that if you will find a way of
getting my answers out into the open under oath, I shall consider that
you have done me and my work a good turn.

QUESTION 1. I _know_ economics and finance, money, banking, credits,
corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the
American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to
the other--not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any
member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their
hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your
questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know
them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of
them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys
where they are daily and nightly set up for the express purpose of being
knocked down. I know the relation of each of these important life
factors to each of the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't jokers of the
"System." Make no mistake, Mr. Banker, my knowledge is not "a skimming
and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would
naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker and manipulator,"
but the straight brand which the "Standard Oil" and the "System" so like
to impress into their service when they run up against it in their
continuous robbing excursions. You may judge that my knowledge is not of
the smattering kind when I say that for years, in spite of my refusal to
join the band and wear the collar, whenever Rogers and Rockefeller had a
particularly hard nut to crack they called me in to try it on my
"_knows_."

2. Yes, I am aware that there have always been, and that there will
always continue to be, very rich men, and that there cannot be many of
them, and that where they are there must be very poor ones. And I also
know that no honest man, rich or poor, objects to the necessarily few
very rich ones who have honestly acquired great fortunes as the reward
of their own or their ancestors' labors of body or brain in the interest
of all the people. Don't misunderstand me--no honest man or woman can
object to the _necessary_ great fortunes, but all honest American men
and women do object, and are getting ready to make their objection
heard, to all unnecessary great fortunes, "made dollar" fortunes gained
by trick of finance or evasion of law, or the brutal and ruthless stock
manipulation of recent years. The sooner the "System" and the