xiliaries of the Commissary Department or the Hospital Service of
the Army. What is meant is that the abnormal conditions of industry,
uncorrected by the Government, afforded a glaring opportunity for
unscrupulous men of business who, whatever their professions, cared a
hundred times more for themselves than for their country. To these
was due the pitiless hampering of the army in the interest of the
wool-trade. For example, many uniforms paid for at outrageous prices,
turned out to be made of a miserable cheap fabric, called "shoddy,"
which resisted weather scarcely better than paper. This fraud gave
the word "shoddy" its present significance in our American speech and
produced the phrase--applied to manufacturers newly become rich--"shoddy
aristocracy." An even more shameful result of the selfishness of the
manufacturers and of the weakness of the Government was the use of cloth
for uniforms not of the regulation colors, with the result that soldiers
sometimes fired upon their comrades by mistake.

The prosperity of the capitalists who financed the woolen business did
not extend to the labor employed in it. One of the ugliest details of
the time was the resolute attempt of the parasites to seize the whole
amount of the abnormal profits they wrung from the Government and from
the people. For it must not be forgotten that the whole nation had to
pay their prices. It is estimated that prices in the main advanced about
100 per cent while wages were not advanced more than sixty per cent.
It is not strange that these years of war form a period of bitter
antagonism between labor and capital.

What went on in the woolen business is to be found more or less in every
business. Immense fortunes sprang up over night. They had but two
roots: government contracts and excessive profits due to war prices. The
gigantic fortunes which characterized the North at the end of the war
are thus accounted for. The so-called prosperity of the time was a
class prosperity and was absorbed by parasites who fattened upon the
necessities of the Government and the sacrifices of the people.

CHAPTER XII. THE MEXICAN EPISODE

That French demagogue whom Victor Hugo aptly called Napoleon the Little
was a prime factor in the history of the Union and the Confederacy. The
Confederate side of his intrigue will be told in its proper place. Here,
let us observe him from the point of view of Washington.

It is too much to attempt to pack into a sentenc