Commons, would not stand such an audacious monopolist plot for one week. It would assume control over the industry, and it has no Supreme Court to question its decrees. The formation of a coal trust was advocated a few years ago by a late well-known colliery owner in the ostensible interests of both masters and mer. If it should ever appear it will not long survive its first attack on British industry. SENATOR: Have you seen the bill in equity filed in Pittsburg by Henry C. Frick in his suit against Andrew Carnegie, which reveals the following amazing profits of the Carnegie Steel Company? Profits of the Carnegie company for 1899....... Andrew Carnegie's share.......... Per week.. Estimated profits for 1900.. Andrew Carnegie's share.. Per week....... Frick's 6 per cent. on this basis... Carnegie's estimate of Frick's interest.... His share, according to option...... ..$21,000,000 12,285,000 235,000 42,500,000 24,867,500 470,000 16,238,000 $6,000,000 Andrew Carnegie's estimate of the value of the plant.. 250,000,000 157,950,000 Mr. Carnegie has declared that he can, in ordinarily prosperous times, sell the property on the London market for £100,000,000, or $500,000,000. Of this sum his share would be $292,500,000. The capital of the company is given as follows: Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited Carnegie, Phipps & Co., Limited... .$5,000.000 5,000,000 In 1892 these companies were merged into the Carnegie 25,000,000 It is impossible to obtain armor except from the Carnegie and Bethlehem companies and impossible to purchase it from these companies except at their own price. To enable the Carnegie company to equip an armor-plate mill the Government agreed to give it certain contracts, from which it probably paid for the mill. The same method was followed by the Bethlehem works, the Government being impressed with the belief that with competition lower prices would be secured. Instead, however, a combination was effected, and prices for armor plate have shot upward so rapidly that the purse of the country is scarcely long enough to afford such a luxury. They now advance the plain, straightforward proposition that the country will pay $545 a ton for armor or get none at all. The Ship Subsidy bill was designed to hand over to shipowners the modest sum of $180,000,000; another, the Pacific Cable bill, grants to the company constructing a cable to Manila the sum of $6,000,000 in annual installments of $300,000. What can the people of this country think when, as was said, and not denied, the profit in the construction of steel armor already authorized for new vessels will be from $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 in excess of a fair remuneration? The men who control these steel trusts and who are charging their own government $545 and $445 a ton for armor plate have been selling precisely the same to Austria and Russia for $259 and $240 per ton. Steel trusts are under implied agreement to make vast contributions to the Republican campaign fund this year, and no Republican Senator had the nerve to deny it. Mr. Carnegie, it is generally said, wrote the steel schedule in the existing tariff. Through its provisions, at the lowest estimate, he has put not less than $100,000,000 in his pocket. We delayed the subsidies fearing to defend 186,000,000 gifts on the stump. We can pass them after election. The provisions of one of our bills have no precedent in any of the world's legislation on merchant marine. What a satire is the finesse of our Power-holding Class financiers upon the precious products of our civilization! PRESIDENT: They have overthrown the basis upon which reposes the nation's tranquillity. SENATOR: Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, the Gold Standard, the late Currency Measure, and recent Republican subsidies constitute a ganglio priesthood which have plunged the American laity into profound ignorance. The course of the Power-holding Class reminds me of the polity of Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks: They put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract their attention and thus interrupt them while churning their master's milk. PRESIDENT: With the great body of the people, in whom the right of sovereignty resides, whose polar star is right and not expediency, none doubt this proposition but statesmen who, representing the Power-holding Class, make human rights anything or nothing, to suit their varying ideas of expediency, which has been in all ages the pretext of every atrocity, the tyrant's plea, and the Jesuit's watchword. This formidable tyranny is coming home to the business and bosoms of the well-to-do classes, who begin to realize, first, that all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity—namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; second, that all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them; and third, that the end and object of government should be the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community, affirming the right of a majority to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be deemed most conducive to the public weal. SENATOR: All work and no play, Mr. President, makes Jack a dull boy. Let us adjourn. You will be in Columbus on Wednesday, July 18. I will report to you upon the adjournment of the Kansas City Convention. PRESIDENT: Good-night, Senator. ACT IV. Scene 4. The President's home at Canton, Ohio. (Enter SENATOR HANNA.) SENATOR: Good-morning, Mr. President. What will be the effect of the Nebraskan's convention? PRESIDENT: The following article in the Democratic platform adopted at Kansas City has failed to attract from us the attention its importance deserves: We are opposed to government by injunction; we denounce the black list and favor arbitration as a means of settling disputes between corporations and their employees. In the interest of American labor and the uplifting of the workingman as the corner-stone of the prosperity of our country we recommend that Congress create a department of labor in charge of a secretary with a seat in the Cabinet, believing that the elevation of the American laborer will bring with it increased protection and increased prosperity to our country at home and to our commerce abroad. The Republican platform deals at length with the gold standard, the tariff, with subsidies, reciprocity, and the colonial and foreign policy of the Administration. But it has very little upon the subject of labor, and promises little in the interest of the laboring people, who comprise so large a portion of our population and almost the entire mass of wealth-producers. To one who considers coolly the subject it will appear that outside of the Power-holding Class Americans in gen |