Surely the martyred president and savior of mankind, the immortal Lincoln, must have anticipated the present deplorable condition when in his message to the second session of the thirty-seventh congress,--to be found in the appendix to the Congressional Globe of the thirty-seventh congress, second section, page 4--when he said: "Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point with its connections not so hackneyed as most others to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital, that nobody labors unless somebody else owning capital somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. * * * Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. * * * No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost." CHAPTER XI. INDICTMENT OF PRESIDENT DEBS. The railroad managers and federal courts were leaving no stone unturned to secure the indictment and incarceration of Eugene V. Debs. If successful, it was their intention to dispose of all the officers and directors of the American Railway Union in the same manner. Attorney General Olney, acting for the railroads, was hatching a scheme to incarcerate the officers of the union and refuse them bail. Attorneys Walker and Milchrist were ready to prove that Debs ordered the boycott, that he conspired against the lives and liberty of the people, that he conspired to overthrow the government, in short, they were ready to prove anything that would further the ends of the corporations which they represented. These diabolical plotters never doubted for one instant that the officers of the American Railway Union were innocent of the charges preferred against them. They knew very well that they (the officers) had no authority to order a boycott or strike, and that it was ordered by a majority vote of the men employed on each system. They also knew that from the inauguration of the strike, not one word or act of Eugene V. Debs could be construed into an offense and make him amenable to the law.