had unloaded it on Mr. Ryan. They seem to think it very clever of
the King to have got rid of it to the American millionaire. To one
knowing Mr. Ryan only from what he reads of him in the public press,
he does not seem to be the sort of man to whom Leopold could sell a
worthless rubber plantation. However, it is a matter which concerns
only Mr. Ryan and those who may think of purchasing shares in the
company. The Guggenheims, who are to operate this rubber, say that
Leopold did not know how to get out the full value of the land, and
that they, by using the machinery they will install, will be able to
make a profit, where Leopold, using only native labor, suffered a
loss.

To the poor the ways of the truly rich are past finding out. After a
man has attained a fortune sufficient to keep him in yachts and
automobiles, one would think he could afford to indulge himself in
the luxury of being squeamish; that as to where he obtained any
further increase of wealth, he would prefer to pick and choose.

On the contrary, these Americans go as far out of their way as
Belgium to make a partner of the man who has wrung his money from
wretched slaves, who were beaten, starved, and driven in chains.
This concession cannot make them rich. It can only make them richer.
And not richer in fact, for all the money they may whip out of the
Congo could not give them one thing that they cannot now command,
not an extra taste to the lips, not a fresh sensation, not one added
power for good. To them it can mean only a figure in ink on a page
of a bank-book. But what suffering, what misery it may mean to the
slaves who put it there! Why should men as rich as these elect to go
into partnership with one who sweats his dollars out of the naked
black? How really fine, how really wonderful it would be if these
same men, working together, decided to set free these twenty million
people--if, instead of joining hands with Leopold, they would
overthrow him and march into the Congo free men, without his chain
around their ankles, and open it to the trade of the world, and give
justice and a right to live and to work and to sell and buy to
millions of miserable human beings. These Americans working together
could do it. They could do it from Washington. Or five hundred men
with two Maxim guns could do it. The "kingdom" of the Congo is only
a house of cards. Five hundred filibusters could take Boma, proclaim
the Congo open to the traders of the world, as