The Red Cross regards your position and standing to be such as to make your views on the progress and value of the 19th century, in comparison with other countries and your prophecies regarding the 20th century of great value, and we respectfully request you to forward to us at your earliest convenience from 40 to 70 words in your own handwriting, giving your thoughts in that connection. We shall read them at all of our meetings throughout the United States, and afterwards allow the United States Government to take them and forever exhibit and preserve them in the Congressional Library at Washington.

An engraved invitation is being prepared, one of which will be mailed to you, but the time is short, and we take this method to expedite matters, and hope you will send in your "Greeting" before December 1st, if you can do so.

We prefer to have the "Greeting" in your own handwriting rather than typewritten because we wish to have each "Greeting" in autograph form when turned over to the government for preservation for all time.

To the American National Red Cross:

During the century just closed, mankind has made marvelous progress in his control over the forces of Nature, and in the production of things which contribute to his physical comfort.

The early years of the century marked the progress of the race towards individual freedom and permanent victory over the tyranny of hereditary aristocracy, but the closing decades of the century have witnessed the surrender of all that was gained to the more heartless tyranny of accumulated wealth. Man's progress has heretofore been material and not spiritual or ideal and the future alone can demonstrate whether any real progress has been made.

I believe the new century will open with many bloody revolutions as a result of the protest of the masses against the tyranny and oppres sion of the wealth of the world in the hands of a few, resulting in great progress towards socialism and the more equal distribution of the prod ucts of human toil and as a result the moral and spiritual uplifting of the race.

Washington, D. C.,

Nov. 22, 1900.

R. F. PETTIGREW.

APPENDIX VIII

THE PRESS

When the reduction in the cost of refining sugar since 1886 is taken into consideration, when we take into consideration the cheaper labor, cheaper material of every kind, which can be had to-day than in 1886, this increase between the cost of raw and refined sugar shows how perfectly and how completely the trust have been able to manipulate and control the market.

Everybody knows the facts; and yet, Mr. President, the great newspapers of this country constantly circulate the story that the trust has caused a decline in the price of sugar, knowing, as they do, that their statement is untrue; but the trouble is that the great corporate newspapers of this country are owned by special interests and run in those interests, or they sell their editorial columns for cash for any interest that may come along.

They are anonymous; they have no character; no one is behind them. They hire men to write editorials who write against their convictions, the same as a man hires a lawyer to try his case. They retail these falsehoods for the purpose of influencing the people of this country in behalf of the special interests which they always represent, sometimes because their stock is owned by men whose interests are promoted thereby; and their editorials are ordered from the business office, oftentimes by men who do not and can not speak the English language; and again the editorial columns are sold, purchased, for the purpose of promoting an interest for which they receive pay. The people of this country are rapidly finding out this fact. The great newspapers of this country are gradually losing the influence which they never had the right to possess in any particular.

Speech in the Senate, June 10, 1898.

INDEX