eir country,
these gallant gentlemen naturally took it for themselves." The eventual
massacre of the remnant of this hardy and impenitent organization by the
labor unions more accustomed to the use of arms is beyond the province of
this monograph to relate. The matter is mentioned at all only because it
is a typical example of the open robbery that marked that period of the
republic's brief and inglorious existence; the Grand Army, as it called
itself, was no worse and no better than scores of other organizations
having no purpose but plunder and no method but menace. A little later
nearly all classes and callings became organized conspiracies, each
seeking an unfair advantage through laws which the party in power had not
the firmness to withhold, nor the party hoping for power the courage to
oppose. The climax of absurdity in this direction was reached in 1918,
when an association of barbers, known as Noblemen of the Razor, procured
from the parliament of the country a law giving it a representative in the
President's Cabinet, and making it a misdemeanor to wear a beard.

In Soseby's "History of Popular Government" he mentions "a monstrous
political practice known as 'Protection to American Industries.'" Modern
research has not ascertained precisely what it was; it is known rather
from its effects than in its true character, but from what we can learn of
it to-day I am disposed to number it among those malefic agencies
concerned in the destruction of the American republics, particularly the
Connected States, although it appears not to have been peculiar to
"popular government." Some of the contemporary monarchies of Europe were
afflicted with it, but by the divine favor which ever guards a throne its
disastrous effects were averted. "Protection" consisted in a number of
extraordinary expedients, the purposes of which and their relations to one
another cannot with certainty be determined in the present state of our
knowledge. Debrethin and others agree that one feature of it was the
support, by general taxation, of a few favored citizens in public palaces,
where they passed their time in song and dance and all kinds of revelry.
They were not, however, altogether idle, being required out of the sums
bestowed upon them, to employ a certain number of men each in erecting
great piles of stone and pulling them down again, digging holes in the
ground and then filling them with earth, pouring water into casks and then
drawing i