"The board of officers awarded six hundred thousand dollars'
damages to the Government; and the case was appealed to the
President of the United States, and he sold out the Navy!"
"Sold it out!" gasped Montague.
The officer shrugged his shoulders. "That's what I call it," he
said. "One day old Harrison startled the country by making a speech
in support of the President's policy of tariff reform; and the next
day the lawyer got word that the award was to be scaled down about
seventy-five per cent!"
"And then," added Bates, "William Roberts came down from Pittsburg,
and bought up the Democratic party in Congress; and so the country
got neither the damages nor the tariff reform. And then a few years
later old Harrison sold out to the Steel Trust, and got off with a
four-hundred-million-dollar mortgage on the American people!"
Bates sank back in his chair. "It's not a very pleasant topic for a
holiday afternoon," he said. "But I can't forget about it. It's this
kind of thing that does it, you know--this." And he waved his hand
about at the gay assemblage.
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