For it was perfectly evident, years ago, that the industrial evolution of this country was a process of exploitation. It was the knowledge of this fact that lay behind the Sherman Law of 1890; and again the Interstate Commerce Act, which sought to restrain, to a limited extent at least, the boundless license to plunder which had been taken unto themselves by the railroads. No broad-minded man can read with an open mind the facts with regard to the Homestead strike, the Pullman strike, the war in the Cœur d’Alene, or the coal strike of very recent years, without coming to the conclusion that no matter who was in the wrong in the immediate circumstances leading to those national catastrophes, the real underlying cause was a revolt on the part of a subjugated people against the hardships of industrial slavery. Without going into details, let us examine, in the light of history, a few of the cardinal facts that have so far made possible a continuance, indeed, a constant widening and deepening, of this process of exploitation. Let us remember always, as we face the facts, that the primary cause of this condition lay in that evolution, which was probably inevitable, from the household stage of manufacturing in this country to the stage that is represented by the modern trust. That evolution stands to-day completed. It was, as a matter of fact, completed on the day when the American Sugar Refining Company assumed the dominating position in the sugar trade. Subsequent developments have been but a repetition, sometimes on a larger scale, sometimes on a smaller, of that climax. What, then, makes possible the continuance of this process in the face of the ever-growing public knowledge of its existence? The answer is our public shame. This process, openly recognized by the public, thoroughly analyzed day by day and year by year by brilliant writers in press and periodical, exposed again and again in excellently written books by college economists, has gone on and on through climax after climax for the simple reason that the one power in the world that could stop it--the will of the American people--has been turned from its purpose, defeated in its honest efforts, and betrayed in its administration, through the fact that in our democratic political world the power of mobilized wealth has been sufficient to restrain the hands of our political parties and prevent the striking of the blows that would have put an end to the process. To-day, in America, the people elect their statesmen; but the exercise of the people’s power through these statesmen is curbed, directed, and controlled by groups of moneyed interests. This is a statement that many will challenge; it is a statement that cannot be proved or disproved. I give it as my opinion, based upon long, careful study, and based, too, on personal knowledge.