oprietor more
than his business is worth, and he is tickled, but they only pay him
part money, and give him stock in the combine for the balance, and let
him run his old business, now owned by others, at a good salary, and he
gets the big head and buys a rubber-tired carriage, and sends his family
to Europe. Then the trust closes down his factory and throws his men out
of employment, lowers the price of goods to run out others who have not
entered the trust, and the people who get goods cheap say a trust is the
noblest work of God. After the outsiders have been ruined, and the man
who entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him,
and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents
on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come
home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone
to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former
manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby,
and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he
tries to get a position pushing a scraper on the asphalt pavement, and
if he fails he either jumps off the pier into the lake, or takes a gun
and goes gunning for the trust promoter who ruined him. And after the
factory man is drowned, or sent to the penitentiary for murder, the
stock in the trust takes a bound and is away above par, and he hasn't
got any of it, and the poor competitors of the trust having been ruined
and closed up, prices of the goods go up kiting, and the dear people who
said a trust was the noblest work of God say it is the dumbdest work of
man, and they pass resolutions to down the trust, while the owners
of the good stock in the trust stick out their fat stomachs, full of
champagne and canvasback and terrapin, and laugh at the people till they
nearly die of apoplexy, and drive bob-tailed horses that live better
than the people, and carry blanketed dogs on velvet-cushioned carriages,
that would turn up their noses at good wiener skins worse than I did
when you loaded my tobacco, you little red-headed rascal," and Uncle Ike
drew a long breath, and brought his fist down on the table in anger, as
he got worked up over the wrongs of the people at the hands of the gold
brick trusts.

"Gosh," said the red-headed boy, as his eyes kept opening wider and
wider when he took in all Uncle Ike had said, "I should think the people
would have the trusts arres