In the days of savagery the strong devoured the weak--actually ate their flesh. In spite of all the laws that man has made, in spite of all advance in science, literature and art, the strong, the cunning, the heartless still live on the weak, the unfortunate, and foolish. True, they do not eat their flesh, they do not drink their blood, but they live on their labor, on their self-denial, their weariness and want. The poor man who deforms himself by toil, who labors for wife and child through all his anxious, barren, wasted life--who goes to the grave without even having had one luxury--has been the food of others. He has been devoured by his fellow-men. The poor woman living in the bare and lonely room, cheerless and fireless, sewing night and day to keep starvation from a child, is slowly being eaten by her fellow-men. When I take into consideration the agony of civilized life--the number of failures, the poverty, the anxiety, the tears, the withered hopes, the bitter realities, the hunger, the crime, the humiliation, the shame--I am almost forced to say that cannibalism, after all, is the most merciful form in which man has ever lived upon his fellow-man. Some of the best and purest of our race have advocated what is known as Socialism. They have not only taught, but, what is much more to the purpose, have believed that a nation should be a family; that the government should take care of all its children; that it should provide work and food and clothes and education for all, and that it should divide the results of all labor equitably with all. Seeing the inequalities among men, knowing of the destitution and crime, these men were willing to sacrifice, not only their own liberties, but the liberties of all. Socialism seems to be one of the worst possible forms of slavery. Nothing, in my judgment, would so utterly paralyze all the forces, all the splendid ambitions and aspirations that now tend to the civilization of man. In ordinary systems of slavery there are some masters, a few are supposed to be free; but in a socialistic state all would be slaves.