in recounting the woes of their
less fortunate brothers--these men under the spell of the brutal code of
modern dollar-making are converted into beasts of prey, and put to shame
the denizens of the deep which devour their kind that they may live.

In the harness of the "System" these men knew no Sabbath, no Him; they
had no time to offer thanks, no care for earthly or celestial being;
from their eyes no human power could squeeze a tear, no suffering wring
a pang from their hearts. They were immune to every feeling known to God
or man. They knew only dollars. Their relatives of a moment since, their
friends of yesterday and long, long ago, they regarded only as lumps of
matter with which to feed the whirring, grinding, gnashing mill which
poured forth into their bins--dollars.

In telling the story of Amalgamated I hope to have profited by my long
and intimate study of this cruel, tigerishly cruel "System," so as to be
able to deaden myself to all those human sympathies which I have heard
its votaries so many times subordinate to "It's business." I shall try
only to keep before me how the Indians of the forest, as our forefathers
drove them farther and farther into the unknown West, got bitter
consolation out of the oft-chanted precept of their white brethren of
civilization, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," reminding myself
that whatever of misery or unhappiness my story may bring to the few, it
will be as nothing to that which they have brought to the many.

In asking for the serious, earnest consideration of the public, I shall
be honest in giving to it my qualifications, my motives, and my desires
for writing this narrative. For thirty-four years I have been actively
connected with matters financial. As banker, broker, and corporation
man, I have, from the vantage-point of one who actually handled the
things he studied, studied the causes which created the conditions which
made possible the "System" which produced the Amalgamated affair. In my
thirty-four years of business experience I have seen the great fortunes,
which are the motive power of the "System" referred to, come out of the
far West as specks upon the financial horizon and grow and grow as they
travelled Eastward, until in their length, breadth, and thickness they
obscured the rising sun. At short range I have seen the giant money
machine put together; I have touched elbows with the men who made it, as
they fitted this wheel and adjusted that ge