But I may as well conclude what I have to say regarding railroads, which must also revert back to the people, and be conducted by them for the public benefit, as our common highways are now conducted. Vanderbilt, Scott & Co. are demonstrating it better and better every day that all the railroads of the country can be much more economically and advantageously conducted under one management than under a thousand different managements. They imagine that very soon they will have accomplished a complete consolidation of the entire system, and that by the power of that consolidation they will be able to control the government of this country. But they will not be the first people who have made slight miscalculations as to ultimate results. Thomas Scott might make a splendid Secretary of the Department of Internal Improvements, for which the new Constitution, which this country is going to adopt, makes provision; but he will never realize his ambition to preside over the railroad system of the country in any other manner. And I will tell you another benefit that will follow the nationalization of our railroads. You have all heard of the dealing in stocks, of the “bulls” and the “bears,” and the “longs” and the “shorts,” and the “lame ducks” of Wall street. Well, they will all be abolished. There will be no stocks in which to deal. That sort of speculation, by which gigantic swindlers corner a stock and take it in at their own figures, will, to use a vulgar phrase, be “played out.” And if you were to see their customers, as I have seen them, rushing about Broad street to catch sight of the last per cent. of their margins as they disappear in the hungry maw of the complacent brokers, you would agree with me that it ought to be “played out.” Under the system which I propose, not only will stock gambling be abolished, but also all other gambling, and the hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people who are now engaged in it, living from the products of others, will be compelled to go to producing themselves. But, says the objector, take riches away from people and there will be no incentive to accumulate. But, my dear sir, we don’t propose to do anything of the kind, nor to destroy any wealth. There will never be any less wealth than now, but a constant increase upon it. We only propose that the people shall hold it in their own right, instead of its being held in trust for them by a self-appointed few. Instead of having a few millionaires, and millions on the verge of starvation, we propose that all shall possess a comfortable competence—that is, shall possess the results of their own labors.