Yesterday morning brought a note from a son of a former schoolmate of mine requesting an interview. That schoolmate was W. B. Brown—“Buck” BrownⒺexplanatory note, as we called him in that ancient time; ancient is the right word, for the school was Dawson’s school, and the time could not have been later than 1846, when I was eleven years old, for my father died in the spring of 1847, and I was never in a school after that eventⒺexplanatory note. I remember “Buck” Brown very well, after all these sixty-two years. The school numbered twenty-five boys and girls; some of them were little children; others were older and larger, and “Buck” Brown was the oldest and largest of all; his age was twenty-five, and to the most of us he seemed not of our world, but a patriarch stricken with age, a relic of a hoary antiquity. He was very studious, very grave, even solemn; he had a kindly smile and a disposition in harmony with it; and he had a tongue, but he seldom used it. I shall be glad to talk with the son, and yet the talk, as I foresee, will only be about the tenants of the grave. He mentions the names of many of his father’s schoolmates and mine, but they are all dead, most of them many years ago. With each name, as it came under my eye, there flashed before me, often with a sharp vividness, a fresh young face that had been familiar to me two generations ago; and in each case it was a face that is dust and ashes now, and from whose happy young eyes the light was quenched years and years ago.

“Buck” Brown was a most patient creature. At the noon recess he always remained at the schoolhouseⒶtextual note to study his lessons while he ate his dinner, and WillⒶtextual note Bowen and John BriggsⒺexplanatory note and I always remained also, and sacrificed our dinner for the higher profit of pestering him and playing pranks upon him, but he never lost his temper. In fact I never knew him to lose his sweet serenity except once: thereⒶtextual note was an idiot slave girl in the town who could not go anywhere without being followed and jeered at, and mocked, and made fun of by the young boys of the place. It was a custom of the time to treat friendless lunatics and idiots in this way, and it attracted no attention; but one day a grown man joined the young ruffians in their persecutions. “Buck” Brown was passing by at the time. Suddenly he was transformed. All his serenities vanished in a moment, and he burst into a fury of passion that was amazing for its fierce intensity. He beat and banged the man until there was little left of him but pulp.

Yesterday the magazine publishers met together at a luncheon at the Aldine ClubⒺexplanatory note. They have been meeting there once a month for the last two or three years, with a very wise end in view—this end being to get acquainted with each other, become friendly, and work together for their mutual advantage, instead of each fighting for his own hand as in the days gone by. About forty of these men were present. These are the men who are responsible for the policy of their publications. Their editors are merely salaried servants, and have no authority, and in fact but little influence, perhaps, in the matter [begin page 230] of policy. For years now, it has been policy for the magazines to make war, along with the newspapers, against the great corporations and monopolies, and this war has been carried on as such wars are always likely to be conducted where the persons assailed have to take what they get and can’t talk back. It has been a cheap and easy matter to be bold and daringly ferocious in attacking the corporations, for the reason that they had no friends—at least no friends that were brave enough to face the general storm in their defenceⒶtextual note. It was always possible, of course, that the corporations had a defenceⒶtextual note worth examination and consideration if they could only get a hearing, but for several years such a hearing has been quite impossible. The hostility to the corporations was brought to its height by President Roosevelt’s attitude toward them. The corporations were the creation of the atrocious tariffs imposed upon everything by the Republican partyⒺexplanatory note, and Mr. Roosevelt and his party have known all the time that all the burdensome monopolies could be squelched by the simple process of reducing the robber tariffs to a figure which would allow the rest of the nation to prosper, instead of conferring the bulk of the prosperity upon a few dozen multimillionaireⒶtextual note producers—but neither the President nor the party has ever confessed that this was the caseⒶtextual note; they have persisted in attacking the symptoms and in letting the disease carefullyⒶtextual note aloneⒺexplanatory note. They have had their reasons for it: the vast election contributions of the money of stockholders have kept that party in power, and the President’s ferocious attacks upon them of the last two or three years have been merely a sham and a pretense. He has inspired no real move against them in the courts, he has merely indulged in wordy blusterⒺexplanatory note about what he was going to do.

Among mighty corporations the chief sinner selected for attack was the Standard Oil CompanyⒺexplanatory note. For some years now, that Company has been freely and volubly charged with every crime and every villainy known to commercial oppression and misconduct, and anybody who could think of any vindictive thing to say about that corporation could promptly get a hearing in the newspapers and the magazines; and so the American world was brought to believe that the Standard Oil people were conscienceless criminals,Ⓐtextual note one and all. The Standard Oil employs sixty-five thousand persons. The Company has been in existence about forty-five years, yet in all that time it has never had a strikeⒺexplanatory note. For years now, strikes have been persistently frequent in all the other industries of the country; the newspapers are always full of them; rioting and bloodshed are common because of the strikes. The fact that the Standard Oil Company has never had a strike might suggest to a sane person, here and there, that the Standard Oil chiefsⒶtextual note cannot be altogether bad, or they would oppress their sixty-five thousand employees from habit and instinct, if they are so constituted that it is instinctive with them to oppress everybody else. But neither their good standing with their wage-earners nor any other testimony that exists in their favor, can get even a passing hearing in any newspaper or magazine in the United States.

Of the forty-five magazine publishers that were present at that luncheon yesterday, there was probably not one whose magazine had not had the habit, for the past few years, of abusing the Rockefellers, Henry Rogers, and the other chiefs of the Standard Oil, and without doubt those publishersⒶtextual note had acquired the habit of heartily hating the said chiefsⒶtextual note and of experiencing emotions of horror at the mere mention of their names—and [begin page 231] so they must have had some curious sensations when John D. Rockefeller, seniorⒶtextual note, John D., juniorⒶtextual note, and Henry Rogers walked in in single file, yesterday,Ⓐtextual note and sat down at the head of the table, elbow to elbow with the President of their Association. To me it was an interesting spectacle, and dramatic. Three-fourths of those magazine publishers had never seen those three persons in their lives before, except in a couple of million photographs and caricatures.

How did these notorious criminals come to venture their persons in this den of their deadly enemies? It happened in this way: Doubleday came here a few days ago and said he had been thinking it was time for somebody connected with the public printsⒶtextual note to go and look at a Standard Oil magnate and see what kind of a devil he might seem to be, from an outside inspection; and time, also, for the said publisher to come into actual contact with the fiend and talk with him and try to get on the inside of him and see what he might look like in thereⒺexplanatory note. He had been moved to this strange and unchristian project by something he found in the Annual Report of Mr. Rockefeller’s Institute for Medical Research—a Report which showed that the ten million dollars which Mr. Rockefeller had put into that Institute was bearing good fruit, such good fruit, in fact, that it would not be popular for the newspaper or magazine press to say much about it, and not good policy to notice it otherwise than inⒶtextual note a three-line remark followed by a judiciousⒶtextual note permanent silence; a Report no paragraph of which could find its way into a newspaper where room was needed for an account of the latest rape. One of the facts in that Report was this: oneⒶtextual note of the results of the Institute’s patient, continuous, and unflagging research into that awful malady, meningitis, was the reduction of its death-rateⒶtextual note from 75Ⓐtextual note per cent ofⒶtextual note the persons attacked to 25Ⓐtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, with the hopeful prospect that that death-rateⒶtextual note would presently be still further reduced. There were other great things in that Report, and Doubleday told me about them, but I will not set them down at this time. Doubleday had been vaguely aware that Mr. Rockefeller had been known to make large contributions to charities and to good causes of one sort or another, privately, in addition to the one hundred and thirty-eight million dollars he has publicly contributedⒺexplanatory note to such things.Ⓐtextual note He hunted out some of these cases and found that the facts were in accordance with the rumors, therefore it seemed to Doubleday that perhaps Mr. Rockefeller was not giving away his tens of millions at a time wholly to buy public charity for his Standard Oil offencesⒶtextual note. Finally he concluded to go and get acquainted with Mr. Rockefeller and see how much of him was Standard Oil fiend and how much of him was average human being. He went to Rockefeller, got acquainted with him, down in the country, played golf with him every day, talked with him hour by hour, got acquainted with his sister-in-lawⒺexplanatory note and talked with her about Rockefeller, and it ended in his conceiving a greatⒶtextual note respect and liking for the man, and also in his conceiving a considerable degree of shame for disrespecting the man this long time upon evidence which presented only one side of his case.

Now then, the idea of Doubleday’s visit to me was this: heⒶtextual note wanted to bring Rockefeller face to face with all the magazine publishers—and did I think it would be wise for him to do this? He wanted to do Rockefeller a good turn, but possibly it might be a bad turn. The men who had lent their magazines to harsh criticisms of him might resent his [begin page 232] appearance among them as an impertinence. He had asked Mr. Rockefeller if he would be willing to meet those men and Rockefeller said,

“Certainly. Why not? I am willing to meet and talk with any body of men, friends or enemies.”

Doubleday asked me what I thought of the project—ought he to go on with it? I said I thought it was a very good idea; that I knew Mr. Rockefeller fairly well and was sure he would favorably impress those hostiles. Doubleday said he would go on with the project, but he wanted all the strength he could get; he would like to have Mr. Rogers there. What would I think of that? I said Mr. Rogers’s face would destroy any harsh evidence that had ever been brought against him, he wouldn’t need to say a word; those men would look at him and would recognize and realize that if he was a villain there wasn’t anybody left in the country that wasn’t.

Well, then, would I come to the luncheon? And would I get Mr. Rogers to come?

I said I didn’t think heⒶtextual note would decline; indeed I was quite sure he would accept, and that Doubleday could tell Mr. RogersⒶtextual note I would go if heⒶtextual note would come and fetch me.

Mr. Rogers arrived at our house on time yesterday, and drove me to the Aldine Club, and that pleasant little dramatic surprise occurred which I have already mentioned: Rockefeller, his son John, Mr. Rogers and I, filed in and sat with the chairman on the firing line. After a speech from the chairman and a speech from an officer of the organization, explaining the nature of the organization and its purpose, I followed with a speech. Then Mr. Rockefeller was asked by the chairman to make a few remarks. Mr. Rockefeller got up and talked sweetly, sanely, simply, humanly, and with astonishing effectiveness, being interrupted by bursts of applause at the end of almostⒶtextual note every sentence; and when he sat down all those men were his friends, and he had achieved one of the completest victories I have ever had any knowledge of. Then the meeting broke up, and by a common impulse theⒶtextual note crowd moved forward and each individual of it gave the victor a hearty hand-shake, and along with it some hearty compliments upon his performance as an orator.

But I have forgotten one rather striking incident. This was the reading of a letter in which a physician described an impressively interesting surgical operation which was performed on a child last March. It was a physician’sⒶtextual note child; it was four months old; it had been stricken by a fearful malady which sometimes attacks grown persons and attacks children with some little frequency; it is an internal hemorrhage, whose details I am not able to describe, and is in almost all cases fatal. The attack was making rapid progress; the physicians in attendance knew of nothing that could be done; the child was evidently dying; the hour was midnight. Some one suggested that one of Mr. Rockefeller’s Institute researchers had been making experiments upon kittens which promised a hope—at least a slight hope—for this child.♦ Ⓐtextual note One of the doctors drove to the house of that physician, reached there at one o’clock, routed him out of his bed, and they drove to the Institute and gathered a few instruments but could not get all that were needed, because the othersⒶtextual note [begin page 233] were locked up and the holder of the key was not there; but that Institute physician had with him, fortunately, one instrument which was absolutely essential; it was a needle so fine and delicate as to be next to invisible, and its thread was wholly invisible except when held against a black background. They proceeded to the house of the patient. The child was too young for the use of anesthetics, and none were given. The thing necessary to be done, if I remember the details rightly, was to sever a vein of the child and an artery of its father, sew the ends of these tubes together in an absolutely perfect way, making no mistakes in the joining of them, and renew the child’s famished blood with the fresh blood of the strong and healthy father. The child was wasted and white and flabby, and it was so small a creature that it possessed no vein large enough for the operation except one hidden deep in the calf of its leg. When they were ready for the operation they could not tell, and had no way of finding out, with absolute certainty,Ⓐtextual note whether the child was still alive or not, but it seemed to be dead. But they proceeded with the operation. The new blood was flushedⒶtextual note into the child, and everybody stood by watching to see if there would be any effect. For a time no effect was apparent; then a faint rosy tinge appeared on the topsⒶtextual note of the child’s ears; after a little this rosy tinge appeared upon the ends of the child’s fingers. After a little while the same tinge began to rise in the death-whiteⒶtextual note cheeks; then presently that rosy tinge burst out in a sudden flash all over the little creature, and it threw up its hands and broke into a cry—with its grateful mother there to hear that music! This was nearly threeⒶtextual note months ago. The child is well and flourishing nowⒺexplanatory note. It owes its life to the ten million dollars which Mr. Rockefeller put into that Institute.

The reading of the letter was listened to in a deep and impressiveⒶtextual note silence, and the interest and emotion which it excited were visible in the faces of every person present, and there were times when those men seemed hardly to breathe. When the end came there was a pause and a deep breath, and then followedⒶtextual note a burst of grateful and uplifting applauseⒶtextual note which was another triumph for the criminal at the bar.