The Spider's Web

that what might be left at the Congressman's death would go to his widow for life and, after that, to Luke's sister Jane. The Philadelphia aunt had inherited her fortune fr

el, to whom he went for advice

lars is too much for a young man to have at his call in New York. It's n

ht he knew a s

ut we happened to have a bigger one on hand. His concern's an old one, one of the oldest American firms in its line; this man's the third generation of his family to be in it, so it's well-established and has the good old-f

e business?

ing, and well mad

e does ne

suppose he has to keep up with the progress of the trade. Of course, that very element of family pride might disincline him to give an outsider a

re good, and that of Herbert Croy, the shriveled Ruysdael lawyer, was especially rosy. Forbes expressed hi

r of strength, and his mustache and the hair about his temples being slightly touched with gray, he seemed sober and con

ce?" he inquired, when he had told Luke

gh of course I don't know enough about the

smile

businesses either. In these times the average president of a company thinks he earns his salary by manipulating

the scales to weigh the material; the windmill-like machine that spread the offered fabric on its wide arms and, turning at the will of the expert buyers, displayed its burden before the examiners in a strong north light; the

isn't so honest as it once was, and if the cloth-ma

t the entrance, men were employed at designing patterns of cardboard and working, amid busy calculations, with rulers and T-squares, like so many architects' draughtsmen. From them the completed patterns were taken to other tables at which they met the cloth accepted in the first room, other workmen tracing the designs in chalk upon pieces of the cloth. The problem of these se

given to a man at a large table. Through a slit in the center of this table, a knife of incredible strength and keenness plunged rapidly up and down. The man in charge forced the bundle against the knife, deftly pushing it forward, so tha

w puzzle," said Luke, "and that knife looks lik

s gravely, "and the bottom one doesn't vary

" Luke wanted

work on the knife. We hope soon t

s a fire-escape. Forbes took Luke up one of these stairways, a broad and easy flight of which the

e and one room known as the matching-room. All seemed well lighted and well a

the cutting department below. Beside them were four other girls, who worked at a contrivance in which, when covered buttons were required, an uncovered button, a piece of tin and a bit of cloth were inserted, a lever pul

and danced over the cloth pressed under them by women feeding them as a frightened keeper in a menagerie might feed an angry beast. They were all of them run by steam or gasoline, and Forbes told Luke that they were all made by one trust, which owned all the patents. There were different machines for every kind of sewing, for every loop that could be required of

eir arms flying in a similar manner, sewed buttons on coats, waistcoats, and trousers-the only two processes that invention was as yet unable wholly to deliver over to machinery. Lastly, there was a half-floor given to what at first looked like linotype machines,

of the factory, and so no "sweating"; the factory was a union shop; there had

a financial agency and from a firm of expert accountan

for quite two months. Perhaps because he had fallen out with his employers, this witness insisted upon telling how he had for ten years been hired by a combination of the ruling corporations to influence national legisla

the polls of members of Congress that sought re-election after having opposed the corporate interests at Washington, and how he had spent thousands of the trusts' dollars in electing candidates who, personally or through their bosses, promised that they would support a high tariff and prevent the passage of laws too kindly to the working class. He had hired congressional clerks and pages, the former to betray what advance information came to them, the latter to pick up valuable gossip. He had the secret

with his only child, Betty, a pretty, high-colored, brown-eyed girl, as yet unformed and only twenty-two years old. As a rule, these two men sat in the parlor, a room that retained the character of For

seems as if the fellows at the head of our party wer

Here they all are blackmailing the tariff, a s

eflected. He still believed in the power of a party's indivi

t this would

mocrat, to be sure, but an anti-Tammany man. He comes out for a fine thing like direct primaries. Well, the other day an Assemblyman I know went to him and asked him to sign a bill this Assemblyman wanted passed. What happened? The Governor said: 'Will you vote for the direct primary law?'

ower seemed to pervade the country's entire industrial system, described an alleged forgery in the books of a railway known to be controlled by Porcellis's hero and eager to evade the anti-trust laws. According to this witness, a "double entry"

em as securities for a bond-issue. They got that money and used it to financ

this three Senators high in

tion, "and the party is no better right here in New York than it is in any other state. But you can't repair an organization by

e made his first political speech, holding up Leighton as the Erasmus of Republicanism. It was an unfortunate simile, for the opposition press lost no time in lampoon

hs the faces of grinning devils raised by the pestilential life below, laughing at it, dipping enormous white claws to stir it, and then hissing skyward as if to proclaim, because of what New York was, their defiance of God. Once or twice, to escape from them, he walked as far downtown as Wall Street and loitered through the silent night, where the

en thousand persons, the Astor House had moved Horace Greeley to admiration because six hundred and forty-seven persons slept under its roof. There Clay had received the news of his nomination in 1844, and Webster the word of his defeat at the hands of the Wh

religion would again open man's eyes to his own littleness and the omnipotence of the Deity. There would be legislation that would be the end of industrial combinations, of the crushing of the small manufacturer and the grinding of the faces of the poor. No more national banks would be merged, n

events soon proved, was opposed to one of the interests of the great financier whom he had once so much admired: those interests ruined the adventure and, more from grief because of

go to New York, and, as Luke managed to live within his meager salary, he was able to continue for them the home in Americus upon the income from his now well-paying investment in R. H. Forbes

an to give it a new significance. Accepting the world in the garb in which Forbes thought it well to present it to her, she owned only the finest standards of her type, and there was no meanness in her. Physically, she had that rarity in young women: height combined with grace. Her hair, as Luke saw it, was like so much sunshine, her eyes were clear and brown, and the radiance of her coloring not even a man that was not her lover could deny. Luke, for his p

it came to include certain politicians who were now for the first time in their careers evincing a desire for the organization's betterment, and that only after the organization had failed to re-elect them to office. These men, in one o

ief, "that fellow you got a pardon

de, he was leaning back in his chair with his fingers clasped in his crisp, black

Street Jail. That place is full of nobody but husbands who won't pay alimony, but

l prison. We c

hings so a Grand Jury

ow Street got to do with Auburn, w

s in the floor so a prisoner sent to it for bad behavior can't sit down or sleep. They've-- Oh, I can't go into it all now; but the women are treated

rned to the subject, he said there was nothing to be don

r in the New York post-office. Federal detectives arrested him and showed him to have made a fortune

e for that? All the papers will be at me for it. As if I were responsible for the business morals of every man that

received the report of investigators who pointed out that, since the succe

heroin aren't the same as those governing the sale of cocaine, and, un

. His growing love for Betty had given him new views on

to the floor. His tire

of society happens to exist. No really effective method of regulation, let alone suppression, has ever been devised or ever will be. Gee whiz, young man, do you kno

make arrests and win promotion. This man had friends among the keepers of illegal resorts who would swear to paying tribute to police captains. He introduced the two lawyers to a collector who said that $2,400,000 were yearly paid in th

ellow confesses he's a crook himself. Start an agitation to force the Police Commissioner to resign as unfit? Not much! If he

up and dow

e public conscience turns over and whines in its sleep, these fellows think they can cure it of what ails it by passing a few more laws. They pass a law against dance-halls, and they breed brothels. That's the way it goes all down the li

ther turn o

makes them, but when people give him votes, he gives them coal in winter and picnics in summer. He goes to their funerals and their weddings, and he knows more about what the people of this country want than Thomas Jeffer

y. Daily his lethargy increased; daily he lived more in his love for Betty an

on the Pacific Slope who sold a patent, the idea for which he stole from the plaintiff in a patent case in his own court; the District-Attorney of Doncaster County, in Pennsylvania, told Luke that only the statute of limitations saved from jail three associate judges of that county who had accepted bribes in the granting of liquor licenses, and that a judge in a nearby county had accepted $3,500 toward his campaign fund from brewing companies whose retailers must apply to him for licenses. It seemed that of two of the most prominent judges of the h

ke was in progress. A Philadelphia jurist denied the right of free speech to aliens. In Illinois, Smith appealed from a conviction for swindling Brown, and the Supreme Court upheld him because the indictment, which read that Smith "did unlawfully and felon

nor case long remained in Luke's memory. A clerk in a trust company disappeared with $25,000, and a fugitive bill of indictment was returned against him; the runaway opened negotiations with his former employers by means of advertisements in the Paris newspapers and then used his wife as an intermediary until the trust company promised to have the District-Attorney submit the indictment for a verdict of not guilty if the clerk woul

that traders in justice should be especially just. He came across countless cases of pettifogging among shyster practitione

ler reasons in support of its decisions; he wanted devices to end "the law's delays," simplified procedure and judges who were closer to the people and farther from the corporations; he thought the courts of ap

ke had joined a club of young men who had for the most part inherited their money and were unanimous for the new movement; it was time, they said, that politics should be taken out of the hands of the muckers, and they came near to convincing Luke until, in a moment of enthusiasm, he happened upon secrets which showed him that the men in power in this party were not dif

n him a prominence, even a certain following, among the public; but the irony of life was too much for him; he had, at this period, an eye too appreciative of the odds against him. He saw Betty two or three times a week, took her motoring and to the theaters, but he refr