The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and the impoverishment of the common people until it was the bread of charity or the blood of the revolution, has ever been the herald of moral decay and of national death. So passed the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome, and, if we may judge the future by the past, so will perish the greatest republic that ever gleamed like a priceless jewel on the skeleton hand of Time. Self-interest, humanity, patriotism, religion itself, admonish us to weigh well the problem of the hour--a problem born of human progress, forced upon us by the mighty revolution wrought in the industrial world by the giant Steam--and that problem is: Shall the average American Citizen be a Slave or a Sovereign? Don't imagine for a moment that I'm an anarchist-- that I'm going to wind up this seance by unfurling the red flag and throwing a hatful of bombs. I admit that I haven't much respect for law--there's so much of it that when I come to spread my respect over the entire lot it's about as thin as one of Sam Jones's sermons. Still, I don't believe in strikes, and riots and bloodshed. I'm for peace --peace in its most virulent form. I've had a sneaking respect for Cleveland ever since he employed a substitute to put a kibosh on the Southern Confederacy while he remained at home to play pinochle with the pretty girls. He may not be much of a statesman in time of peace, but there's no picnic ants on his judgment in time of war. It is time that capital and labor realized that their interests are really commutual, as interdependent as the brain and the body; time they ceased their fratricidal strife and, uniting their mighty forces under the flag of Progress, completed the conquest of the world and doomed Poverty, Ignorance and Vice--hell's great triumvirate--to banishment eternal. Unless labor is employed, capital cannot increase--it can only concentrate. Unless property rights are held inviolable and capital thereby encouraged to high enterprise, labor is left without a lever with which to lift itself to perfect life and must sink back to barbarism. It is time that American citizens of alleged intelligence ceased trailing blindly in the wake of partisan band- wagons and began to seriously consider the public welfare --time they realized that the people were not made for parties, but parties for the people, and refuse to sacrifice their patriotism on the unclean altar of partisan slavery. Blind obedience to party fiat; the division of the people of one great political family into hostile camps; subjection of the public interest to partisan advantage; placing the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty--the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity--have brought the first nation of all world to the very brink of destruction. . . .