Are we to believe the interested, prejudiced, purchased witnesses of corrupt wealth, or are we to believe the testimony of the witnesses of the people--men who have sacrificed and suffered in order to tell the truth. It is because the classes who have the advantages of culture and leisure, always care more for their own comforts than for truth and justice, that these problems, my reader, must be worked out, by the millions made of the same identical common mud that you and I are. As William E. Gladstone has said, all the reforms brought about in England during the last century, and of which all her citizens now boast, "were at first merely impossible ideals in the minds of the ignorant and fanatical poor," and were carried through by the working people "in opposition to the cultured and leisure class." It is because those who possess the power and the learning to lead mankind aright have always proven recreant to the trust imposed upon them, that God, in directing the course of human history, has invariably swept this class aside and accepted as His instruments the poor, the simple-minded and uncorrupted. From the birth of the primitive church among the poor fishermen of Galilee to the abolition of chattel slavery by an agitation instituted by social and political outcasts, the hand of God moving in the world has invariably brushed aside the rich and powerful with the intellectual parasites that swarm about them, and in building nations, religions, or instituting great reforms, has uniformly chosen the normal, healthy material at the base of society still uncorrupted by luxury. CHAPTER XII. VOTE YOURSELVES RICH. Those who have been voted rich, not by their own votes, but by our votes, the votes of the common people, are now engaged in proving to us THAT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE FOR THEM WE CAN BY NO POSSIBLE MEANS DO FOR OURSELVES. Having accumulated immense fortunes by means of vote enacted legislation, THEY PREACH TO US THE UTTER FOLLY OF OUR HOPING FOR ANY GAIN FROM THE SAME SOURCE. So interested are they in our proper economic education, that they are willing to supply both text-books and teachers. They love learning and from purely philanthropic motives seek to make us wise. But what is their wisdom so willingly imparted? From what follies are they so anxious to guard us? TO VOTE OUR ENEMIES RICH: THIS IS WISDOM. TO ATTEMPT TO VOTE OURSELVES RICH: DANGEROUS FOLLY. Their science teaches that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENT WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR WEALTH TO BE OF ANY EFFECT IN BEHALF OF THOSE WHO WIELD THE INSTRUMENT. Text-book in hand they say to the people, "It is impossible for you to vote yourselves rich."