FELLOW CITIZENS: If I had a million o' money--carefully protected from the income tax by a plutocratic supreme court--I would probably not be here to inquire whether you are Slaves or Sovereigns. And if you could draw your check for seven figures--with any probability of getting it cashed--you would not be here to answer. You'd do just as Dives did: lean back in your luxurious chair and absorb your sangaree, while Lazarus scratched his Populist fleas on your front steps and exploited your garbage barrels for bones. You'd turn up your patrician nose at the lowly proletaire, and if he did but hint that, having created this world's wealth, he was entitled to something better than hand-outs, you'd have an anti-communistic cat-fit and denounce him as an insolent hoodlum who should be comfortably hanged. That's human nature to a hair, and you are all human,--I suppose--even if the politicians do buy you with gas and sell you for gold. I tell you frankly that I'm complaining, not because of the other fellow's colossal fortune, but because I can't strike the plutocratic combination. I'm dreadfully anxious to accumulate a modest fortune--of about fifty millions-- that I may build a comfortable orphan asylum for that vast contingent of Democratic politicians whom the next election will deprive of their "pap." I'm no philanthropist who's trying to reform the world for the fun of the thing--who's willing to starve to death for the sake of an attractive tombstone. I want to so amend industrial conditions that I won't have to hustle so hard--and so long--between meals; and when they are bettered for me they will be bettered for you, and for every man who--with pick or pen, brain or brawn-- honestly earns his daily bread. I want more holidays; more time to sit down and reflect that it is good to be alive; more time to go fishing--not fishing for men, but for sure--enough suckers. Here in America if the average mortal aspires to fill a long-felt want with first-class fodder, he's got to chase the almighty dollar on week-days like a hungry coyote camping on the trail of a corpulent jack-rabbit, and spend Sunday figuring how to circumvent his fellow-citizen. Life with the American people is one continental hurry, and rush from the cradle to the grave. We're born in a hurry, live by electricity and die with scientific expedition. Half of us don't take time to become acquainted with our own families. We've even got to courting by telephone, and I expect to see some enterprising firm put up lover's kisses in tablet form, so that they can be carried in the vest pocket and absorbed while we figure cent per cent. or make out a mortgage. . . .