The Monticellonian., 1916-11-09

Diu you ever go among strangers and pretend to be a more important parsonage than you really are? Yes? So have 1. There are many of us who habltually take a taxicab when we go into strange city on a modest piece Of business. Yet at home we would walk six blocks to save nickel in car rare. l would not acknowledge to the hotel clerk, nor would you, that an in- slde room, price one dollar, is what, In my heart, l would like to ask for when l say that three-fifty will be about right. And we tip the waiter, you and l, although we know that he makes twice the money We do, and we let the haberdasher's clerk sell us a shirt for three dollars when we should pay one, and the barber bull dozes us into taking a shampoo when there is perfectly good bar of soap at home and not working.
 For, to ourselves, upon occasion. we like to be the dream people, to see ourselves as the great and dominant of the land, to step out of the every day commonplace Of our existence. We pay the price of our temporary emancipation. We may feel bit fool 1sh when the bellboy is gone and are alone with the pitcher of ice water. but in our hearts it is worth the money.
 But with all this tendency to dis semble, how large a front of false pre- tense could you put up, how impor- tant parsonage do you think you could make of yourself, if you should lind all the gates open and were invit- ed to do your durndest? And if you should, in a moment of abandon, sum. mon courage to introduce yourself as the King of Spain or Anthony Com stock or Lillian Russell, and if you did this in gathering that you knew to be made up of selected master minds. how well do you think you would be able to sustain the part?
 This is the story of a modest en- ployee of the government, drawing $2,- 300 year. and with the wife and kid dies tucked away in a thirty-dollar flat, who walked into a convention of mil
 
 lionaire manufacturers and with no basis in fact for his claim, virtually spoke to these dominant and success 'ful princes of industry as follows:
 Gentlemen. you are mere children playing at the factory business am the master here. Please be nice to me and tell me all your secrets or Ui1 off oe terial."
 It is the story of young man who, as a detective for the federal govern ment, assumed this position among the lions of big industry. who lived up to the part he had chosen for him self and got the inner secrets of a great business organization, these be- ing the results he was after.
 This government employee who was given the opportunity to become the uper-dissembler, was a special agent of the department of justice, and his assignment was to ferret out the se- crets of various trusts that were sus- pected of conspiracies in restraint of trade. He was a detective of a new school Where the sleuth of yester- day went about with a dark lantern to discover who purloined Lady Let tvs jewels or stole me che-ild,' the new detective unravels the mysteries and seeks to determine the manner in which fifty big factories, with 100,- 00o men on their pay rolls. combine to stifle the small competitor who would enter their field.
 It was such an assignment as this that one morning came over to New York in the mail from Washington and fell to the lot of Special Agent Billy Gard. The instructions said:
 "The Northern Pulp x Paper Manu- facturers' association will hold it's con-