the National City Bank on that night in May, 1899. Through false
representations and specious pledges and the credit of the names of
"Standard Oil" and the National City Bank, thousands of people were
beguiled into investing their savings in this Amalgamated Copper
Company. Because of the promise of great gains other thousands mortgaged
their homes, appropriated their wives' savings, even their employers'
funds, and embarked in this fair-seeming enterprise. The greatest bank
in America aided and abetted the conspiracy by the loan of its funds to
lure the victims deeper into the toils. All in, the trap is sprung; the
thousands are despoiled of their savings by familiar devices of finance,
and throughout the land is spread a wave of misery, madness, and
despair.

The crime of Amalgamated, a critical correspondent writes me, is purely
a Wall Street offence, important to bankers and capitalists but of no
consequence to the working men, the farmers, or the toiling millions who
have no savings to invest in stocks. "Of what concern is it to us," says
this writer, "how one section of the rich robs another of its
hoardings?"

Poor fool! A few men cannot deprive even a few thousands of so great a
sum as $36,000,000 without working untold injury upon the entire body of
the people. Such a stupendous sum looted from the coffers of the many
and piled in the vaults of three or four men unbalances the whole
economic structure of the nation. The consequences of that act do not
end in the series of defalcations and bankruptcies, imprisonments and
suicides, in the ruined homes and wrecked careers that follow in its
immediate wake. In the grip of these plunderers intrenched in the
stronghold of finance each of these filched millions becomes a new
weapon of oppression. Because of the crime of Amalgamated every pound
of food that goes to sustain life in the American people, every shingle
on every roof that shelters the American people, every mile of
transportation for man or freight in America; in fact, every necessity
and every luxury of the American people has had added to its cost some
fractional increase, representing in the aggregate tens and tens of
millions annually, which, flowing into the coffers of the "System,"
strengthen and extend its stupendous grip on the property of the nation.

Our country for a generation has been prosperous beyond the dreams of
man, yet what have the masses of our people to show for it? A better, a
hi