"It was an easy matter for me to take a sum of money from the drawer and make away with it. I was not detected in the first peculation; this encouraged me to take more. So matters went on until I was guilty of having stolen a sum aggregating ten thousand dollars. I knew that I could not keep the game up much longer, for the annual accounting would disclose the deficit.

"Of the sums I had taken, I had less than half saved. I did not know how I was to get out of the position in which I was placed. Then the idea struck me that I might make the entire sum good if I could make a successful turn on the Exchange.

"This I determined to try.

"From the first I was successful. Soon I had three times the sum required to make up my peculations.

"I restored the money to the safe and breathed easily.

"This was my first venture in dealing with other peoples' money.

"The experience led to my entering upon a career as a banker and broker.

"For eight years I was actively engaged in rolling up a fortune. I was sought out by the Magnates of many of the largest Trusts, and they extended me unlimited credit.

"When the country was precipitated into a panic in 1893, I was not one of the sufferers; I was one of the scoundrels active in bringing the distress upon the people. I aided in the establishment of the all-powerful Money Trust.

"Later I was interested in a big mining scheme. It appeared to me to be one of the best things in which to invest money. I put the bulk of my fortune in the mining stocks, and lost.

"In attempting to retrieve my losses I dissipated my fortune to the last cent.

"The whole of my career as a banker was of a criminal nature. Nearly everything I had touched was a speculative venture. The cursed practice of watering stocks to three and four times their actual value was the common work of my days.

"At the end I was caught in the net which I had so often thrown out to ensnare others. My former partner, James Golding, the Napoleon of Finance, wrought my undoing.

"All of this leads to this conclusion:

"I am an enemy of the Trusts now, because I know their methods; I know the results that follow the practice of fict.i.tious speculation. Before you all I acknowledge that my past has been of the darkest and most disreputable nature.

"I also wish to state that I have experienced a change of heart. It has not come upon me solely because I have lost my fortune; I have felt it creeping upon me for the past three years. In my inmost heart I feel a beating that will not be stilled unless I am engaged in the work of destroying the power of the accursed Trusts.

"That there is a chance on earth for a man to redeem himself, I am confident. I have heard the call and have responded to it. I am resolved to use the rest of my strength in battling with the enemies of the people. And I am the more in earnest since I can never forget that I am personally responsible for the distress of hundreds. Widows and orphans, young and old, all have been my victims.

"What object Nevins may have in getting us to recount our grievances, I do not know; but if it will lead to any good result, he may depend upon me to give my untiring aid.

"I have but a word to add. Since my ruin, I have seen my wife and only child, a daughter of twenty, languish and die before my very eyes. This has embittered me against the men who have worked the ruin of the ma.s.ses more than anything else. I have pledged myself to avenge the sufferings of humanity. I shall be doing something for the good of the race; something to atone for the evil deeds I myself have done."

There is nothing in the recital of Harrington's life's history that is of an exceptional nature. True, no one present is aware that he had at one time been the head of the great bond issue plot.

But the delegates are looking for something of a far different tone than a mere recital of crime and a fall from affluence to penury. Several of the committeemen are on their feet demanding the floor.

Cyrus Fielding, the delegate representing the federation of stone masons, is recognized by the chair.

Fielding is a man of short stature, his eyes betray a lackl.u.s.tre that might be the result of over-indulgence in liquor or want of rest; he is thin and poorly clad, his face is cleanly shaven. At every pause in his speech he runs his fingers through his thick dishevelled black hair, and finishes this mannerism with wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. His delivery is awkward and these repeated movements intensify this awkwardness.

"I have a grievance against the Trusts that dates back as far as my birth. I never had a fair start. My father was a victim of the power of gold and I inherited his misfortune.

"My first work was as a helper in the great Pennsylvania Iron Trust's works that are owned by that old man, the self-styled philanthropist, Ephraim Barnaby, a hypocrite of the first water, who goes about the world asking people how he can best dispose of his fabulous fortune.

"From the rank of helper I soon rose to the position of foreman of the moulding shop. This was a most important place and I felt proud that I had attained it in so short a period as three years.

"It was my ambition to learn all I could relating to the work in the iron industry. Toward this end I spent four hours every night in reading and experimenting. At the end of another three years I had a fund of knowledge that put me in the front rank as a constructing engineer.

"But I was not a graduate of a college of engineering, so I could not get the degree. The opportunity of utilizing my practical knowledge by forming a competing company was closed by the bar of traffic rates.

"My employers advanced me to the rank of superintendent of the shops in the largest iron manufacturing city in the state. I had to be satisfied with a position under the iron masters.

"Then came the memorable strike that led to the killing of the men by the paid detectives of the Iron Masters.

"The claims of the men were just, and as a man I could not side against them. I put my fortune in with them. The details of the strike are known to you all. The story of the shooting of unarmed mill hands at the instance of the mill owners will never be forgotten; it has marked an era in the history of this country.

"Well, I was a conspicuous figure in those days. The strikers hailed me as a champion; the mill owners first sought to win me over; then they contrived to do away with me. Three times I was a.s.saulted by murderous men who had been hired to kill me.

"When their schemes of violence failed they resorted to the most effective method of destroying me. They discharged me and refused to let me return after the strike was declared off. Not satisfied with having turned me away from their mills they dogged my every step. Since that day I have been unable to get employment in any mill in this country.

"As I am acquainted with the methods of the iron trade I have been able to give the trade Union many valuable points. It was upon my suggestion that the amalgamation of the unions was effected.

"From my intimate knowledge of the manufacture of iron I know that the item of wage is less than fifteen per cent. of the cost of the completed casting, yet the tariff on manufactured iron is on the average thirty per cent. Where does the additional fifteen per cent. go? To fatten the pockets of the favored manufacturer. But that is only half the story.

The fifteen per cent. that is supposed to protect the American laborer, does it go for this end? Not at all. All of you are familiar with the wage schedules in the iron industry. They have not been advanced five per cent. since the imposition of the high tariff. So the manufacturer gobbles more than ninety per cent. of the tariff bounty.

"It is because I keep telling the iron workers this truth that I am hounded by the minions of the Trusts.

"We have allowed ourselves to be robbed long enough. I am an American to the back-bone, and I propose to fight the men who have disputed this country till I die.

"Let me say that to whatever Nevins may propose I am willing to lend my support, provided the ends he seeks to obtain are honorable and the means reasonable.

"As I am talking I cannot keep out of my mind the home which the Iron Masters destroyed. I had a wife and two children who loved me and were the idols of my heart. I saw this home destroyed. I saw my children turned adrift and their mother forced to work to support them; for during the first three years after the strike I could get nothing to do.

"With these memories which had as a climax the deaths of two nearest and dearest to me, I have nothing left to live for but the fulfillment of my resolve to break the power of the Monopolists who have control of this country."

"This meeting will be protracted to the middle of next week if we all take a half hour or more to tell our tale of woe," observes one of the committee who cannot foresee the end of the discussion.

The chairman asks if the members wish to limit the time of the speakers to five minutes, and this proposition meets with the approval of all.

So the remaining stories are told in short intensive sentences which describe the heart-breaking history of men who have been trodden down under the heel of monopoly.

There are examples of every type that can be imagined. Men who have been defrauded of their ideas and patents; others who have been the victims of unjust legislation, the dupes of the speculator, the betrayed friends of men who have ridden to fortune on the backs of those who gave them their first start.

Under the new ruling, the first man to be recognized is Herman Nettinger, a man known to all the a.s.semblage as an anarchist. He had been admitted to the councils on the supposition that the best way to pacify and placate the Anarchistic element was to offer them full representation in the work of regenerating the government.

Nettinger had been one of the few men who succeeded in eluding the police during the days of the reign of anarchy in Chicago in 1885.

He is a man of gigantic build, and of imperturbable placidity. When a soldier in the German army had provoked him to the point where he had to fight, this modern t.i.tan had seized his tormenter and without apparent effort had dashed the man's brains out by b.u.t.ting him against the wall of the barracks. For this episode Nettinger had been compelled to serve eleven years in the military prison.

During these years he had familiarized himself with the teachings of the socialists, for his companions were, many of them, students of sociology. Upon his release he had come to this country. He invented a compressed air motor, but the American Motor Trust robbed him of his patents.

In the s.p.a.ce of five minutes Nettinger strives to defend the theory of anarchy. He denounces all government as a make-shift, and a.s.serts that man should accordingly dispense with the forms of government and depend upon animal instinct to regulate the social community. He names Samuel L. Bell, chairman of the International Patent Commission, as the man who contrived to rob him of his patent rights.

The meeting adjourns at the conclusion of this harangue.