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Heem. The motive might lu misunderstood by some. Still I nour you to favour that

I keenly appreciate, and am heartily grateful for, the gentle frendly spirit wtucke faromfated there graceful lines. It will flease you to liuor that Jessie is back again. As I write these words, she slumbers peacefully in her wadied basket besive me

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In regard to some contributed manuscript he again wrote to this friend:

Contributors frequently make the mistake of sending manuscript to me; that is a very unsafe proceeding for my house is already full of books, papers, dogs, trinkets, manuscript, etc., and any new strange arrival is likely to be lost. When you are in Chicago suppose you run up here and see for yourself how wild a place this den of mine is.

No, I am not a colonel. I am and have always been, and shall always be a man of peace. I do not know a sword from a ploughshare or a spear from a pruning hook.

My feet incline to quiet ways

Where hostile ferments cease,
The while my muse inclines to praise
The sweet pursuits of peace.

Chicago, March 12, 1892.

Very cordially yours,

EUGENE FIELD.

The sentiment expressed in the lines recalls that fervent passage in one of his books:

Of peace I know and can speak. Of peace with its solace of love, plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty, heart-ache, disappointment, tears, bereavement. Of war I know nothing and never shall know; it is not in my heart, or for my hand to break that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee.

On the day of Mr. Field's funeral there were memorial exercises in the public schools of Chicago in which the pupils were permitted to recall incidents or remembrance of the Children's Poet. One small lad had a story worth the telling, for he was the boy who had found Jessie when she was lost, and restored her to her master.

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AN EXTRACT FROM A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

(PUBLISHED A. D. 2096)

1976

BY ALEXANDER M. REYNOLDS

IN ORDER to understand the extraordinary events that we are about to describe, it will be well for the reader to glance for a moment at the financial conditions that existed all over the civilized world in the latter part of the twentieth century. For a period of nearly a hundred years, the money of the world had been gradually passing into the hands of a few individuals. Owing to the rapid and unexpected exhaustion of the mines, the annual production of gold had sunk to an inappreciable quantity, and this fact, together with that of the almost entire retirement of silver as a circulating medium, had enabled the financiers for which the century was famous, practically to corner the available supply of currency. A statistician of the period estimated that, in 1975, seven eighths of all the money in existence was under the control of the seven great banking houses, that were virtually the financial dictators of the world. Nor was the stupendous influence of these syndicates supreme in business transactions only. Owing to the maintenance of vast armies, which made of Europe at that period one great armed camp, the yearly deficit of every important nation with the possible exception of Switzerland was enormous, and could only be met by the continual floating of loans. When it is understood that the funds in these cases could only be obtained from one of the seven great syndicates, which acted in such perfect accord as to really form one gigantic trust, some idea may be realized of the enormous power wielded by them in the affairs of the world. The debt that was being heaped upon struggling humanity was a constantly

See "The Mind Motor," in the May, 1897, number.

VOL. XXX-14

increasing burden from which there appeared no escape. The gold obtained from the syndicates, when put into circulation, flowed rapidly back to its source, through the trusts and monopolies, which were but the tentacles of the insatiable octopus that was strangling in its grasp the individuals and governments of the earth.

If we speak of periods in the past, as ages of stone and iron, the twentieth century may, with equal propriety, be termed the Age of Gold. Finance, alone, ruled in the minds of the people; art, literature, science, society all were subservient to it. Patriotism was dead. In 1871, when France at the mercy of Germany-appealed to her citizens for the enormous indemnity demanded by the latter nation, from hovel and palace patriots vied with each other in pouring into the treasury the gold that was to free them from an hereditary foe. In 1962, when the Teutonic Empire in turn conquered by her Gallic adversary, and almost on the point of dismemberment applied to the syndicate in Berlin that controlled the finances of the country, for a loan to satisfy the demands of the enemy, the result was an immediate refusal to risk funds upon a government whose future was so problematic, and Germany was actually forced to accept terms from a more daring syndicate of Parisian bankers, and through them obtain the gold that enabled her to continue her national existence.2

In

Art and literature languished. science, indeed, some progress was made, but it was to utilitarian ends alone, that Knowledge lent her aid, and if inventions

2It is more than hinted by Taine in his History of Finance," published in 1897- that the refusal on the pa of the German syndicate to entertain the proposition their government, was but the part of a well laid p by which the conquered nation was compelled to pa higher rate for the required funds. Certain it is, th large proportion of the German bonds of 1960, ultin passed into the hands of the Berlin bankers.

were many, discoveries were few. There was no dearth of society or of an aristocracy, but it was the banker, who two centuries before had been admitted but on sufferance into the higher circles, that now, regardless of birth or talent, led in all social matters and dazzled with vulgar display the eyes of a decadent world.

There have been in all ages, men who well nigh conquered the earth, but the conquests of Alexander, of Cæsar, or of Napoleon, never laid upon humanity such hopeless thraldom, as did these great syndicates, through the resistless power of their hoarded gold. Never in history had the governing power of the world been so centralized, and never had true individual liberty been less real than in the year 1976, when, as boasted by an American historian of the day, "all were equal before the Law."

On February 1st, 1976, the government of the United States of America, confronted by the deficit in its finances that had become a matter of almost annual occurrence, called for bids for an issue of six per cent gold bonds to the amount of one hundred million dollars.

On March 3d, the Secretary of the Treasury, in accordance with law, published a list of the bids received. They were as follows:

Van Der Morgan, Bilt & Co., Bankers, New York, $100,000,000, at par.

John Hogan, Number 118 Santos avenue, San Francisco, $100,000,000 at 50% premium.

In studying events of the twentieth century, a very clear insight into the existing conditions, as they were viewed by the people, can often be gained by reference to the files of the press of the day. In connection with these bids, one of which was destined to play so prominent a part in history, the reader's attention is called to an extract taken from the San Francisco Chronometer of March 5th, and which is an excellent indication of the state of public opinion at that time.

THE NEW ISSUE OF BONDS

't should be a matter of congratulation to the people he country, that the new issue of bonds is to go, as been the custom for nearly a generation, to the known American banking firm of Van Der Mor'ilt and Company. The report published some

weeks ago, by a contemporary, that the firm had entered into an arrangement with the German banking house of Wilheim & Company, by which the latter was to finance the new issue and the home firm have the handling of the expected Swedish loan, happily proves to be unfounded. The American people will prefer to see the obligations of their beloved country held by its own citizens, and to rely once more upon the powerful aid of the syndicate to which they have owed so much in the past, and on which they depend so much in the future. An amusing incident in connection with the bids is the tender of a San Franciscan who signs himself, John Hogan. A reporter called yesterday at the modest, one-storied house of the alleged financier on Santos avenue, only to find a card upon the door, stating that the mysterious personage was out of the the city. Very little could be learned from the neighbors concerning the new "capitalist": he seems to be a scientist of moderate means a chemist, one man said who devotes most of his time to the pursuit of his hobbies. Verily, the Crank have we with us always!

Under the law that existed at the time, the successful bidder in such cases was required, within ten days, to deposit in the United States treasury or a sub-treasury, ten per cent of the amount of his tender, and upon the issuance of the bond, in thirty days, to pay over the remainder. During the interval that elapsed between the third and the thirteenth of March, there seems to have been no comment or speculation upon the possibility of the mysterious John Hogan's making good his bid, and in the files of the papers of the day, we find no reference to the subject, other than the extract just quoted. Finance had become so precise a science, that the distribution of the limited supply of gold was known with an exactness that was marvelous. In accordance with law for the people at the period were nothing if not law-abiding the Secretary of the Treasury had notified Hogan that his bid was accepted and called his attention to the clause of the statutes, touching upon the ten per cent deposit, but it is not supposable, that he for a moment contemplated the possibility of the bid being a bona fide one, or of the bonds passing into hands other than those of Van Der Morgan, Bilt & Company. He knew, as did every one else whose business dealt with finance, that there could be no such amount as $150,000,000 within the control of any one man or combination of men, outside of the syndicates.

On March 13th the unexpected happened. A few minutes before noon, five heavily laden drays drew up before the receiving

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The Banker of Nations Develops His Plan to the Powers

room of the sub-treasury in San Francisco, and John Hogan, appearing before the startled official in charge, made the announcement that he was prepared to deposit the $15,000,000 necessary to validate his bid, and asked that the required tests for determining the fineness of the bars be made and he given a receipt for his deposit. The same afternoon the astounding news was flashed to all parts of the globe, that, for the first time in nearly fifty years, a private individual had opposed the power of the syndicates and established incontestably his ability to compete with them in matters of finance.

We shall not dwell upon the excitement caused by this announcement, nor is it the purpose of this history to deal other than briefly with events. Suffice it to say, that for the next twenty days, John Hogan, in spite of the most persistent efforts on the part of the newspapers, disappeared completely from public gaze, and left an amazed world to speculate on his identity and upon the source from which was derived the gold which financiers knew could not have come from any that had been in circulation.

On April 2d the day for the final payment into the treasury of the balance of the loan- in the midst of excitement, that had known no parallel since the days of the Du Bois Mind Motor, the new gold king turned over to the government $135,000,000 in bullion, and receiving in return the United States obligations, was driven through dense crowds of an excited populace to his house on Santos avenue.

The next morning, in the principal papers of the country, there appeared over his signature, the historic proclamation, that was to produce such thrilling consequences. It was brief and to the point, and was in substance, as follows:

He claimed to have discovered the transmutation of metals, and to be in the possession of knowledge by which he could produce gold to any considerable extent. It was his intention to put the precious metal into circulation, only through the regular channels as they existed at that time. In order to do this, he proposed to become the banker of the nations of the world. Far from wishing to assume a position in any sense political, or to impose as had the method of financiers in

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the past

-conditions that were burdensome and humiliating to governments, he declared that he contemplated advancing to all solvent nations, or to those whose conduct was in accordance with the spirit of the age, funds to any justifiable amount at the uniform rate of interest of one half per cent per annum. He did not propose to enter into enterprises of a private nature: loans, other than national ones would not be considered, and it was not his policy to make use of the unlimited resources at his command to harass with unfair competition the industry and business of the world. Since the exhaustion of the gold mines had enabled unscrupulous syndicates, by the cornering of the currency, to become practically the dictators of governments, and through them, to oppress and stifle trade and commerce, it was his object to take place of the mines, and by putting into circulation each year, through the agency of national laws, such sums of money as seemed advisable, make an end of, and render impossible, the conditions that had existed for the past fifty years. He was prepared to fulfill his promises during all the remaining years of his life. On his death, he declared that his secret should die with him.

The results of this communication speedily became manifest: in it the syndicates saw the destruction of the combinations that they had thought invincible, and the end of a power that they had wielded for half a century. Their action was prompt and decisive. On April 4th, there was introduced in the United States Congress, which was in session at that time, a resolution stating that, in view of the fact that an individual claimed to have made certain discoveries, which, if true, threatened the welfare of the nation, and placed it in the power of one man, through the possession of unlimited gold, to cause the upheaval of the financial conditions that had been the policy of the government for generations, it was urged, that acting on the established principle of "the greatest good to the greatest number," and in view of the precedent established in the case of one, Du Bois, whose discovery of the mind motor in 1945, had imperiled the welfare of the industrial classes the alleged discoverer, John Hogan, be taken into custody and the knowledge of the transmutation of metals be, if possible, effaced from his mind by mesmerism, and in the

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