The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1896-10-25

tale with nought of yarnish or veneer.
1t was about score of years ago
when Hanna and the Vanderbilts they
who have lately given 100000 draft
TO the Mckinley campaign fund-met
with sundry others of their tribe in
New York City and arranged with ex-
Congressman w. l.. Scott, of Illinois,
a syndicate to buy coal lands in Spring
Valley. Six miles west of La Sale, ILL.,,
this Hanna-VanderbiH syndicate
bought 10000 acres. Shafts were sunk,
the coal veins opened, and coal produc-
ton ON these Ilanna-Vanderbilt syndi-
cate lands began at once.
Among other matters incident to all
this, q town was surveyed and built
and named Spring Valley" Ii might
better have been called 1.-The Valley of
the Shadow of Death for such it
proved to many an innocent woman and
child before the Hanna love for work
folk in this instance had expressed
itself to exhaustion.
AFTER MINERS SAVINGS.
st the beginning the men employed
IN these Spring Valley mines were
Americans OF English, Scotch,
Welsh and Irish stock. These men
were as hard working and industrious
as any who ever welded pick or wore
candle at their hat bands. Down with
the choke and fire damps they earned
their perilous money, and their frugal
thrifty wives at home saved it. The
miners, like the mines of Spring Val
ley, throve apace and prospered.
But this was too much for the
Hanna-Vanderbilt syndicate, to whom
the sight of a prosperous wordngman
had something maddening about it.
They put their heads together and
mapped out a plan 1T was to be and
do two things, this plan. 1t was to
act as safeguard against strikers, and
it was to- divert the penny-meagre
stream of the miners savings back
to the company again.
And it was the poisonous beauty OF
the whole affair that the syndicate
whose sole purpose was to miserably
swell it's hoard at the loss and pauper-
ism of the miner. should appear as
one moved only by the most friendly
and benevolent interest in the welfare
Of its working folk. The syndicate
scheme in nutshell WAS to build and
sell the miner home on the install
'ment plan
WORK OF THE VAMPIRE
In India there lives q creature, halt
bird, half beast with the wing of a
demon and the face of fox, which
for want of better term is called a
bat. Because it sucks blood and lives
by nothing else, it is given the dis
tinguishing epithet of vampire. All
day it hides in the cayerns or under
dark cliffs, or in the shadows and
darkness of the crumbling temples and
fanes of that broken spi1.it-lost land.
At night the activities of the vampire
assemble themselves. Through the
open easement of some bungalow it
turns its flight It's noiseless coming
does not disturb the Misunderstanding
sleeper. The vampire, lowering above
its victim, sets him to deep slumber
still with the cool, insidious promise
of its tanning wings. The sleeper
never stirs, nor feels the work that's
letting out his life. The blood flows
and drips, the vampire drinks and
feeds until with the first gray rays
of day, its blood taste for the moment
satisfied the vampire dr0opS heavily
away, leaving the sleeper dead.
Such is the vampire bat of India,
and such for very parallel of scheme
was the Hanna-Nanderbilt syndicate
arrangement to build and SELF its
w0rkmen homes ON the instalment
plan. For insidious, soft and wool-foot
trachery the game would have been
worthy a Bengal tiger. The whole
business amounted to this: lit set a
trap for the Spring Valley miner and
used wife and children as the bait and
lure.
SOLD AT DOUBLE VALUE.
The Hanna-y Vanderbilt syndicate,
owning the land, built cottages there
on. Then they put price and fixed
the figure. What had cost $500 was set
at $500, and so in proportion, whether
higher or lower. When a miner
bought" house he didn't get deed;
he got a contract. The miner each
month was to pay a certain sum, and at
the end of every six months or a year
he was to pay the interest on the
whole sum, which, like the grass, had
been growing night and day, and I'M
like the grass, grew as exuberantly
in January as it did in June.
When all was paid, principal and in
which, by the very price and
the space of the payments, was to run
ana Iengthen into years as a tfanSac-
tion-then the miner was to receive
his deed. Do you observe the excel
lence of the method? The syndicate
posed as the benefactor of the miner.
The contract with the promise of a
final home was bond against strikes
and a fetter to hold the miner in sub
lection to the syndicate. Every pay
ment that was made was extra rivet in
n. l. Il. III. r II
In the hope OF winning a final home
shelter for wife and children many a
miner bent his neck to this syndicate
yoke. The instalment plan took, and
the Hanna-Vaderbilt cottages at double
their value were readily taken by the
miners. For time all went fairly
well. AT the wages paid, with steady
work, by economy and careful living
and occasional stint the miner met