e out of their savings like the veriest
"come-ons." Humbly they take, in return for the gold earned with the
sweat of their brows, a piece of paper of a given value which they
return later and exchange for half the amount the paper cost them
originally. In the space between purchase and sale fifty per cent. of
their investment has disappeared--has been filched away, but yet they
have no resentment. They evince none of the feelings of the man whose
pocket has been picked or whose till has been robbed. On the contrary,
their sentiment is of admiration for the banker, the broker, the
financier through whose agency their money has been lost.

Take, for instance, the prosperous tanner who goes to his banker with
$100,000, the fruit of ten years' success, and exchanges this sum for
1,000 shares of Steel Preferred. Now, if he were to examine this
security with half the thought or investigation he gives to a $500
car-load of bark, he would learn that there was not 20 cents on the
dollar of real value behind it. In six months the eminent tanner is
again at the banker's offering for sale his thousand shares of steel. In
the meantime it has declined in value and he has to part with it for
$50,000. But he does not complain; indeed, he bows his way out of the
palatial office of the great man and is full of sincere thanks when the
banker promises to let him know the next good thing on the market.
Suppose our tanner had purchased ten cars of tan bark and found that
each car-load was short ten per cent. Would he not at once go to his
attorney and exclaim emphatically that he would spend thousands rather
than let the scoundrel who had tricked him get away with his swag?

Suppose our grocer waxing rich invests his funds in the Sugar trust. He
thinks he knows all there is to be known about sugar. The business of
the trust is to make the sweet commodity and sell it to the people. No
mystery or magic, surely, about this simple pursuit. Yet when our grocer
invests his savings, the sugar stock is many dollars more valuable than
when, scared into selling by fluctuations which he cannot see any reason
for, he tries to get back his investment. So many times have investors
been milked of their savings by this one trust during the past twenty
years that in the coffers of its creators and jugglers are hundreds of
millions of money that once belonged to the people for which they have
received absolutely nothing in return.

Both the tanner and the