The slave-owners of today do not realize that they own slaves. And the slaves do not realize that they have owners. Formerly one man owned one, a dozen or a hundred slaves. Occasionally even more than that. Now a hundred thousand men each own a part of every slave. The great mass of the people are slaves to unjust systems, and everyone who profits by these systems is part owner of everyone who loses by them. If there could be a partition suit and every slave owner be set apart his share, the fact that there are slaves today, and millions of them, would be quite plain. It would be found that this man owns fifty slaves, that man a hundred and some as high as fifty thousand. Should the richest girl in the United States be given white girls only as her share of the slaves, she would have a thousand at least—a thousand white girl slaves. Some persons are part slave and part free, because they get a little more than the commonest kind of a living. Sixty million people in the United States are either all or part slave, and the number who are all slave is much greater than that of the black population in the days of chattel slavery. This new slavery exists because the owners do not realize that they are owners and the slaves do not realize that they are slaves. Years ago Mrs. Emery, of Lansing, Mich., wrote a little book, entitled “The Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People.” The way to freedom is financial legislation in the interest of the people.—_Missouri World._ * * * * * The nation that prepares for war will sooner or later have war. We get just anything we prepare for, and we get nothing else. Everything that happens is a sequence; this happened today because you did that yesterday.—_The Philistine._ * * * * * In 1896 Mr. Bryan had undisputed control of the organized Democracy and was defeated. In 1900 he still had control, and was defeated worse than before. Now, let it be remembered that all the Western Populists, with their newspaper press—including such strong and widely circulated papers as the Nebraska _Independent_, supported him; and let it be further understood that now and in the future he will get no support from Populists or the Populist press; then figure out the lurid prospects Mr. Bryan has of sweeping the country in 1908. Now, with this actual state of things confronting him, does anyone believe that Mr. Bryan has any hope of reorganizing the shattered ranks and disgraced leaders of the Democracy into a winning party in 1908? And, if he has no such hope—and in reason he cannot have—what is his purpose putting so much into a cause that he knows is absolutely hopeless? We can see but one reason for Mr. Bryan’s course, and that is that he intends to prevent the organization of a party that would unite the South and West, and defeat the plutocracy, thus restoring the Government to the original purpose of its great founders.