mencement of its "world politics" it had done for Rome, deluding itself thus to conquer the crisis.

To do away with the misery of the city poor, it everywhere multiplied public works even useless ones. It distributed food free, or partly free, and it provided institutions for the needy. It stirred up rich families to follow its example and to aid it.

But to meet these expenses, it had to raise the taxes on agriculture, and families of wealth had to spend in the cities the larger part of what they got from their holdings in the country. Therefore, artificially, life in the cities made itself easier and pleasanter, and that in the country more difficult and uncomfortable, in spite of the fact that the natural course of things tended to produce the opposite effect.

Cured in so unreasonable a fashion, the mischief grew worse. The exodus of peas

ants toward the cities increased, and with it the exigencies and the necessary cost of comfortable living in them. As the evil grew, more of the same remedy that had aggravated it was applied-foolish expenses on the part of the city, ruinous taxes on agriculture-till from bad to worse the system held together no longer and all the social structure fell to pieces in one colossal catastrophe.

This is precisely the mistake that civilization to-day ought to know how to avoid. One thing the catastrophe of the empire teaches modern men, and that is, that the evil from which the great cities of the civil world now suffer is a salutary, a healing, a beneficial suffering, since it restrains naturally the growth of cities and their luxury and keeps people in the country where the cost of necessities transforms itself into a gain, into greater comfort and better living. In short, it is the vis medicatrix naturalis, nature's remedy,-for establishing the equilibrium between agriculture and industry, between city and country, confused by the development of modern civilization.

Therefore all artificial means that might tend to alleviate this suffering and favor the growth of cities at this moment when the balance of things demands that this development cease, would be pernicious, and, to shun a small present evil, would prepare woes and difficulties and dangers infinitely graver for the future.

Even if modern civilization adopted the policy followed by the Roman Empire and

tried with the same dangerous artífice to eliminate suffering, it ought not to fear a catastrophe like that undergone by the ancient civilization. Its greater vastness and power and long establishment make improbable a similar destiny. Yet, if not destroyed, it might be profoundly troubled and weakened in seeking to favor the cities to the disadvantage of the country-so much the more disturbed and weakened, inasmuch we are all dazzled by its triumphs and outward signs of power and grandeur, and, therefore, succeed with far more difficulty than the ancients did in discerning the signs of old age in the world around us. We fail to notice the cracks that go winding their fatal way through the great edifice under whose roof we are sheltered.

In another respect, also, the story of the decay of the Roman Empire admonishes modern men. It admonishes them not to mistake the sightiiness of external manifestations of riches and power for signs of real riches and power. A civilization is not always indeed stronger and more affluent in the times when it shows forth as such. On the contrary, when men flatter themselves the more with appearances, not seldom has decadence already set in.

We often stop in admiration and astonishment before the great ruins of ancient Rome especially in what were once the European provinces of the empire—and we think how grand, how mighty, and how rich must have been the empire capable of erecting such impressive monuments, which so many centuries have not been able to efface from the earth. Nevertheless, to estimate rightly those remains, it must not be forgotten that almost all the great Roman monuments of which we have still conspicuous fragments, belong to the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, the times of decline and dissolution. As the empire weakened and grew senile, a species of monumental vainglory pervaded it and the great structures became greater. An almost certain rule for guessing correctly the century to which monuments belong, is to attribute them to an epoch as much the later as the ruins are the more imposing.

For the city of Rome itself, the period of the amplest enlargement and splendor

and population was the middle of the fourth century. Its decadence was then well under way. Only then was it-for the number and grandeur of its temples, for the sumptuousness of its baths, its basilicas, its private palaces, the beauty of its public gardens, for its size and populousness-the first and finest city of the empire, the wonder of all the world. On the other hand, in the first century, when it was smaller, modest, and simple, when the empire was truly in its most flourishing period, with frontiers secure, population on the increase, the city developing naturally, agriculture, commerce, and industries prosperous-then was the state well ordered and strong. Nor is this an historic paradox. In greater or less degree, it is always happening.

In families, as in peoples and civilizations, showiness and vainglory, the craze for doing on a big scale even what could without damage-nay, to advantage-be done in little, are signs rather of decay than of progress. The passion for the colossal and the vast is not a sound passion, born of epochs strong in a steady moral and social balance, but of epochs that are really in decline, disturbed by a profound disproportion between desires and actuality, greedy for excitements and violent sensations, wasteful of work and wealth, to give themselves a false impression of greatness and power, and irritated by a spirit of rivalry and competition, which easily degenerates into punctilious spite.

To maintain and further the vainglory of monuments, festivals, and ceremonies that gradually ruined the Roman Empire, rivalry contributed not a little the eversharpening rivalry between the large, the medium-sized, and the small cities of the empire, between the provinces and the districts, between classes, families, professions, sects, religions. When one city built an amphitheater or a bath or a basilica, the sister city must have the same thing, as large or larger. If one wealthy family erected or endowed a temple or a bath, others had to do the same or more. Among religious sects, there was a constant struggle to have the finest temple or the most sumptuous ceremonies.

This explains why small cities, like Verona, had enormous amphitheaters, large enough to hold several times the city's population. It also explains how provinces, cities, private individuals, engaged in this struggle for grandiosity, squandered enormous wealth that might better have been spent in defending the empire or in conserving its economic resources. Many of those ruins that are to-day our admiration, were, in the times when they stood as superb edifices, the very ruin of the empire.

And now let us look within our own conscience. Can we say that our age is immune from this mania for grandeur and boastful showiness, from this spirit of sterile rivalry, public and private, which scattered so many treasures of the ancient empire and clothed its fatal decay in seeming splendor?

I do not know who could say so, seeing the giddily rapid progress of public and private extravagance, the continuous inflation of popular vanity, professional and class pride, the tendency to mistake, in everything, colossal proportions for intrinsic worth. Whoever looks about him, in America as well as in Europe, sees this sentiment diffusing itself on every hand, gaining ground, muddying politics, religion, literature, philosophy, art; sees it corrupting and changing the temper alike of the higher and the lower classes; and, not that alone, he sees everywhere a strong inclination to regard this sentiment as a sign of strength, a proof of greatness and of progress.

The story of Rome admonishes us to distrust this illusion and to sound the mind of our civilization more deeply. To too many of us it seems a shining mirror of perfection. If twenty centuries of work and study place us, the fortunate heirs of an ancient civilization, in a position to live more safely and comfortably than our forefathers upon this little globe, they, nevertheless, do not permit us to alter at our pleasure the moral value of virtues and vices.

What were vices, faults, defective inclinations of the will twenty centuries ago, remain such to-day. Modern civilization would commit the worst of all mistakes. if, deaf to the great lesson of the ruins of Rome, it boasted of those defects which, in the ancient world, destroyed one of the greatest works of human mind and energy.

F

REE-BORN, independent American, proud of your liberties, suppose you wished to buy a ham; and suppose that to fulfill your desire you were compelled to disguise yourself, to don false whiskers, to go in the dark of the moon and to negotiate up a blind alley with a grocer similarly disguised. What would you think?

What would you think if every time you went forth to purchase household supplies, a detective dogged your footsteps, followed you by stealth, hung over your shoulder, noted your smallest transactions, and reported your remarks?

What would you think if you knew the same power that hired the detective to be at the same time choosing your senators, selecting your legislators, and dominating your public affairs?

How would you relish all this? How would you square it with your basic notions of individual freedom?

You are not, as yet at least, obliged to put on false whiskers when you go out to buy sugar or a ham; but you might be subjected to even greater annoyances than I have suggested if, under given conditions, you should attempt to buy another staple of far greater importance to you and to your household.

Unless you happen to be unusually familiar with certain latter-day phases of business as it really is, you will not regard this statement otherwise than as a mere fantasy. The object of these articles is to show you by documentary evidence that it is no more than the simple truth; that there is a condition. as wide as the continent and rigidly enforced under which men may not buy a staple article where they please nor of whom they please; that the most important, subtle, adroit, and successful combination of the day is at all times at work in our pocket

books and households without our suspecting it; and, finally, that in secret but effective fashion it has profoundly influenced our public affairs no less than our expense accounts. And yet we have hardly heard of it.

Italy, of late, has been investigating the Camorra, a strange, stealthy secret organization that in some parts of the country is stronger than the government, choosing and controlling public officers, influencing legislation, directing or overawing business, terrorizing business men, its spies listening at every door, looking in at every window, lurking about the path of every wayfarer.

If, upon reading the chronicle of the American lumber industry, you are reminded of the Italian organization and tempted to call this the American Camorra, it will be no fault of the chronicler. For now, at the beginning, I warn you of a profound difference that you may be prone to overlook. The Italian Camorra is carried on by bad men for evil purposes. The combination that dominates, controls, manipulates, and spies upon the American lumber trade is not composed of bad men, but of men of the highest possible standing in their communities, eminent and respected-leaders of business, men of character and worth; and the ends for the sake of which they resort to such extraordinary means are ends that they hold to be right. These ends may represent a footless economic absurdity, they may be on all scientific grounds utterly indefensible; but the men that pursue them implicitly believe them to be fair, just, and moral.

This fact elevates their story far above any mere trust story that ever was told. These men are fighting daily and risking imprisonment for what they believe to be a principle, and the thing for which they fight is medieval, reversionary, and so economically unsound that if they knew anything

about either economics or the real history of the race they would revolt at it. And yet they are willing to go to jail for it. In the United States of America, Twentieth Century, A.D.

This is not all. The thing that they are fighting for directly and materially and daily affects every household in the nation. It is reflected in every house-rent, in every bill for household necessities, in every item that goes to make up the cost of living. Every day it piles something more upon the bent shoulders of that pathetic figure of patience, the Ultimate Consumer. Lumber is the universal necessity; it enters under countless forms into every structure that has a roof. The purpose of these men is to make the price of lumber abnormally high. From the contractor or house-builder this abnormal excess passes to the landlord; from the landlord to the tenant; from the tenant, grocer, and butcher to you and me. From it can be no escape. No house can be built without lumber; the lumber combination takes its toll from every house that is built; the price of the toll, paid and repaid, finds its eventual resting-place in the items of the increased cost of living, which rises steadily to the accompaniment of an augmenting complaint.

And yet all this time, whatever newspapers, campaign orators, the uninformed or the prejudiced may say, there is no such thing as a Lumber Trust. Literally, no such thing. The whole lumber industry of the United States is held together by a matchless and wonderful organization, but there is no Lumber Trust.

This organization has thousands of members in all parts of the country, many of them presumably men of independent minds and preferences; and they are so perfectly disciplined that at the appearance of one little signal, all act together like a drilled army. It has all the business territory of the United States so mapped out and divided that its prices rule everywhere and its members, under the control of its formulated principles, dominate and possess the trade.

It attacks recalcitrants and outsiders, drives them out of business, closes yards and factories, terrorizes alien manufacturers, scrutinizes the private books, records, and letter-files of its opponents, has its spies in every unfriendly establishment, studies and follows every suspected shipment, keeps

incessant watch on suspected business men, maintains a horde of well-trained detectives, bribes employees, scatters hush-money, dogs witnesses. It has exerted its influence over courts, public officers, administrations, legislatures, Congress, and political parties. Composed of a great number of diverse elements, it is compact, secret, efficient, most ably managed, and while threefourths of its members have no idea of its own activities, they follow, support, and obey it with unquestioning faith.

Yet this strange combination has no incorporated nor holding company, no stocks nor bonds, no dividends, no visible control, no tangible machine for monopoly such as there is in the oil, tobacco, sugar, and other industries. Organized, for practical results, as carefully as any of these, the lumber trade goes on working together without a trust, because its members are inspired with a feeling that they are contending for a principle. And all the time, the principle for which they make sacrifices and maintain so vast and momentous a concern is an economic absurdity.

You cannot match this situation in all the history of trusts.

No one could attempt to make it clear without explaining in detail the present state of the great American lumber industry, and no one could explain that without telling the story of the two remarkable men around whom most of these things revolve.

One of them, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, might be called the twentieth century's Man in the Iron Mask, so curious is the mystery that for some reason has grown up around him. Until five years ago, when the Cosmopolitan Magazine first revealed his astonishing story, not ten thousand persons in the United States were consciously aware of his name. And yet, in a country supposed to be given over to the worship of riches and rich men, he had long been the possessor of a fortune that overtowered those of a hundred famous millionaires, and on that country's affairs and daily life he was exercising an almost unexampled influence.

The stories of the great American fortunes have rung all the possible changes on the man that begins penniless in the world and masters riches; but among them is no story that resembles this man's. Other men have designed, planned, and labored to be rich. Fortune came to this man,