s,
which exist only to safeguard the people's deposited savings, hundreds
of thousands of dollars on her bare story that she was the possessor of
some mysterious documents. One sees a $6-a-week office-boy of one of the
"System's" votaries able to borrow for the "System," on his bare note,
four millions of dollars from a New York institution which only exists
to safeguard the people's savings--although the law says that such
institutions shall not loan to any man on any kind of collateral, even
Government bonds, one-tenth that sum. One sees two men, drunk with their
success, gouging and tearing at each other's hearts in Wall Street, and
sees their gouging and tearing bring about a panic which takes from the
people in an hour over a billion dollars and drives scores to suicide,
murder, and defalcation--the two men continuing meanwhile as ornamental
pillars of society instead of wearing prison stripes. One sees a great
railroad corporation, in which are millions of the trust funds of
widows, orphans, and charitable institutions, caught "short" (having
sold something it did not own) in the stock-gambling game and held up to
the tune of ten million dollars by a reckless stock gambler, who says
"If you don't settle to-night it will be twenty millions to-morrow"; and
the toll is paid, while the great banker who conducts the release of the
hold-up charges the further tribute of twelve million dollars for his
services. And then one sees this twenty-two millions of "commission"
tacked on to the capital stock of the great railroad which is
subsequently capitalized into a "bond" and sold to great life-insurance
companies as a first-class investment for their trust funds.

When one sees these things and a hundred other as rankly fraudulent, one
should not wonder at anything American connected with dollars.

Such things occur because the "System" has so far been able to keep the
public in ignorance of its doings. On the surface there is nothing to
suggest that a set of vampires have captured the high places of finance
and are sucking away the life-blood of the nation. Our banks and trust
companies all present a fair exterior and apparently are the same safe
and honorable institutions they were before the canker fastened on them.
Only its votaries know what the "System" is, and their way is the way of
silence and darkness. A tie, stronger and more effective than the oath
of the Mafia, binds them to its service, and woe be to him who d