When the routine of business has been gone through with, the chairman announces that the meeting will proceed to the consideration of new business, if there is any.

William Nevins, the man who had carried the Stars and Stripes at Hazleton, now a committeeman who has always taken a subordinate part in the work, asks to be heard.

Supposing that he is to speak on the one subject uppermost in the minds of the committee, the chair recognizes him. Rising from his seat in the back of the room Nevins walks to the front of the hall, and standing before the chairman, half turns so as to face the men in the a.s.sembly.

From his first words it is apparent that he has a matter of grave concern to impart. The attention of all is engaged.

"Mr. Chairman," he begins, "I am unaccustomed to speech-making; yet on this occasion I feel that I am capable of expressing myself in a manner that will be clear and forceful. I am to tell you a few truths, and in uttering the truth there is no need of depending on rhetoric or oratory.

"As you all know, I am a poor man. How I came to be reduced to a position little better than beggary is not known by any of you, for I have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will be called upon to discuss later.

"We have no time to hear the life-story of any one," sententiously observes a man in the front seat.

"But you will have to take time to hear me," retorts Nevins, and he continues.

"I was a graduate of Yale, in the cla.s.s of 1884. My name was not Nevins, then. After a year spent in travel in Europe I returned to the United States and began to practice my profession of a civil engineer, in the city of New York. My father had died when I was a child and had left my mother a fortune of about $40,000. From this sum she derived an income of $2000 a year. She gave me an allowance of $800 up to the time that I began to work as an engineer.

"Two years after I had entered the office of a leading railroad I planned an extensive change in the working of the road and submitted it to the president. He approved of the suggested changes and put the matter before the board of directors. Shortly afterward I was informed that I could proceed with the work. The work was accomplished and the officials were more than pleased. They made me chief engineer of the road and a stockholder. I soon had a considerable block of stock. Then a great Magnate looked at the road with covetous eyes, and ruin came upon us.

"The stock of the road was depreciated and borne down on the Exchange until the road became insolvent. All my money was in the road, and when the crisis came I found myself stranded. The King of the Rail Road Trust, Jacob L. Vosbeck, bought up the stock and then raised it to even a higher figure than it had ever before attained.

"Ill-luck followed me and I have gone down, down, until I can scarce make a living as a draughtsman in a shop. The curse of monopoly has caused my ruin. I did not succ.u.mb to fair compet.i.tion. I am now enlisted in a fight against the usurpers of the free rights of the people, and I declare to you all, that I am in this fight in dead earnest. By an appeal to justice we can gain nothing.

"I was one of the sixty miners who were attacked on the highway at Hazleton by the High Sheriff of Luzerne County. I witnessed the mock trial in Wilkes-Barre. I have thought of all the possible means the Trusts have left to us, and find that there is but one available.

"They have all the money and all the agencies of the law; they have intimidated the humble and ignorant workingmen until these poor creatures are no better than serfs, and to be a.s.sured of bread, they work as voluntary slaves.

"What is there for us to do but to fight the magnates with their own weapons? Intimidation is their deadliest method. The horrible picture of a starving family is held up before the wage-earner, and he is asked if he will vote to put his wife and children on the street. He is told that if he will accept starvation wages, the Trust will let him make such wages. In desperation he accepts the terms.

"What I propose is to intimidate the criminal aggressors so that they will fear to make their fortunes at the expense of the honest, hard working and credulous people.

"How shall it be done? Ah! it is a simple matter."

Here the voice of the speaker becomes husky, and he turns to face the chairman of the committee. In almost a whisper he exclaims: "I propose to give them an object lesson. They have given many to us." Again he resumes his normal voice.

"Have you not seen mills closed before election time so as to coerce men to vote as the mill owners directed? Has not this suspension of work brought distress, starvation, death, to thousands of homes? Is it not murder for men of wealth to resort to such means to win an election in a free country?

"Well, I now propose to form a syndicate--a Syndicate of Annihilation!"

"Mr. Chairman," cry half a dozen voices. "Mr. Chairman, Point of order!

Point of order!"

Before the chair can recognize any of the speakers a general commotion ensues. Men begin discussing with one another excitedly; there is a perfect bedlam.

All the while Nevins remains standing as if awaiting an opportunity to resume his speech.

At the expiration of some minutes order is restored so that his voice can be heard. "Permit me to explain," he cries.

The committeemen, as if acting by a common impulse, cease to squabble, and are attentive again.

"I propose to hear the circ.u.mstances under which each of you has been brought to the condition that leads you to combine against the Trust; and if there is sufficient ground for belief that you will be zealous workers in my syndicate, I will admit you to membership. No man who has not had a more serious grievance against the Robber Barons than I have outlined, will be eligible. _I have told you but one incident of my case._

"The work that I shall outline to you after hearing your stories, will require stout hearts to carry it into execution.

"It cannot be accomplished by fanatics. It requires the concerted efforts of men of sound judgment; men of courage. The a.s.sa.s.sin is a coward at heart--the political martyr must be valiant."

The novelty of the suggestion that has just been made is the first thing that appeals to the minds of the committee. They begin to realize the horrid character of the proposition. Much discussion follows. Men want to know what Nevins means by a Syndicate of Annihilation. Whom does he intend to murder? Annihilation and murder are considered synonymous.

To all questions Nevins replies that the details will be given as soon as the men recite their grievances.

Professor Talbot and Hendrick Stahl, the two men who are in the secret with Nevins, advise the members of the committee to comply with the demands.

Then begins the strange, startling recital of the stories of human distress. Of the forty men of varying professions and trades, there are those who tell of their efforts to stand up under the weight of the yoke of commercial despotism. Each man is of impressing character and strong individuality.

The chairman, Albert Chadwick, is the first to tell his story. It is the prelude to the concerted cry of the oppressed--the cry which has sounded through the ages as the one never varying note in the music of the universe; the dread inharmonic monotone that marks the limitation of humanity, exhibiting man's inability to convert the world into a paradise.

CHAPTER IX.

ARRAIGNMENT OF THE TRANSGRESSORS.

Standing upon the little platform which serves as a rostrum, Chadwick, a man of fifty, seared and bent, lifts his hand to command the attention of the committee.

He is a figure that would do credit to the brush of a great artist. His appearance is that of a man who has been deprived of the power of looking at the world as a place of rest; he is a bundle of nerves, and at the slightest provocation bursts into a storm of irascibility. A tortured spirit lurks in his soul and is visible in his stern, tense features.

As he begins the recital of his grievances against the Trust, it is apparent that he means to give the audience an embittered story. So the attention of all is centered upon him.

"Human liberty is the boon which man has sought since the dawn of creation; it has furnished the incentive for his struggle to reclaim the earth from the domination of brute force; it is the inherent idea that the founders of this Republic sought to embody in the Const.i.tution. But Liberty must have as a complement unhampered opportunity," are his opening words.

"The man who is dependent upon another for his livelihood is not capable of enjoying real liberty, or of attaining happiness. When the men of a nation are debased to a position of minor importance, where they can only act as servants, they lose the stamina necessary to make them good citizens. This condition now prevails in the United States.

"My own experience will exemplify this statement.

"Forty years ago I attained my majority. I was a citizen of the state of Pennsylvania, and considered that I was a freeman. By the death of my father I had come into a fortune of fifty thousand dollars. I lived in the oil region, and sought to engage in the oil industry. To this end I purchased land contiguous to a railroad. On my holdings a well was located which yielded three hundred barrels of oil a day.

"No sooner had I begun to operate my well than the agents of the Oil Trust, which had then but recently sprung into existence as a menace to individual refining, came to me with a proposition to incorporate my well in the Trust's system. The well was capable of earning a net profit of seventy thousand dollars a year. The Trust offered me a paltry two hundred and thirty thousand dollars for my plant. This I refused to accept, for the actual value was one million dollars.

"Then by crafty insinuation the agents of the Trust intimated that unless I sold my property and accepted inflated stock in the Trust and allowed my well to be absorbed in the system, I would find myself opposed by the mighty consolidation. Still I refused to abrogate my right to conduct an independent business.

"Failing to allure me by their offers, which would have proved valueless in the end; or of intimidating me by their threats, the agents reported to the office of the Trust that I was obdurate and must be disciplined.

"Accordingly pressure was brought to bear on the railroad over which I sent my product to a market. The railroad discriminated against me; it gave the Trust a rebate on all oil shipped over the road and made me pay the full schedule rates. Even against this detrimental condition I was able to sell my oil at a small profit.

"I might have survived the unequal struggle had not the 'pipe line'

system been introduced. By this the Oil Trust transports its oil to the sea-board at a cost that enables it to undersell all compet.i.tors. And for a time the price of oil was reduced, and all the minor compet.i.tors were driven into bankruptcy or forced to sell out to the Trust at a ridiculously low figure.