rnly impressive in the way in which this rising
capitalist class went forward to snatch what it sought, and what it
believed to be indispensable to its plans. There was no hesitation, nor
were there any scruples as to niceties of methods; the end in view was
all that counted; so long as that was attained, the means used were
considered paltry side-issues. And, indeed, herein lies the great
distinction of action between the world-old propertied classes and the
contending proletariat; for whereas the one have always campaigned
irrespective of law and particularly by bribery, intimidation,
repression and force, the working class has had to confine its movement
strictly to the narrow range of laws which were expressly prepared
against it and the slightest violation of which has called forth the
summary vengeance of a society ruled actually, if not theoretically, by
the very propertied classes which set at defiance all law.

THE BANKING FRAUDS BEGIN.

The chartered monopoly held by the traders who controlled the United
States Bank was not accepted passively by others of the commercial
class, who themselves wanted financial engines of the same character.
The doctrine of State's rights served the purpose of these excluded
capitalists as well as it did that of the slaveholders.

The States began a course of reeling out bank charters. By 1799 New York
City had one bank, the Bank of New York; this admixed the terrorism of
trade and politics so overtly that presently an opposition application
for a charter was made. This solitary bank was run by some of the old
landowning families who fully understood the danger involved in the
triumph of the democratic ideas represented by Jefferson; a danger far
overestimated, however, since win as democratic principles did, the
propertied class continued its victorious march, for the simple reason
that property was able to divert manhood suffrage to its own account,
and to aggrandize itself still further on the ruins of every subsequent
similar reform expedient. What the agitated masses, for the most part,
of that period could not comprehend was that they who hold the
possession of the economic resources will indubitably sway the politics
of a country, until such time as the proletariat, no longer divided but
thoroughly conscious, organized, and aggressive, will avail itself of
its majority vote to transfer the powers of government to itself. The
Bank of New York injected itself virulently