“Here on earth a person who has the most money can buy the best seat in the theater, the finest pew in church. He can often buy to a certain extent his election to go to Congress or to the Legislature, put a ‘corner’ on wheat so as to create fictitious prices. The rich man is honored; his word is law, and if not, he not infrequently buys enough votes to make it a law. His employes, in order to keep their position, are often compelled to vote according to his dictates and his interests. By monopolistically clogging natural opportunity he is enabled to collect profit, interest, rent and taxes. He manipulates, as we have seen, the varying purchasing power of the dollar in his favor. He wears the best clothes; eats the tenderest meat; lives in a fine residence; goes to entertainments; makes pleasure excursions, and does countless other agreeable things. While, on the other hand, the poor man is compelled to toil early and late, live in a small, ill-ventilated, poorly-heated, screenless house or hovel, wear coarse clothes, eat the tough meat and small potatoes; by his toilsome labor his step has become slow and clumsy, his form is bent, his head droops, his shoulders stooped; his brow is careworn; he has little or no time for amusements, education, ethical culture and personal cleanliness. All his vitality is expended in acquiring the mere material subsistence. He sits down on an uncomfortable chair. He has little furniture, a bare floor, small, curtainless windows, a poor bed, a sooty stove, and not infrequently an unclean dooryard. “From the foregoing explanation you can clearly see that the rich man has the advantage _everywhere_. He, by some roundabout means, which the poor and often less-enlightened person does not understand, charms away the products of the poor man’s labor; and the more the rich monopolize the land, the medium of exchange and other necessary means of production, the better his charm works.” “You say that the rich man has the advantage over the poor man _everywhere_, but on this point I feel quite certain that you are mistaken,” said Rev. Dudley. “With our present system of paying taxes, the rich man pays nearly all the taxes. On this point then, if on no other, the poor man has the advantage over the rich. This, I think, you cannot deny or successfully refute, Mr. Midith.”