Now, let us review the situation a moment. I have shown you, first, that the notable drift of population is to the loss of village and country, and the undue and dangerous growth of the city; second, that the notable movement of finance is that which is bringing villages and country under mortgage to the city; and third, that they who handle the products for sale profit more thereby than those who create them—the difference in one State in twenty years reaching the enormous sum of $110,000,000. Are these healthy tendencies? Do they not demand the earnest and thoughtful consideration of every patriotic citizen? The problem of the day is to check these three currents that are already pouring against the bulwarks of our peace and prosperity. To anchor the farmer to his land and the villager to his home; to enable him to till the land under equal conditions and to hold that home in independence; to save with his hands the just proportion of his labor, that he may sow in content and reap in justice,—this is what we need. The danger of the day is centralization, its salvation diffusion. Cut that word deep in your heart. This Republic differs from Russia only because the powers centralized there in one man are here diffused among the people. Western Ohio is happy and tranquil, while Chicago is feverish and dangerous, because the people diffused in the towns and the villages of the one are centralized and packed in the tenements of the other; but of all centralization that menaces our peace and threatens our liberties, is the consolidation of capital—and of all the diffusion that is needed in this Republic, congesting at so many points, is the leveling of our colossal fortunes and the diffusion of our gathered wealth amid the great middle classes of this people. As this question underruns the three tendencies we have been discussing, let us consider it a moment.