o, to affect
important legislation for this great interest or the other, buy or sell
stock for the benefit of legislators whose votes they desire to
influence. Extreme caution is demanded in the execution of such orders,
or all hands might by some slip-up find themselves wearing striped
suits.[15]

Such a catastrophe seemed imminent some years ago when the Sugar Trust
was before the United States Senate for some legislation necessary to
bolster up its monopoly. Its agents had either been less cautious than
usual in disguising the raw bribery they were perpetrating, or this
particular Senate was too brazen to take the usual precautions to hide
its greed from the world. In any case, so great an outcry was made in
the press of the country that some sacrifice to the people's wrath was
called for--one of those familiar sacrifices which, at intervals of ten
or fifteen years in this republic, our rulers make to the great god
Integrity. An investigation was organized, and a Senatorial inquisition
had before it eminent sugar capitalists and many other distinguished
gentlemen who could by no possibility shed light on the transactions,
and then, realizing that a show of earnestness, at least, was demanded,
it was agreed that some member of Moore & Schley's firm must go on the
witness-stand, and, on refusing to tell which Senators had speculated in
sugar, must be sent to jail. This grandstand play, it was calculated,
and rightly, would so hold the attention of the American people that
when the committee concluded its investigation with the usual loud
acclaim of duty well done, its Draconian punishment of the unsubmissive
broker would act as another ten years' stay against outcry.

When this stratagem was decided on, John Moore announced that he as head
of the firm should be the sacrifice. But the representatives of the
"System" and the Senate firmly refused to assign him that role, and
instead, to his grief and anger, nominated for jail the associate member
who had charge of Moore & Schley's Washington business, whom they
declared the logical victim. During the thirty days that his friend and
partner spent behind the bars John Moore's hair whitened more than in
all the years before, and from that time until his death he refused
firmly to take part in his old line of work, or was ever again his old
jovial self.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Over a year after the publication of this statement startled the
country, John A. McCall, President