Vol. 4.

BECAME personally acquainted with Mr. Lincoln in 1847. In that year an Internal Improvement Convention was held in Chicago, in which the states of the Mississippi Valley were represented. Mr. Lincoln was a delegate from Illinois, and I was a delegate from Iowa. Both of us were vicepresidents of the convention. Edward Bates, of St. Louis, was president, and made a speech that gave him a national reputation. He was subsequently appointed Attorney-General by President Lincoln.

The convention was held under a large tent, there being no building in Chicago at that time sufficiently large to accommodate the people. Before the convention was ready to proceed with its business, there was a clamorous call by the crowd for Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, and it was found impossible to do anything until Mr. Corwin responded to the call. He took the platform, made a few grimaces, said some funny words which put everybody in a good humor, and the convention was then organized.

Mr. Corwin was an extraordinary man. His complexion was so dark that he might be easily taken for a colored person. He was a brilliant and fascinating speaker, and was one of the great stump orators of his day. He was bitterly opposed to the war with Mexico, and said in Congress that if he was a Mexican in Mexico, he would "welcome the Americans with bloody hands to hospitable graves." This remark proved

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No. 3.

a death blow to his political prospects. Mr. Lincoln made a characteristic speech His droll the convention. marks and happy illustrations delighted the people.

re

When I went to Washington in 1864, I renewed my acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, who was then president. He was very cordial in his greeting, and I had the pleasure of meeting and riding out with him and Mrs. Lincoln on several occasions.

No one without personal knowledge. can have any idea of the terrible ordeal through which Mr Lincoln was passing at that time. Whenever I visited the White House I found the waiting room. and corridors crowded with men and women waiting for an audience with the President. Men were there on all kinds of business-most of them to importune the President for office. Women were

there-mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters-to beg the President for some favor to their relatives who had been or were in the army, some of whoin were in prison and some under sentence of death. Mr. Lincoln was a tenderhearted man, and the painful struggle to which he was subjected by his sense of duty to his country and his sympathy for those who were suffering from the stern arbitrament of war, can hardly be imagined, certainly not described.

I was present at the second inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, March 4, 1865, when the following incident occurred: Dark and lowering clouds hung over the

President and the people as he commenced his inaugural address from the east steps of the Capitol. While he was speaking-suddenly and with startling effect a flood of sunshine burst through the clouds and enveloped, for a few minutes, the President and those around him in a blaze of golden light. I hoped then that this was an omen of good for Mr. Lincoln and his incoming administration, but perhaps it was an omen of something higher than earthly dignities. It was under the smiles of heaven that he uttered these memorable words:

"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphans, to do al' which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

I was at City Point the day General Grant started on his Appomattox campaign, and Mr. Lincoln was there and remained after the army had left. He was admonished to be careful, as here might be enemies lurking in the neighborhood who would consider it a great deed to capture or kill him, but, hendless of this advice, he wandered around from place to place making observations, indifferent, apparently, to his persona" safety. He was a noticeable figure there, not only on account of his size, but for the peculiarity of his dress. He wore a tall, silk hat and a long surtout which illy fitted his lank body.

While I was at City Point at that time I had an inkling of the "pomp an I circumstance of glorious war.' On: very

dark night, about 10 o'clock, the rebels. made an attack on the fort just below City Point. For half an hour, a least, there was an incessant roar of artillery with the rattle of musketry, an ever and anon the heavens were illuminated by bombs and shells bursting in the air. It was very exciting, and I can readily understand how a similar scene inspired Francis Key to write that immortal song, "The Star Spangled Banner."

Lee surrendered to Grant on the 9th day of April, 1865, and five days after

wards, April 14, Mr. Lincoln was shot by Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, about 10 o'clock at night. He expired the next morning at about 7 o'clock, and the country was plunged from exultant joy over the end of the war into overwhelming grief by this terrible tragedy. My intention was to be at the theatre that evening, but I was detained by some business matters until it was too late to go. I was in bed, asleep, when I was aroused by Major Stevens, the son-inlaw of Colonel Baker, whom I could not see, but whose voice I recognized, who exclaimed in startling tones, "Judge, the President, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Stanton are killed!" and without waiting for any questions he rushed out of the room and "left the world to darkness and to me."

To say that I was badly scared is to put it mildly, but I mustered courage. enough to go to the window and look out upon the street, where I could discern persons running, and it occurring to me that possibly a wholesale killing of those connected with the government was on hand, the best thing I could do was to stay in my room till morning, which I did, passing the rest of the night in sleepless anxiety. When daylight came I went out upon the street and saw what will never again be seen in Washington. Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the Treasury Department, was crowded with people, the most noticeable of whom was the colored population. Negro women all along the avenue were on their knees, weeping, wringing their hands and wailing out their lamentations. Men were running here and there as though they wanted to do something without knowing what to do, and altogether it was an indescribable scene of excitement and commotion.

Solemn and impressive funeral services for the dead President were held in the celebrated East Room of the White House and were largely attended by officials of the government and the diplomatic corps. To escort the remains of Mr. Lincoln to Springfield a joint committee of the Senate and House was appointed, of which I was a member. We left Washington in a train of four or five cars all draped in deep mourning.

We stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago, at each of which places Mr. Lincoln lay in state a day or two, and it seemed as though the entire population of those cities turned out to look for the last time upon the face of their martyred President. At all the little towns and villages along the route the people assembled as well in the night as in the daytime, to give expression to their sorrow and see the funeral train. At some places as late as the midnight hour, with torches and lanterns to give light, groups of little girls dressed in white sang suitable hymns and by their bright presence and sweet voices seemed to deprive night and death of half their darkness and gloom.

We were met at Springfield by a great crowd of the old friends and neighbors of Mr. Lincoln, and, surrounded by a multitude whose tears and sighs gave proof of their unaffected sorrow, we laid away and left all that was mortal of Abraham Lincoln where

"The wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."

I need not enlarge here upon the qualities which made Mr. Lincoln a good and great President, as they are as familiar as household words to the people of this country. Suffice it to say that no man ever lived who impressed his personality so deeply upon the hearts of the American people as Abraham Lincoln

and

"Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear."

T

HE worst, the most obvious, apparently the most hopeless, character istic of the closing days of this wonderful nineteenth century is the tremendous accumulation of private fortunes in the hands of the few, and the corresponding growth of pauperism., misery, political and industrial slavery on the part of the many. There is not one of our congested centers of population that does not contain more millionaires than existed in the whole country forty years ago Thousands and thousands of wealth producers are constantly out of employment.

The concentration of industry and capital, the growth of trusts, the destruction of small industries and the forcing of small capitalists to the wall in all lines of trade, together with the constantly increasing army of the unemployed and the growing unrest among the sons of toil, are daily adding to the number of those upon whom the conviction is forced that a new social order is inevitable. The impossibility of the long con

tinuance of present social arrangements has become clear to the most enlightened minds of the age, while the fear of impending change is agitating the hearts. and brains of the most obtuse and conservative.

Is there any connection between abnormal wealth and abnormal poverty, between the wealthy idler and the homeless tramp? Obviously, yes. Under the present system production is carried on, not for those who simply want, but for those who can buy. It is plain that the income of a single Vanderbilt or Rockefeller must equal the combined incomes of an army of ordinary citizens. Say Rockefeller has $120,000,000, which is far below the common estimate. This sum at five per cent will yield an annual return equal to the joint earnings of 12,ooo men working at the rate of $500 per year each. Estimating a family of five persons it then appears that the income of a single millionaire family, such as that of Rockefeller, must equal that of a city of 60,000 inhabitants, each head of

tribution must be caried on co-operatively, for the benefit of all.

Every intelligent workman knows that his labor creates several times more wealth than he receives in the form of wages, and necessity has forced upon society a recognition of the fact that this surplus must be distributed for the benefit of its creators instead of for the idle few. This can only be done by co-operation.

Many attempts have been made in the past to bring about a recognition of the economic superiority of co-operation. In most instances these attempts have been complicated by the introduction of sociai or religious theories having no necessary connection with the industrial principle itself, and in a great majority of instances such movements have been failures. At any rate, they have not possessed the necessary capacity of assimilation to make them universal. These attempts have generally taken the form of co-operative colonies, and other causes leading to failure, besides the one above mentioned, may be stated. There has been a lack of legislation favorable to their scheme of operations. No sooner would a community of colonists come together than dissensions would arise, lawsuits would ensue, and as a result of legal complications the colonies would be broken to pieces. Again, these enterprises have failed because the members would gather themselves together in some remote corner of the earth outside

of civilization, without carrying with them sufficient provisions and capital to sustain them until they should be able to create for themselves a new civilization. Thus, before they could produce their own food, they would starve. Another leading cause instrumental in the failure of colonies is that the colonists themselves have been theorists, dreamers and readers of books, but exceedingly poor at manual labor. A further and important cause of failure has been lack of proper business management and definite plans for operations.

But, as a rule, men profit by the mistakes of their predecessors, and the failures of co-operative enterprises have taught lessons of caution to others who

have sought by this means to solve the problem of industrial emancipation. The most promising recent attempt at solving the riddle of the Sphynx is that of the Co-Operative Brotherhood, a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Washington, and now carrying on business at Burley, in that state. The principal cause of failure of co-operative organizations have, as far as possible, been eliminated from the Co-Operative Brotherhood. Its plan provides for good business management, and its legal organization is such as to rest its cause on the most securely established laws of the land. It has no peculiar religious or social theories to work out, and it leaves no place open for those theorists and dreamers who are unable to do practical work with their hands or brains. Every co-operator must be a producer, and the conditions of life are such as to be favorable to individual incentive.

It is the intention of this company to direct the labor of its members to the production of every possible thing they themselves may need to consume. Thus, by directing the whole energy of the organization to the production of things which are to be consumed by the producers themselves, this corporation becomes absolutely free from the necessity to enter into competition with outside. business interests, which might be detrimental.

From a business point of view the fact. that this company enters into no forced competition with other interests in the business world is one of the greatest securities against any possibility of failure. Of course, it should not be understood that the products of the labor of this corporation are never to be sold in the markets of the world. What is meant is that the company will never be forced to sell its products in competition with others, but will sell when it can do so to advantage and profit. For instance, with our co-operators in manufacturing lumber and shingles to build their homes, in raising wheat and vegetables to eat, and wool for clothing, what matter is it to them whether the market price of these things are low or high? These things are produced for use and not for profit.