Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1907-09-05

81 newspapers-and they the most i'm
por.aat-notiied me rbat they would
no longer carry out their contracts tc
publish my daily letter. They gave az
their reason; not the real one. fear q
"Ihe Seven" but fear that / wou.d
involve them ia ruinous libel suits.
who had legal proof for every state
Inent made; | who was always care
full to understate! Next, one press
association after another ceased to
send out smy letter as news, though
they had been doing so regularly for
months. The public had grown tired
OF the sensation" they said.
| countered with a telegram to one
or more newspapers in every city and
large town in the United States:
1.-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 1t did not. Under
their orders the telegraph companies
refused to transmit the letter. | got
an injunction. 1t was obeyed in typi.
cal, corrupt corporation fashion-they
sent my matter, but so garbled that it
was unintelligible. 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.
f~ession 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 cataclysn.
Observation-Disclosures. APP
parently all was tranquil; apparently
the people accepted the Wall street
theory that | was an exploded sensa.
ton" 1.-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-
Sulned.
Sunday. Reebuck, taken i'll as he
was passing the> basket in the church
Of which he was the shining light, died
at midnight-a 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 flotsam, by
which we measure the speed and d.
rection of its current. Under that ter.
rife tension, which to the shallow
seemed a calm, something had to
give way. If the dam had not yielded
where Roebuck stood guard, it must
have yielded somewhere else, or might
have gone all in one grand crash.
Monday. You know the story of the
artist and his Statue of Grief-how he
nodded the features a hundred times,
always failing, always getting an anti
climax, until at last in despair he gave
up the impossible and finished the
statue with a veil over the face. |
have tried again and again to assem-
BILE words that would give some not
too inadequate impression of that tire
mendous week in which, with a success
sion of explosions, each like the crack
of doom, the financial structure that
housed S0,000,000 of people burst, col.
lapsed, was engulfed. l cannot.
must leave it. to your memory or your
imagination.
For years the financial leaders,
crazed by the Excess of power which
the people had in ignorance and over
confidence and slovenly good-nature
permitted them to acquire, had been
tearing out the honest foundations on
which alone so vast d structure can
hope to rest solid and secure. They
had been substituting rotten beams
painted to look like stone and iron
The crash had to come! the sooner
the better-when a thing is wrong,
each days delay compounds the cost
Of righting it. So, with all the horrors
of wild Week" in mind, all it's phys.
ical and mental suffering, all it's ruin
and rioting and ~bioodshel, l still can
that ] am justly proud of my
share in bringing it about. The blame
and the shame are wholly upon those
who made wild Week necessary and
inevitable.
In catastrophes, the cry is Each for
limself!" But in a cataclysm, the
obvious wise %selfishness is generosity,
Ind the cry is: Stand together, for,
we perish" This was a cata-
No one could save himself,
except the few who, taking my often
Urged advice and following my exam
money. Farmer and artisan and pro.
essional man and laborer owed mer.
liant; merchant owed banker; banker
wed depositor. No one could pay be-
no one could get what was due
i'm or could realize upon his property.
he endless chain of credit that binds
ogether the whole of modern society
.ad snapped in a thousand places. 1t
lust be repaired, instantly and Sc.
urely. But how-and by whom?
Ito be C%ontinued.)
~aN~ssaraAN~s
~ .