Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1906-11-30
Copyright 1906, by the Bobbs Merrill Coz A
ODE Deluge
~ BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS ~

BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIP.

full scene. But please remember that in
this world every thought and every act is
a mixture Of the good and the bad: and
the one or the other shows the more prom
inently according to ones point of view.
There probably isn't q criminal in any
cell, anywhere, no matter what he may
say In sniveling pretense in the nope OF
lighter sentence, who doesn't at the
bottom of his heart believe his crime or
crimes somehow justifiable-and who
couldn't make out a plausible case for
himself.
At that time I was stuffed with the
arrogance Of my fancied membership I'm
the caste Of directing financial geniuses
/ was looking at everything from the
viewpoint of the brotherhood Of which
Roebuck was the strongest brother, and
of which l imagined myself a full and
equal member. / did not, / could not,
blind myself To the vivid reminders of his
relentlessness; but / knew too well how
necessary the iron hand and the fixed
purpose are to great affairs to judge him
as ~lnfuriated Walters, with his vanity
savagely wounded, was judging him. I'd
as soon have thought Of describing Cen
eral Grant as a murderer, because he
ordered the battles in which men were
killed or because he planned and led the
campaigns in which subordinates COM
IlitNGu IdpINS anu plldSF ana dSS1SSlfla-
ton. / did not then see the radical differ
ence-did not realize that while Grants
work was at the command of patriotism
and necessity, there was no necessity
whatever for Roebuck's getting rich but
the command Of mis- own greedy and cruel
appetites.
Don't misunderstood me. My morals are
practical, not theoretical. Men must die,
old customs embodied In law must be
brpypn tho vapal must no briba1 and tho
weak cowed and compelled, in order that
civilization may advance. You can't es-
tablish a railway or a great industrial
system by rose-water morality. But /
shall show, before l finish, that Roebuck
and his gan Of so called organizers of
industry" bear about the same relation TO
industry that the boil weevil bears to the
cotton crop.
I'll withdraw this, If one can
show me that, as the result of
the activities of those parasites,
anybody anywhere is using or is able TO
use a single pound or bushel Of yard more
Of any commodity whatsoever. I'll with
draw il, If / can not show that bur for
those parasites. bearing precisely the same
relation to our society that the kings and
mobiles and priests bore 70, France before
the revolution, everybody except them
would have more goods and more money
than they have under the system the en-
ables these parasites to overshadow the
highways of with their strong
no!Gs and to clog them with their toll
gates. They know little about producing,
about manufacturing, about distributing,
about any process of industry. Their skill
is IN temptation, in trickery and in terror.
on that day, however, l sided-honestly.
as | thought-wlth Roebuck. What / saw
and heard Increased my admiration Of the
man, nv already prOfOuOd rpSDact for his
master min And when, just after wal
tiers went out, he leaned back in his chair
and sat silent with closed eyes and NOV
ing lips, I-yes, /. Matt Blackjack. Black
Matt, as they call me-was awed in the
presence OF this great and good man at
prayer!
How he and that God of his must have
laughed at mel So infatuated was / that,
clear as il is that he'd never have let me
be present at such a scene without a
strong Interior motive, not until he him
self Ions afterward made It impossible for
me to deceive myself did I penetrate TO his
real purpose-that he wished TO fill me
with a prudent dread and fear OF him,
with a sense of the absoiuteness of his
power and of the hopelessness Of trying to
combat 1t. But at the time l thought
lmbecile that my vanity had made meat
the time l thought he had let meat
preseht because he genuinely liked, adj
mired and trusted me!
Is 1t not amazing that one who Gould fall
into such colossal plumbers should sur
we TO tell OF them? l would not have
survived had not Roebuck and his crowd
peen at the same time making an ever
more colossal m~isestlmate of me than
was making of them. My attack was yio-
lent but temporary; theirs was equally
Nioieht' ana chronic and incurable to boot.