Few men comprehend the growth of private fortunes in this country, and the encroachments they have made on the rest of the people. Take one instance: A man in Chicago that had a private fortune secured control of all the wheat in the country, and advanced the price until flour went up three dollars a barrel. When he collected $4,000,000 of this forced tribute from the people, he opened his corner and released the wheat, and the world, forgetting the famishing children from whose hungry lips he had stolen the crust, praised him as the king of finance and trade. Let us analyze this deal. The farmer who raised the wheat got not one cent of the added profit. The mills that ground it not one cent. Every dollar went to swell the toppling fortunes of him who never sowed it to the ground, nor fed it to the thundering wheels, but who knew it only as the chance instrument of his infamous scheme. Why, our fathers declared war against England, their mother country, from whose womb they came, because she levied two cents a pound on our tea, and yet, without a murmur, we submit to ten times this tax placed on the bread of our mouths, and levied by a private citizen for no reason save his greed, and no right save his might. Were a man to enter an humble home in England, bind the father helpless, stamp out the fire on the hearthstone, empty the scanty larder, and leave the family for three weeks cold and hungry and helpless, he would be dealt with by the law; and yet four men in New York cornered the world’s cotton crop and held it until the English spindles were stopped and 14,000,000 operatives sent idle and empty-handed to their homes, to divide their last crust with their children, and then sit down and suffer until the greed of the speculators was filled. The sugar refineries combined their plants at a cost of $14,000,000, and so raised the price of sugar that they made the first year $9,500,000 profit, and since then have advanced it rapidly until we sweeten our coffee absolutely in their caprice. When the bagging mills were threatened with a reduced tariff, they made a trust and openly boasted that they intended to make one season’s profits pay the entire cost of their mills—and these precious villains, whom thus far the lightnings have failed to blast, having carried out their infamous boast, organized for a deeper steal this season. And so it goes. There is not a thing we eat or drink, nor an article we must have for the comfort of our homes, that may not be thus seized and controlled and made an instrument for the shameless plundering of the people. It is a shame—this people patient and cheerful under the rise or fall of prices that come with the failure of God’s season’s charge as its compensation—or under the advance at the farm which enriches the farmer, or under that competitive demand which bespeaks brisk prosperity—this people made the prey and the sport of plunderers who levy tribute