“We all know, then, that some have amassed immense fortunes of material wealth, while the vast majority under your present conditions are doomed to life-long toil, to poverty. But, by what means or power did these rich men accumulate their immense wealth? Not by personal industry, for the industrial powers of an individual are too limited. Not by economy, for if he had saved everything he ever _earned_, he would have but a small fractional part of what he has _accumulated_. Not by any particular personal superiority, for the personal powers to produce material wealth are nearly equal in all sound men and women; but he accumulated and appropriated it by _monopoly_. You have enacted many laws by your much prized ballot, and these rich men used those laws to monopolize natural opportunity so that they are continually growing richer on _interest_, _profit_, _rent_ and _taxes_, without productive labor. You see if all monopolistic statute laws, which include nearly all statute laws as such, were repealed and disregarded, all would stand equal before natural opportunity. Profit, interest, rent and taxes are produced by monopolistic laws. If there were no monopolistic laws, no person could accumulate or appropriate wealth without productive labor. “Let us take an illustration: You have a few men that have over a $100,000,000 of wealth as you call it. You can figure up in a few minutes that they can not have _earned_ or _produced_ that amount of wealth in one or even in two generations. But some of these men have accumulated this immense fortune in twenty or thirty years. Let us figure a little on this. Suppose that a man has accumulated $100,000,000 in fifty years of three hundred working days each. This would require an average accumulation of nearly $7,000 for every working day. Now you all know that a man cannot, by any human power, _earn_ or _produce_ $7,000 worth of wealth--wheat, corn, coal, books, houses, clothing, or whatever else it may be. But we know that he has the wealth, or your representative of wealth--the dollar; and if he has not _earned_ it himself by productive labor, by which all wealth must be produced, he must have appropriated it from the labor of others in the form of profit, interest, rent or taxes, for which the receiver _does_ nothing and for which the giver _receives_ nothing.