidate for indorsement by Amercian Business and Amer- 
 ican Wage-Production. 
 
 EX-SECRETABT SHAW : Mr. Shaw, now of New York City, while 
 Secretary of the Treasury, proved himself in sympathy 
 with the principle of American Business for American 
 Business Men. He would be "safe and sane" and make a 
 fine, steady, and reliable President. 
 
 SPEAKER CANNON : Has always stood "like a stone wall" In 
 defense of the domestic market as the natural property of 
 the domestic wage-producer. 
 
 GOVERNOR HUGHES : Through the haze of an all too brief 
 public career, there loom in Governor Hughes the outlines 
 of a figure of colossal proportions in statecraft. He re- 
 minds one of Abraham Lincoln in his calmness and balance 
 and his certainty of doing the wise thing at the wise time. 
 The only point of doubt is as to his education on the mat- 
 ter of international trade and as to whether he is too much 
 in sympa'thy with the New York Importing Ring TO realize 
 the weight of the American wage-producer's claim to the 
 whole of his own domestic market. The fact that a man 
 is a Republican does not chalk him soxind on this point: 
 for Mr. Roosevelt claims to be a Republican. One great 
 thing in Mr. Hughes's favor is that he is not a politician 
 and does not pull political wires. The Presidency will have 
 to hunt for him ; for ho will never hunt the Presidency.
 
 462 
 
 But sober business men could not afford to back even men as 
 good as these, unless the Republican platform unequivocally 
 declared against any downward revision of a single item on 
 the tariff schedule ; and as unequivocally promised, a decided 
 increase in the tariff on the rising tide of European imports 
 which threatens soon to extinguish our factory fires. 
 
 Therefore, with the failure of Republican platform assur- 
 ances of the sort above outlined, or with the renomination of 
 Mr. Roosevelt, the nomination of Mr. Taft, committed as he is 
 to downward tariff revision, or of anybody at present in the 
 Roosevelt Cabinet or in any way favored by the present Wash- 
 ington regime, with its open hostility to Amercian Property- 
 Production, our business men and wage-producers should vote 
 for upward revision Congressmen, and for the uemocratic pres- 
 Identical candidate, whose election would then close up the Re- 
 publican ranks against downward revision, since neither the 
 House nor the Senate, if Republican, would consent to grind 
 Democratic free-trade axs. 
 
 The End.
 
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