"There is no such thing in America as an independent Press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare express an honest opinion; if you express it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. Any man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and race for his daily bread, or for about the same thing--his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an 'Independent Press.' We are tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." In the case of "The American People versus the Banks and Trusts," we have found, by personal examination, as also by the confession of a member of the family, John Swinton, that the money which inflates the purse of the prominent editorial witness consists of the marked coins that made up a portion of the booty in question. No sane juror will believe the testimony of such a witness. CLERGY NEEDS SYMPATHY, NOT BLAME. It is also claimed that God's ministry has offered its testimony in behalf of the defense. It is not my purpose to say anything against the clergy, because if there is an abused and ill-treated class of men on the face of the earth to-day, who need pity and prayer and succor, it is the men who have dedicated their lives to the Christ who was killed by the rich of His time, and who are now dependent for their living, their children's food and their wives' clothing, upon the blended piety and pride, the virtues and vanities of the rich of to-day. In all that inconsistent barbarism, which we call civilization, there is no man who needs sympathy so much and deserves blame so little as he who is attempting at the same time to preach for God and to get his living from God's enemies, to build monuments to the Christ who lived and died for the poor, and gain the material and cost of these monuments by flattering those who are grinding the faces of the poor.