The Spanish Fork press. [volume] (Spanish Fork, Utah) 1902-current, 1907-10-10


tie newspapers with which | had I'D.
vertislng contracts. They also con-
trolled the main sources through
which the press was supplied with
news-and often and well they had
used this control and SUI prislngly
cautious had they been not so to
abuse lt that the editors and the pub
lie would become suspicious. When
my war was mt 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--notified 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. l
who had legal proof for every state.
ment made; | who was always care
full to understate! 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.
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 1t 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 / got
an injunction. 1t was obeyed in typi-
cal, corrupt corporation fashion--they
sent my matter, but so garbled that 1t
was unlntelligible. 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
|
in my private vaults, and waited for
the cataclysm.
enthusiastically APP
parently all was tranquil; apparently
the people accepted the Wall street
theory that | was an exploded sensa-
ton" The Seven" began to preen
themselves the strain upon them to
maintain prices, II 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-
sumed.
Sunday. Roebuck, taken Ill 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 its surface fiotsam, by
which we measure the speed and di'
rection of it's current. Under that ter
rife tension, which to the shallow
seerled calm, something had to
give way. If the dam had not yielded
where Roebuck stood guard. 1t mus,
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 hundred times
always failing, always letting an anti
climax. until at last In despair he gave
I'D 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 mo-
too inadequate impression OF that tire
mendous week in which, with success
sion of explosions, each like the cract
of doom, the financial structure thai
housed S0,OOO,0O0 of people burst, col
lapsed. was engulfed. cannot.
t must leave It to your memory or YOU
! imagination.
+ For years the financial leaders
n crazed by the excess of power whicf
the people had in ignorance and over
Y confidence and slovenly good-natur'
| permitted them to acquire. had beer
d tearing out the honest foundations OF
t which alone so vast structure car
hope to rest solid and secure. The!
I had been substituting rotten beami
n painted to look like stone and IRON
;, The crash had to come! the sooner
the better-when a thing Is wrong
e each days delay compounds the cos
3. of righting it. So, with all the horrors
+! of wild Week" in mind, all its phys
d ical and mental suffering, all It's ruiz
and rioting and bloodshel, l still cal
n insist that | am Justly proud OF m,
s share in bringing it about. The blam
IS and the shame are wholly upon thos
E. who made "Wild Week" necessary an
e inevitable.
d In catastrophes, the cry Is Each 10
=" himself" But in a cataclysm' tn
Is oh,,iou, ,Uiea selfShneSs is generosity