omics, a
professor in his alma mater, and the recipient of honors at home and
abroad.

That was in 1894. What a difference a few years has wrought. Now he is
an outcast, driven from his position in the faculty by the order of
Rufus Vanpeldt, the Woolen King, the patron of the university. Talbot is
reviled by his fellow-collegians, and ostracized from the society in
which he had always been a leader; and all because he has had the
manliness to express the truth on the political conditions of the
country.

He has advocated the reduction of the tariff to a reasonable point; he
has been a staunch supporter of the income tax; his views on the money
question are deemed heretical and he is dismissed from the circles of
learning.

From being the submissive hireling and servitor of the educational
institution, he entered the political field as their most powerful
adversary. He is one of the leaders of the Anti-Trust movement. When the
committee of Forty was organized, he had been one of the first selected.

Many of the committee await his speech with lively interest. Whatever
view he takes of the proposition they determine to adopt. He is the next
member to be called upon.

In an impressive, convincing argument he approves of the proposition.
Not that it is faultless, but because it offers the only remedy for the
vicious condition of the country's social condition.

In presenting the arguments in favor of the adoption of the proposition,
Professor Talbot demonstrates that the centralization of capital in the
hands of a few men is the gravest mistake that a republic can permit to
occur. It creates an oligarchy that is more pernicious than one of class
distinction, since such a one can be coped with, while an oligarchy of
wealth possesses so many ramifications that it is practically
unassailable except by direct and physical means.

"It is the common belief that labor-saving inventions are accountable
for much of the distress that exists in this country," he says, "but
this is not so in so far as the inventions themselves are concerned.

"The evils that have followed the introduction of labor-saving machinery
are the results of capitalists seeking to squeeze the last cent of
profit out of their enterprises.

"When an inventor produces any improvement in manufacture he does the
world a good; when the manufacturer who adopts this invention, at the
same time discharges his adult male operatives and substitutes child
labor