"These delusive theories of a tariff for revenue and a tariff for protection, served the purposes of the Gold Power, by calling the attention of the people away from the real difficulty which stood in the way of wealth producers. All that the people needed was an opportunity to apply their labor to natural resources, and be able to exchange their products for products of equal value, produced by the labor of others. The foreign trade of the country was a matter of small importance compared with the home trade. If at almost any time during the latter part of the Transition Period, the people of this country had been guaranteed just such rations as were provided for soldiers, or even convicts, there would have been no surplus for exportation; and had the whole people been provided with all the clothing that was needed to keep them well clad, it would have taken the entire product of wool, flax, cotton and leather. But the press of that day, religious as well as secular, was to such a large extent under the control of the Gold Power, that facts such as these were kept away from the masses of the people. And it may be added in this connection, that the educational system of the country was controlled by this same power to suppress the truth on economic questions, and many eminent scholars were removed from professorships in the higher institutions of learning, because they refused to teach such sophistries as suited the purposes of the Gold Power. "In our very brief mention of the political agitations of that time we have only referred to the leading measures advocated by the dominant political parties. It is due however to even that benighted age to state, that at every step taken by the international Gold Power to financially conquer the world, a few of the more enlightened and self-sacrificing spirits, boldly exposed the financial wrongs which were being perpetrated against the people for the still further enrichment of the money kings of the Old World and their agents and co-workers in the great centers of wealth in this country. But these courageous, clear headed and humanity loving pioneers of a higher civilization were frowned down as dangerous agitators and enemies of law and order, and every foul epithet was applied to them. If in business, they were boycotted, and if belonging to the ranks of labor, they were blacklisted and in many cases imprisoned on false charges, and some were even executed for crimes which they did not commit. And yet the measures of reform they advocated along political lines were usually of such a nature that had they been enacted into law they would only have prolonged, for a few decades perhaps, the false system which pauperized and degraded the toiling millions.