a dark corner by a strong-arm man;
another group owe money to one of the "System's" banks and a brief spell
on the financial rack will weaken their grip. Sooner or later all
succumb. While such details as these were being attended to, lines were
being strung here and there to bring about the passage by the city of
Brooklyn and the Legislature of New York State of ordinances and laws
which should allow this and compel that to be done, and so rivet the
various links of the great venture.

While in the midst of this campaign, to which Henry H. Rogers' genius,
matured in many a hard-fought business battle, foresaw an early and easy
triumphal termination, there came athwart his victorious path a
financial guerilla, "balloony," mysterious, yet as sticky as a
jelly-fish, who was destined to exert a most maleficent influence on his
after-life. Fate hangs no red lights at the cross-roads of a man's
career. No "pricking of his thumbs," no strange portents warned the
Master of "Standard Oil" that the impudent Philadelphia swashbuckler who
dared interfere with the execution of his plan to fetter the "System's"
yoke to the necks of the citizens of Brooklyn was the factor that
destiny had chosen to shape the ends that he had rough-hewn.

The financial guerilla was J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of
rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate,
wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of
men--J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster,
who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective
franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized
world than any other man of this or any previous age.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The New York "curb" is the latest invention in finance, coming closely
upon the heels of the invention of trusts, and it holds the same relation
to the New York Stock Exchange that Private Things hold to corporations.
Before a stock can be bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange, there
must be submitted to the governors a description of what the stock is,
which must be of such tangibility that any one who cares to investigate may
find there every detail and particular of the property represented, set
forth with the utmost exactitude. But on the "curb" stocks can be traded in
without responsible sponsors or descriptions that mean anything. In other
words, a stock may be bought and sold there, which is so vague and
indefinite