If my neighbor accompanied me to market with a load of potatoes and I were to ask a policeman to help me take his load from him, the economists' words would apply. The government, through its agent, the policeman, could not double my wealth without robbing my neighbor. But this is not the situation. I came alone. A stranger assaulted me and took both wagon and potatoes, leaving me very poor. Now, in spite of the professor's words, the state, in the person of its officer, can abolish my poverty and give me a wagon filled with potatoes without doing injustice to any one else. I can be made happy without depriving any other being of what he has earned, and I do not ask the state to legislate into existence a single potato. I simply ask that the potatoes already existing as the result of my labor be taken from the highwayman and returned to their rightful owner. This is what the masses ask. Not that the government give them anything produced by others, not that the government attempt to create anything independent of the labor of its citizens, but that it return to them their own. We demand the capture of the highwayman, monopoly, and that the opportunities taken from us by him be restored to us.[10] [10] When a monopoly becomes a government monopoly, its nature changes entirely, and all that was objectionable disappears. The evil pertaining to a monopoly is its exclusiveness. When private monopoly becomes government monopoly, it is no longer exclusive, for the whole people enjoy its benefits alike. Unity of administration is not an evil if the resulting benefits are shared by all. The only possible way to destroy the great monopolies is to convert them into government functions, and administer them as the post office, the army, navy, weather service, the public schools and parks are now managed. There is no other way to destroy our new industrial despotism. Read "Socialism and Social Reform," by Prof. R. T. Ely; also "Wealth against Commonwealth," by H. D. Lloyd. We not only demand but we are actually organizing for the pursuit. The Democratic Volunteers are superintending the preliminaries and in 1900 law and order are to be established, the adventurers suppressed, and restoration made. The issuance of the nation's money, now a private monopoly, controlled by bankers, will again be made a function of government, and the people will be permitted to exchange their products without paying revenue to their enemies for the means of exchange, which is their own creation. Other wrongs will be righted with equal facility. Each victim, however, must be taught that his vote is both horse and hound for pursuing, and both gun and rope for punishing and reclaiming. Our vote is our one weapon, our one means of defense, and source of power.