through a system that mocks at God’s recurring rains, knows not the farmer, and locks competition in the grasp of monopoly. And the millions, thus wrung from the people, loaned back to them at usury, laying the blight of the mortgage on their homes, and the obligation of debt on their manhood. Talk about the timidity of capital. That is a forgotten phrase. In the power and irresponsibility of this sudden and enormous wealth is bred an insolence that knows no bounds. “The public be damned!” was the sentiment of the plutocrats, speaking through the voice of Vanderbilt’s millions. In cornering the product and levying the tribute—in locking up abundant supply until the wheels of industry stop—in oppressing through trusts, and domineering in the strength of corporate power, the plutocrats do what no political party would dare attempt and what no government on this earth would enforce. The Czar of Russia would not dare hold up a product until the mill-wheels were idle, or lay an unusual tax on bread and meat to replenish his coffers, and yet these things our plutocrats, flagrant and irresponsible, do day after day until public indignation is indignant and shame is lost in wonder. And when an outraged people turn to government for help what do they find? Their government in the hands of a party that is in sympathy with their oppressors—that was returned to power with votes purchased with their money—and whose confessed leaders declared that trusts are largely private concerns with which the government had naught to do. Not only is the dominant party the apologist of the plutocrats and the beneficiary of their crimes, but it is based on that principle of centralization through which they came into life and on which alone they can exist. It holds that sovereignty should be taken from the States and lodged with the nation—that political powers and privileges should be wrested from the people and guarded at the capital. It distrusts the people, and even now demands that your ballot-boxes shall be hedged about by its bayonets. It declares that a strong government is better than a free government, and that national authority, backed by national armies and treasury, is a better guarantee of peace and prosperity and liberty and enlightenment diffused among the people. To defend this policy, that cannot be maintained by argument or sustained by the love or confidence of the people, it rallies under its flag the mercenaries of the Republic, the syndicate, the trust, the monopolist, and the plutocrat, and strengthening them by grant and protection, rejoices as they grow richer and the people grow poorer. Confident in the debauching power of money and the unscrupulous audacity of their creatures, they catch the spirit of Vanderbilt’s defiance and call aloud from their ramparts, “the people be damned!” I charge that this party has bought its way for twenty years. Its nucleus was the passion that survived the war—and