“When the world awakens some morning and reads that at a given hour the forty Robbers of America were sent to their eternal resting place with their crimes on their heads, the shock will not pass away in a day.  It will be far different from reading of a battle fought six thousand miles from Washington.  Then will be the time for the men who have the good of the people at heart to reestablish them in their rights.

“Money is the god that the Nation is asked to worship.  It makes fools of the majority and knaves of the rest.

“It will take some unprecedented occurrence to stir the masses.  The firing on Fort Sumter shook the Nation more than the carnage of Gettysburg.  The Nation has come to be apathetic on a vital question; even more so than in the ante-bellum days.  The dry-rot of Commercialism is consuming us.  We are governed by dividend worshipers.  We must act, if our manifest destiny to be a lasting republic is to be fulfilled.

“If the taking off of the forty men would do the work that I wish to see done I would be glad; but it will require a sacrifice on our part of more than our prejudice against taking of life.  We shall each have to kill our man, and then commit suicide.”

“What!” ejaculate several.

“We shall be obliged to commit suicide.  There is no other course open for us, for if, on the announcement that the forty men have been murdered, there is not the still more surprising statement that the murderer of each is found dead beside the slain, the effect will be common-place, and everyone will say it is a cowardly plot to kill forty of the ‘best citizens.’  There is no way out of it.  You would all gladly fight with an enemy of the country to the death.  To rescue the flag from the enemy you would face a hail of lead.

“This flag of Freedom is defiled to-day by the Magnates.  You are asked to rescue it.  It was snatched from my hands on the highway as I went to present a petition to my fellow citizens.

“When each of us has been allotted his man we will work to the accomplishment of the plan at the given time.  On each there will be found a letter explaining what led to the killing of the public enemy.  These forty letters will appear in the papers throughout the land; they will be compared and found to be counterparts; then the public mind will grasp the significance of the seeming murders.  It will then be regarded as an act of deliverance.  In place of being regarded as murderers we shall be recognized as men whose love of country impelled us to sacrifice our lives unhesitatingly.

“By the blotting out of forty of the chief despots, and the publication of the reasons; and by the announcement that the people are determined to regain their rights, the road to National Ownership and Control of Public Utilities, and the regulation of the finances and commerce by the government, will be materially cleared.

“In fact, I am confident that the next election after this object lesson will find the robbers ready to sell at a just price and the people eager to come into possession of their own?”