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park which bears his name, and where stands the column to his memory, crowned with a bronze counterfeit of him, standing forthright and intrepid, as I have often seen him in life. It is a clear sky with racing clouds that the statue stands against, and I almost imagine it swaying and moving, such is the illusory effect of the clouds. I enter the park and rest on a settee looking toward the lake.

Chicago has now a population of a million and a half - you will observe that this passion for figures remains with me. To the south I can see the smoke of the steel mills; to the north the towers of granite, tile, and brick of the city, and all between populous quarters. Twenty miles of city north and south; ten miles of city east and west. I am on Douglas' ninety acres, ten of which he deeded to the University of Chicago. Its three-story college building stands to the west of me about one half a mile; abandoned now. The acres themselves have passed to an insurance company on a mortgage. And in the general decay of Douglas' memory and influences this seems fitting enough.

Of course, the Civil War was waged to free the negro; and to do it it was necessary to have a protective tariff, which came into being soon after Lincoln was elected, and has been the policy of the country ever since. Also for this emancipation it was necessary to revive the bank, and this was done during the war. Not long after the war was over · the trust known as the Standard Oil Company was organized. Its moving spirit en

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dowed the Douglas university and moved it to the Midway Plaisance. It has continued its uninterrupted graduating years from Douglas' time till now. It is still Douglas' university at least as much so as this United States was Douglas' these United States. It is a university built out of tariff privileges and railroad rebates; while Douglas' university was built from land, which Douglas was foresighted enough to buy in anticipation of Chicago's growth, and the increment in values produced by the Illinois Central railroad. Douglas was hotly denounced for crookedness and money grabbing in those days of 1858 by the Abolitionists and Free Soilers. Indeed much is said now in criticism of Mr. Rockefeller; but I believe it will pass. Besides he is not running for office, or trying to found an ocean to ocean republic; and hence criticism does not hurt him so much.

Below me and down behind a wall the tracks of the Illinois Central roar to the wheels of numerous trains, long trains of ten and twelve cars, sleepers, diners, parlor cars, bound straight for New Orleans and New York, either place reached in twenty-four hours from Chicago. I wish Douglas could see this. Still, would he like to know that the public have no access to the lake at any place where the tracks lie between the shore and this wall? Perhaps he would see that this occupancy correctly exemplifies the fate that the free-soil doctrine has met with throughout the country.

There are sounds of trowels, voices of workmen

behind me. A group of masons and laborers is repairing Douglas' tomb; for it is not scrupulously cared for these days. Postprandial orators are frequently remarking amidst great acclaim that the hand on the dial of time points to Hamilton; and if government is as corrupt as the newspapers say it is, and if Hamilton stood for corruption in government, the hand on the dial undoubtedly points to him. At this moment a young man and woman come to a settee near me. The young woman asks her companion: "Who is that monument to?" "Douglas," he answers in staccato. "Who was Douglas?" "A Senator or something from Illinois. But why change the subject? You have kept putting this off, and I have six hundred dollars saved now, and prospects are good. I would like to be. . ." the rest is borne away by the wind. But I know it is the old theme. Soon his arm encircles her shoulders over the back of the settee. She looks at him and smiles. It is April!

The men are repairing the mortar between the stones of Douglas' tomb. Two are masons, two are negro helpers. The negroes are as free as the whites; the whites are no freer than the negroes. They are all wanderers, looking for jobs without settled places, paying board as I do, or living in rented places. One of them may own his house. Some laborers do, not many. They are like the factory workers, the whole breed of workers throughout the land. The Civil War did not make them prosperous, or change their real status. It seems that

the God of nature still rules, and that Darwin is his best prophet. These men are free to work or to starve. Some things have changed. It is no longer against the law to send abolition literature through the mail. But it is against the law to incite laborers to strike, whether they are white or black, and it is against the law for laborers, white or black, to organize themselves into unions. The slave owners were pretty well organized once, both financially and politically, but now the corporations are much better organized than the slave owners were. The negro did not dare to rebel against his master. And now the law prevents the laborer from organizing against the corporation. We have freedom now, but of a different quality. It has changed its base, but is there more of it?

A freight train goes by nearly a mile long. It is laden with coal, oil, iron. I can't believe that the soil is free. Coal and oil and iron have too much of it. I think of the banners borne in the campaign of 1860, when Baron Renfrew stood that night on the balcony of his hotel. He will soon be king of England and emperor of India. And some one either the men who carried those banners or their sons

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some one now has a complete overlordship of this United States.

Why did not these banners make free men and a free soil? I suspect that the banner of protection to American industries was as influential at least as the free soil banner. It was easy after the war

to force the XIV Amendment on the country, to give citizenship to the negro so far as his color had kept him out of it. It remained for the courts to call the corporations citizens and to fit to their backs the coat of equal protection of the laws, which they told us was cut and sewed for the negro. Hence this long freight train with coal, oil, and iron — all very well, but where are the free men and the free soil that Reverdy's son died for?

Cries are now being uttered of capitalistic America. Also they say the Supreme Court is always the mouthpiece of the dominant influence. That was what was said when Taney decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen. "The courts are tools of Satan, the Constitution is a league with Hell," said Garrison. He burned a copy of the Constitution on a public bonfire. That could be done then, for slavocracy only interfered with free speech in the South. Now it is not so safe to criticize the Supreme Court anywhere in America. I myself think that coal and iron and oil are more powerful than cotton ever was, and more permeatingly dominant. It would not do to burn the Constitution anywhere in this United and Standardized States. As for mocking the flag, one might be lynched on the spot.

The Filipinos have taken literally the Declaration of Independence, which is the platform upon which Lincoln was elected; and they are fighting us in the name of Lincoln. We have an army over there sustaining the honor of the flag, under William Mc

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