Senator Call, of Florida, said:--"It is well for the people
to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the
government are becoming subject to the control of a very
small number of people, and the extent to which these
powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost
as much so as the Czar of Russia.
"The present system places the control of the wealth of
this country in the hands of a very small number of
persons, an almost infinitesimal portion of the people;
gives them money to buy those who represent the people."
Senator Berry said:--"So much injustice has been done to
the people, so many wrongs have been perpetrated in the
interests of wealth and capital by the passage of unjust
laws, that the people are in open revolt to-day, and they
have a right to be; they have determined to have relief,
and they are entitled to it."
Senator Stewart said:--"If there is no reason nor humanity
in the possessors of accumulated capital there is power in
revolution."
Senator Gorman, the Democratic leader in the Senate,
said:--"We stand to-day, Mr. President, upon a financial
volcano. The labor of the country appeals through every
channel it can to this administration and this Congress to
stay the awful wreck that is threatened."
The eloquent address of Senator Ingalls presented still
more forcibly and fully the evils of plutocracy, which is
"threatening the safety if it does not endanger the
existence of the republic," by "the tyranny of combined,
concentrated, centralized, and incorporated capital." "The
conscience of the nation is shocked at the injustice of
modern society. The moral sentiment of mankind has been
aroused at the unequal distribution of wealth, at the
unequal diffusion of the burdens, the benefits, and the
privileges of society." "At this time there are many scores
of men, of estates, and of corporations, in this country,
whose annual income exceeds, and there has been one man
whose monthly revenue since that period exceeds the entire
accumulations of the wealthiest citizen of the United
States at the end of the last century." "By some means,
some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or
otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a
two-thousandth part of our population have obtained
possession and have kept out of the penitentiary, in spite
of the means they have adopted to acquire it, of more than
one half of the entire accumulated wealth of the country.
That is not the worst, Mr. President. It has been chiefly
acquired by men who have contributed little to the material
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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