comfortable margin to be husbanded as a safeguard for my declining
years. I had a wife and three sons. My sons were all under age, and I
kept them at school to provide them with good educations.

"There was competition in my business; such natural competition as is
met with in all pursuits. It did not, however, prevent my making a
success of my business.

"Then came the Tobacco Trust. It set out to control the retail trade.
This was to be effected by the inauguration of a system of "consigning"
goods to the retail stores with strict provisos that the retailer would
not handle the product of any concern out of the Tobacco Combine. In
order to ingratiate themselves with the store-keepers, the Trust
managers at first offered terms that were so far below the current
prices that a majority of the stores bound themselves to handle the
Trust goods exclusively.

"Three years passed, in which the independent tobacco manufacturers
strove to hold out against the ring. Then came a crash.

"I had opposed the innovation of binding myself to buy from one concern;
for I felt intuitively that as soon as the Trust was all-powerful it
would begin to exercise dictatorial sway over the retailer.

"My fears were soon justified.

"The Trust advanced the price of its goods to the retailer, and
compelled the trade to sell at the same retail figures.

"When this system of extortion was successfully launched the Trust
determined to reward its patrons, as a means of pacifying them for
reduced profits.

"The reward came in the shape of discriminating against the
store-keepers who still handled the goods made by the fast vanishing
opposition concerns.

"I was informed that unless I signed an agreement to use only the Trust
brands of cigarettes and tobacco no more goods would be sold to me. As
the Trust embraced all of the leading brands, that meant that I must go
out of business.

"My puritan blood boiled at the thought that I must submit to the
tyranny of a band of robbers. I determined to fight to the last. Four
years of business at a net loss, drove me into insolvency; then a
mortgage was placed upon my freehold, to be followed by foreclosure. I
still struggled on, under the delusion that I was in a free land and
that the Trust iniquities would not be permitted to crush the individual
citizen forever. The decision of the courts of the several states where
the Tobacco Trust was arraigned, upholding the Trust, disillusioned me.
But it