The silver messenger. (Challis, Idaho) 1890-1912, 1907-12-03

which the press was supplied with
news-and often and well they had
used this control, and sus prisingly
cautious had they been not so to
abuse 1t that the editors and the pub
lie would become suspicious When
my war was at its height. when l was
beginning to congratulate myself that
the huge magazines of The Seven
were empty almost to the point at
which they must sue for peace on my
own terms. all in four days 43 of my
81 newspapers-and they the most i'm
portant-notifed me that they would
no longer carry out their contracts to
publish my daily letter They gave as
their reason, not the real one, fear Of
/ The Seven" but fear that / would
involve them in ruinous libel suits. I
who had legal proof for every state
ment made / who was always care
full to understatel Next, one press
association after another ceased to
send out my letter as news. though
they had been doing so regularly for
months. The public had grown tired
Of the sensation" they said
1 countered with telegram to one
or more newspapers in every city and
large town in the United States:
a. The Seven are trying to cut the
wires between the truth and the pub
lie. If you wish my daily letter. tele-
| graph me direct and | will send it at
my expense"
The response should have warned
The Seven" But it did not. Under
their orders the telegraph companies
refused to transmit the letter. l got
an Injunction. 1t was obeyed in typi-
cal, corrupt corporation fashion-they
sent my matter, but so garbled that 1t
was unintelligible. l appealed to the
courts. In vain.
To me, it was clear as sun in cloud
less MONDAY sky that there could be
but one result of this insolent and
despotic denial of my rights and the
rights of the people, this public con-
fession of the truth of my charges.
turned everything salable or mort
gageable into cash, locked the cash up
in my private vaults, and waited for
the cataclysm.
Thursday-F Saturday. APP
parently all was tranquil; apparently
the people accepted the Wall street
theory that l was an exploded sensa-
ton" The Seven" began to preen
themselves; the strain upon them to
maintain prices, if no less than for
three months past, was not notably
greater; the crisis would pass, | and
my exposures would be forgotten, the
routine of reaping the harvests and
leaving only the gleanings for the
sewers would soon be placidly re-
su1ned.
Sunday Roebuck taken i'll as he
was passing the basket in the church
of which he was the shining light, died
at midnight beautiful, peaceful
death, they say, with his daughter
reading the Bible aloud, and his lips
moving in prayer. Some hold that
had he lived, the tranquility would
have continued but this is the view Of
those who cannot realize that the tide
Of affairs is no more controlled by the
great men" than is the river led down
to the sea by it's surface fotsam, by
which we measure the speed and di
rection of its current. Under that ter
rife tension, which to the shallow
seerned a calm, something had tC
| give way. If the dam had not yielded
where Roebuck stood guard, it mus
| have yielded somewhere else, or nigh
] have gone all in one grand crash.
! Monday. You know the story of the
artist and his Statue of Grief-how h'
nodded the features hundred times
always failing, always 9etting an anti
climax. until at last in despair he CAV,
I'D the impossible and finished tn,
statue with a veil over the face.
have tried again and again to Assem-
Bile words that would give some no
too inadequate impression of that tire
mendous week in which, with success
sion of explosions. each like the cracl
of doom, the financial structure tina
housed 1000 900 of people burst, co
lapsed. was engulfed. cannot.
It must leave it to your memory or you
imagination.
IT For years the financial leaders
n crazed by the excess of power whic
the people had in ignorance and ovel
y confidence and slovenly good-natur
permitted them to acquire, had bee
ID tearing out the honest foundations
st which alone so vast structure ca
hope to rest solid and secure. The
I had been substituting rotten beam
N painted to look like stone and irol
e, The crash had to GOMEZ the soone
the better-when a thing is wroni
,e each days delay compounds the COS
s. of righting it. So, with all the horror
}! of wild Week in mind. all its ply
I'd ical and mental suffering, all its rui
and rioting and bloodshel, still ca
or insist that 1 am justly proud of m
RS share in bringing it about. The blan
rs and the shame are wholly upon thos
e. who made wild Week" necessary an
he inevitable.
Id In catastrophes, the cry is Each f
)" himself" But in a cataclysm, ii
Us obvious wise selfshness is generosit
ny and the cry is: Stand together, 70
h singly, we perish" This was cat
IT. clysm. No one could save himsel
er except the few who, taking my ofte