“This makes coal not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.

“In the hands of the Trust the price is raised to the highest possible point.  The monopoly is complete; the demand perpetual.

“Every home where coal is consumed is a witness to the rapacity of the Coal Trust.  I therefore name as one of the transgressors, Gorman Purdy, President of the Coal Trust, the man who ordered the massacre of the miners at Hazleton; who has driven widows and orphans from the mining towns to let them starve on the highways.  He is the possessor of $160,000,000, the equivalent of the earnings of 10,000 miners for forty-five years.

“I name as a transgressor, Ebenezer J. Sloat, President of the Leather Combine.  His single fortune is $80,000,000.  This man succeeded in effecting a consolidation of all of the leather producers; now the nation pays the Trust a royalty on every pair of shoes that is sold.

“He has driven the cobbler out of existence and has set children and women at the machines which turn out completed shoes, on which not a single part has to be made by skilled labor.

“It is not in the trades alone that the Transgressors are to be found.  They have developed in high places.

“I name as one of the proscribed, ex-Supreme Court Justice Elias M. Turner, who, at the demand of the Magnates, recanted his judgment on the question of constitutional taxation, and left the humble citizens to bear the burden of taxes while the Trusts and Monopolies go practically exempt.  This act of betrayal to the public weal is the more atrocious as it was done by a man who had been invested with the highest honor that the nation could bestow upon the ermine.

“If the wearer of the robe of justice outrages his garment is it to remain an invulnerable shield against our righteous condemnation?  He who doles justice, must himself be its chief exemplar.

“Another of the high servants of the people who has betrayed his fellow countrymen, is ex-Attorney General Lax.  It was his masterful policy of inaction that permitted the trusts and monopolies to intrench themselves during the four years that he stood as their buffer, against all efforts of the several states to curb them.

“Entering the office as a man of moderate means he left it possessed of a fabulous fortune—­the bribe money of the Magnates.  And not content to retire from office, and cease his nefarious trade, he is to-day the counsel for the Money Trust.  It is his mind that conceives the interminable means for forcing the Government to issue bonds for the benefit of the Banking Syndicate?”

“It was Herbert Lax who made me a bankrupt,” exclaims one of the committee.  “He caused my brother to commit suicide.  If ever there was a cold-blooded villain, Lax is the man.”

“His acts were those of charity compared to some of the Transgressors,” observes Nevins, before he continues to announce the list.  “Is the bankrupting of men to be compared with the heinous crime of enslaving children?