Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1907-01-18

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.
I countered with 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 l 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 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-
fession OF the truth of my charges.
l turned everything salable or mort
gageable into cash, locked the cash up
in my private vaults, and waited for
the cataclysm.
Thursday-Friday-Saturday APP
parently all was tranquil; apparently
the people accepted the Wall street
theory that was an exploded sensa-
tion." 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.
sumed.
Sunday. Roebuck, 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 ne 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 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, 1t 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 hundred times,
always failing, always getting an anti.
climax, until at last in despair he gave
up the impossible and finished the
statue with 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 success
sion OF explosions, each like the crack
OF doom, the financial structure that
housed S0,OOO,0OO of people burst col.
lapSed, was engulfed. | 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 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 Fighting It So, with all the horrors
Of wild Week" in mind, all its phys
ical and mental suffering, all its ruin
and rioting and bloodshel. still can
insist 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 HEach for
himself!" But in cataclysm, the
obvious wise selfshness Is generosity
and the CRY is: Stand together, for,
singly, we perish" This was a cata.
clysm. No one could save himself,
except the few who, taking my often
urged advice and following my exam.
pie, had entered the ark Of ready
money. Farmer and artisan and pro
fessienal man and laborer owed mer
chant; merchant owed banker; banker
owed depositor. No one could pay be
cause no one could get what was due
him or could realize upon his property
The endless chain Of credit that binds
together the whole of modern society
had snapped In thousand places. II
must be repaired. instantly and Sc
curely. But how-and By whom!
I issued a clear statement Of the