l the money I could lay hands on, he never
offered to return me that hundred thousand, not even after the pool had
liquidated, as will be shown later. In spite of this fact, in his
readiness to hurl any charge or insult at me, he had his hireling, Denis
Donohoe, recently make the accusation that I alone of all its members
refused to keep up my payments to the Flower pool.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A RETROSPECT AND A MORAL

The crime of Amalgamated and its immediate consequences are before my
readers. I have fulfilled the promise made in my foreword to expose to
the people of America the manner in which they have been plundered and
the methods by which the "System" habitually cheats them out of their
savings. Robbery conducted on so gigantic a scale as I have pictured
must necessarily simulate the natural processes of finance, and to
understand the deep devices of the schemers requires a knowledge of
banking and commercial practices which the average man has no chance to
attain. If I had begun my story by stating exactly what constituted the
crime of Amalgamated, my readers would not have grasped its heinousness.
In the chapters that I have devoted to leading up to it they have been
educated in the piratical practices of finance and financiers, and have
acquired familiarity with the jugglery of corporations and the
multiplication and division of stock certificates through which most of
the great American fortunes have been created.

Depending still on the ignorance of its blinded dupes, the "System"
again raises its brazen face from among the poison rushes of Wall Street
and hisses, "Listen to what he calls a great crime--a simple business
transaction. It is no crime, but a common practice of modern finance and
by no means unusual or extraordinary."

No crime to take by a trick from thousands of the people thirty-six
millions of the results of our great country's prosperity? Think of what
this vast sum represents--the revenues of a year's work of 36,000 men
earning each $1,000. Think of it, ye millions who dig and delve and bear
heavy burdens that your mothers, wives, and children may in exchange
have a bite to eat and a couch to sleep upon!

The crime of Amalgamated, as I have explained it, constitutes a specific
breach of the banking laws of the State and nation. But the legal
aspects of the offence are trivial in comparison with the great moral
crime which was consummated by Henry H. Rogers and James Stillman, in