Francis A. Adams

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

“ To Nevins, in the allotment of the proscribed, has fallen the head of the money trust, a multi-millionaire banker, a financial Magnate known throughout the civilized world as the most rapacious miser on record. This man has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for honesty of purpose, and his moral appreciation is imperceptible. To recount the deeds of cunning, of fraud, of gigantic robbery that he has committed in his relentless quest for wealth, would be to retell the story of wrecked railroads, enormously profitable bond issues and Wall street panics of the past decade. ”

“ The weather-beaten cottages, which never have known a coat of paint, do not attract their attention. The groups of ragged children playing in the dusty road, scurry out of the path of the horses. On the hillside to the left stands the Jumbo Breaker, the largest coal crusher in the world. Its rambling walls rise to a height of several hundred feet up a steep incline. The noise of the machinery within can be heard distinctly from the roadway. The grind, grind, grind of the mammoth crushers, which sound as a perpetual monotone to the townspeople, is lost on the ears of Ethel and Harvey. ”

“ With such a man as a candidate on the platform we shall adopt, the will of the people cannot be thwarted.
"We can frame the platform. Where is the man?"
"Trueman! Trueman!" comes the cry.
From mouth to mouth the name passes; now it is shrieked by an entire state delegation; now by the entire assemblage. Louder and louder becomes the cry. It is chanted, sung, shouted, shrieked. Men who have shouted themselves hoarse utter it inarticulately.
In the centre of the floor there is a movement; the guidon of New York is moving. It is being borne toward the Pennsylvania delegation. ”

“ As he begins the recital of his grievances against the Trust, it is apparent that he means to give the audience an embittered story. So the attention of all is centered upon him.
"Human liberty is the boon which man has sought since the dawn of creation; it has furnished the incentive for his struggle to reclaim the earth from the domination of brute force; it is the inherent idea that the founders of this Republic sought to embody in the Constitution. But Liberty must have as a complement unhampered opportunity," are his opening words. ”

“ The ever present thought that the day will soon arrive on which each will have to commit two deeds of violence, the one, to take a public enemy out of the world's arena once and forever; the other, the extinction of self, is enough to keep the mental tension at the snapping point.
Yet, not a man weakens. The stolid march of trained men toward inevitable death is the only counterpart to their action. And their unfaltering fulfillment of the work allotted them is the more remarkable as each works independently. It is one thing to be impelled forward by the frenzy and madness of battle ”

“ Is it destined to end as many thousands have done, in miserable failure?
"What I propose will strike you as the ravings of a man who has lost his last grain of sense," he begins. "Yet I am prepared to demonstrate that the plan is not only feasible, but that it is the only one which can be put into execution and carried through to a successful issue. The greed and the power of the Trust Magnates is insatiable. They will not make the least concession to the people. The day for arbitration is at an end; the time for the people to act is at hand. ”

“ His heart and mind have a common impulse—Purdy's body must be saved from desecration; it must be buried with that of Metz.
"Pick up that body," he orders of the men who surround him. "It must be buried with Metz."
In his voice there is a ring of command that none dares to question. As the miners stoop to lift the corpse Ethel utters a cry of anguish that pierces the hearts of even the most hardened men. It is the wail of humanity protesting against anarchy.
By a vigorous effort Trueman frees himself from the miners who are carrying him on their shoulders. ”

“ In point of picturesque scenery and modern alteration attained by the unceasing labor of man, the antithesis between the natural and the artificial is pronounced in many respects; especially at that place in the river where it runs through the steep banks on which is situated the thriving city of Wilkes-Barre. Here may be seen the majestic hills standing as sentinels over the marts of men that crowd the river edge. The verdure of these hills during the greater part of the year is the one sight that gladdens the eyes of the miners whose lives, for the most part, are spent in the coal pits. ”

“ It is the acme of inventive genius. To work the breakers, a man need have no more intelligence than the tow-mule that plods a beaten path; and such a man is the ideal laborer from the standpoint of the owners of the breakers.
But such men are not indigenous to America; they must be imported, and that, too, from the most benighted lands of Europe.
What an incubator of warped humanity the breaker has become! It saps even the attenuated manhood of the aliens it attracts, and when they are rendered useless for its ends, emits them to be a scourge on the earth. ”

“ His domination over the lives of the thousands who slave in his foundries is kept unshaken by reason of the fact that he coats the bitter acts of oppression of which he is constantly guilty, with ostentatious gifts in the name of benevolence. He presents the cities of the country with public libraries.
This philanthrophic iron master has erected an armory for his private detectives for every library he has established for the people. To make a life of unparalleled achievement as an amasser of money terminate in glory is well within his power, but avarice is the chief occupant of his heart. ”

“ You and I are both victims of oppression.
"I am a producer of wheat, the great staple of this country. You are all consumers of my product. When I cannot make a living by producing wheat, and you cannot purchase it without paying tribute to a band of speculators, there must be in operation a damnable system of oppression to bring about this condition, for it is not natural.
"The Wheat Trust determines what price I shall receive for my wheat; it sets the price at which you shall buy it in the form of bread. ”

“ I have discriminated against those who have prostituted the laws of God and man; not a man whom I shall declare proscribed but he is known to all men as stained with the blood of innocents.
"'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' This voice cries to us from four million mothers' mouths for deliverance from tyrants who compel them to work for a living even in the hours of their pregnancy. The child laborers of this land of freedom raise a piteous plea. ”

“ With these words of encouragement ringing in his ears, Trueman departs. He has yielded to the human weakness which prompts a man to confide his inmost thoughts to woman. Kingdoms have been destroyed, empires have crumbled in a day; the world's greatest generals have seen their carefully designed campaigns fall flat, all through the treachery of women in failing to keep secret the confessions of their confidants. ”

“ Trueman takes off his hat and waves it as a sign for silence. The cheering and the rumor that Trueman has suddenly appeared, turns a sea of people in the direction of the music stand. Fully eight thousand men are within the radius of his voice. ”

“ The events of the past twenty-four hours have been so unparalleled that men dare not jump at conclusions. To proclaim the forty agents of the Syndicate of Annihilation martyrs, may lead to an instant uprising of the anarchistic element. To denounce them as murderers may have the same effect. Fear prompts the people to take a conservative stand, they wait for full evidence before pronouncing a verdict.
They do not know that Harvey Trueman is pleading the cause of justice and right to a mob at Wilkes-Barre. ”

“ A nation composed of such men is not free, no matter what its form of government may be.
"I am ready to do anything that will restore the right to the individual citizen to engage in business; I am ready to make a stand against the few plutocrats who now usurp the avenues of human activity; and I believe that we will be able to enlist men in support of the idea that the rights of the majority transcend the aggressions of the oligarchy of American capitalists." ”

“ He pictures her as she appears before them; a daughter whose father has been stricken, as if by a blow from Heaven; a woman left friendless; for the friends of prosperity are never those of adversity. Thus he awakens a feeling of pity in the hearts of the people for the woman they have so recently reviled. Pity gives place to love as he tells them that Ethel Purdy wishes to give to the citizens of Wilkes-Barre the millions that her father has hoarded; when he concludes by telling them that she is to become his wife, an acclaim of rejoicing is given. ”

“ He has risen by virtue of fearless championship of the cause of the masses. Once in the office of the Presidency, all uprightness and independence has left him and he has worshiped at the feet of the Idol of Gold.
"To win the Presidency will be to inaugurate an era of real National prosperity, in which the labor of the people will be insured just remuneration. To win Ethel will be to abolish the distinction of class." ”

“ On the countenances of the men can be read the exultation of their hearts, that at least one of their tyrants has encountered his Nemesis. Faces here and there are wreathed in smiles, as though their possessors were hastening to a fete. Some are grave, for the thought of the retribution that the Magnates will demand, and which they knew so well how to secure, is enough to bring a pallor to the cheek. There are men in the eddying thousands who have felt the hot lead of Latimer and Hazleton burn into their backs and the recollection makes them shudder. ”

“ To these ignorant men, to whom the first principle of self-preservation is that limit of erudition set by the coal barons themselves, whose first and last lessons in life are to read correctly the checks of the time-keeper and the figures on the "company store" checks which they receive in payment for their work, what difference does it make that the dead miner was a Magyar—not a full fledged American? ”

“ At the very hour Harvey Trueman is pondering over the grave conditions that keep him from making Ethel his wife, she is thinking of the mockery of her riches, which furnish her with every attribute to happiness but one—that eclipses all others—the heart's desire. ”

“ I shall set you an example by announcing that I pledge my support to Mr. Nevins in anything that he may do that has for its object the emancipation of the women, children and men of this country from industrial slavery.
"There is a living to be had for every inhabitant on the earth if he will work. We in America should guarantee more than subsistence to our citizens. A life of plenty is here for all if the social conditions can be readjusted." ”

“ Here is a new party, which is to make its second appeal to the people. Where its strength will lay, whom it will select to be the standard-bearer of its radical platform, these are questions that baffle the most astute observers.
The morning of the opening session of the convention finds the vast auditorium of the Music Hall where the meetings are to be held, crowded with spectators. It is impossible for one-tenth of those present to hear the speakers; they come not to hear so much as to breathe the surcharged air of the political storm which it is known will be fostered. ”

“ They rapidly name, in chronological order, the events that have been instrumental in bringing about the degradation of labor. There is the primal generator of universal distress—the private corporation—which operates with all the functions of an individual, yet is free from even the most ordinary obligations that are enforced upon the individual; from the private corporation has sprung the Trust, a consolidation of corporate bodies which intensifies the evils that exist under the former institution, and as an inevitable consequence of Trusts comes private Monopolies. ”

“ The sharp contrast that will be presented in the staid and uninspiring speeches of your predecessors, and your fervid, fluent and convincing call to action, will lift you to the position of the logical candidate.
"No successful statesman has ever been unmindful of the practical side of politics. A speech may create a whirlwind of enthusiasm for an orator; yet if there is no one to guide the tempest it is soon spent. I shall be on the watch for the moment that must see your name put in nomination. ”

“ Yesterday it had not existed, even in the minds of dreamers; to-day, in the convention of one of the great political organizations an attempt was made to throttle the voice of the majority. The voice of a single man rose high and clear above the tumult; it was the voice of a Moses come to lead his people from bondage. And that people were quick to appreciate the importance of the presence of a great leader. ”