gher, and a MORE EXPENSIVE standard of living--that is all. That this
prosperity which is our national boast will last forever is incredible.
Sooner or later will come one of the times when Nature frowns and sends
her floods, her droughts, and her epidemics of disease. Is the American
people prepared by its long-sustained prosperity to bridge over that
period of want and suffering?

The truth is that the mass of our population has not sufficient surplus
laid by to last over thirty days of such a calamitous interval. All the
unearned increment of national prosperity the "System" has captured and
capitalized. Not only have the people been deprived of the profits of
their labor, but this capitalized prosperity is the stern instrument by
which new burdens are laid on their shoulders and new tithes are exacted
from their wages. But for the plundering "System" the great mass of our
people would be able to sit in their tents in the shade of their
husbanded harvests and laugh to scorn the frowns of fortune. Now, I say,
God help the nation when Nature, tired from her great work, rests, and
the people, too, are compelled to rest--for then will come an awful
awakening. When the millions face famine and realize for the first time
that their gigantic storehouses, filled to bursting with the surplus of
the past, are the property of the few who cannot even count the
contents, much less use them--when they realize that these hoarded
treasures are as far beyond their starved reach as are the violets and
daisies beyond the picking of the galley-slave, then they will
appreciate how much deeper and more damnable are the crimes of the
"System," such crimes as Amalgamated and its like, than even such
national tragedies as the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and
McKinley, at each of which all the people held aloft their hands in
horror.

Why is it that the millions of intelligent, able-bodied Americans, who
could crush the tribe of Rockefeller as elephants crush snakes, rise
with each sun and dig and delve and suffer that a Rogers may wallow in
wealth and an Armour gain a greater income than the Rothschilds? Why are
they so easily hoodwinked into imagining that the elaborate reports
detailing the immense and growing wealth of the country represent their
own well-being and affluence? Because the wise men of the "System" know
human nature, know that most men and women accept unquestioningly the
conditions they find surrounding them. Each