did not permit him to divorce this wife, so he caused to be introduced and passed a bill permitting divorce on grounds of insanity. But, being a moral citizen, who believed in the sanctity of marriage for everybody but himself, Mr. Flagler allowed this law to stand only long enough for him to get his divorce. He then had his legislature repeal the law, so that no one might be corrupted by his evil example.
He married another woman, and shortly afterwards left her a widow with a hundred million dollars. Needless to say, such widows are not left very long to mourn; Mrs. Flagler espoused a certain Judge Bingham, a leading citizen of Kentucky. A pre-nuptial contract barred him from inheriting her estate; nevertheless she managed, eight months after their wedding, and six weeks before her death, to present to him a trifling matter of five million dollars. Then she died, and he, being lonely, and in possession of spare cash, looked around for something to play with. He decided to play with you—that is, with a newspaper!
There was an old newspaper in Louisville, the "Courier-Journal," which had been made by the genius of Col. Henry Watterson, a picturesque old-style Democrat, a radical of the Jeffersonian type, who stormed with vivid and diverting ferocity at the "robber barons" of Wall Street. The paper had got into financial difficulties, owing to family quarrels of the owners, and Judge Bingham bought it, with its evening edition, the "Louisville Times," for something over a million dollars. Col. Watterson was to stay as "Editor Emeritus"; that is, he was to be a figure-head, to blind the public to the sinister realities of modern capitalism. But modern capitalism is too greedy and too ruthless a force for the old-style gentleman of the South; Col. Watterson could not stand the editorial policy of his new owner, so he quit, and today the "Courier-Journal" challenges the "Los Angeles Times" as an organ of venomous reaction. I quote one sample of its editorials—the subject being that especially infamous variety of pervert known as the "Christian Socialist clergyman." Behold him!—
Some person who has never worked in his life—except his tongue—and
yet talks to his "congregation" about problems of workingmen.
This rogue is sometimes an elocutionary shyster who rambles about the
downtrodden—meaning his prosperous followers and, of course, himself—the
expected revolution, the rights of the pee-pul, and so on.
What he desires to do is to heroize himself, to appear to his pee-pul as
