Malefactors of great wealth!

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MALEFiiCIOfiS.

OF GREATWESITH

Class _aJj^i3A Rnnk .3 4^

II

PERSONAL BITTERNESS SHOULD BE FOREIGN TO THIS CONTROVERSY. ALL MEN DO AS THEY MUST.

For whatever purpose this withering fire of hard names w^as furied forth by connsel for the wily plaintiffs, we think w^e can see more and better reasons than those of "total depravity" and

"abhorrent greed" — to quote the exact language of plaintiff's counsel — urging American Production, the defendant in this action, to appeal this case to this the most equitable court of our nation. And, furthermore, may it please your Honors, we do not propose, in our contention to the contrary of the argument of plaintiff's counsel, to return evil for evil and fritter away our breath and the patience and time of this most high court with argumenta ad hominem and loud denunciations of wickedness of these wily plaintiffs. For although we can easily prove the wily plaintiff the Importing Trust, to be a pirate, a pickpocket, an assassin and an escaped convict, and the hardly less wily plaintiff the Exporting Trust to be almost as bad, nevertheless we shall do this, if we do, in no spirit of bitterness, but rather as our duty to our client, American Production, and altogether in sorroAV and in no wise in anger; and the reason of our Christian spirit is this:

After all that has been said on the subject we do not believe, your Honors, that the human heart is such a very bad thing in it's intent. If it is "altogether wicked," it is because bread and butter and their equivalents, in one sense or another, lie in that direction. We do not believe that a poor human creature "wills" either to be good or bad. We believe such a creature has an earnest desire to live with the least pain and the greatest comfort; which earnest desire is called by some "the instinct of self-preservation." In line with this instinct of self-preservation, your Honors, there have gathered, through the long ages of evolution, a group of proclivities', all of which are indispensable to agreeable existence, and all of which are expressed l)y brain-cells, also outlined through the ages. In fact these proclivities are the ministers unto this physical life which to most of us is so precious; and we could not dismiss either of them without opening a window to a harsh wind that might blow out the little candle of our life. In addition to these proclivities, we have all been gifted with intelligence, also a proclivity, and also represented by, and acting through brain-cells, involuntarily formed, the true purpose of which is to make plain to our other proclivities the clearest and surest path to their safe exercise in the line of their object.

And, your Honors, the man who owns these proclivities, although they have absolute power over his thoughts and actions, had no choice in saying how one proclivity should be related to another.. With different people, these proclivities have different relative values. In some, one proclivity will predominate; in others, another. If a man's proclivities are nicely balanced one against another, you have a model citizen. But if they are out of balance, you may have what is commonly called a "crank ;" or it may be a criminal. But in every case what he will do under given circumstances is determined by the relative influence of these groups' of brain-cells which represent the proclivities; and all the relative sizes and values of these groups are determined by parentage and environment, over which the subject has no control. The manner in which these proclivities, through their respective groups of brain-cells, come into action which eventuates or not in muscular activity on the part of the subject, — according to the nature of the proclivity — is also entirely beyond the control of the subject, such action being automatic and irresistible. For, as we have said.

these proclivities are the direct off-spring of what we call "the instinct of self-preservation/' and their only business is to save the body of th-e subject from pain or furnish it with pleasure. Therefore the physical condition of the body is the particular concern of the proclivities and that condition is evidenced by sensations over which again the subject has no control. For instance, if the stomach be empty, the subject feels hunger. This sensation of hunger causes an association of ideas which suggests the necessity of food. The hunger proclivity awakens the reasoning or intuitional proclivity, through which arises into consciousness a vision called "memory'' of when and where food has been theretofore obtained; and muscular play which takes the direction of food follows irresistibly as to the subject and naturally as to its position in the series of actions over which the proper proclivity has control, that proclivity for the moment representing the entire ego and wearing the ego's apparel. And so with any other matter affecting the physical life of the subject. A physical condition which, on behalf of the subject, requires action to secure pleasure or avoid pain, immediately causes a memory or vision to arise in consciousness, which is associated with some former action to the same end: and through the motive-instigation of the particular group of brain-cells affected, muscular action follows in the direction of the proper relief. All this is done irresistibly, so far as the subject alone is concerned.

In a word, the exciting cause of proclivity-action lies beyond the control of the subject in a physical sensation or condition which his humanity imposes upon him; and the action follows its sufficient cause. A particular point that we wish to make is that sometimes the association of ideas awakened by a given physical condition arouses several proclivities at once, which will persist in proportion to the power of the cells and of the exciting cause. Sometimes the activities of these proclivities harmonize and so contribute to one and the same result. Then there is no sense of conflict or notion of decision or "willing." But sometimes opposed proclivities may be aroused simultaneously; as for instance, the desire, usually called "acquisitiveness'^ and the desire usually called "benevolence." In this' case, the stronger proclivity will prevail and the subject will prove himself either an honest man or a thief, according to the relative powers of the brain-cells representing these proclivities, and the degree of excitement which each has suffered. In any event, the subject was fore- ordained from the foundation of the race, under certain circumstances' acting as excitants to proclivity-action, to be either an honest man or a thief; but being conscious of the existence of two different emotions, one leading towards the act and the other away from it, the subject will believe that he "willed" either to leave his neighbors purse alone or to appropriate it, according as one or the other group of brain-cells proved the stronger.

He could not see the complex machinery which caused his act. He could not realize that the groups of brain-cells which were the next cause of his action, whether he stole or stale not, were "the heirs of all the ages," and that he could not change their action nor prevent them for the time being from assuming his clothing, any more than he could cast a star from it's celestial location. This is natural, your Honors. He felt "free," therefore, he believed he was "free" and that his act was one of a '^free will.'' But if his will were as free as it seems to be; were his choice between two courses of action possible, he w^ould be nothing less than God himself. Alas! the logic of events proves him to be, just as he is, a single little unwilling event in the endless string of changes which the matter composing his body has been going through since it's atoms were created. So far as the individual is concerned, he has no more "free will" than if he were stone instead of flesh and blood, the belief that his will is "free" being merely an inference from faulty premises. Therefore, your Honors, all our actions being thus the result of circumstances over which none of us' has any control, and every one of us in body, mind and soul, being just exactly of that causal nature which must produce the very actions i^roceeding from us, whatever be a person's acts, we cannot say "He did it to injure me." Whatever he did was because of the peculiar balance of his proclivities ; proclivities caused by the necessity of keeping his body from pain or affording it pleasure. All we can honestly say is, "He is so constructed from the beginning of time that this act was caused by what he could not control." Your Honors, this question of the origin of proclivities, namely, as the guardians of our physical lives, the sine qua non of the perdurance of our kind, is of great importance to our argument and we venture to summarize onr remarks thereon, as follows:

Our most remote evolutionary ancestor Avas a minute organic cell.

This cell developed a muscular and a nervous system.

Certain things were necessary to its continued life.

It had sensations, denoting need.

These sensations had a reflex etfect upon the motor nerves.

The muscles of locomotion by an equally reflex action of these motor nerves moved the cell into such a relation with its environment as to reduce the need and allay the exciting sensation.

In the course of ages the one cell developed around it other cells, which were the sensoria, corresponding to other needs which arose from variety of environment.

This collection of cells was what we now call the ^'brain," and they developed a clearing hous'e for their sensations, which interrupted the instantaneous play between some of their sensations and the motor nerves.

This clearing house we call ^^memory." It was the result of past experience. It contained the beginnings of our metaphysical law which we call ^'Association of Ideas." Here began the development of the reasoning creature. Sensations then awoke an association of ideas', a comparison of experiences had under similar sensations. Those ^'memories'' which were connected with agreeable results then transmitted the delayed current of sensation to the motor nerves which set the muscles in operation and disposed the whole organism in accordance with the most satisfactory experiences'. Thus eon after eon passed by. The brain grew and became more and more minutely correspondent to environment. It was not a simple but a very complex machine. Groups of cells had evolved to correspond to particular phases of life of the subject, all excitable through speciflc sensations, which transmitted their currents through the clearing house of memory and by association of ideas touched just the requisite motor nerves to provoke muscular action which, if the memory-record was correct, would supply the need and allay the sensation. This is whence we came and what we are — organic machines.

Your Honors, there is nothing we can think of which so well illustrates our notion of human action as our modern graph ophone. The machine has externally the same identical appearance no matter what record is being delivered from it. But in fact it changes its identity with the changing record. The same throat is used, but its utterances are from a different source from record to record. Under some circumstances it is a well-known prima donna; under others, it is a celebrated brass band. And so on indefinitely. Yet all the time it looks the same to the naked eye. Now a man is a graphophone. One set of proclivities speaks through his mouth, looks from his eye, acts in his movements. Then he is one creature. The record is changed and he is another creature. Another set of proclivities has been attached to the nerves and the muscles by another sensation; and while externally identical, the internal representative of the ego is different. How often we have heard it said, "Smith was not himself to-day," meaning that he was different in the way he impressed the witness. Sometimes little Tommy is "as cross as a bear" ; and sometimes "as good as an angel." They are different Tommies. Sometimes one group of proclivities is acting through his graphophone of a body, sometimes another. But his body is merely the plaything of his proclivities, and his proclivities are as merely the plaything of his physical sensations, resulting from a full or empty, a sick or well stomach, refreshed or tired muscles, or some other condition of body or environment; or resulting even from some state of mind — brain-cells — caused by some circumstance which has awakened a peculiar association of ideas, but with regard to wliich the setting off of one proclivity against another may have neutralized

2^

action. And it may be added that his sensations are the mere plaything of his internal and external environment which in turn are the mere plaything of the course of creation and evolution.

Under this theory of ours, your Honors, human conduct can hest be explained. It is easier to believe that every human action is inevitable than to believe that it had no cause back of the actor. How otherwise can you explain the conduct of the man Avho, in spite of resolutions to the contrary, solemn promises, and earnest desire, always falls a victim to the same temptation and commits the same act over and over again, never once forgetting his former revolting experience and its bad effect upon his happiness? He promised better things' while under the influence of one set of proclivities; and broke his promises under the influence of another set. The fact is there are as many different men in one body as are possible from permuting and combining human proclivities.

But let no man s'ay, your Honors that if a man cannot help doing what is injurious to others, and therefore called "wrong," he ought not to be restrained. If a man kills, he is dangerous to life. If he steals, he is dangerous to property. And as you would confine a wild animal; destroy a mad dog; or raise an umbrella, it is fitting and right that rational beings should protect themselves from unhappily contrived human beings by such restraint as will remove the danger.

Therefore, your Honors, we have no bitterness toAvard the wily plaintiffs. They are as they were created. They do as they must. Their machinery is operated by unseen excitants; they naturally move in line with the instinct of self-preservation ; or nt lenst intend to; and thev are in no wise responsible in any abstract way ; but if they are doing injury to our client, they must be properly restrained in ways which mature deliberation will determine.

III. Inflammatory Denunciation And Exaggerated Epithets Are Not Argument

Your Honors we desire to call to your attention various expressions', in addition td those already mentioned as uttered by counsel for the wily plaintiffs, the aforesaid Importing Trust and Exporting Trust, and to move that they be expunged from the record of argument in this action. From what we have just said, it appears that there is and has been no such thing as malice in any action heretofore taken by the defendant, American Production ; that whatever it has done is but the result of its inherent nature, which it did not contrive and over which it hath no control ; and that the exciting causes of all its action lie beneath its reach somewhere in the very roots of its being. Therefore, when plaintiffs' counsel lay any action of this defendant to "corporate greed"; when they hiss between their set teeth the expression "predatory Avealth," or when they thunder out "protectionist avarice," they are using baseless terms, and, we fear, attempting to excite passions, appeal to which is not warranted by any action of our client, American Production ; unless, in tlie vocabulary of the modern "trustbuster," "greed" means the ordinary enterprise shown by any person in scMMu-ing the profit allowed by the current degree of demand for his goods'; ^^predatory wealth," capital industriously earning dividends, in the same way pursued by capital everywhere, since capital came into being; and "protectionist avarice" the natural desire to confine American demand to American supply, giving all Americans' a fair field with favor to none.

But, your Honors, although we can honestly say that our client has done naught to merit these furious epithets, since what it does is without malice and without volition, we are likewise ready to admit that there is no malice in the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and its' partner in sin, the Export ing Trust, when they thus by proxy pour the lava of their volcanic denunciations upon the head of our devoted client, American Production. And yet, your Honors, as we said a little way back, there is a reason. These plaintiffs do not attack our client in this way except it be for the purpose of self-preservation, of diminishing pain or increasing pleasure for themselves, in accordance with the results of our analysis of human actions a few moments ago. The withering anathemas of these plaintiffs merely stand for an attempt to destroy an enemy, not for the joy of the destruction, but in order to remove from their path an obstacle in the way of their happiness. Now, your Honors, it is very easy to see the object of all these hard names as applied to our client by the wily plaintiffs. They wish to destroy our client, American Production, at least for a time, in order that they may enjoy what, in a measure, American Production is* now enjoying, viz., the American domestic market; the Importing Trust, as a location for the sale of cargoes of foreign goods, whereon it will make a profit ; and the Exporting Trust, as a location where it can buy

"raw materials" free of tariff duties, to work up into other goods for the export trade. This, your Honors, is the purpose of all this wild tirade against American Production, so cunningly called "the trusts" by counsel for the defense. It is on this account, your Honors, that these plaintiffs have s'o bitterly attacked our beneficent client, American Production, and not because they delight to see honest and industrious American citizens cast down unto death with the despair that seizes men when they see their employment gone and slow starvation menacing them and their dear wives and children; not because they delight to see this great nation halt upon its upward path to bury its untimely dead and build afresh the structure once so fair and necessary to its life and to its progress, but shaken to the earth by the dynamite conspiracies of these wily plaintiffs ; for, your Honors, these plaintiffs are not bloodthirsty and wanton, but merely market-thirsty and hungry for trade, and the reflex action of their longing sensations takes no note of the horrors, far worse than internecine war, through which our devoted nation must wade, if "tariff revision" finally accords them their desires.

IV

THE PLAINTIFF, THE IMPORTING TRUST, IS THE CEN- TURY OLD MORTAL ENEMY OF AMERICAN PRODUC- TION, AND ALL IT SAYS ABOUT ''''THE TRUSTS," THEREBY MEANING AMERICAN PRODUCTION, THE DEFENDANT IN THIS ACTION, SHOULD BE TAKEN CUM GRANO SALIS.

Let US be just, your Honors, and, before we condemn too severely its effort to preserve its family line, acknowledge the lofty pedigree of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, and the century-old interests it has at stake.

The Importing Trust, your Honors', is a vast interest, whose octopus-like body rests within our seaboard cities, but whose thread-like tentacles have laid hold, with a more or less deadly grasp, upon nearly all the veins and arteries of our country. The lives and the happiness and the stomachs of its members depend, primarily, not upon this defendant, American Production, but upon Foreign Production, it having been their practice from time immemorial to inflame the people of this country airainst their real benefactor, our client, American Production, by the application of odious epithets like "favored classes,'' "tariff favorites," "infant industries," in the earlier days, and latterly by calling our client horrific names, such as "trusts," "predatory wealth," "cormorant corporations" and the like, until the people, blind with rage and with hate against their only hope of life and progress, have arisen and torn down the tariff-dike and allowed the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, to sit as sole mistress in our marts and gather boundless wealth from the savings of our people, while millions of our people starved on every hand and the whole nation languished in despair. This has been the course of the members of the Importing Trust for more than a century; the same course they are pursuing now, with high hope of the same result as that so often attained of old.

We say it in all kindness and with full remembrance of our philosophy which excludes the notion of malice, but we say only the truth when we declare that the Importing Trust for more than a century has been for us in this land a giant bird of prey, with no other interest here than to plunder us of our vitals when w^e wax fat; and when we have thus been levelled to the earth in poverty, to wing its way to a distant hill-top, above the carrion stench from our dead workers, and await the rising of a fresh race of workers and the time when American wealth has accumulated enough once more to make it worth the while of this same foul bird to descend anew upon our homes and hearts.

It was the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, your Honors, who first applied the name of "trusts'' to all American Production, as a term of sweeping reproach that would madden our people to hate their own and cleave to this predatory alien, the Importing Trust. Surely, your Honors, there is only poetical justice in turning the tables upon this monster of destruction, this prodigy of hypocrisy, by also calling it a "trust." Surely, it is no more than just to apply this term to a mighty aggregate of interests, moss-groAvn with dark and damp life, which for more than a hundred years has fought at every step with bloodthirsty fury the progress of

American Production on this soil. American Production, did we say? Ay, the progress of American Ciyilization, we might have said; since American Production for American Consumption measures to an ounce American Civilization. From our Colonial days down to this hour we have thus been victimized and betrayed by the wily plaintiff. As colonists we were merely a flock of sheep for fleecing by the wily plaintiff, which used every endeavor with the English King and Parliament to strangle every sign of life shown by our client, American Production, on its manufacturing side. It pretended to a divine right to enter our colonies with its goods and compel the tribute of high prices from our forefathers, who were forbidden to manufacture. Therefore we think that it is due to this wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, thus to say that much of its present-day arrogance and its puzzling intolerance are merely heritages from a triumphant past, when, with it, to demand was to receive, to command was to be obeyed. What wonder that lordly members of the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, still regard us as but an English colony, where they may while away a portion of the year in taking from our toilers tolls on imported goods, only to go to Europe for the remainder of the year, to loll in luxurious carriages, live in elegant palaces', and spend their Importing-Trust profits in a thousand ways of delight? For this they have always fought our client, American Production. But American Production would not down. From decade to decade it strugded on, often crushed by the weight of the power of this wily plaintiff, the Importins: Trust ; often wounded almost unto death by the blind folly of our own people, frenzied by the stealthy slanders of the Importing Trust, this wily plaintiff, which then as now, hesitated at no measure for the destruction of its adversary, our present client, American Production.

And so, your Honors, the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, has continued down to this very day, pursuing its happiness by the destruction of American Production, at every point and in every way possible. From the necessities of the case, from the fact that it is a struggle as between life and death, we do not believe that there is any crime at which, as a concrete proposition, the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, would balk to work the final dissolution of American Production. It disguises itself in every way and makes' use of any and all agents to accomplish the injury of our client. When in its war against our client, after years of use of the naked blade of "Free Trade," our people had come to look with horror upon this weapon, as wielded by the Importing Trust, the wily plaintiff took care to conceal its real instrument of destruction by giving it different names, among which your Honors will doubtless recall "Lower Taxation,'^ "Moderate Protection," "Free Kaw Materials," "Tariff Eeform" and "Eevenue Tariff," as some of those employed by the wily plaintiff a decade or two ago; and "Reciprocity," "Cuban Treaty," "Relief for the Cubans," "Relief for the Filipinos," "Reduction of War Tariffs," "German Trade Agreement," "Stopping tlie Gathering of Gold in the Treasury," and "Tariff Revision," as some of the later subterfuges' by which the wily plaintiff seeks to hide the keen edge of tlie Free Trade knife with which it cuts the tliroat of the fat bullock, American Domestic ]Market.

But, your Honors, at the present moment the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, is wielding with all its power the bJacle a\ hich it calls ^^Tariif Revision"; and with ^'Tariff Eevislon" as a watchword and the cry, ^^The American trusts are selling cheaper abroad than at home," it is trying once more to drive our people so crazy that they will turn and tear down our tariff dike which dams out the world's surplus goods and dams in the world's wandering capital, and let in the deluge, tie the hands of our workers by forcing capital to seek other scenes and send them all supperless to bed and many of them to untimely graves. Ah, your Honors, if anything could justify this cruel war on all the workers of this country, it would surely be the happiness of so large and lordly a concourse of blueblooded commercialists, as that which makes up very largely the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust. Who, then, make up the wily plaintiff, the Importing Trust, your Honors? In answer to the question, we say that far and away its larger portion is composed of importers of foreign goods', the fathers and grandfathers of many of whom were importers before them, in whose blood has come to be mixed a large spilling of the spice of aristocracy, and who look with proud intolerance on whatever seems to lend dignity and strength to our client, American Production. These people control the chambers of commerce of all our foreign-trading cities, which, under the tutelage of members of the wily plaintiff, pass resolutions declaring that "the people demand an early relief from the iniquities and burdens of the tariff by a substantial reduction of its rates" ; or that "we favor an immedate revision of the tariff." These importers live in the most expensive quarters of their respective towns, drive imposing carriages, or thunder by in the largest automobiles, and everywhere sow the seeds of respect for '^commerce" or ''international trade," showing, mean while by their opulence and magnificence of living how profitable, for a hundred years past, they have found the business of emptying American savings banks.

In addition to the hereditary and other importers engaged directly in vulgar trade, there is a wing of the Importing Trust which is not vulgar enough to engage in trade, being made up of Mayflower descendants of the silk-stocking variety. These people and their fathers before them w^ere born with golden spoons, diamond tipped, in their tiny mouths. They are blue-bloods of the purest ultra-marine. They are veritable Plymouth Rocks. They carry in their sacred persons all that is hardly worth saving in this Republic. Do they work? Never. They are the true and only class of exclusive '^consumers" in the country. When the newspapers of the Importing Trust say the ^'consumers'' must be considered and the tariff tax abolished, they mean by "consumers" these people w^ho forever ''consume" and never "produce," these proud and w^ould-be aristocratic people who consider themselves a separate class, to serve which humbly and forever is the duty of the "laboring classes," by which term they mean all who are not rich enough to live without work and join the illustrious body of "consumers" and buy a pedigree. Believing that they are the whole show, and that the "laboring classes," like the birds and the grass, are mere inconsequential incidents of life here, they also believe that they should have their work done at the lowest price possible through world-wide competition between workers; therefore their allusions to the "robber tariff" and "favored producers," as if they were denied their rights when a tariff dike keeps out the ocean of foreign surplus products, the odds and ends of the world's bargain counters and bankrupt and fire-sale stocks, anxious to be sold here at worse than auction prices. There is another thing they have in mind also as their right, and one which would be re-established by a ^'revision" of the dike, and that is retinues of servants at European wages, which would be theirs if the dike were "revised," and our workers, turned out of our factories in starving swarms, should beset these choice "consumers" for jobs in kitchen, chamber, cellar and stable. For these reasons the silk-stocking, blueblood "consumers" are enthusiastic members of the Importing Trust, and on every occasion root for "tariff revision," "reciprocity treaties," "German Trade Agreements," "Annexation of Canada," "annexation of Cuba," "free trade with the Philipines," "war on the trusts"— anything and everything to make their high living come at the lowest price, by exposing American workers to the deadliest competition. We cannot blame them for all this. Their brain cells are so arranged that they must ever be blood-suckers and never blood-producers. But the rest of us are fools if we do not understand them.