er than beggary is not known by any of you, for I
have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend
to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will
be called upon to discuss later.

"We have no time to hear the life-story of any one," sententiously
observes a man in the front seat.

"But you will have to take time to hear me," retorts Nevins, and he
continues.

"I was a graduate of Yale, in the class of 1884. My name was not Nevins,
then. After a year spent in travel in Europe I returned to the United
States and began to practice my profession of a civil engineer, in the
city of New York. My father had died when I was a child and had left my
mother a fortune of about $40,000. From this sum she derived an income
of $2000 a year. She gave me an allowance of $800 up to the time that I
began to work as an engineer.

"Two years after I had entered the office of a leading railroad I
planned an extensive change in the working of the road and submitted it
to the president. He approved of the suggested changes and put the
matter before the board of directors. Shortly afterward I was informed
that I could proceed with the work. The work was accomplished and the
officials were more than pleased. They made me chief engineer of the
road and a stockholder. I soon had a considerable block of stock. Then a
great Magnate looked at the road with covetous eyes, and ruin came upon
us.

"The stock of the road was depreciated and borne down on the Exchange
until the road became insolvent. All my money was in the road, and when
the crisis came I found myself stranded. The King of the Rail Road
Trust, Jacob L. Vosbeck, bought up the stock and then raised it to even
a higher figure than it had ever before attained.

"Ill-luck followed me and I have gone down, down, until I can scarce
make a living as a draughtsman in a shop. The curse of monopoly has
caused my ruin. I did not succumb to fair competition. I am now enlisted
in a fight against the usurpers of the free rights of the people, and I
declare to you all, that I am in this fight in dead earnest. By an
appeal to justice we can gain nothing.

"I was one of the sixty miners who were attacked on the highway at
Hazleton by the High Sheriff of Luzerne County. I witnessed the mock
trial in Wilkes-Barre. I have thought of all the possible means the
Trusts have left to us, and find that there is but one available.

"They have all the money and