er-the-head" verbosity or "under-the-feet" profundity and intricacy
of the political economy pedant, which are as the canvases of the
Whistler school to the masses; but rather will I use the brush of the
artisan who in giving us our white fences, our gray cottages, and our
green blinds sets off those things which make up the pictures the people
really understand and dearly prize.

In the last few years the public has heard many stories of this
Juggernaut "System," which has grown to be the greatest private power in
our land--greater almost than the power which governs the nation,
because it is not only great within itself but by its peculiar workings
is really a part of the power which governs the people. Particularly has
it been told the story of Standard Oil by Mr. Henry D. Lloyd in his able
work, "Wealth Against Commonwealth," and by Miss Ida M. Tarbell in her
recent historical sketches; but however thorough these writers may have
been in gathering the facts, statistics, and evidences, however
relentless their pens and vivid their pictures, they dealt but with
things that are dead; things that to the present generation are but
skeletons whose dry and whitened bones cannot possibly bring to the
hearts, minds, and souls of the men and women of to-day that
all-consuming passion for revenge, that burning desire for justice,
without which no movement to benefit the people can be made successful.

In telling my story I shall, for I must, tell it fairly, and to make
sure of this I pledge myself to keep to the exact facts as they
occurred, not allowing myself to be overawed by their greatness into
contracting them, nor to be tempted by their littleness into expanding
them. In doing this I know, because of the peculiarity of the subject
and my intimate relation to it, no other way than to do it in the first
person. As I have already stated, I would prefer to deal with my subject
through the principles involved rather than with the men concerned; but
as I shall be compelled to call spades spades, I must, of necessity, use
the names of men and of institutions fearlessly and without favor.

In the beginning it will be necessary, for that clear understanding of
the whole subject which is one of my principal objects, to treat at
sufficient length the Bay State Gas intricacies and trickeries, in which
in a certain sense Amalgamated had its being. This will compel me to
devote a chapter to one of the most picturesquely notorious ch