of revenue that now go to increase the
fortunes of the Masters of Commerce, will be enjoyed by the toilers who
create our National prosperity.

"The statistics of the future shall record the existence in this land of
thousands, hundreds of thousands of independent business men. The
columns devoted to enumerating the Child Labor of the land will be
dispensed with; there will be an increase in the number of mothers and a
decrease in the number of women who are forced to earn a living by
manual toil.

"The platform we adopt must contain a plank providing for the imposition
of a tax on a man according to his ability to pay. There is no sanction
for a law to govern a community, however large, however populous, if
this law is in contradiction of the principles that govern a household;
for we cannot conceive of a government that is not built on the
household as the unit.

"Where is the father so inhuman that he will demand of the stripling,
the infirm, the feminine members of his family to procure the means of
support, before he has exhausted every other effort that can be made by
himself and his stalwart sons? Even the insatiate Trust Magnates, were
they suddenly to be reduced to penury, would shield their wives, their
daughters and their indigent.

"Then who shall say that this Republic, a household on a mammoth scale,
is not justified in collecting the taxes necessary for its maintenance
from the incomes of the rich, and not from the paltry possessions of the
wage-earner? The hundredth part of the income of the rich will more than
pay for the legitimate expenses of the Government.

"I am a firm believer in 'vested rights' and carry my adherence
back to the dawn of creation. Then it was that God vested mankind
with the right to live upon this earth. He endowed man with the
ability to earn a living, and gave to each and every man an equal
inheritance--opportunity.

"Any laws that man has made which abridge this right of equal
opportunity are unconstitutional in the broad sense of being at variance
with God's will. Applied to our Constitution, the vested right of the
people to the equal opportunity to labor is higher than the right of the
few to retain the fruits of the labor of the many.

"I advocate the taxing of the incomes of our citizens before we tax
their wages, which is their capital." Cheers interrupt the speaker for a
full minute.

"It is my hope, the people's hope, that the bulwark of this country be
once