other
possessors of these "unnecessaries" realize that their doom is sealed
and dig for the cyclone cellars, the quicker the American people will
get through with the strenuous house-cleaning job for which they are
just rolling up their sleeves.

3. I do know there must be billions of dollars' worth of stocks and
bonds in America. I also know that among these legitimate billions of
dollars are now mixed other billions of dollars that have no proper
title to being, save the greed of the "System." That while the existence
of certain billions of dollars' worth of stocks and bonds is proof
positive of the great prosperity of the whole country and the whole
people, it does not follow that their existence is proof that the hands
they are found in are the hands they should rest in. Further, I assert
that the existence of other billions of dollars' worth of stocks and
bonds is proof positive that the laws have been violated and that the
great prosperity of the whole country has been used as the excuse and
motive of this violation, and declare that, in my opinion, it is the
duty of honest men and women to do all in their power to shrink
fictitious securities and to destroy them; and, further, that it is the
duty of all honest men to lend a hand so that the legitimate billions of
dollars of stocks and bonds may be returned to the hands of those who
are legally entitled to them.

4. I am aware that the people owned billions of these stocks and bonds
three years ago, and also that if they had then sold them back to the
"System," even at the price they had paid for them, and had kept their
money in the banks without interest, or had even buried it in the ground
or kept it in their stockings for a year, they would have been able to
buy back for fifty cents on the dollar what they had sold the "System,"
thereby making for themselves billions of dollars and impoverishing the
"System" by just as many billions as they had made. You know that the
"System," after it had loaded up the people with its stocks, "shook them
out," and thereby gathered in half the billions of money the people had
paid for what they bought.

Let me illustrate. The people bought of the "System" for 760 millions of
dollars the Steel Trust stocks and bonds, and after the people had the
"System's" chromos and the "System" had the people's 760 millions of
savings, the "System" caused the price to be cut in two. Then it bought
back the Steel Trust's chromos for 380 m