THE

Republic.

HE NATION is face to face with a moral responsibility which it cannot evade without a self-inflicted wound far more terrible in consequences than would be a war for her very existence against an aggressive invading power. Indeed, with all the facts and evidence that are to-day in the possession of our people if the Republic shrinks from her whole duty it will be at the expense of her soul life or spiritual existence. So long as the people were ignorant of the now clearly-established facts relating to the systematic practices of the Standard Oil Company and its co-partners in long-continued defiance of law; so long as the voters were innocent of the fact that in their midst there had grown up a great business or commercial oligarchy which, largely through persistent law-breaking, moral criminality, indirection and secret control of the well-springs of government and the arteries of trade, was drawing into the hands of a small group of unscrupulous law-breakers untold millions which under honest and just business practices would to-day be blessing the masses of America; so long as the electorate did not know that they were harboring a band of systematic law-breakers whose actions dwarfed into insignificance the occasional law-defiance of the hunted anarchists, the soul of the people was not contaminated by this moral leprosy, further than by the indirect spiritual deterioration that always attends the subtle poisoning of the sources of political, social, educational and business life, and the further evil influence arising from the corruption and defilement of those of their number who became from time to time the tools or instruments of this sinister power. But when the cancer feeding on the moral life of the nation and corrupting the varied springs of collective activity, was laid bare; when the evidence of long-continued, brazen and cynical defiance of the laws of the land was proven in court by overwhelming and irrefut

plead ignorance, and every man was brought face to face with the gravest responsibility that has confronted the free men of America for fifty years, a responsibility quite as great and momentous in its significance as that which faced our fathers when they signed the Declaration of Independence, because on the result of the present battle between the the criminal rich, of whose guilt there is no question, and the Republic, hangs the fate of free institutions. Popular rule or a democratic republic cannot live if the corrupting Standard Oil system is longer to maintain its morally debasing supremacy.

And just here is a solemn and inescapable fact which should be driven home to the consciousness of every citizen. In a republic every voter becomes morally responsible for civic morality and national honor to the limit of his individual power, both in vote and influence. So surely as a moral order obtains in the universe, no man can escape this inexorable obligation and remain guiltless. Nothing is more precious or sacred than the soul of a nation, and history bears eloquent testimony to the truth of the saying of the inspired seer: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Anything that tends to undermine the moral ideals of a people or to confuse the popular mind in regard to the fundamental ethical verities of justice, honor, integrity and the spirit of fraternity expressed in the Golden Rule, strikes at the spiritual life of a nation; and in a republic this spiritual life is entrusted to the voters. Therefore upon each citizen devolves an inescapable responsibility. He who shirks this duty, no matter in what sophistical excuse he may seek to take refuge, is a partaker in the moral criminality that is poisoning the national life. If, on the other hand, he faithfully performs his duty with that spirit of unselfish devotion to the ideal of pure and free government that marked the action of the fathers, he maintains his own spiritual integrity and is quit of moral responsibility

for the evil that he has unselfishly striven to destroy.

Under present social and political conditions, due largely to the fact that the materialism of the market has, tare-like, choked the wheat of spiritual ideals in church, state and business life, we are frequently brought face to face with lawlessness, moral criminality, oppression and dishonesty triumphantly enthroned, aggressive, insolent and defiant, the most conspicuous example being found in the criminal combination we are about to consider and its commercial ramifications, which constitute the gambling paradise Wall Street.

Often, indeed, to all superficial appearances it seems that "the wicked flourish as the green bay tree"; but so surely as Creation obeys Law, and the master Law of the universe is spiritual, the closing words of the inspired poet's declaration are none the less profoundly true than his introductory observation: "The end thereof is death."

Shakespeare condenses into a few words something which in its essence, as it relates to the soul, must be true if we live in a moral universe or a universe under the dominance of spiritual law, when he puts these words into the mouth of the remorse-stricken royal murderer of Denmark:

"In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by Justice,
And oft 'tis seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the Law; but 'tis not so above.
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In its true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence."

Whatever may be our thought as to the soul of man and a future state, if we believe in an over-ruling Intelligence that is sane and moral, Deity that expresses justice as well as law, we cannot escape the conclusion that not only will the spirit of real self of man reap what it has sown, but that no man who in the presence of the most subtle and deadly peril that can confront his fatherland remains indifferent or does not do all in his power to awaken others to a realization of the deadly danger, can escape soul-blight from moral recreancy. Our fathers gave fortune and life for the establishment of free, just and pure government. An oligarchy of criminal rich has to-day placed this priceless heritage in extreme jeopardy. Only by united action of the conscience element of our people can

the Republic be preserved from the most corrupt and degrading form of despotism. This is the grave and inescapable truth that confronts every patriot in America to-day.

The Commerical Leper and The Contagion he Has Spread Throughout Business and Political Life.

The history of the Standard Oil Company constitutes one of the most astounding and, ethically considered, perhaps the blackest page in the commercial history of any nation of modern times. This corporation was the pioneer in many of the black arts that have been the means of destroying the old moral idealism that marked business conditions half a century ago,-arts that have also transformed the government from the watchdog of the people's interes to that of a faithful collie for corporate power whose rapid acquisition of wealth has been largely due to the plunder of the people and various indirect practices only possible because of the corruption of government and the securing of positions of vantage in every department of public life for their trusted servants, who have thus secretly secured immunity for lawbreakers through guilty betrayal of their sacred trust and connivance with the corporation anarchists. The Standard Oil Company also was the great parent of those soulless combinations that have been operated by men, often professing to be Christians and claiming to be moral, yet who under the mask of impersonal corporate organization have resorted to cruelly unjust and secret practices which could not result other than in the destruction of the life-long labor of their antagonists; not by fair fight in open field, but by methods that can only be compared to the cowardly assassin's practice of stabbing in the dark. When its ends required defiance of law, it never scrupled to evade or defy the legislation it had been unable to prevent. Thus through a criminal career of half a century it was able subtlely to destroy all effective opposition, to levy upon the millions of America taxes and tributes that in all probability the government could not have levied directly without rebellion from taxpayers.

As this great corporation advanced in power, its poisonous virus rapidly extended through the business channels of the nation, and simultaneous with the spread of business ideals innocent of all ethics or considerations of justice, we find the master spirits of the

trust extending their hold upon almost all the sources and centers of the nation's material wealth on the one hand, and the sources of government power and of public opinion on the other.

This corporation has afforded probably the most perfect exhibition of the menace of intellectual power divorced from moral ideals or conscience that is known to history. Its master minds have been adroit, daring and masterful, and they were early wise enough to complement their intellectual astuteness with the services of an army of lawyers to act as retainers,-lawyers as brilliant intellectually as they were wanting in lofty morality; men willing to prostitute their God-given power to ignoble service for gold; men who were ready to hire out their brains to devise ways and means that would enable the master moral criminals to plunder a nation and subvert the ends of justice for the benefit of the few. The army of hired legal prostitutes was, however, but one strong arm. To succeed, the master spirits early understood that they must attach to themselves by community of interest the master spirits who control the arteries of trade, the great national sources of material wealth, and gain a strong hold on the banking interests. While their hold on government has been from the early days a chief consideration, they later have devoted much attention to gaining a strangle-hold on church, college and school. The Methodist and Baptist churches used to represent the most aggressive conscience force in America in the presence of social, economic and political evils.

Do they to-day? Mr. Archbold's millions, given to the great Methodist Syracuse University, have not been spent in vain. Should the reader harbor such a delusion, let him read that amazing recent special plea for the Standard Oil called A Raid on Prosperity, written by Chancellor Day of the Syracuse University. Chancellor Day has well been called the Standard Oil's man Friday. How many Methodist and Baptist religious papers are holding up the hands of the President or sustaining the incorruptible Chicago judge for seeking merely to enforce the law against the great law-breakers, which every one of these great criminals, even, would insist should be rigorously enforced against small offenders who no less clear ad violated it?

But the menace of the Standard Oil system

is found not merely in its powerful hold and demoralizing influence over public opinionforming agencies throughout the nation, such as church, press and college, nor yet in its arrogant and insolent attitude toward the nation, seen in its disposition to hold the threat of a panic and business disaster as a club over the government, if the Republic should insist on punishing their criminal acts: its supreme menace is found in its power through its ramifications.

The Supreme Menace of The Standard Oil Interests.

The Standard Oil system has extended its tentacles around the great arteries of trade and travel. Not only have the master spirits of this great trust acquired large interests in the various railway lines, but they have also acquired large interests in various local transportation companies, in electric lighting and gas companies, navigation corporations, coal and copper mines, and a number of the great banks and trust companies. Nor have they stopped here. Tobacco, pulp and paper corporations, fiber companies, glucose works, clock corporations, engine companies, the Steel Trust, the Western Union Telegraph Company, insurance companies and other great interests, are to-day represented, on their governing boards or boards of directors, by master spirits in this great trust. More than fifty public utility corporations have directors in the Standard Oil corporation, or brothers or sons of the master directors represented on their boards of directors. While, besides the great National City Bank of New York, known as the Standard Oil Bank, the Standard Oil interests are represented on the boards of directors of various other great banks, trust companies and insurance companies. Thus, for example, according to Who's Who for 1907, William Rockefeller is represented on the board of directors of six banks as well as one trust company.

And through this reaching out, the Standard Oil system has been able to draw its support, or rather to cement into one great community of interests, a mighty oligarchy of privileged wealth that assumes the attitude. toward the people and the government of supreme insolence and defiance; a community of lawless wealth that in substance says to the President and the Nation: Punish our great law-breakers or seek to restrict our lawless raids on the people's earnings, and we will

precipitate panics and spread want and ruin on every hand.

Few people dream of the extent or sinister import of the Standard Oil's ramifications. When they do, we believe that they will be quick to demand that the corruption, lawlessness, injustice and oppression that have placed republican institutions in deadly peril be once and forever destroyed. Because of the paramount character of this great issue; because the real question at stake in the present revolt of the people against lawlessness or the anarchal corporations is popular sovereignty or Standard Oil supremacy, no patriot can be indifferent to the issue.

Amazing Revelations Showing Ramifications of The Standard Oil Interests. The January issue of Government contains a striking paper evincing much careful research and of great value and interest to thoughtful Americans. It is entitled "Reply to Archbold's Plea for Mercy." In the opening paragraph the author, who signs himself Theodore W. Lincoln, notices Mr. Archbold's special plea for the Standard Oil Company, made in The Saturday Evening Post. It is one of several briefs which have recently appeared by those who represent the interests of this great criminal corporation, most of which make the absurd pretence that any attempt to treat the law-breakers like other malefactors is persecution; that is to say in effect that the great wealth and the long persisted in course of the great corporations and the master spirits that are responsible for their management, ought to insure immunity for the criminals. Most of these briefs also contain veiled threats intimating that if any attempt is made on the part of the government to treat the great criminals as smaller criminals are treated, the great law-breakers will retaliate by wrecking the legitimate business interests of the country, through gamblers' panics such as the country has recently been a victim of.

In the first place, let us notice for a moment this plea of persecution. There is not in the civilized world a people so jealous for fair play or quick to resent any act that savors of persecution or the taking of an unfair advantage, as the citizens of the United States; and it is doubtless the knowledge of this fact that has led the master spirits among the criminal rich and their hirelings and special pleaders to raise the cry of persecution

whenever any attempt is made to treat the millionaire law-breakers of the criminal oligarchy in precisely the same manner that these same essential anarchists would demand that a poor man who systematically defied the law should be treated. There has never been any desire or disposition on the part of the people, the President or the judiciary to persecute the Standard Oil or other criminal and law-defying corporations. The most any one has demanded is that the courts should treat all conscious law-breakers with equal impartiality; should, for example, see that the multi-millionaire criminal who is in no wise under the stress of want or necessity should be no more immune in his lawbreaking than the poor man who after vainly seeking work steals in order to save himself and family from starvation.

Now we submit: Is this demand unfair or does it in any way savor of persecution? Mr. Archbold in his paper naturally enough does not dwell on the justice or merit of the government's contention that the great criminals no less than the little offenders shall be punished; but he seeks to convey the idea that the effort to secure justice for the lawbreakers would be disastrous for the nation. He says: "To disintegrate its various arteries of trade, reared and developed at home and abroad with such indefatigable enterprise and industry, would be a national calamity."

To which the writer in Government pertinently replies by asking Mr. Archbold a series of questions, the gist of which is as follows: "What kind of a calamity will it be if it is found that the unlawful practices of the Standard Oil Company cannot be controlled by the Government of the United States? . . . Do you consider it a presumption on the part of the courts of the United States to put your coterie and its company on trial on charges that nearly every inhabitant of this country (and, to our shame, of every other country) knows are true? you mean to imply that if the United States courts do not discontinue their attempt to bring the Standard Oil Company to justice, "your company promise or imply that the sovereignty, stability and the solvency of our country are threatened by you and your company? Is not this coming pretty close to treason, to say nothing of contempt of court?"

Do

Government's contributor shows how the

recent Wall Street panic was precipitated by the community of criminal wealth, whose master spirits are the Standard Oil. He shows that the veiled threat of Archbold would be a subject "for mirth but for the serious consequences likely to result from the threat of the Standard Oil Company to loot the country if restrained from its violation of the law. The present financial situation is pointed to as a warning that the prosecution of this case by the Government must stop. The Government is warned that the taking of further testimony will result in drawing the lines more tightly around bank deposits."

Two Sovereigns Cannot Exist Under

One Flag.

This thoughtful contributor to Government next examines Mr. Archbold's brazen declaration that the Standard Oil Company is not a monopoly. On this point his observations are so timely that we quote them at length:

"In no other business have the profits been so vast that with them all other business connected therewith has been owned by it. It builds the tank cars used for carrying its product; it makes its tin cans; it builds its own pipe line on private property taken for public use; it builds its engines, pumps, vast machinery, and manufactures the chemicals used; it owns its ships in sufficient number to be 'floating on every sea.' Left without competition it makes its own price. The profits were, and are now, enormous. It hardly knows what to do with them. Having obtained the oil business, it turned to other fields. It was found that gas for illuminating and heating purposes could be made from oil. With its profits it either bought out the gas plants in our eastern cities or destroyed them by competing plants, and then made its own price and had the State pass a law denying the others the right to go into the same business. Instances of this are noted when the Standard Oil Company entered the Boston and New York gas fields, drove out all competition and secured its present complete monopoly.

"When inventions for the use of electricity became valuable there was a great demand for copper. The Standard Oil Company, with its profits, entered that field and now controls the production and price. Not content with controlling these necessities, it goes into the stock market and enters into

the game of depressing securities; and when they have reached a sufficiently low point, buys them, and by the use of well-written articles and the great metropolitan journals induces the public to buy, marks up the price, and when they have reached as high a point as it dares to put them, sells them out to the public. Then begins a period of depression and the same thing is worked over. It has even gone further and promoted stock of companies absolutely worthless, and if it had been the ordinary promoter would have landed in jail. One instance in particular can be referred to, that of the Arcadian Copper Company. William Rockefeller and Henry H. Rogers were on the board of directors of this company. It put the stock out at a low figure, advanced it to ninety-two dollars per share, then dropped it back, doubled the capitalization, put it up to ninety dollars and induced the public to buy it because the Standard Oil Company was behind it. It then turned out that there was no copper, and that all the property that the company had was a second-handed mill, located on leased land, that had been mortgaged to Albert C. Burridge, one of its directors. All the money the public had lost had gone into Standard Oil.

"These are a few of the things that will be, looked up and considered by that great jury, the American people, in the near future, in passing on the question whether the Government shall control the Standard Oil Company or the Standard Oil Company shall control the Government. One of two things must happen, either the Government must control the Standard Oil Company and make it obey the law, or the Standard Oil Company will control the Government. These two sovereignties cannot exist in this country at the same time. It must be all slave or all free."

An Important Table Showing Some of The Ramifications of The Standard Oil System.

Interesting and suggestive as are the above observations, Mr. Lincoln's revelations concerning the extent and the sinister power of the oil trust are far more important. They will serve to explain why the puppets of high finance or the Standard Oil system with one accord denounce every incorruptible patriot who seeks to break up the riot of criminality and lawlessness that marks the trail of the Standard Oil interests. Striking and import