Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard Oil monopoly. I thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about it was that the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law, in the illegal use of those public roads which are called transportation lines, the secret rebate, the discriminating service, the favoritism which the transportation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly, but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the Standard Oil monopoly will exist, if they can get the favored illegal treatment which they got in the building up of their monopoly and which they still have in sustaining it. The power of Privilege in securing money, and the power of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol is not the ownership of the oil-well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of franchises. With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful conditions which beset us, but I know, as well as I know anything, that the principle of the private ownership of land has had nothing whatever to do with our trouble. Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to Monopoly; equalize the taxes; make the rich support the government in proportion to their wealth; restore public utilities to the public; put the power of self-government back into the hands of the people by Direct Legislation; restore our Constitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from the necessaries of life; establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to freedom of trade. With these reforms in operation, millionaires would cease to multiply and fewer Americans would be paupers. Trusts would not tyrannize over the laborer and the consumer, Corporations could not plunder a people whose political leaders they have bought. Some statesman might again declare as Legaré declared twenty years before the Civil War: “WE HAVE NO POOR.” English travelers might have no occasion to say, as Rider Haggard said last year, that our condition was becoming so intolerable that there must be reform or revolution. On the contrary, the English travelers might say once more, as Charles Dickens said in 1843, that an Angel with a flaming sword would attract less attention than a beggar in the streets. And with these reforms accomplished any man in America who wanted to work a farm of his own could do it.