I told him that I could not accept until I had conferred with my
friends. I had no intention of refusing, but I wanted to seem to defer
to the judgment of my lieutenants.
I called them to the capital singly, and explained that I could be of
vastly more service to the organization were I at Washington, and I
arranged with them to convert the rank and file to this view.
Each felt that the weight of my decision rested upon himself, and their
vanity was greatly pleased. I was begged not to renounce the leadership,
and after persuasion, this I promised not to do.
As a matter of fact, it was never my intention to release my hold upon
the State, thus placing myself in another's power.
So I accepted the tender of the Senatorship, and soon after, when the
legislature met, I was elected for the full term.
I was in as close touch with my State at Washington as I was before,
for I spent a large part of my time there.
I was not in Washington long before I found that the Government was run
by a few men; that outside of this little circle no one was of much
importance.
It was my intention to break into it if possible, and my ambition now
leaped so far as to want, not only to be of it, but later, to be IT.
I began my crusade by getting upon confidential terms with the
President.
One night, when we were alone in his private study, I told him of the
manner and completeness of my organization in Pennsylvania. I could see
he was deeply impressed. He had been elected by an uncomfortably small
vote, and he was, I knew, looking for someone to manage the next
campaign, provided he again received the nomination.
The man who had done this work in the last election was broken in
health, and had gone to Europe for an indefinite stay.
The President questioned me closely, and ended by asking me to undertake
the direction of his campaign for re-nomination, and later to manage the
campaign for his election in the event he was again the party's
candidate.
I was flattered by the proffer, and told him so, but I was guarded in
its acceptance. I wanted him to see more of me, hear more of my methods
and to become, as it were, the suppliant.
This condition was soon brought about, and I entered into my new
relations with him under the most favorable circumstances.
If I had readily acquiesced he would have assumed the air of favoring
me, as it was, the rule was reversed.
He was overwhelmingly nominated and re-elected, and for the result he
generously gave me full credit.
I was now well within the charmed circle, and within easy reach of my
further desire to have no rivals. This came about naturally and without
friction.
The interests, of course, were soon groveling at my feet, and, heavy as
my demands were, I sometimes wondered like Clive at my own moderation.
The rest of my story is known to you. I had tightened a nearly invisible
coil around the people, which held them fast, while the interests
despoiled them. We overdid it, and you came with the conscience of the
great majority of the American people back of you, and swung the Nation
again into the moorings intended by the Fathers of the Republic.
When Selwyn had finished, the fire had burned low, and it was only now
and then that his face was lighted by the flickering flames revealing a
sadness that few had ever seen there before.
Perhaps he saw in the dying embers something typical of his life as it
now was. Perhaps he longed to recall his youth and with it the strength,
the nervous force and the tireless thought that he had used to make
himself what he was.
When life is so nearly spilled as his, things are measured differently,
and what looms large in the beginning becomes but the merest shadow when
the race has been run.
As he contemplated the silent figure, Philip Dru felt something of
regret himself, for he now knew the groundwork of the man, and he was
sure that under other conditions, a career could have been wrought more
splendid than that of any of his fellows.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE COTTON CORNER
In modeling the laws, Dru called to the attention of those boards that
were doing that work, the so-called "loan sharks," and told them to deal
with them with a heavy hand. By no sort of subterfuge were they to be
permitted to be usurious. By their nefarious methods of charging the
maximum legal rate of interest and then exacting a commission for
monthly renewals of loans, the poor and the dependent were oftentimes
made to pay several hundred per cent, interest per annum. The criminal
code was to be invoked and protracted terms in prison, in addition to
fines, were to be used against them.
He also called attention to a lesser, though serious, evil, of the
practice of farmers, mine-owners, lumbermen and other employers of
ignorant labor, of making advances of food, clothing and similar
necessities to their tenants or workmen, and charging them extortionate
prices therefor, thus securing the use of their labor at a cost entirely
incommensurate with its value.
Stock, cotton and produce exchanges as then conducted came under the ban
of the Administrator's displeasure, and he indicated his intention of
reforming them to the extent of prohibiting, under penalty of fine and
imprisonment, the selling either short or long, stocks, bonds,
commodities of whatsoever character, or anything of value. Banks,
corporations or individuals lending money to any corporation or
individual whose purpose it was known to be to violate this law, should
be deemed as guilty as the actual offender and should be as heavily
punished.
An immediate enforcement of this law was made because, just before the
Revolution, there was carried to a successful conclusion a gigantic but
iniquitous cotton corner. Some twenty or more adventurous millionaires,
led by one of the boldest speculators of those times, named Hawkins,
planned and succeeded in cornering cotton.
It seemed that the world needed a crop of 16,000,000 bales, and while
the yield for the year was uncertain it appeared that the crop would run
to that figure and perhaps over. Therefore, prices were low and spot-
cotton was selling around eight cents, and futures for the distant
months were not much higher.
By using all the markets and exchanges and by exercising much skill and
secrecy, Hawkins succeeded in buying two million bales of actual
cotton, and ten million bales of futures at an approximate average of
nine and a half cents. He had the actual cotton stored in relatively
small quantities throughout the South, much of it being on the farms and
at the gins where it was bought. Then, in order to hide his identity, he
had incorporated a company called "The Farmers' Protective Association."
Through one of his agents he succeeded in officering it with well-known
Southerners, who knew only that part of the plan which contemplated an
increase in prices, and were in sympathy with it. He transferred his
spot-cotton to this company, the stock of which he himself held through
his dummies, and then had his agents burn the entire two million
bales. The burning was done quickly and with spectacular effect, and
the entire commercial world, both in America and abroad, were astounded
by the act.
Once before in isolated instances the cotton planter had done this, and
once the farmers of the West, discouraged by low prices, had used corn
for fuel. That, however, was done on a small scale. But to deliberately
burn one hundred million dollars worth of property was almost beyond
the scope of the imagination.
The result was a cotton panic, and Hawkins succeeded in closing out his
futures at an average price of fifteen cents, thereby netting twenty-
five dollars a bale, and making for himself and fellow buccaneers one
hundred and fifty million dollars.
After amazement came indignation at such frightful abuse of
concentrated wealth. Those of Wall Street that were not caught, were
open in their expressions of admiration for Hawkins, for of such
material are their heroes made.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE
At the end of the first quarter of the present century, twenty of the
forty-eight States had Woman Suffrage, and Administrator Dru decided to
give it to the Nation. In those twenty States, as far as he had
observed, there had been no change for the better in the general laws,
nor did the officials seem to have higher standards of efficiency than
in those States that still denied to women the right to vote, but he
noticed that there were more special laws bearing on the moral and
social side of life, and that police regulation was better. Upon the
whole, Dru thought the result warranted universal franchise without
distinction of race, color or sex.
He believed that, up to the present time, a general franchise had been
a mistake and that there should have been restrictions and
qualifications, but education had become so general, and the condition
of the people had advanced to such an extent, that it was now warranted.
It had long seemed to Dru absurd that the ignorant, and, as a rule,
more immoral male, should have such an advantage over the educated,
refined and intelligent female. Where laws discriminated at all, it was
almost always against rather than in favor of women; and this was true
to a much greater extent in Europe and elsewhere than in the United
States. Dru had a profound sympathy for the effort women were making to
get upon an equality with men in the race for life: and he believed that
with the franchise would come equal opportunity and equal pay for the
same work.
America, he hoped, might again lead in the uplift of the sex, and the
example would be a distinct gain to women in those less forward
countries where they were still largely considered as inferior to and
somewhat as chattels to man.
Then, too, Dru had an infinite pity for the dependent and submerged
life of the generality of women. Man could ask woman to mate, but women
were denied this privilege, and, even when mated, oftentimes a life of
never ending drudgery followed.
Dru believed that if women could ever become economically independent of
man, it would, to a large degree, mitigate the social evil.
They would then no longer be compelled to marry, or be a charge upon
unwilling relatives or, as in desperation they sometimes did, lead
abandoned lives.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A NEGATIVE GOVERNMENT
Upon assuming charge of the affairs of the Republic, the Administrator
had largely retained the judiciary as it was then constituted, and he
also made but few changes in the personnel of State and Federal
officials, therefore there had, as yet, been no confusion in the
public's business. Everything seemed about as usual, further than there
were no legislative bodies sitting, and the function of law making was
confined to one individual, the Administrator himself.
Before putting the proposed laws into force, he wished them thoroughly
worked out and digested. In the meantime, however, he was constantly
placing before his Cabinet and Commissioners suggestions looking to the
betterment of conditions, and he directed that these suggestions should
be molded into law. In order that the people might know what further
measures he had in mind for their welfare, other than those already
announced, he issued the following address:
"It is my purpose," said he, "not to give to you any radical or ill-
digested laws. I wish rather to cull that which is best from the other
nations of the earth, and let you have the benefit of their thought and
experience. One of the most enlightened foreign students of our
Government has rightly said that 'America is the most undemocratic of
democratic countries.' We have been living under a Government of
negation, a Government with an executive with more power than any
monarch, a Government having a Supreme Court, clothed with greater
authority than any similar body on earth; therefore, we have lagged
behind other nations in democracy. Our Government is, perhaps, less
responsive to the will of the people than that of almost any of the
civilized nations. Our Constitution and our laws served us well for the
first hundred years of our existence, but under the conditions of to-day
they are not only obsolete, but even grotesque. It is nearly
impossible for the desires of our people to find expression into law.
In the latter part of the last century many will remember that an
income tax was wanted. After many vicissitudes, a measure embodying
that idea was passed by both Houses of Congress and was signed by the
Executive. But that did not give to us an income tax. The Supreme Court
found the law unconstitutional, and we have been vainly struggling since
to obtain relief.
"If a well-defined majority of the people of England, of France, of
Italy or of Germany had wanted such a law they could have gotten it with
reasonable celerity. Our House of Representatives is supposed to be our
popular law-making body, and yet its members do not convene until a year
and one month from the time they are elected. No matter how pressing the
issue upon which a majority of them are chosen, more than a year must
elapse before they may begin their endeavors to carry out the will of
the people. When a bill covering the question at issue is finally
introduced in the House, it is referred to a committee, and that body
may hold it at its pleasure.
"If, in the end, the House should pass the bill, that probably becomes
the end of it, for the Senate may kill it.
"If the measure passes the Senate it is only after it has again been
referred to a committee and then back to a conference committee of both
Senate and House, and returned to each for final passage.
"When all this is accomplished at a single session, it is unusually
expeditious, for measures, no matter how important, are often carried
over for another year.
"If it should at last pass both House and Senate there is the Executive
veto to be considered. If, however, the President signs the bill and it
becomes a law, it is perhaps but short-lived, for the Supreme Court is
