ll they suffer a few men to siphon
automatically the money of the many into their own pockets?

It is only a matter of simple mathematics to ascertain the day, and that
only a few years away, when ten men will be as absolutely and completely
the legal owners of the entire United States and all there is of value
in it, as John D. Rockefeller is the absolute legal owner of the large
section of it of which he is to-day possessed.

_When that day is here, the people will legally be the slaves of these
ten men._

If this is so--and it is as surely so as it is that the Constitution of
the United States of America guarantees to every man, woman, and child
who is a part of it perpetual freedom--it is so because the legal
interest alone to which the ten men will be entitled and which they must
receive (or our entire structure will fall) will of itself bring to
their coffers all the wealth in existence within a given time. If this
is so, then why have the American people allowed themselves to reach
this condition? Why are they to-day not only resting peacefully under
this worse than death-bringing yoke, but assisting in the further
riveting of this badge of dishonor and degradation?

The reason is simple: They have been lulled to sleep by the "System" and
its cunning votaries until they have but a dull appreciation not only of
existing conditions but of their coming consequences. It is almost
incredible that a people as intelligent as the American people, and as
alert to that individual and national honor which they have bought with
so much of their blood and their peace of body and mind, can be so
deceived and juggled with. When one looks about, however, and notes
happenings of which one personally knows, and the degradation and
dishonor to which public opinion is seemingly indifferent, nothing is
incredible.

One sees a certain man openly displaying five hundred millions of
dollars, a sum which represents the life earnings of 150,000 of our
population, and knows that this man has secured this incredible amount
during forty years of his life. One sees the second highest and most
honorable office in the nation, a United States Senatorship, openly
bought for a few stolen dollars by a man who up to the very day of its
purchase was a watch repairer in a small country town, and who had never
done a single meritorious deed or been possessed of worldly goods to the
extent of $5,000. One sees a wily adventuress secure from the bank