I saw nearly all of our attempted factories in ruins, and four thousand workingmen driven from the city by the smelter trust; and then came again the glowing vision of sixty million pounds of wool, and an enormous production of cotton, grown annually in a radius of five hundred miles around our very doors. This raw material was being shipped two thousand miles to be worked into the most essential commodities. Every day we were walking over the finest glass sand in the world, yet we were denied the benefit of that most needful and profitable industry. I knew we dwelt in the heart of the leather producing district of the nation and yet no shoe factories. These are but a few of the raw materials in the region of the Rocky Mountain Western States. One who has made a study of industrial economics knows too well why the State of Colorado has (to speak comparatively) but seven people to the square mile. He well knows one reason to be the protective associations which protect _big business_ instead of protecting the people,--forever crying down co-operative industry which is for the good of all. In the homes of these asking alms which I visited, I saw the fearful destroying effect on character of the wolf as he peered through broken pane, and the cracks and crannies of door and wall. I saw the humiliating tears and flushed faces of those who for the first time were forced to beg. It was exactly like those of my associates who for the first time had been thrust into prison. It needed but a glance to tell me whether they had received "charity" before, for there is always the spirit of being hardened to the "disgrace," just as there is in the manner in which the prisoner treats the situation if he has previously "done time." Little children it is said will tell the truth when men and women lie. I saw the father and mother, with the hope of making an impressive plea, lest they fail to obtain the needed food and fuel, prevaricate in replying to my many questions, or perhaps remain non-committal, but often the little child at hand, conscious of the practiced deceit of the parent, would speak the truth. Then would follow the austere look of reproof from the parent or a sudden banishing from the room. The cheerless house, the starving home was sowing the seed of crime. I was a destroying angel. I was blackmailing my helpless victims into dishonesty just as the plain-clothes man or uniformed police blackmail the poor white slave of the Red-light District and the homeless, out-of-work man of the street.