grocer must know, when they look up and down
Wall Street at the great office buildings which tower into the sky on
either side of the street, that these are huge hives of expensive bees
who, from New Year's to New Year's, do not produce a dollar. They should
realize that the hundreds of millions spent each year for the expense of
running the "System's" game, and the millions which the game-makers
flaunt in their faces, must have been derived from such as they--the men
who produce.

It is the phenomenon of the age that millions of people throughout this
great country of ours come of their own free will to the shearing pens
of the "System" each year, voluntarily chloroform themselves, so that
the "System" may go through their pockets, and then depart peacefully
home to dig and delve for more money that they may have the debasing
operation repeated on them twelve months later.

You may ask if I desire to convey the idea that the great financial
institutions and trusts of this country, which have their head centre in
Wall Street, are all concerned in a conspiracy to rob the people of
their savings. You think, doubtless, that so sweeping a statement goes
beyond the truth. I desire to go on record right here in declaring that
all financial institutions which in any way are engaged in taking from
the people the money that is their surplus earnings or their capital,
for the ostensible purpose of safeguarding it, or putting it in use for
them, or exchanging it for stocks, bonds, policies, or other paper
evidences of worth, are a part of the machinery for the plundering of
the people.

This is a terrible charge, I am well aware, but it is based upon a
thorough knowledge of the subject and made with a full appreciation of
its gravity. I do not mean to say that all the men who handle and
control the different institutions I mentioned have guilty knowledge of
the bearing of their actions. Many of them are of the purest minds and
most honest intentions, and are quite incapable of participating
voluntarily in a conspiracy to wrong any one. They do not know, however,
that the relation between their own minor institution and the general
financial structure constitutes the former an agency for the "System,"
which controls and has organized the general financial structure into an
instrument for converting the money of the public to its own purposes.
In fact, the "System" has cunningly possessed itself of the financial
mechanism of the