CHAPTER IX

Beneath a big oak Pole stood holding his bridle-rein and waiting, his

earnest gaze on the long road leading to Jeff Wade’s farm. Suddenly he

descried a cloud of dust far ahead and he chuckled.

“He’s certainly on time,” he mused. “He must ’a’ had his hoss ready out

in the thicket. Mel made good time, too. The dern devil is thirstin’ fer

bloodshed. Mel’s that sort. By gum, that hain’t Wade; it’s Mel hisse’f,

an’ he’s certainly layin’ the lash to his animal.”

In a gallop Jones bore down on him, riding as wildly as a cowboy, his

broad hat in one hand, a heavy switch in the other. He drew rein when he

recognized Baker.

“Did you deliver that message?” Pole questioned.

“Oh, yes, I finally got him alone; his wife seems to suspicion some’n,

and she stuck to ’im like a leech. She’s a jealous woman, Pole, an’ I

don’t know but what she kinder thought Jeff was up to some o’ his old

shines. He was a sorter tough nut before he married, you know, an’ a man

like that will do to watch.”

“Well, what did he say?” Pole asked.

“Why, he said ‘all hunkydory.’ The spring plan ketched him jest right.

He said that one thing—o’ bloodyin’ up the main street in town—had

bothered him more than anything else. He admired it in Floyd, too. Jeff

said, ‘By gum! fer a town dude that feller’s got more backbone than I

expected. He’s a foe wuth meetin’, an’ I reckon killin’ ’im won’t be sech

a terrible disgrace as I was afeared it mought be.’”

“But whar are you headin’ fer in sech a rush?” Pole asked.

Jones laughed as he put his hat carefully on his shaggy head and pressed

the broad brims up on the sides and to a point in front. “Why, Pole,” he

answered, “to tell you the truth, I am headed fer that thar spring. I’m

goin’ to acknowledge to you that, as long as I’ve lived in this world, I

hain’t never been on hand at a shootin’ affair. Mighty nigh every man I

know has seed oodlin’s of ’em, but my luck’s been agin me. About the most

excitin’ thing I ever attended was a chicken fight, and so I determined

to see this un. I know a big rock jest above that spring, and I’m a-goin’

to git thar in plenty o’ time. You let me git kivered all but my eyes,

an’ I’ll run the resk o’ gettin’ hit from thar up. Whar you makin’ fer,

Pole?”

“Me? Oh, I’m on the way home, Mel. I seed the biggest rattlesnake run

across this road jest now I ever laid eyes on. I got down to settle his

hash, but I didn’t have anything to hit ’im with, an’ I’m done stompin’

at them fellers sence Tobe Baker, my cousin, over at Hillbend, got

bliffed on the knee.”

“Well, so long!” Mel laughed. “I’ll hunt rattlesnakes some other time.

Are you plumb shore you hain’t got the jimmies agin’, Pole? Take my

advice an’ don’t tell about seein’ snakes; it sets folks to thinkin’.

Why, I seed you once in broad daylight when you swore black spiders was

playin’ sweepstakes on yore shirt front.”

“So long, Mel!” Pole smiled and waved his hand. He made a fair pretense

at getting ready to mount as Mel galloped away in a cloud of dust. The

horseman was scarcely out of sight when a pair of fine black horses

drawing a buggy came into view. The vehicle contained Captain Duncan and

his daughter Evelyn. She was a delicate, rather pretty girl of nineteen

or twenty, and she nodded pleasantly to Pole as her father stopped his

horses.

“You are sure that thing’s off, are you, Baker?” the planter said, with a

genial smile.

“Oh, yes, Captain.” Pole had his eyes on the young lady and had taken off

his hat, and stood awkwardly swinging it against the baggy knees of his

rough trousers.

“Well, I’m very glad,” Duncan said. “I know you told some of the crowd

back at the store that it had been settled, but I didn’t know whether it

was reliable or not.”

Pole’s glance shifted between plain truth and Evelyn Duncan’s refined

face for a moment, and then he nodded. “Oh, yes, it was all a mistake,

Captain. Reports get out, you know; and nothin’ hain’t as bad as gossip

is after it’s crawled through a hundred mouths an’ over a hundred

wigglin’ tongues.”

“Well, I’m glad, as I say,” the planter said as he jerked his reins and

spoke to his horses.

As he whirled away Pole growled. “Damned ef I hain’t a-makin’ a regular

signpost out o’ myself,” he mused, “an’ lyin’ to beat the Dutch. Ef that

dern fool don’t come on purty soon he’ll—but thar he is now, comin’ on

with a swoop—looks like his hoss is about to run from under ’im, his

dern legs is so long. Now, looky here, Pole Baker, Esquire, hog-thief

an’ liar, you are up agin about the most serious proposition you ever

tackled, an’ ef you don’t mind what you are about you’ll have cold feet

inside o’ ten minutes by the clock. You’ve set in to carry this thing

through or die in the attempt, an’ time’s precious. The fust thing is to

stop the blamed whelp; you cayn’t reason with a man that’s flyin’ through

the air like he’s shot out of a gun, an’ Jeff Wade’s a-goin’ to be the

devil to halt. He’s got the smell o’ blood, an’ that works on a mad man

jest like it does on a bloodhound—he’s a-goin’ to run down some’n. The

only thing in God’s world that’ll stop a man o’ that sort is to insult

’im, an’ I reckon I’ll have that to do in this case.”

Jeff Wade was riding rapidly. Just before he reached Pole he drew out his

big silver open-faced watch and looked at it. He wore no coat and had on

a gray flannel shirt open at the neck. Round his waist he wore a wide

leather belt, from which, on his right side, protruded the glittering

butt of a revolver of unusual size and length of barrel. Suddenly Pole

led his own horse round, until the animal stood directly across the

narrow road, rendering it impossible for the approaching rider to pass at

the speed he was going.

“Hold on thar, Jeff!” Pole held up his hand. “Whar away? The mail hack

hain’t in yet. I’ve jest left town.”

“I hain’t goin’ after no mail!” Wade said, his lips tight, a fixed stare

in his big, earnest eyes. “I’m headed fer Price’s spring. I’m goin’ to

put a few holes in that thar Nelson Floyd, ef I git the drap on him ’fore

he does on me.”

“Huh!” Pole ejaculated; “no, you hain’t a-goin’ to see him, nuther; that

is, not till me’n you’ve had a talk, Jeff Wade. You seem in a hurry, but

thar’s a matter betwixt me an’ you that’s got to be attended to.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Wade demanded, a stare of irritated

astonishment dawning in his eyes.

“Why, I mean that Nelson Floyd is a friend o’ mine, an’ he ain’t a-goin’

to be shot down like a dog by a man that could hit a nickel a hundred

yards away nine times out o’ ten. You an’ me’s close together, an’ I

reckon chances ’ud be somewhar about equal. I hain’t a brag shot, but I

could hit a pouch as big as yourn is about as easy as you could me.”

“You—you—by God, do you mean to take this matter up?”

Jeff Wade slid off his horse and stood facing Pole.

“Yes, I do, Jeff; that is, unless you’ll listen to common sense. That’s

what I’m here fer. I’m a-goin’ to stuff reason into you ef I have to make

a new hole to put it in at. You are a-goin’ entirely too fast to live in

an enlightened Christian age, an’ I’m here to call a halt. I’ve got some

things to tell you. They are a-goin’ to hurt like pullin’ eye-teeth, an’

you may draw yore gun before I’m through, but I’m goin’ to make a try at

it.”

“What the——?”

“Hold on, hold on, hold on, Jeff!” Pole raised a warning hand. “Keep that

paw off’n that cannon in yore belt or thar’ll be a war right here before

you hear my proclamation of the terms we kin both live by. Jeff, I am

yore neighbor an’ friend. I love you mighty nigh like a brother, an’ I’m

here to tell you that, with all yore grit an’ good qualities, you are

makin’ a bellowin’ jackass o’ yoreself. An’ ef I let you put through yore

present plans, you’ll weep in repentance fer it till you are let down in

yore soggy grave. Thar’s two sides to every question, an’ you are lookin’

only at yore side o’ this un. You cayn’t tell how sorry I am about havin’

to take this step. I’ve been a friend to yore entire family—to yore

brothers, an’ yore old daddy when he was alive. I mighty nigh swore a

lie down in Atlanta to keep _him_ out o’ limbo when he was arrested fer

moonshinin’.”

“I know all that!” growled Wade; “but God——”

“Hold yore taters now, an’ listen! You mought as well take yore mind

off’n that spring. You hain’t a-goin’ to git at Nelson Floyd without you

walk over my dead body—an’ thar’s no efs an’ ands about that. You try

to mount that hoss, an’ I’ll kill you ef it’s in my power. I say I’ve

got some’n to tell you that you’ll wish you’d listened to. I know some’n

about Minnie that will put a new color on this whole nasty business; an’

when you know it, ef you kill Nelson Floyd in cold blood, the law will

jerk that stiff neck o’ yourn—jerk it till it’s limber.”

“You say you know some’n about Minnie?” The gaunt hand which till now

had hovered over the butt of the big revolver hung down straight. He

stood staring, his lip hanging loose, a sudden droop of indecision upon

him.

“I know this much, Jeff,” Pole said, less sharply. “I know you are not

after the fust offender agin yore family honor, an’ when I prove _that_

to you I don’t believe you’ll look at it the same.”

“You say—you say——?”

“Listen now, Jeff, an’ don’t fly off the handle at a well-wisher sayin’

what he thinks has to be said in justice to all concerned. The truth is,

you never seed Minnie like other folks has all along. You seed ’er grow

up an’ she was yore pet. To you she was a regular angel; but other folks

has knowed all along, Jeff, that she was born with a sorter light nature.

Women folks, with the’r keen eyes, has knowed that ever since she got out

o’ short dresses. Even yore own wife has said behind yore back a heap on

this line that she was afeared to say to you. Not a soul has dared to

talk plain to you, an’ even _I_ wouldn’t do it except in this case o’

life an’ death.”

Wade shook back his long, coarse hair. He was panting like a tired dog.

“I don’t believe a damn word of what you are a-sayin’!” he muttered, “an’

I’ll make you prove it, by God, or I’ll have yore life-blood!”

“Listen to me, Jeff,” Pole said gently. “I’m not goin’ to threaten any

more. Believe me or not, _but listen_! You remember when Thad Pelham went

off to Mexico a year or so ago?”

Wade made no reply, but there was a look of dawning comprehension in his

great, blearing eyes.

“I see you remember that,” Pole went on. “Well, you know, too, that he

was goin’ with Minnie a lot about that time—takin’ her buggy-ridin’ an’

to meetin’. He was a devil in pants; his whole family was bad. The men

in it wouldn’t go in the gate o’ heaven ef a woman was winkin’ at ’em on

the outside. Well, Thad started fer Mexico one day, an’ at the same time

Minnie went on a visit to yore brother Joe in Calhoun.

“She went thar a year ago,” Wade said, “fer I bought ’er ticket at

Parley.”

“She told _you_ she went to Calhoun.” Pole’s eyes were mercifully

averted. “I met her an’ Thad in Atlanta.”

Wade caught his breath. He shook from head to foot as with a chill.

“You say—Pole, you say——?”

Pole pulled at his mustache and looked down.

“Well, I reckon they wasn’t down thar to attend a Sunday-school

convention, Jeff—they didn’t have that look to me. But I was so worried

fer fear I mought be doin’ a woman injustice in my mind that, after they

left me—to make sure, I went in the office o’ the hotel an’ made sure.”

Suddenly Wade put out his hand and laid it heavily on Pole’s shoulder.

“Looky here, Baker,” he said, “if you are lying to me, I——”

“Hold on, _hold on_, Jeff Wade!” Pole broke in sternly. “Whenever you use

words like them you smile! So fer, this has been a friendly talk, as I

see it; but you begin to intimate that I’m a liar, an’ I’ll try my best

to make you chaw the statement. You’re excited, but you mustn’t go too

fur.”

“Well, I want the truth, by God, I want the truth!”

“Well, you are a-gittin’ it, with the measure runnin’ over,” Pole said,

“an’ that ought to satisfy any reasonable man.”

“So you think then, that Nelson Floyd never done any—any o’ the things

folks says he did—that ’twas jest report?”

“Well, I ain’t here to say that, nuther,” said Pole most diplomatically.

“But la me! what a stark, ravin’ fool you was about to make o’ yoreself,

Jeff!” Pole went on. “You started to do this thing today on yore sister’s

account, when by doin’ it you would bust up her home an’ make her life

miserable.”

“You mean——?”

“I mean that Joe Mitchell, that’s been dead stuck on Minnie sence she was

a little gal, set up to her an’ proposed marriage. They got engaged an’

then every old snaggle-toothed busybody in these mountains set in to try

to bust it up by totin’ tales about Floyd an’ others to ’im. As fast as

one would come Minnie’d kill it, an’ show Joe what a foolish thing it was

to listen to gossip, an’ Joe finally told ’em all to go to thunder, an’

they was married an’ moved on his farm in Texas. From all accounts they

are doin’ well an’ are happy; but la me; they wouldn’t be that a-way long

ef you’d ’a’ shot Nelson Floyd this mornin’.”

“You say they wouldn’t, Pole?”

“Huh, I reckon _you_ wouldn’t dance a jig an’ sing alleluia ef you was to

pick up a newspaper this mornin’ an’ read in type a foot long that yore

wife’s brother, in another state, had laid a man out stiff as a board fer

some’n that folks said had tuck place some time back betwixt the man an’

her.”

“Huh!” Wade’s glance was now on Pole’s face. “Huh, I reckon you are

right, Pole, I reckon you are right. I wasn’t thinkin’ about that.”

“Thar was _another_ duty you wasn’t a-thinkin’ about, too,” Pole said.

“An’ that is yore duty to yore wife an’ childern that would be throwed

helpless on the world ef this thing had ’a’ come off today.”

“Well, I don’t see _that_, anyway,” said Wade dejectedly.

“Well, _I_ do, Jeff. You see, ef you’d ’a’ gone on an’ killed Floyd,

after I halted you, I’d ’a’ been a witness agin you, an’ I’d ’a’ had to

testify that I told you, in so many words, whar the _rale_ blame laid,

an’ no jury alive would ’a’ spared yore neck.”

“I reckon that’s so,” Wade admitted. “Well, I guess I’ll go back, Pole.

I won’t go any further with it. I promise you not to molest that scamp.

I’ll not trade any more at his shebang, an’ I’ll avoid ’im all I kin, but

I’ll not kill ’im as I intended.”

“Now, you’re a-talkin’ with a clear head an’ a clean tongue.” Pole drew a

breath of relief and stood silent as Wade drew his horse around, put his

foot into the heavy wooden stirrup and mounted. Pole said nothing until

Wade had ridden several paces homeward, then he called out to him, and

beckoned him back with his hand, going to meet him, leading his horse.

“I just thought o’ some’n else, Jeff—some’n I want to say. I reckon I

wouldn’t sleep sound tonight, or think of anything the rest o’ the day,

ef I don’t git it off my mind.”

“What’s that, Pole?”

“Why, I don’t feel right about callin’ you to halt so rough jest now, an’

talkin’ about shootin’ holes in you an’ the like, fer I hain’t nothin’

agin you, Jeff. In fact, I’m yore friend now more than I ever was in my

life. I feel fer you _’way down inside o’ me_. The look on yore face cuts

me as keen as a knife. I—I reckon, Jeff, that you sorter feel like—like

yore little sister’s dead, don’t you?”

The rough face looking down from the horse filled. “Like she was dead an’

buried, Pole,” Wade answered.

“Well, Jeff”—Pole’s voice was husky—“don’t you ever think o’ what I said

a while ago about shootin’. Jeff, I jest did that to git yore attention.

You mought ’a’ blazed away at me, but I’ll be derned ef I believe I could

’a’ cocked or pulled trigger on you to ’a’ saved my soul.”

“Same here, old neighbor,” said Wade as he wiped his eyes on his shirt

sleeve. “I wouldn’t ’a’ tuck them words from no other man on the face o’

God’s green globe.”

When Wade had ridden slowly away Pole mounted his own horse.

“Now, I’ll go tell Nelson that the danger is over,” he said. Suddenly he

reined his horse in and sat looking thoughtfully at the ground.

“No, I won’t,” he finally decided. “He kin set thar an’ wonder what’s

up. I was in a hair’s breadth o’ the grave, about to leave a sweet wife

an’ kids to starvation jest beca’se of him. No, Nelsy, old boy, you look

death in the eye fer a while; it won’t do you no harm.”

And Pole Baker rode to the thicket, where he had hidden his bag of

cornmeal that morning, and took it home.

(_To be continued._)

_A Phase of the Money Problem Bankers Dare Not Discuss_

BY ALBERT GRIFFIN

_Author of “The Keynote: Substitute Honest Money for

Fictitious Credit,” “The Hocus Pocus Money Boon”_

Because of limited space, this paper contains little more than

principles, facts and conclusions, without argument—and the subject is

considered from the practical man’s standpoint rather than that of the

theorizer. The one monetary proposition to which all schools agree is

that “money is the medium of exchange.” To be used as such is its one

and only universally admitted purpose—and no other characteristic is

essential. No matter of what it consists, whatever is _willingly_ used by

people as their medium of exchange is money, and should be so recognized

by everyone—but unfortunately, the greater part of it is not.

There is honest money and dishonest money. None is strictly honest that

is not as good as the best—for exchange purposes. Ideal money has the

same exchange value at all times, and everywhere—and the best money

is that which is nearest the ideal. Without discussing what it should

consist of, I hold that the material ought to be more substantial than a

banker’s “confidence” that he will always be able to pay the most of his

debts with mere debits and credits. As business cannot be done without

money, and as each person needs enough of it to enable him to exchange

his services and products for the services and products of others, it

goes without saying that there ought to be enough to supply each and all

liberally—and that no man, or set of men, should be allowed to affect

materially this supply for selfish purposes.

To most people, the soundness of the “quantitative theory” of money is

self-evident. Concisely stated, it is that, whenever the quantity of

money in circulation increases faster than the exchanges to be made with

it, commodities tend to rise in price—and _vice versa_—which is but the

application to money of the inexorable law of supply and demand. While

the soundness of this theory is generally admitted, every business

man knows that sometimes facts seem to disprove it. In 1890, when the

failure of Baring Brothers so nearly precipitated a panic throughout this

country, the quantity of visible money in circulation was increasing;

and the same fact was true in April, 1893, when the proceedings agreed

upon at the conference between Secretary Carlisle and prominent New York

bankers precipitated a fearful panic on the next business day—and yet, in

both of these cases, the apparent conflict resulted from the suppression

of a part of the facts.

Now for the explanation: In comparing the size or weight of two masses

the whole of each must be contrasted with the whole of the other, and

in comparing two actively operating forces all of the factors of each

must be considered together, without regard to names. But, strange to

say, three-fourths of what is being used and paid for as money, and which

really does the work of money, and does nothing else, is denied the right

of being called money by some doctrinaires—and also by bankers, when

talking to the public. Although between May 1 and October 1, 1903, the

volume of metallic and paper money actually increased, this something

which had been doing the work of money was contracted $500,000,000 in

New York City alone—but as it was not called money its relation to the

results was not generally recognized.

Deposit banks are little more than clearing-houses; and the laws permit

their owners to pay nine-tenths of their debts with money literally made

by themselves—out of nothing—which they coolly call “liquid capital,”

or “bank credit,” although it is neither capital nor credit. The real

nature and far-reaching effects of this modern practice are not clearly

understood by one in twenty even of the bankers themselves—and none of

them dares discuss it publicly. The most of those that do not fully

understand it _feel_ that there is something wrong about it; and those

that do understand it know that, if people once begin to study “the

system,” they will demand radical changes in it—or its entire abolition.

Government reports for 1904 put the volume of metallic and paper money

then in existence at $2,829,273,316—or $31.16 per capita; and the

Comptroller’s report shows that the banks whose reports he consolidated

were earning interest on more than $6,278,000,000 of money that had no

existence—or $76.47 per capita. This stuff is what, for a dozen years,

I have called “hocus pocus money.” It consists of nothing but, in the

language of Professor Sidgwick, rows of figures on bank books; and yet

it affects business, prices and values, exactly as that amount of real

money would. Invisible, intangible and mythical, it is nevertheless very

real—filling the land with prosperity, joy and song today, and disaster,

tears and despair tomorrow, it is the most potent economic power ever

known. Business men gladly accept it as money. _The courts treat it as

money._ And, although, for technical reasons, most political economists

do not do so, I insist that, to all intents and purposes, it is money,

and should be so recognized. Indeed, until this shall be done, it will be

impossible to frame a monetary system that will always work equitably and

beneficently.

Between 1896 and 1904, as officially reported, the increase in the volume

of visible money was, in millions, $1,322,000,000—or $9.75 per capita;

but the quantity of hocus pocus money in use increased $5,275,000,000—or

$43.42 per capita—the quantity of both kinds then actually in use being

$107.63 per capita. This shows that four-fifths of the increase in the

medium of exchange consists merely of the right given favored people to

draw checks on banks to pay which no real money has been deposited.

In 1888, 5,866 bank reports showed that they were then collecting

interest on $3.41 for each dollar of their capital available for

“commercial loans”; but last year’s reports of the 13,772 national, state

and private banks and loan and trust companies show that their aggregate

capital (including surplus, undivided profits and bank-notes) amounted

to $2,927,000,000. This was everything their owners had put into their

business, and of it $2,743,000,000 had been paid out for bonds, stocks,

real estate, real estate mortgages, etc., leaving only $183,000,000

available for “commercial loans.” And yet their “loans and discounts”

aggregated $6,431,000,000, or $35.07 of “commercial loans” for every

dollar of their not otherwise invested capital. If this is not “_getting

something for nothing_” on a stupendous scale, I should like to know what

would be so considered.

Remember, that these figures include all of the reported banks.

Individual cases are incomparably worse. On December 2, 1899, the

National City Bank, of New York City (the principal of the several

hundred Standard Oil banks), had $6,709,216 of capital, surplus, etc.;

its investments of capital aggregated $27,270,738; its available capital

was therefore $20,561,519 _less than nothing_; and yet it was then

actually earning interest on $60,906,034 of “loans and discounts,” making

$81,467,553 of hocus pocus money. And remember further that, to make

people more dependent on banks for this kind of money with which to do

business, the volume of real money is kept as small as possible. This is

the real reason why bankers engineered the contraction of the currency

after the war and the demonetization of silver. But for them no class of

business men would have consented to either of those economic crimes.

Here are a few more important facts:

1. Interest has to be paid _to the banks_ on every dollar of hocus pocus

money as long as it lives.

2. It lives, on an average, only about two months.

3. Every payment of a note or draft extinguishes the hocus pocus money

involved in that transaction and contracts its volume that much, making

it the most constantly and wildly fluctuating money ever known.

4. Whenever, for any reason, bankers fear a demand for an unusual amount

of real money they make fewer “loans” and “call in” some that are

outstanding, which destroys that part of the “liquid capital” that was in

actual use as a medium of exchange and cramps the money market.

5. Bankers sometimes do these things unnecessarily, for the purpose of

making a “bear market”; but it is also true that business conditions

sometimes compel them to do so, as was the case in 1857 and 1873.

6. If the banks had on hand as much money as they reported (which is not

always true), they, in 1888, owed $6.01 for every dollar they reported;

and last year the proportion was $9.98 to $1. The sixty-two national

banks in the central reserve cities are required to keep nearly 25 per

cent. of their deposits on hand in cash; the 285 in the other reserve

cities only 12½ per cent., and the 5,065 in non-reserve cities only 6

per cent. State bank requirements vary greatly, private banks and loan

and trust companies are under few or no restrictions, and the loan and

trust companies keep only about 2 per cent.

7. Less than one-tenth of the “deposits” in banks are real money—the

others being mere promises of the banks to pay money to those who

have bought (with notes) the right to draw checks against them—and it

is simply impossible to so regulate the system as to prevent it from

frequently working disastrously.

8. Contracting the volume of any kind of money that is willingly accepted

by producers always causes suffering. Indeed, modern conditions require a

large annual increase in the volume of money; and, with an insufficient

supply of real money, it is not now possible to prevent the use of hocus

pocus money.

9. It is well known that, when their interests seem to require it, great

bankers defy the laws made to restrain them.

10. There ought to be places in which people can deposit money and know

it will remain there until checked out by themselves.

For ten years I have called attention to the fact that there never has

been, in this or any other country, a widespread commercial panic that

was not caused _solely_ by the sudden contraction of the hocus pocus

money then being used by banks, and have challenged contradiction; but

this challenge has never been accepted. Hocus pocus money _is the one and

only seriously disturbing factor that has always and everywhere preceded_

these catastrophes. Other causes aggravate them, but, with it eliminated,

panics would be impossible, because it is this sudden, absolute

destruction of the bank’s manufactured “liquid capital,” used by so many

as their medium of exchange, which paralyzes their business operations

and makes “the bottom drop out of the market,” as it were.

No words are lurid enough to portray properly the terrible evils and

personal suffering that its use causes, and I submit that it is time

people should begin to consider earnestly the question, Had we not better

insist that some kind of real money shall be substituted for the unreal

now in use, and thus permanently remove the cause that so often produces

such baleful results? Conditions were never so favorable for doing this

as they are now. No election is pending; the two great parties are lazily

talking on similar platforms; all financial organs insist that the

country is prospering; and, although people are deeply stirred, they are

not excited.

The use of hocus pocus money, and its evil results, have increased

steadily from the beginning of the deposit banking system. From time to

time methods change, but every change increases the power and profits

of the few—and the helplessness of the many. The gravest of these

changes began to be felt about a decade ago. Leading bankers had always

used some of their hocus pocus money for the promotion of their own

schemes, but from that time the Rockefellers, Morgans and others have

been systematically getting control of the principal deposit banking

institutions, and using, not only a rapidly increasing proportion of

their depositors’ real money, but also more of the hocus pocus money

made possible by those deposits. Mr. Lawson and others have shown how

this has been done on a gigantic scale, in specific cases, and of all

unfossilized, sober-minded people I ask, can 999 business men afford to

permit the thousandth man to continue appropriating to his own use the

hocus pocus money their own deposits have made possible—and, in addition,

help him to keep the volume of real money ruinously small? Indeed, would

it not be idiotic folly to do so?

To me the problem appears to be: How can hocus pocus money be safely

eliminated—or so restricted as to be harmless—and the quantity of real

money so increased that all will, at all times, be able to exchange

their products and services; that commercial panics and long periods of

business depression will become impossible; and that a few men in each

community will no longer have the power to ruin all who refuse to obey

their orders?

Space will not permit me to tell here how this can be done, but I will

say that, fortunately, this greatest and most overshadowing of the

economic problems that confront humanity is the easiest of all to solve;

that, as bankers are the controlling spirits in—or back of—nearly all

trusts and combines, settling the money problems will make the solution

of all the others easier; that it can be done without wronging anyone, or

imposing additional burdens on the people; and that economic and social

conditions would improve during the entire process.

But suppose that some of my conclusions may not be correct, does not the

experience of the last hundred years prove, beyond controversy, that our

banking and financial systems must be radically unsound in some very

important particulars? And, if so, should we not insist upon their prompt

improvement—or the substitution of better ones?

Every business man knows that, if the banks were required to keep larger

reserves always on hand, they would be safer places of deposit. And they

are equally well aware that the more real money there is in circulation

the more prosperous and happy are the people. And the vitally important

question is, not how far or how fast shall we go, but, shall we not begin

to move steadily and determinedly in the direction of less danger and

more permanent prosperity?

_A Leaf From a Protective Tariff Catechism_

(OVERHEARD IN A PROTECTIVE KINDERGARTEN)

BY JOEL BENTON

Q. What is Protection?

A. It is placing a duty upon foreign goods, of many kinds, to enable

American makers of similar goods who “plead the baby act” to get higher

prices for those goods than they otherwise would. It is compelling all

the people to pay taxes to a few of the people.

Q. Why is this favor given to the few people?

A. On account of the fact that they pay so much higher wages than foreign

manufacturers do and to compel them to pay still higher wages.

Q. Is this necessary?

A. It is very necessary to the Republican Party; for it gives it an issue

and its chief cause for existence. When it saw accomplished, by the

fortune of war, the freedom of the slave, what could be more natural and

glorious than its ready espousal of anti-freedom for commerce?

Q. Are “protective” duties always just equal to the difference between

our wages and foreign wages?

A. That is what our argument implies; and, if our argument is true, that

is all we can ask. But how is a noble army of patriots to be maintained,

and how can election expenses be met if we do not—in our tariff—treble

and more than quadruple this difference often?

Q. Are high wages given by our manufacturers without an equivalent

advantage in return?

A. It is true of wages, as of other things—that they are ordinarily worth

their price, so that our _high-priced_ labor is really labor of _low

cost_. But it is a mighty convenient subterfuge to keep this fact out of

sight and by this means hoodwink the poor laborer for his vote.

Q. Do manufacturers keep a lobby at Washington for securing a tariff that

makes them pay _high_ wages and yet sell their goods at _low_ prices?

A. That is what we very often say, substantially.

Q. Can our manufacturers sell goods abroad?

A. They do very largely over other tariff walls, and bear the expense

of transportation and insurance and secure handsome profits. But the

question is too delicate a one to enlarge upon.

Q. Does Mexico have a protective tariff?

A. She does. The plea for it there is that it is a defense against our

_high-priced_ labor. The Mexican peons work for very _low prices_ and at

a more than correspondingly _high cost_. It is one of the beauties of

Protection that, whether labor costs little or much, you can plead for it

for either reason.

Q. Does Protection help Agriculture?

A. It puts a tariff on hay, grain, potatoes, eggs, etc. Very little of

any of these commodities are imported by us. When they are imported to

any extent the farmers are the chief buyers, as they are of peas, beans

and other seeds for planting. By paying the duty on all these things

themselves they not only feel certain there is a duty, but they have the

satisfaction of knowing they are not forgotten in the great “protective”

scheme.

Q. Why is Protection called the American System?

A. This was the question Daniel Webster asked Henry Clay, who so named

it, when they were not in accord upon the tariff. Webster was puzzled

by the name, for he knew the system was European and medieval; but

“American” sounds well and makes us consistent in berating foreign things

and ideas.

Q. How does Protection help commerce?

A. Commerce is so foreign we don’t need to help it. So we let it go to

the miserable foreigners—what we permit to exist. It is really better to

pay the two hundred million dollars we pay them yearly to carry our goods

than to let that amount of money pervert our high and noble doctrine.

Q. What is meant by having the tariff “revised by its friends”?

A. That, as the English say, is a good “half-crown phrase.” But its real

meaning is to oppose revising the tariff in any way whatever. Several

elections have been carried by this plea, and we are still working it

for all it is worth. Of course no one goes to have his shoes mended to a

shoemaker who is in favor of their holes and lack of heels, and no one

selects depredators of hen-roosts to watch chicken thieves; but we must

not defer to ordinary rules when “the noble citadel of Protection” is in

danger.

Q. Is it understood that to change the tariff injures business?

A. We always say that, and charge to Free Trade the calamity that ensues.

Q. Suppose someone tells us there has been no Free Trade, and if Free

Trade existed there would be no tariff to change, and therefore no injury

from tariff changes?

A. Then is the time to look wise and say little. For our main object is

to make Protection the source of all good and Free Trade the cause of all

evil.

Q. How did it happen that, when hides were freed from duty in 1872—and

even by the McKinley bill—they were taxed under the Dingley bill?

A. Well—but—let’s see. Why shouldn’t hides enjoy prosperity? It’s certain

the big cattle dealers, who use the Government pastures without cost,

profit by the duty, while we can claim it helps the farmers.

Q. Why are works of art tariff?

A. Not because the artists ask for Protection. They’re such curious

people that they all oppose it. So we choose to be benevolent to them in

spite of their eccentric behavior.

Q. What other peculiar tricks have our Protection wise men?

A. A pretty good one is to say that we are not tied up to any present

or definite “schedules,” but to remember constantly that, if any change

is made in the tariff, it must be one that goes up and never one that

goes down. It was a great mistake for Garfield to say, “I believe in a

Protection that leads to Free Trade.”

Q. What is Reciprocity?

A. It is—well, suppose you should build a bonfire and then pour water on

it, or build a levee on the Mississippi and then punch holes through it.

It is a part of our consistent scheme. Blaine knew, and who can dispute

Blaine?

Q. What is Free Trade?

A. It is any scale of duties for any purpose that is the least bit lower

than the Dingley bill. Everything that preceded that “bravest tariff

ever made” is Free Trade. If some day Protection should climb to loftier

heights, those who should oppose it by the lower Dingley bill would be

Free Traders.

Here a boy, who got surreptitiously into the class, asked this

unauthorized question:

Q. But you say this country has prospered under almost unbroken

Protection. Now, since everything tariff-like before the Dingley bill is

either Free Trade or Free Tradish, why is not all our prosperity up to

the passage of that owing to Free Trade?

A. A boy cannot be expected to understand the flexibility of our

nomenclature or the grandeur of a great principle. We are struggling to

help “American Industries.” Must so little a thing as mere consistency

stand between us and our friends? Boys should be seen and not heard.

Q. What is meant by American Industries?

A. Mainly manufactures. Of course these, and all protected interests,

represent only from 5 to 8 per cent. of the real and total industries of

the country. But they are the ones having large capital and power—the

ones that can hire attorneys and maintain a lobby, and that have abundant

“fat for frying” when important elections are at hand. Doesn’t “American

Industries” sound well, if you only mouth it right, and roll it from the

editorial pen and the platform often enough?

Q. How about the industries that are left out, or get merely nominal

Protection?

A. The question is quite irrelevant. What more can they ask than to live

in a “protected” country and be saved from Free Trade?

Q. Why do we protect woolen goods, and then de-protect manufacturers by

“protecting” wool?

A. For the same reason that the boy cuts off a shoestring on one end

and ties the cut-off piece on the other end. It amuses the boy and very

likely helps us to get rid sooner of a foreign shoestring.

Q. Mention the value of Protection to American shipping.

A. It doesn’t hurt it; for, by its aid and the help of our navigation

laws, there is none to hurt. The way to have ships is first to make it

impossible for us to build them, and then give enough subsidy to make

it possible. Now you see the little joker and now you don’t. Didn’t

President Harrison almost shed tears when he hauled up the American

flag on a steamer rescued from a foreign register? It isn’t possible to

have Protection and have everything, but isn’t it lovely to make things

impossible at much expense and then make them possible at more expense,

and at last call in a President and have a melodramatic time about it?

Besides all this, it employs money and promotes labor.

Q. Does Protection make wages _high_ and goods manufactured _low_?

A. That is what our philosophers maintain. Manufacturers are so anxious

to exist here, and it is so necessary that we should have them, that

they must pay high for their labor and sell its product low. To avoid

paying but a little for labor, and to be prevented from selling their

goods at high prices, they are even willing to maintain expensive lobbies

at Washington and contribute large sums for electing Protectionists to

Congress, to say nothing of “hypnotizing” doubtful or opposing senators.

Q. Can the first part of the above answer be really so?

A. It must be. A Protection journal had for its headlines on a Protection

article the other day the statement that for many years Protection had

done for manufacturers just this: It has made the wages they give _high_

and the prices they get _low_, and so they would be splendidly off if it

were not for the shadow of that wicked Wilson bill.

Q. Does prosperity then consist in enlarging your expenses and reducing

your income?

A. It always does in Wonderland and Topsy-Turvydom, and under Protection.

Q. But do not “protected” manufacturers import laborers?

A. Manufacturers are held by us to be benevolent. Of course they import

laborers, in order that there may be more here to get the benefit of our

higher wages.

Q. How about invention under Protection?

A. It isn’t necessary. So long as you can run the old ramshackle

machinery, and be defended by the Government, you are saved the trouble

of inventing newer and better methods. Some way might possibly be found

if Yankee wit were once to be let loose, whereby we could compete with

other nations in our manufactures, so that everybody would admit it, and

then what would become of Protection? Remember constantly it isn’t the

welfare of the people that is paramount; it is Protection.

Q. Protection being so much more necessary than free government, free

soil, free speech, and so cherubically philanthropic when compared with

the dreadfulness of British Free Trade, the question arises, How shall

we maintain its propaganda?

A. We must first of all be very careful to say that Free Trade is

British. Of course Magna Charta, including trial by jury and many other

good things, are British too, but we mustn’t lose so good a stock

argument. It is true, also, that England has prospered far more under

Free Trade than she ever did under Protection. But the glorious Blaine

accounted for that by saying that Free Trade might be good for England,

but it must never come here. In other words, two and two make five or six

over there, but here they fail to make four.

Q. What next must we do?

A. As our country has been very prosperous from its commencement, and

we have had more or less Protection within that period, the best way is

to say that all this has happened “under Protection.” It has happened

_under_ other things, too, both good and evil, because it couldn’t

happen _over_ them. But never let us forget that it was all caused by

Protection. The very slight fact that our country was most prosperous

when we had very low revenue duties is purely accidental and irrelevant.

In Mr. Blaine’s history of his career in Congress he described the period

of our greatest prosperity. But there was no election in view then, and

he was careless enough to say that this period coincided with what is

called the period of the Free Trade tariff of 1846. It was a dreadful

mistake, because the statement was altogether too true, and Protection

has no use for that which is merely true.

Q. There are other arguments, are there not?

A. A very decisive one is to call Free Trade a theory. For it is a theory

of the Creator, who seemed to favor the idea of commerce along with

civilization. But He, of course, left something for men to find out. The

Chinese found out in the twelfth century that a big wall around their

country would keep off nations that were savage and hostile; but the

Republican Party have gone the Chinese one better and have walled off

trade. No doubt some college Free Trader will ask you ironically if it is

really the man who walks on his feet who is the theorist and innovator,

and if the one who walks on stilts, and who tries to get everyone else on

stilts, and who thinks it is a mistake that people were not born already

stilted—as nations should have been already walled—is not one. But levity

like this is what a great cause must not notice.

Q. What more must be said?

A. We must take pains to compare the United States with some foreign

country. As we have already shown that everything good that has occurred

here is wholly owing to Protection, we must take some foreign country and

charge all that is bad there, such as the costly armies, the despotic

or kingly rule, the dense population, the illiteracy, etcetera, to Free

Trade. There are no really Free Trade countries in Europe except England,

and possibly Belgium. They are protective in part. But they are foreign,

and that is sufficient for the argument. Only put the excess of our

benefits over theirs to the benefit of Protection, and all will be right.

Q. What shall we say about cheapness and dearness?

A. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say we must be all things to all men? If we

do seem to oppose somewhat the solidarity of humanity, we meet in our

arguments a variety of mental difficulties. Our Apostle Harrison went

for dearness by not wanting to find a cheap coat, for fear he should

find a cheap man under it. Another Apostle thought “cheap and nasty go

together.” At the final period of a Presidential election, however, it

is better to say that Protection makes things cheap, and our editors

almost always take that cue. To be sure, if cheapness were our intention,

Protection could not be established, and we could not cry out against

“cheap pauper labor.” The arguments must therefore be shuffled—and cheap

and dear must sometimes be taken and at other times denied. The question

is more or less of a crux, but it is the beauty of the noble doctrine

of Protection that all trivialities of this sort it majestically sweeps

away. Not being amenable to any of the laws of human reason, it is not

disturbed by such trifles as truth and consistency.

Q. But can’t we say the foreigner pays the tax?

A. We certainly can and we do. But this argument needs very cautious

handling. Sometimes duties are collected through the Post-Office, when

the cat is let out of the bag and the duty comes directly to the man

to whom the package is addressed. If he asks to have it charged to the

foreign country his goods came from, even a Republican postmaster will

sometimes laugh at him. Such perverse incidents as this are what Artemus

Ward might call “in-fe-lick-et-us”—very.

Q. How was it when Congress removed the tax from sugar?

A. Well—sugar isn’t everything. It won’t do to be too one-sided. We could

not resist telling the public then that we had removed a heavy burden

from _its_ shoulders. We really hated to tax the foreigners so much.

Q. What can be argued about the terms Protection and Free Trade?

A. Argument is superfluous here. The very word Protection is an

assumption that meets all our requirements. It forecloses argument and

shuts off dispute. Who doesn’t wish to be “protected”? And how charming

it sounds to say we are protected from burglars, from enemies and from

the horrors of trade—that is, trade with a foreigner. It must be always

understood that if you could stand near the Canada or Mexico boundary and

make a good bargain on the other side—say, the purchase of a horse for

fifty dollars less than you could purchase him in your own country—you

would inflict upon yourself and your country just so much loss. But if

you buy the horse here at a price higher by fifty dollars, or over a

tariff, with the fifty dollars added, you enrich both yourself and your

country. On this doctrine, which is our fundamental one, we must and can

stake everything, and against it the frothy waves of Free Trade will beat

in vain.

Q. Why is not Free Trade also a felicitous term?

A. Things that are in themselves good, and that are made free and

abundant, are, we must admit, generally to be approved. Abundant health

or abundant friendship or abundant money we have not yet thought it

wise to consider objectionable. But there are exceptions to all rules.

Abundant trade—or Free Trade—which is trade done voluntarily by shrewd

and sane men in order to procure abundant money, is different. To have

it otherwise would upset our whole system of philosophy. What was this

land of the free made for, if its main purpose were not to put shackles

on trade? What we want is to eat our own cake and have it too; to sell

everything we can to foreigners and buy nothing from them, and finally to

get fat by stewing in our own juice.

The term Free Trade—to refer to the original question—is now so

asphyxiated by us, by our contempt of it, that it suggests a Pandora’s

box of horrors the moment we mention it. To speak of it in this

contemptuous way is really one of our strong arguments. What we want is

to scream it out as a horror, to make it a bugbear. It is like telling

children of some dreadful bogy lying in wait for them in the dark, or

like Dr. Johnson’s experiment with the fishwoman of Billingsgate, when

he called her a hypothenuse, a triangle, a parallelopipedon, and several

other mathematical things of which she had not the faintest knowledge and

which she consequently supposed were very bad.

No, whatever else we do, let us stick to our insistent and persistent

screech against Free Trade.

_Monopoly; The Power Behind the Trust_

BY JOSEPH DANA MILLER

How comes it that a power in its unimpeded operations beneficent—namely,

the force or forces of combination or co-operation—becomes under certain

conditions so injurious to modern industry? Why is a union of two

factories or many factories, of two companies or many companies, a signal

to the community of anticipated extortion? And why should the development

of natural laws—those of combination and co-operation—provoke a public

demand for regulation, and those who avail themselves of these operations

be deemed amenable to punishment?

We may grant that a perfected combination which should succeed in

forestalling any given commodity would be criminal. The law from its very

beginnings has so regarded all such attempts. It is conceivable that,

under certain conditions, a mere agreement between individuals might

perfect a combination clearly within the provision of the law compelling

its forcible dissolution. But this is not conceivable under modern

conditions where wide distribution of capital and free labor exists. Law,

indeed, may create such monopolies, which it may by popular demand be

called upon to destroy, undoing with one hand what it has done with the

other. State-created monopolies have existed often in history—as notably

in the reign of Queen Elizabeth—but because these have been created

by direct act they have been exceedingly unpopular. So, in periods of

greater public intelligence, and where the people exercise larger powers

of government, it became necessary to accomplish the same result by

indirect means, by putting into operation some general law under which

monopoly could find a shelter, and the secret sources of which could not

be so easily traced.

For, contrary to the almost universal opinion, monopoly is weak. It

demands protection. And from what does it demand protection? From the

all-powerful natural law of competition. The curious Socialist notion

that competition leads to monopoly is true only in the sense that

monopoly, seeing how powerless it is when threatened by the forces of

competition, seeks the protection of such laws as it can secure, or which

already exist, for the suppression of competition. And this brings us to

the conclusion which is unavoidable that there are no monopolies save

law-created monopolies.[1]

If this seem a novel proposition to the reader I will ask him not to grow

impatient, for the demonstration will grow upon him as he reflects. It

will seem novel, for if true all the laws and statutes for the regulation

of combinations are so much waste of time and paper and the hours of

legislatures and courts. In the acceptance of such explanation of the

trust problem must go the rejection of many proposed remedies, among

them the much-lauded one of “publicity.” While publicity is always to

be commended and sought for in public or semi-public matters, it does

not appear that laws enforcing publicity upon purely private industrial

combinations are founded upon equity. Nor is it likely that publicity

will assure us the possession of knowledge beyond what we already have

through the work of independent investigators. Nor is it probable that

enforced publicity will elicit impartial truth. This proposition is of a

piece with the punitive theory in the treatment of the problem, a theory

which has already led the people far astray. Men shrink instinctively

from such stringent regulation, and this is a true index of the moral

relation, if we may so speak, of this problem to legislation. But because

they will not think clearly they return to the proposition of legal

interposition.

Along with the remedy of “publicity” must go all laws, existing or

proposed, limiting capitalization or stock watering. Beyond the fact

that such laws would often force capitalization below the earning

capacity—which is no unfair basis of capitalization—it must be said

that the evils of stock watering are largely imaginary. It is true

that over-capitalization may conceal from the public the real extent

of monopoly profits, and is for this purpose, if for no other, often

resorted to. But this of itself ought to constitute no valid reason

for drastic legislation. Investors ought to be left free to take their

own risks, and speculative ventures ought to be left free to fix their

own capitalization, for otherwise perfectly legitimate, if largely

speculative, business interests may be made to suffer injuriously to

the interests of the community. But laying aside for the time all

considerations of this kind, stock watering is only a symptom—a sign that

monopolistic powers, and not legitimate business interests, are being

capitalized.[2]

High capitalization, it is sometimes said, tends to increase price. It

does offer temptation to increase of price, but nothing can put it

within the power of combinations to increase price save the forces of

monopoly. This power you do not increase or decrease by adding to the

numbers of the counters, the considerations governing which are purely

those of the stock-gambling fraternity.

National licensing of corporations to do business—a remedy proposed by

Mr. Bryan and adopted by President Roosevelt—must also be dismissed.

Obviously if the state has endowed corporations and armed them with

letters of marque by authority of which they may prey upon commerce,

it is the height of absurdity to ignore this feature of the question

with talk about licensing them. In a very real sense they are already

licensed, for it must be repeated that combinations do not create the

monopoly, but merely avail themselves of the monopolistic powers created

by society through acts of Government.

Of necessity all such laws must fail. This, it is scarcely necessary to

say, has been the universal experience. And from future legislation no

more is to be hoped than from past legislation, however well intentioned.

The reason why all this anti-trust legislation is futile is because,

having created monopoly privileges, Government has appealed to the

natural instincts of all men to seek these opportunities and benefits.

Such laws are attempts to give effective form to the public’s foolish

anathemas against impulses shared by everybody, and are therefore as

futile as the Pope’s bull against the comet. When we understand that

these great trusts are monopolies that Government has made, we will

realize why it is that Government cannot unmake them by any other process

than by removing the causes of their creation.[3] Books prescribing

such anti-trust legislation may continue to cumber the libraries of our

lawyers, and streams of statutes may continue to pour from the lawmaking

bodies of states and Nation, but these will be either positively harmful

or wholly harmless, never effective.

We are, indeed, “fooling” with natural laws, and we can do so only at our

peril. The law of competition and the law of co-operation or combination

are what they have often been called, the centripetal and centrifugal

forces of social economics. Competition is often a painful but really a

merciful process; it weeds out the useless and the inefficient; selects

unerringly its business leaders; destroys, but where it destroys builds

up; rescues from the mass the individuals and processes most fitted to

survive, and out of chaos brings order. It replaces obsolete with more

perfect organization, and where such organization becomes unwieldy it

replaces organization with individuals, reverting to the earlier type of

industry. Thus the country store is succeeded by the store in which is

sold but one line of goods, and this is succeeded by the mammoth type of

country store, the great city’s department store; and the development

of the last named type seems again to revert to the second—viz., a

congeries of stores in which each is distinct from the other, each

attaining a reputation for competitive excellence in one line of goods,

thus illustrating in the retail trade the interplay of the forces of

competition and combination.

Just as there is a limit fixed to the bounds of competition, so there

is a limit to the bounds of combination. The maximum of combination

and the maximum of efficiency are not the same. There is a point in

the progress of combination beyond which it does not, or would not

naturally advance—and that is when it reaches the maximum of efficiency.

It seems very likely that the element of monopoly in society today forces

combination far beyond the point of the most efficient co-operation.

These natural laws may not be “regulated.” Such laws are not for

regulation, but for obedience. We may impede, we may interrupt their

operation, but only to our injury. The most we can do is to regulate our

institution by these laws, as we trim a sail to the wind and tides; we do

not attempt to “regulate” wind and tides; and these laws of co-operation

and competition are of the same order—natural laws which to disobey is to

be destroyed.

We hear much superficial talk about “the wastes of competition.” The

Socialists play into the hands of the trust apologists who defend them

on the ground that competition leads to waste. Beyond the fact that

competition has never yet been fully tried, that it has never yet been

wholly free, and that such waste as it entails is inseparable from

the natural process which weeds out the incompetent, the antedated

and the unskilled—a process of which the waste is but incidental to

the conservation—is that these combinations do not seek primarily to

escape the waste of competition so much as to avail themselves of those

artificial laws which prevent competition from doing its perfect work.

The term expressing the opposite of competition is not combination,

but monopoly. Professor Jenks, in his work, “The Trust Problem,” falls

into this error when he speaks of combinations in the retail trade as

overcoming the “friction” of competition, instancing associations of

hardware dealers, druggists, etc. Here, he says, we have an element

of combination from which he assumes the element of competition has

been eliminated. But his error is in the analogy he seeks to establish

between such agreements from which the element of competition cannot be

expelled, and agreements which are based upon the control of some special

privilege created by law, and of which the great railroad and industrial

trusts are examples, and which people have in mind when they talk of the

“trust problem.”

Clearly no monopoly exists nor can be made to exist in the retail trade.

Agreements may be made, but they will be broken; and the fact that they

can be broken by isolated individuals who can thus separate themselves

from the combination, and by their separation cause it to dissolve, is

proof that the monopoly element does not exist. For the monopoly element

in the possession of the great trusts is the potent weapon with which

the combinations can compel the recalcitrant member to return, or beat

him into starvation. From mere agreements in the retail trade, such

as Professor Jenks instances, the primary element of monopoly being

absent, desertions are fatal, and for this reason such combinations are

never effective as means for extortion, though they do often arrest the

sacrifices of keenly competing retailers. And the illicit intrusion of

such examples is a favorite trick of the trust apologist, who, when the

evils of the trust are pointed out, grows righteously indignant over

the right of men to combine—which nobody seriously disputes—or points

out with superfluous wealth of illustration how combination effects the

cheapening of production—which nobody ever really denies. For the same

reason labor unions cannot be considered as effective monopolies—though

the trust apologist does not forget them in his special pleas—for the

reason that they possess no effective legal privilege.

But to avoid a possible misunderstanding let us now answer a query which

may have risen in the mind of the reader. Is competition or combination

the beneficent law of industry? Both; for one is the complement of the

other. They exist together, and together they effect the industrial

progress of the world. But monopoly is the negation of both, since

further combination or co-operation is no longer possible where monopoly

is complete. And where there is competition there will be combination,

healthy, rational, continuous, and competition will determine its

development and direction. The defense of the trust based upon the

economic benefits resulting from the elimination of the unskilled is a

defense of the principle of combination present under free competition,

and is in no sense a defense of monopoly of which what we know as the

“trust” is the manifestation. Such discussion, together with much talk of

the wastes of competition, which helps to swell so many pretentious works

on the trust problem, is so much irrelevant “padding.”

That the trusts avail themselves of all possible economies in production

has often been urged in their defense. Certainly such economies are

not needed to secure a monopoly in possession, nor does it seem that

the greatest incentives to their adoption are present. The sacrifice

of inventions rather than their use by these great monopolies is proof

that they do much to prevent such economies. A monopoly can be induced

to accept only with difficulty improved devices which under the spur of

competition it would gladly avail itself of. Thus in the Post-Office,

which is a monopoly, though a Government monopoly, improvements are

introduced only with the greatest difficulty.

If combination can of itself effect monopoly, why are huge sums set

aside by these great corporations to influence legislation? Why are

contributions made to the campaign funds of the two great parties? Is

it not because these combinations seek to perpetuate their monopolistic

privileges? It may be said that it is contributed to effect the defeat

of “strike bills.” But what would a business partnership, not in some

way dependent upon previously existing legislation, care about “strike

bills”? Why does the American Sugar Refining Company (according to the

testimony of Mr. Havemeyer) contribute in some states to the Republican

campaign fund, and in other states to the Democratic campaign fund?

As an example of the kind of defense urged by the trust apologists here

is a work entitled, “The Trust; Its Book,” containing articles from

the pens of Charles R. Flint, James J. Hill, S. C. T. Dodd, Francis B.

Thurber, and others. It is a plea of “confession and avoidance.” The

authors fight shy of even the hated term monopoly, and content themselves

with defending the right of combination. Not one of them appears to

think that the popular outcry against trusts is founded on anything but

utter ignorance; and they therefore devote themselves to showing the

advantages of large scale production—as if that were the question. All

this seems purely disingenuous. It is hardly conceivable that men who

know so well the effects of monopoly, who know how potent has been the

use by combination of existing laws securing the possession of special

privileges, should write this way from any other motive than to becloud

the issue. We can acquit them of intentional deception far less readily

than the professors of political economy. The latter may be at once

exonerated, since it is incredible that men who have become involved in

the self-created subtleties of modern economics should retain sufficient

clearness of comprehension to see anything in its proper relation.

If it be true that there are no monopolies save law-created monopolies,

it only remains for the state to undo the work it has done. The means by

which the state, consciously or unconsciously, has fostered monopolies

may be removed, and a new, and up to this time untried, method for

remedying the evils of trusts be set in motion.

Before we can agree to this, however, we must understand what monopoly

is. Briefly stated, it is the power to charge more than a competitive

price for a commodity or service. This power can be permanently secured

by the favor of Government, and in no other way. An agreement between

individuals cannot accomplish it, since such agreements, even if they

include all individuals in interest, which is impossible, or at all

events inconceivable, would infallibly be broken. The only way such

agreements may be made effective is for Government to make powerless, or

nearly so, the potential competitive elements or individuals in interest.

This it does in several ways, or to be explicit, chiefly in three ways.

By Land Laws,

Tax Laws,

Laws Regulating (or that fail to regulate) the use of the steam highways

of the country.

I know of no other source of monopoly unless it be our patent laws. But

these being—originally at least—rewards of invention, the injury results

from their misuse.[4] Even the misuse of patent laws is not one of the

chief potent influences in the perpetuation of monopoly. But without, in

most cases, adding to the power of monopoly, which derives its strength

from other causes, it puts in the hands of the great combinations the

power to arrest progress. The value to society of an invention is in

its use. Under present misuse of patents, inventions are held out of

use and are often bought up and destroyed for the purpose of depriving

competitors of the use of like improvements, or because such inventions

would often reduce the machinery in present use to the value of old iron.

Clearly, if industrial progress is to be made to yield its full results,

some change in our patent laws is imperatively called for. Were the law

of competition allowed to work freely, the use of such inventions,

even under present patent laws, would be determined largely by the law

of self-preservation. For the sources we have indicated are also the

sources to a degree of the patent monopoly. In a competitive market for

the use of an invention the inventor would be less likely to part with

his invention, even under the present patent system. Where the bidding is

artificially restricted the inventor sells at a disadvantage. Monopoly

has the inventor at its mercy. But however this may be, nothing less than

the free use of an invention to everyone willing to pay a royalty to the

inventor for its use will do justice to the inventor and meet, at the

same time, the interests of the great public and the necessary demands of

industrial progress.

Certain superficial economists, misled by recent manifestations in trust

building, have hastily concluded that the problem it presents is a new

one. For example, Collier, in his work on the subject, says: “The problem

of the trusts is a momentous one, yet it is unqualifiedly a new one.”

Of course it is not new. It is the same old problem of monopoly, and

the so-called trust problem is but a phase of it. It is the problem of

monopoly crystallized. The evils of the trust rivet the public attention,

not because they are more real than the evils of monopoly _per se_, but

because they are more obvious. In some respects the trust, by combining

certain elements of monopoly, tends to make monopoly more perfect and

its operations more harmful. But it simply avails itself of monopolistic

institutions—that is to say, it is built upon land, railroad or tax

monopoly; it takes to itself certain privileges which society has created

and which have hitherto been appropriated and exercised by individuals.

It therefore immediately makes these evils concrete. The trust is thus

a manifestation, and the people, with their customary thoughtlessness,

attack the manifestation rather than the thing itself—the fruit of

monopoly rather than the tree.

The great combinations which suggest themselves when we think of the

trust problem—is there one of them which does not owe its existence to

some monopoly privilege? What would the Standard Oil Company be but for

its control of rights of way, sources of supply, railroad terminals and

the preferential benefits it is enabled to secure? What is the Steel

Trust but a network of artificial privilege? Has not Mr. Charles E.

Russell clearly shown, in his recent articles in _Everybody’s Magazine_,

that the Beef Trust draws its life-blood from its monopolization of

railroad privileges? What would the Sugar Trust be without the favors

it receives from the tariff in its control of the raw material? Could

the Tobacco Trust exist save for the power of taxation which strangles

competition?

Those mentioned include nearly all the greater trusts. A more detailed

demonstration of the truth we are insisting upon could be given, but the

reader can himself carry this line of analysis further. He will find that

it explains the existence of every oppressive combination, and that it

leaves little unresolved or unexplained. It may happen that injurious

combinations will present themselves in which this element of monopoly

does not clearly appear. But these are by-monopolies, so to speak, and

their sources of power may be traced to indirect association with the

giant monopolies.

Let us admit all the good there is in aggregated capital. Let us take the

trust advocates at their word that industry should be left free of all

meddling, repressive or restrictive legislation. Is there, then, a common

ground upon which we can meet? To think so is to delude ourselves. For

their objection is not so much to mischievous laws of this sort as to

interferences with things as they are. Their plea for _laissez faire_ is

hollow and insincere; true _laissez faire_ would render every combination

of capital innocuous for evil; there would be no mammoth aggregations of

wealth in the hands of single individuals and no plethoric incomes.

The law of competition, let the Socialists prate as they will, gives

only to those who earn. But from the denial of this law (of competition)

flows all existing inequality in the distribution of wealth. There are,

it is true, great swollen fortunes, which seem unconnected with these

artificial laws of monopoly. Some of these, while clearly not the result

of greater enterprise or greater ability, seem to be due to cunningly

arranged devices independent of existing monopoly laws. But this is so

in appearance only. There are no such made-to-order arrangements of

industrial combination that can be used for extortion. Competition is

too keenly scrutinizing for such arrangements to go undetected. The

inevitable day when imitation shall overtake them can only be permanently

postponed by seeking the shelter of monopoly.

Some of these gigantic fortunes are the result of stock speculation. But

these are incidental, and are the profits and losses of the gambling

fraternity—a game really played with the counters of monopoly, like

“chips” in a poker game, and the transference of which from one to

another enriches or depletes the finances only of those who play. They

do not concern the man who refrains from taking part in the game, and

whether it be played with railroad stocks or industrials is no great

matter. If these gamblers sometimes use the moneys on deposit in public

institutions—as Mr. Lawson has asserted they do—that also is another

question, though a momentous one.

With the dissolving of these giant combinations which would result from

the removal of the laws of monopoly would disappear the great host of

gamblers and stock jugglers. The great fortunes that result from the

granting of legislative favors would also disappear, since there would be

no longer any legislative favors to grant. And so with many other unjust

possessions. And with them would be banished forever much that corrupts

our social and political life.

[1] In his definition of a trust Mr. John Moody, author of the “Truth

About Trusts,” says: “When men form corporate organizations, or make

agreements, they do not form monopolies. They may take advantage of

monopoly in one way or another, but they do not create it. The monopoly

itself is a social product, which exists with the consent of society,

and men in business take advantage of it where found, just as they take

advantage of other factors for the purpose of achieving their ends.”

[2] Charles M. Schwab, in his testimony before the Industrial Commission

at Washington in excuse of the apparently excessive capitalization of the

Steel Trust, estimated as the approximate valuation of plants, mills,

machinery and transportation properties the sum of $380,000,000, but the

value of the ore, coal, natural gas and limestone properties he put at

the enormous sum of $1,100,000,000.

[3] This is vaguely recognized by the trust advocates and those who have

written on the subject. Professor Jenks, who is one of the most temperate

and discriminating, says: “So far as the industrial combinations are the

result of special advantages granted to individuals or corporations,

whether by the state or by others, it is probable that in most instances

the evil effects would be lessened, if not completely removed, by the

removal of such discriminating powers.” Which is barely more than an

involved method of stating that the removal of a cause will also result

in removing the effect.

[4] Undoubtedly the control of patents is an effective source of monopoly

in very many instances. Some of the large combinations have succeeded in

obtaining control practically of all the patents used in certain lines of

manufacture. That this is a potent source of power one instance alone may

suffice to prove. Professor Jenks tells us that all of the barbed wire

made in this country at the present time, as well as the wire fencing, is

in the hands of the American Steel and Wire Company because that company

has all the valuable patents, with one or two exceptions, in those lines

of manufacturing.

_The Heritage of Maxwell Fair_

BY VINCENT HARPER

_Author of “A Mortgage on the Brain”_

(_Conclusion_)

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS

Maxwell Fair, an Englishman who has amassed a colossal

fortune on ’Change, inherits from his ancestors a remarkable

tendency to devote his life to some object, generally a

worthy, if peculiar one, which is extravagantly chivalrous.

The story opens with Fair and Mrs. Fair standing over the

body of a man who has just been shot in their house—a

foreigner, who had claimed to be an old friend of Mrs. Fair.

Fair sends her to her room, saying: “Leave everything to me.”

He hides the body in a chest, and decides to close the house

“for a trip on the Continent.” Fair tells the governess, Kate

Mettleby, that he loves her; that there is no dishonor in

his love, in spite of Mrs. Fair’s existence, and that, until

an hour ago, he thought he could marry her—could “break the

self-imposed conditions of his weird life-purpose.” They

are interrupted before Kate, who really loves him, is made

to understand. While the Fairs are entertaining a few old

friends at dinner, Kate, not knowing that it contains Mrs.

Fair’s blood-stained dress, is about to hide a parcel in the

chest when she is startled by the entrance of Samuel Ferret,

a detective from Scotland Yard. He tells her that he, with

other detectives, is shadowing the foreign gentleman who

came to the Fair house that day and has not yet left it. He

persuades Kate to promise that she will follow the suspect

when he leaves the house and then report at Scotland Yard.

As soon as Ferret is gone she lifts the lid off the chest,

drops the package into it, and, with a shriek, falls fainting

to the floor. Mr. and Mrs. Fair run to her aid. On being

revived Kate goes to Scotland Yard, where, in her anxiety to

shield Maxwell Fair from suspicion, she inadvertently leads

the detectives to think that a crime has been committed at

the Fair house. The two detectives are piecing together the

real facts from the clues she has given, when Ferret is

summoned to the telephone by his associate, Wilson, whom he

had left on guard in the home of the Fairs. Fair tells Sir

Nelson Poynter, at the latter’s country place, that he has

committed some crime, and explains that Mrs. Fair is not his

wife—that a Cuban scoundrel had married her, already having

a wife, and deserted her, and that he, Fair, had brought her

and her children to England, giving her his name before the

world, yet being her husband in name only. Sir Nelson and

Fair’s other friends, Allyne and Travers, begin to suspect

his sanity.

“But what is the ridiculous idea that has turned your head? What sort of

idiotic crime would you ask us to believe that you have committed? Come,

sir, out with it—what’s the charge against this villainous man?” asked

Sir Nelson, with equal certainty and confidence.

“Only a trifle,” answered Fair. “Just a quiet little—murder!”

“That settles it,” shouted the good old fellow, thumping his knee with

his clenched fist. “That settles it, sir. Sir Porter will have you in a

straitjacket before night. Murder, eh? You burglar, forger, pirate—you!”

Fair waited until Sir Nelson had had his laugh, and then said with

irritating persistency: “Quite another sort of jacket, I think, sir.”

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” retorted Sir Nelson, and then, abruptly changing

the subject and his own expression, “but, I say, Fair, why have you never

married Janet? She was, of course, free?”

“I don’t wonder at the question,” Fair replied, relieved at the change.

“That of course was the first question which presented itself to my

mind. But by the time that Janet came back into my life the old love had

passed away—or perhaps I should put it another way—the love I now found

myself bearing for her was of a different sort. I am a Fair, you know,

Sir Nelson, and destiny demanded that the passion of my life be not like

those of ordinary men. So Janet seemed to come to me not as a woman whom

I might think of as a wife, but as a holy, consecrated, crucifying Idea

which fate had destined should be the ‘Fair Folly’ of this generation. I

think you know that each generation in our family has had its ‘folly.’”

“Yes,” answered Sir Nelson, shaking his head and letting his mind run

back to the follies of the two generations of Fairs that he had known.

“But your folly, my poor boy, has been so above the world’s standards

of rational conduct that it is madness in our earthly eyes—or, perhaps,

it is like the ‘foolishness of the saints,’ of which Saint Paul talks.

But now, old hero—or madman—for reason’s sake, tell me of this accursed

hallucination of yours—this blooming murder, you know. Have you killed

the Pope or the Czar of Russia or Napoleon Bonaparte?”

“I appreciate your inability to accept the truth,” replied Fair. “But you

must do so when I have told you all. You see, I have murdered so seldom

that I was forgetting to tell you the details. Well, Sir Nelson, the

rascal whom I——”

He was cut short by the sudden and alarming appearance of Kate Mettleby,

who came running upon the terrace in traveling dress and quite out

of breath. Both of the men rose and Sir Nelson watched Fair’s face

with ill-disguised concern, which rapidly increased as Fair’s usual

self-control gave place to evident uncontrollable nervousness and

feverish excitement.

“Oh—Mr.—Fair,” gasped Kate, trying to get her breath; “thank God, you are

here! I was—afraid—that”——

“Miss Mettleby,” interrupted Fair, advancing to meet her, “I supposed

that you were halfway to Paris by this time. What has happened? You look

ill.”

“Pardon me, sir,” answered Kate, “but—I’m out of breath—I ran.”

“Do you mind letting me see this young lady alone, Sir Nelson?” asked

Fair, noticing that Sir Nelson stood, dazed and troubled, watching them.

“No, no—by all means,” quickly responded the old man eagerly. “I just

wanted to see if she would not go in and refresh herself first. Allow me

to advise Lady Poynter. The poor girl seems regularly done.”

“Oh, thank you, no, sir,” put in Kate, waving a protest; “I can stop only

a moment. I must return to town on the next train, sir.”

“But you really can’t, you know,” said Sir Nelson. “You really must not

think of returning without luncheon—it’s about ready, you know. I shall

advise Lady Poynter that you are come,” and he hurried off.

“Well?” asked Fair when Kate looked up at him. “Tell me, Kate—and tell

me quickly and without hesitation, for nothing can shock me now. So the

worst of it—all of it—at once!”

“Where is Mrs. Fair?” Kate asked, with a look which begged piteously that

the reply to her question be what she hoped. “She is here? Say that she

is here!”

“Here?” cried out Fair, now thoroughly alarmed, a certain suspicion that

had been gathering force shaping itself into something like certainty in

his mind. “Here. Did she not start for Paris with you and the children?

What can you mean?”

Kate struggled with the dreadful fears that were choking her.

“We all left the house together in the carriage and drove to the

railway station, but there Mrs. Fair said that she wished to drive to a

chemist’s shop, and we were to wait for her speedy return. She went off

accordingly, and about twenty minutes later the carriage came back and

John fetched this letter from Mrs. Fair to me. Take it and read it—it

says that she desired me to take the children to Mrs. Barrington’s, and

announced that she would communicate her change of plans to you. Oh, Mr.

Fair, what does it all mean? I can bear little more of this suspense!”

“Poor old Janet!” groaned Fair, taking but not reading the letter which

Kate handed to him. He walked up and down for a few seconds, then coming

back to Kate said: “I see. I see it now. My God, what a woman! Wait here,

dear, until I consult Sir Nelson, for we’ve got to act with life for the

spur. This is a race, Kate—the maddest ever run!”

“But, Mr. Fair—Maxwell,” complained Kate, “tell me what it all means! I

know about—that horror, you know, in the chest. I saw it. But no harm

shall come to you, Maxwell, for I told them at Scotland Yard that it was

not you—and they told me that they believed me.”

Fair jumped forward and could not believe what he heard, but the triumph

on her poor little agonized face showed only too clearly that what she

said was true.

“Scotland Yard?” he finally cried out. “Are you mad?” Then with a wild

hysterical laugh that chilled her, he added: “So you kindly assured them

that I was innocent, did you?”

“Yes,” she answered, failing to note the irony in his laugh, and

conscious only of the loftiness of her motive. “Yes, for it would have

broken my heart had they even whispered your name. Tell me! tell me! What

is it? Whose body is that in the accursed chest? My mind is going—I can

bear no more! Maxwell, I love you—I love you!”

“My poor little girl,” he said pityingly, looking down at her; “my Kate!

We will talk it all over on our way to town—for I shall go back with you.

Only you must be brave now. Remember that what I did with my hand I did

not do with my heart, will you? My hand killed him; not my mind nor my

will. Believe that, will you not, darling?”

“I will believe neither,” she cried bitterly. “You did not! you did not!”

“Hush!—they will hear you,” warned Fair, adding more gently: “Now wait

here and say nothing to anyone. I will return at once—and we will catch

the next train for town. Poor, poor Janet—good God, what work!”

He dashed into the house, and Kate sat as if dreaming on the garden seat.

After trying to collect her thoughts and to fathom the deepening mystery

which was overwhelming her, she suddenly caught sight of the torn letter

which Mrs. March had dropped upon the seat. Acting mechanically and

scarcely knowing what she was doing or that she was doing anything at

all, she glanced at the piece of the letter which she had chanced to pick

up—and at once her mind was awake. There was a name—a name and an address

that startled her by their seeming incomprehensible coincidence with her

thoughts at the moment. Hearing voices approaching before she had fully

taken in the meaning of this new bit of perplexing tangle, she thrust

the scrap of paper into her pocket. The next instant she saw Fair coming

out of the door, carrying his portmanteau. At his side was Mrs. March.

“I am so sorry,” Mrs. March was saying as they came up to her. “You have

your bag—which means that you are not waiting for luncheon. Must you

really rush off in this way? I wanted to speak to you ever so much.”

“Yes,” Fair replied, putting down the bag and consulting a time-table;

“awfully sorry, but I have just heard that Mrs. Fair was unable to

proceed to Paris this morning, and, of course, I shall be very anxious

until I see her and learn the cause. I think you have met Miss Mettleby,

Mrs. March?”

“Oh, how do you do?” smiled Mrs. March, giving Kate a warm hand grasp.

“Good morning, Mrs. March,” responded Kate, and then to Fair: “I think,

if you don’t mind, sir, I’ll go along through the park by myself. We have

some time, I think, before the train is due. Good morning.”

“Do,” urged Fair, and when Kate had disappeared he turned to Mrs. March

not very cheerfully: “You wished to confess something or other to me?

Do, if you love me, make it something uproariously funny—or else choose

another father confessor. I’m a bit edgy this morning, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will think it the merriest news,” replied Mrs. March,

with beaming good nature. “Maxwell—I’m married!”

Fair looked at her, stupefied. One expression followed another on his

face, and then, when he had secured his usual genial expression, he said:

“Not really? Well, all I can say is—one man is happy. But explain.”

“Wasn’t it just like me to slip over to Brussels and be married quietly?

You know I hate the regulation fuss. And heaven has given me the love of

a man whom I am sure you will love and respect when you know him. All

heart and soul and honor—a knight and a poet.”

“Believe me, my dear friend,” answered Fair, “I wish you all the

happiness that your good heart deserves. When may we congratulate you in

a public manner? And what are we to call you henceforth?”

“It will seem strange to call me by my new name, won’t it—and a foreign

name, too? My husband’s name is Don Pablo Mendes, formerly of Santiago de

Cuba,” said Mrs. March, with a flush of happiness which blanched out and

became the pallor of horror as she saw the effect on Fair.

He dropped the portmanteau, which he had picked up, stared as if stunned

for a moment, and then with a tremendous effort to spare the wretched

woman as long as possible, he said huskily: “I beg your pardon—the fact

is, I am far from well—Good-bye!”

“I’m so sorry,” returned Mrs. March, satisfied that his singular conduct

was really the result of a bad turn. “But tell me before you go,

Maxwell—do you know my dear Spanish boy?”

“I can’t say that I do,” he stammered; “but really I shall miss my

train—good-bye,” and before she could ask him anything more he was

striding across the park.

“What strange behavior!” she said to herself as she watched him. “Maxwell

of all men, too! The mirror of good form—and the one man who never fails

to say the right thing at the right time. Ah, here he comes back to make

the proper amends. Back so soon?” she asked as Fair rejoined her with his

hat in his hand. “Forget something—or did you, like a good fellow, come

back to say just one kind word?”

“Mrs. March,” he began, speaking with strange dignity and pain. “I have

come back to implore your pardon. I lied to you. We shall never see each

other again, and it was dastardly in me to try to shield myself from the

horrible duty which as one of your oldest friends I owe you—the last

thing, also, that I can ever do for you. You are a true woman and a great

soul. Be great enough to face what I have now to tell you. I do know

Pablo Mendes—and if you have not told any of your friends about your

unspeakably deplorable marriage, for God’s sake do not tell them. You

will understand why I say this, and bless me for saying it soon—you will

thank me until your dying day. Your secret is, of course, sacred with me.

Mrs. March, brace yourself now—life is a battle for us all—and victory

is not for them that fight, but for them that bear—so hear me. You will

never see your husband again. Give me your hand—so—are you ill? Courage

now for a moment. Mendes is dead. I—Somebody, in there! Quick! Mrs. March

has fainted!”

Not waiting to help carry her in, he bade Baggs tell Mr. Allyne and

Mr. Travers to join him in town at once, and seeing that servants were

already gone to fetch Lady Poynter, he sped along the avenue to overtake

Miss Mettleby, whose skirts he saw through the shrubbery at some distance

from the terrace. In ten minutes they were aboard the train.