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 The Masses and. the 
 13 ionaires 
 
 By 
 vr illiam Jackson Armstrong

 
 T HE Masses 
 
 AND THE 
 
 millionaires. 
 
 ♦♦ [(•))♦♦ 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 William Jackson Armstrong, 
 
 Delivered before the Oakland Nationalist Club, -in 
 
 Hamilton Hall, Oakland, California, on 
 
 Monday Evening, May 26, 1890. 
 
 PRICE, TEN CENTS.
 
 Copyrighted 1890, by William Jackson Armstrong
 
 I 
 
 The Masses ^Millionaires, 
 
 Fellow-citizens: The. highest attribute of man is not 
 intelligence. Intelligence is common to the brutes. The 
 noblest characteristic of our race is the capacity for the sense 
 ■<>f justice. That sentiment the brutes do not possess. But 
 among civilized or savage men there is none beyond its 
 claim. Whether in marble palaces or African jungles, there is 
 no human heart that does not throb faster at its appeal. 
 
 £g By this fact the civilization of man is possible. Justice is 
 
 *~l the music of history by which man marches to his destiny. 
 
 »= The measure of any civilization is the measure of its justice. 
 a Men and women are civilized according as they hate injus- 
 
 ~ J tice. The man who does not feel the wrong: of his fellow- 
 
 j* men is a savage. 
 
 §2 To-day the more enlightened nations of the world are face 
 to face with the greatest problem of justice that has been 
 met in history. With the work of civilization so far ac- 
 complished that there is enough accumulated wealth to 
 make comfortable all the people of civilized countries, there 
 remains before the world the spectacle of almost infinite suf- 
 fering and want. Behind this spectacle of suffering is the 
 spectacle of inequality without corresponding merit. Be- 
 hind this spectacle of inequality is the specter of fear iu the 
 lives of innocent millions, 
 
 370590
 
 EX LIBRIS 
 
 SAX CARLOS 1769 
 
 ROBERT ERNEST COWAN
 
 473 
 
 The Masses * Millionaires. 
 
 Fell-OW-CITKENS : The highest attribute of man is not 
 intelligence. Intelligence is common to the brutes. The 
 noblest characteristic of our race is the capacity for the sense 
 of justice. That sentiment the brutes do not possess. But 
 among civilized or savage men there is none beyond its 
 ■claim. Whether in marble palaces or African jungles, there is 
 no human heart that does not throb faster at its appeal. 
 
 |j£ By this fact the civilization of man is possible. Justice is 
 
 ^ the music of history by which man marches to his destiny. 
 
 cc The measure of any civilization is the measure of its justice. 
 
 §| Men and women are civilized according as they hate injus- 
 
 "" J tice. The man who does not feel the wrong of his fellow- 
 
 ^ men is a savage. 
 
 f-. To-day the more enlightened nations of the world are face 
 to face with the greatest problem of justice that has been 
 met in history. With the work of civilization so far ac- 
 complished that there is enough accumulated wealth to 
 make comfortable all the people of civilized countries, there 
 remains before the world the spectacle of almost infinite suf- 
 fering and want. Behind this spectacle of suffering is the 
 spectacle of inequality without corresponding merit. Be- 
 hind this spectacle of inequality is the specter of fear in the 
 Jives of innocent millions, 
 
 .'570590
 
 4 THE MASSES \M> THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 A few centuries ago these grim facts would have troub- 
 led nobody. Those were ages of force and. brutality. Men 
 were indifferent to the sufferiug of their fellows. The sense 
 of human rights had not quickened. To-day it is different. 
 General Grant tells us in his memoirs that, knocked about 
 in his boyhood in many log school-houses, lie was told so 
 often that a noun was the name of a thing that he began to. 
 believe it. A similar fatality has overtaken modern Chris* 
 tianity. It has been preached so long from the pulpits of 
 the world, that there are people even outside of the churches 
 wh o begin to suspect its doctrines of truth. To the minds 
 of millions of men and women, the equality and brother- 
 hood of man are no longer rhetorical phrases. Miraculous 
 religion has fared as.it could; but, side by side with the 
 growth of hideous wrongs, the growth of the moral instinct 
 and the sharpening sense of the solidarity of our race, have 
 been the great features of our time. The presence of pov- 
 erty and suffering in the midst of plenty is felt as a moral di>- 
 cord. The conscience of civilization is troubled. The last 
 decade of the nineteenth century begins with an interroga- 
 tion point for justice, 
 
 Millions of intelligent men and women are asking what 
 is the matter, and, whatever is the matter, whether it cannot 
 be cured. Other millions of intelligent men and women 
 have begun to make answers to this question. There are 
 five millions of Socialists in Germany. There are ten mill- 
 ions of incipient Socialists in the United States. The opin- 
 ion of these people, whether guided or misguided, will some 
 November morning make a mighty force at the ballot-box. 
 These thinking and intelligent people assert that injustice is 
 the matter with our modern society. They assert that the 
 civilization of Christendom is trying to live a lie, — with its
 
 I'lli: MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 profession and its practice at swords' points. They point 
 to the suggestive fact that for nineteen centuries it has 
 preached from its pulpits the Sermon on the Mount, and 
 lived in its marts by the gospel of Mammon; that its teach- 
 ing and its example have never heen introduced to each 
 other; that they do not speak as they pass by. 
 
 They .suggest that a possible inhabitant of Saturn, looking 
 on this globe, observes the grotesque contradiction of the 
 doctrine of universal love and human brotherhood taught on 
 .Sundays, and the cut-throat doctrine of the survival of the 
 fittest and the devil for the hindmost, practiced during the 
 remainder of the week — the spectacle of a civilization on 
 whose lips are the ethics of humanity and whose working- 
 scheme is a struggle for existence between man and man 
 deadlier than the feuds of savagery — a scheme of society in 
 which morality and the market have agreed not to interfere 
 with each other. They answer that this state of things has 
 a cure, and that this cure is for each man to give his labor 
 to his fellow-men, and to take from the common product of 
 labor the means for his own life. 
 
 The people who make, this charge against the existing 
 order of things and suggest this remedy are mostly poor. 
 They have not this world's goods. It has been urged against 
 them that their philosophy is born not of their brains but 
 of their pockets — where there is plenty of room. It has 
 been said that the best cure for the socialist would be to 
 give him a house and lot. That might cure the dishonest 
 socialist, but it would not meet his doctrine. To cure social- 
 ism you must answer its argument. There are wise and re- 
 spectable men who make answer. They assert that the 
 present order of things is the best possible for this world. 
 They assert that the philosophy of socialism — all men for
 
 b THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 one man and one man for all — is a beautiful dream ; that if 
 it became a reality it would bring greater oppression than 
 is now endured. They affirm that the world is growing 
 daily better and happier; that its existing order will in the 
 end throw off its own evils. They say that the scheme of 
 enlightened self-interest, every man for himself, is the only 
 scheme by which the progress of man and the evolution of his 
 faculties are possible. They say that this scheme is scien- 
 tific. This is their argument. Scientific enlightened self- 
 interest is a splendid phrase; it is a part of scientific knowl- 
 edge that can be understood by those innocent of all 
 other science. It can be understood even by a millionaire. 
 The wise and respectable people who are in love with the 
 present order of the world — who make this answer to the 
 socialist, are mostly comfortable in this world's possessions. 
 They have farms, counting-houses, professorships, libraries, 
 and cool bedrooms in the summer. Their philosophy, also, 
 might be accused of having origin in pockets — where there 
 is not so much room. But there is a more serious difficulty 
 about it. There is a steadily-increasing number of people 
 who do not believe in it, and there are steadily-increasing 
 reasons for their disbelief. While these respectable and 
 comfortable people are engaged in their libraries and banks 
 in demonstrating that the present industrial arrangement, 
 among men is the only scientific possible arrangement, and 
 that it will finally eliminate inequality and injustice from 
 society, the facts in the world outside do not seem to pro- 
 ceed in harmony with this view of the case. Cunning con- 
 tinues to grasp the wealth of the world. Fraud piles up. 
 colossal fortunes in the hands of the few. Corporations 
 corrupt the sources of public power. The larger industries 
 steadily absoib the smaller, driving increasing numbers of
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. / 
 
 independent men and women into the dependent ranks of 
 wage earners, the profits of their labor running to the hands 
 of the fortunate. Monopolies and trusts swallow for the ben- 
 efit of individuals the legitimate opportunities and gains of 
 millions of men. A million of honest women in our great 
 cities slave for beggarly crusts that would not feetl the cat of 
 the millionaire. The world is filled with discontented labor. 
 By every sun that rises we read reports from some part of 
 this republic of the strikes or lock-outs of thousands of 
 workmen, significant of mighty personal suffering and 
 mighty public loss. The order of society is riotous and 
 rotten with industrial war. In the midst of abundance, a 
 million of willing Americans are tramping for bread. 
 
 These are open facts ; nobody denies them. They are 
 bad for the theory of the existing order of things in this 
 world. They are bad for the assurances of the comfortable 
 gentlemen of the libraries and parlors, who answer the 
 complaint of the socialist. Their arguments would seem 
 to have nothing to do with the case. 
 
 These facts apply in greater or less degree to the condi- 
 tion of every civilized country of the world. They are the 
 facts which to-day are rocking the nations as they have not 
 been rocked for a thousand years in the lap of war. They 
 are the facts by the side of which all other facts — of learn- 
 ing, of art, of discovery, or commerce, or law — are as noth- 
 ing. They are the facts which have met civilization in its 
 pathway as the old Theban Sphinx met the traveler, who 
 must solve its riddle or die. They make the problem of 
 our time. 
 
 But for this occasion let us confine them to our own 
 country. That they should exist here in their most fla- 
 grant and threatening form in the land dedicated to the
 
 8 TITi: MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES, 
 
 equal rights and the equal chances of men, is the most ex- 
 traordinary event in history. 
 
 What is it that lias happened ? 
 
 For a thousand years, covering the Dark Ages, the world 
 was ruled by force. Might was the law of right. Hu- 
 manity was* a foot-ball tossed by conquerors. It believed 
 in the divine right of kings and lords. Tt made no in- 
 sertion of its dignity, 'flic gentleman wore a sword ;is 
 his badge of power. The peasant slept on husks in the 
 valley, and worked for the prince on the hill-top. There 
 were no peoples; there were only lords and serfs. This 
 was believed to he the natural order of things. At length 
 there came a change. The human soul quickened. It ln- 
 gan to be felt that there were rights of men. The people 
 sought power. They dethroned autocrats. Bv the end of 
 the eighteenth century nearly every nation in Christendom 
 had achieved something of political privilege. Then on 
 the western shores of the Atlantic, a young nation arose 
 in its might, bade ultimate farewell to kings, threw out the 
 flag of equal rights, and humanity rose to its full stature, 
 clothed with dignity and power. 
 
 That was America! That was the achievement of 
 Americans a century ago. It was the jubilee of humanity. 
 The creed of Christ had touched t he creed of the State. The 
 eye of the world was strained toward the new continent 
 With equal political rights it was believed that here would 
 be equal chances for all men — that the race for life would 
 be fair; that the cards would not be marked — that the 
 dice in the game would not be loaded. 
 
 The citizens of the early republic were fellow-laborers 
 under this inspiring faith. Every man had his farm, his 
 shop, or his trade. All were independent workers. There
 
 THE MASSES AX I) THE MILLIONAIRES, 9 
 
 were no autocrats of industry. There was not a tramp on 
 the continent. In the hardest stress of life men stretched 
 forth their hands and reached those of their fellows, and 
 felt the quick touch of human brotherhood. 
 
 That bright picture of equality was brief. Unexpected 
 elements entered civilization. Steam, electricity, and ma- 
 chinery — -the genii of fire and force and speed — came to 
 destroy the simple order of the past. Industry was warped 
 into colossal lines. The handicrafts went to the wall. Ag- 
 gregated capital purchased the gigantic implements of the 
 new time. Human labor was bound to the machine. Iron 
 and steel became despots harder than any political tyrants. 
 The wisdom of the fathers did not anticipate the problem 
 Political freedom did not comprehend it. Parading its 
 liberties, American humanity, like its handicrafts, went to 
 the wall. Augustus Caesar boasted that he could rule the 
 Romans as he pleased as long as he assured them that they 
 were free. Lord Chesterfield, at the age of seventy, w 7 as in 
 the habit of saying to his old servant Tyrawley : " Ty, you 
 and I have been dead for many years if we only knew it- 
 Let us walk down town and rehearse our funeral;" 
 
 When railroad corporations elect Legislatures in fifteen 
 American States, American liberty is rehearsing its funeral. 
 
 For this state of things whose is the fault? That is not 
 the question. The facts are here. Their cause is human 
 stupidity colossal as a planet. An age of science should 
 have sounded warning a half a century ago. Neglecting 
 the "proper study of mankind," it has afflicted us with re- 
 dundant learning on bugs. 
 
 Edmund Burke said that the respectable fabric of polit- 
 ical society was the result of the blundering of one part of 
 mankind operating with the villainy of the other. That
 
 1(> Till: MASSES \Ni> THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 has been the industrial history of the Dnited States. Play- 
 ing with forces so strange and mighty that they have 
 changed the face (if the world, we have drifted into a new 
 epoch of civilization, and continued to apply to its problems 
 the wisdom of the ancients. Attempting to carry the com- 
 merce of the Atlantic in the galley-boats of the Romans, 
 would he idiocy less stupendous. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, the common sense and the stat- 
 utes of England made it a crime to make monopolies in the 
 food of the people. To-day a committee of the American 
 Congress finds on investigation that four butchers in the 
 settlement of Chicago have " cornered " the meat of two- 
 thirds of the continent. The man who corners the "meat of 
 the masses" should hang — by the side of his dressed meat. 
 
 "Combine or die!" has become the motto of modern 
 trade. Not less than seventy American industries have 
 been forced into monster trusts, to hold up prices and 
 keep profits in the purses of the few. A half a dozen pools 
 threaten to presently control the bread, butter, and boot- of 
 the United States. 
 
 Even the solemn gentlemen who make our shrouds anil 
 coffins have formed a pool under the name of the ''Na- 
 tional Burial-Case Association." At the sound of this 
 soothing and respectable title, we do not feel quite sure that 
 we are not making a mistake in lingering above-ground. 
 We have a sense that we may not he in quite the right 
 company. We feel that we may owe it to ourselves to 
 patronize these decorous gentlemen and get buried — and 
 join the respectable majority. 
 
 Not long ago these lugubrious gentlemen met in melan- 
 choly conclave in Philadelphia, and, imagining themselves 
 in a cemetery, proceeded to lay a tax on death. Their
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 11 
 
 action to keep up the prices and down the number of coffin? 
 was kept secret, for fear the doctors might become dis- 
 couraged and mortality lessened. 
 
 Then the dealers in old rags and paper formed a trust 
 in Cleveland, to deal with the old-rag problem — of how 
 to cut down the enormous profits of the women of our 
 country out of the contents of their rag-bags. The decree 
 of the old rag-barons, issued in solemn council, ran: "No 
 reduction in prices for old rags without consulting the 
 syndicate." 
 
 Half a dozen gigantic monopolies, headed by their king, 
 have well-nigh appropriated the government of the United 
 States. Their king is the railroads — the monopoly of 
 transportation. These monopolies have assumed functions 
 of power and privileges of taxation unfamiliar to a Persian 
 shah or the Russian czar. Actual statistics upon this sub- 
 ject prove that the taxes in excess of fair profits levied by 
 these monopolies upon the American people are sufficient 
 to carry on three perpetual foreign wars. 
 
 By the force of combination, every ton of coal burned 
 in the United States costs the consumer one-third more 
 than its actual price, with fair profits to the monopoly 
 handling it. 
 
 The coal pirates of Pennsylvania and adjacent States 
 thus mulct from a patient people a yearly tribute of forty 
 millions of dollars. That "octopus of American trusts," 
 the Standard Oil Monopoly, has piled up its two hundred 
 millions of capital by the same conspiracy — a tax upon 
 the people's heat and light, "whipped from the nation's 
 pocket," equal to the cost of a continual war with Spain or 
 Mexico. 
 
 Exemplary among these tender-hearted monopolies is
 
 12 THE MASSES AM> THE M I l.l.K >NA u; KS. 
 
 the gigantic Western Union Telegraph Combination, which, 
 with the confident digestion of :i Dodo, swallowed, a quar- 
 ter of a century ago, sixty different companies al a :_r 1 1 1 1 > . 
 
 With thirty-live millions of dollars of actual assets, this 
 monopoly collects interest off the public on a nominal 
 .-lock capital of one hundred millions of dollars, the slight 
 difference between substance and shadow being fifty-five 
 millions of pure water; thus levying upon the people 
 of the United State.-, by reason of this fictitious stock, a 
 tax equal to that on a permanent debt of $150,000,000 of 
 three per cent government bonds — the American and civ- 
 ilized way of doing it. Add to the extortion of this mo- 
 nopoly that of the Chicago butchers on the meat of the 
 Great West, and yon can fight England and Canada with 
 the spoils every day in the year. 
 
 The profits of the American railway barons] are Levied, 
 in all, on a fictitious debt of four thousand million* of dol- 
 lars! That would support a perpetual war against the 
 Russian czar to aid the cause of the Nihilists. 
 
 The robberies of the other American trusts and corpora 
 fcions would maintain another war against the remaining 
 nations of Europe; or, in the year 1890, the people of the 
 United States can wage a standing fight against the civil- 
 ized world, with more money in their pockets, than in 
 suffering tin exactions of their own industrial tyrants. 
 And yet that stupid generation of the American father- 
 plunged, like school-hoys, into revolution for a three-cent 
 tax on tea! They were young and callow. They had not 
 learned the patient ox-eyed philosophy which come- of 
 high civilization in the golden age of trusts. A hundred 
 and fifty American industries are shuffled in the hand- of 
 pool-mongers like a deck of cards. An American billion-
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 13 
 
 aire buys up, at a stroke, seventy coal mines, within as many 
 miles of St. Louis, to steal the cheapness of warmth from 
 his fellow-men. 
 
 Think again of these sweet-mannered modern buccaneers 
 — the great American railroads! The National Rich 
 Man's Club — the caucus of millionaires — sitting as the 
 United States Senate, reports, in a swift spasm of confidence, 
 after a careful investigation, that these railways, the com- 
 mon carriers of the land, which have received their fran- 
 chises and privileges from the people, levy a tax on their 
 benefactors which the National Congress would not dare 
 assume. A committee of the New York Legislature, 
 making similar investigation, confirms this report by stating 
 that the tribute laid by these corporations upon the nation 
 is one which "no government would dare levy upon any 
 people." 
 
 Approach the gentlemen who sit in the gilded palaces of 
 these corporations, and ask their terms for the shipment of 
 any new product of labor, and you are submitted to an 
 inquisition as to the profits of your private business in the 
 manufacture of that commodity which the most despotic 
 State would blush to impose on its subjects. 
 
 The rule of robbery with these Robin Hoods of the 
 modern highway is "all that the traffic will bear." Their 
 motto of prudence is not to kill the goose. But sometimes 
 the goose expires under the plucking. A Nebraska farmer 
 read in his weekly paper the market price for corn. Be- 
 lieving that there was a fair profit for his labor, he shipped 
 his entire harvest by the neighboring railway to the great 
 city, and awaited his financial ^returns. They promptly 
 came. They were a lull against the farmer for fifteen <l<r/- 
 largj — the balance in favor of the railroad after deducting:
 
 14 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 the selling price of the corn. The farmer hunted up an 
 ancient algebra of his school-days, computed and paid 
 a minus profit. The next year he hunted rabbits. 
 
 On the rich prairies by the Missouri, the average estimate 
 for shipping three hundred bushels of corn to market is 
 two hundred bushels for the railways. 
 
 That is what is the matter with the American farming 
 industry! Not Long ago a governor of Kansas in a mes- 
 sage to the Legislature of h\> State, said: "If the extortion 
 of our railways is not speedily corrected, agriculture in the 
 western half of this Suite will have to be abandoned. 
 Only the marvelous wealth and productive energy of the 
 State have thus tar enabled the people to pay such sums 
 annually." 
 
 Under the exactions of this Caesarian brigandage, the 
 farming lands of that imperial State are passing rapidly 
 into the dead hand of Eastern pawn-brokers. A recent 
 memorial to its representatives in Congress from citizens of 
 that State, recites that a -ingle lawfirm in an inconsiderable 
 Kansas town holds eighteen hundred mortgages on as many 
 Kansas farms. An eloquent California!! asserts that the 
 railroad monopoly of his State has gone into partnership 
 with every farmer in California, "with the corporation on 
 top." 
 
 Computing generously for every cost, including running 
 expenses, interest on invested capital, and replacement of 
 worn-out tracks and cars, a United Stat>- citizen can be 
 transported from San Francisco to Boston in a twenty- 
 thousand-dollar Pullman coach for a cost of less than two 
 dollars. A United States hog can be carried over the same 
 ground for the same price. The railroad companies charge 
 the citizen for this ride one hundred and thirty dollars.
 
 THE MASSES AND THE' MILLIONAIRES. 15 
 
 They charge the hog only six dollars and a half. That is 
 the advantage in the United States of being a hog! The 
 advantage of being a hog is the same as that of being a 
 railway. But we can't all be hogs. 
 
 An Irish car driver in the city of San Francisco points 
 to the central building of the great railway corporation, 
 and with the graphic rheotric of his race informs the tender- 
 foot stranger that "Inside of them walls is the whole State of 
 California!" The information is superfluous to the native 
 sons of the Golden West, They know their master. How 
 long will Americans endure these masters? 
 
 These hideous facts are only pimples on the body of the 
 chartered corruptions of our time. The railroads simply 
 accept the business morals of the age — save that they run 
 them by steam. Into the hands of these giant monopolies 
 a confiding nation has surrendered rights and powers over- 
 shadowing and corrupting its own authority. If you would 
 touch tor wholesome legislation the hem of the garments of 
 power, go no longer to Washington. American sovereignty 
 has retreated into the offices of corporations. Against the 
 gold which was a conquered people's ransom, the Spartan 
 tyrant threw the weight of his sword. Against the liberties 
 of a robbed nation the gigantic corporations of this repub- 
 lic throw the weight of their ill-gotton gold. Mr. Jay 
 Gould informs an investigating committee of the New York 
 Legislature that the railroads have gone out of politics, hav- 
 ing found it cheaper to buy legislators than to elect them! 
 Lord Eldon said: "Corporations have neither souls to be 
 saved nor bodies to be kicked." One would believe that 
 this noble lord had been making American studies of the 
 entities he described. 
 
 We are in the midst of an epoch facing despots mure
 
 Ill Till: MASSES \M> mi; Mll.I.U »>AH;i.-. 
 
 grim than all the autocrats of history. The barbarous feu- 
 dal lord — tht baron of the hill-top — allowed bis serfs their 
 
 crust and ale, and to sleep without tear in their hut- at the 
 foot of hi> castled crag. The despot of our modern indus- 
 try drives enlightened freemen t<> starvation and despair. 
 By recent statistics of the Onited States Labor Department, 
 one million of willing Americans are tramping the streets of 
 our cities and the highways of the land huuting lor wprk and 
 bread. Think of that for the '• best government the sQu 
 ever shone upon!" With grain in our fields to feed the 
 hunger of a planet, that is a spectacle to discredit the in- 
 telligence of any epoch of history. If this is civilization, 
 what is barbarism ? In my judgment that human society 
 only is a success which i'vt-A^ and shelters all its honest 
 mem! 
 
 Political privilege has failed to solve the problem. 
 Equal rights have_not saved the equal chances of men. 
 American liberty has not proved itself the last wisdom of 
 time. The magic exhilaration of pinching a ballot is lost 
 on an empty stomach. Equal rights pall on the fancy of 
 the citizen uncertain of a square meal. 
 
 The vote i.- no longer the symbol of American equality. 
 The moneyless man and the millionaire do not make an 
 equation on election-day-. By a hundred indirections the 
 owner of a million dollars may multiply his vote to a hun- 
 dred or a thousand. The sense of American equality has 
 be< -ii lost. The eagle has become a little less proud. His 
 countenance is sickly. His win-- droop. The Fourth of 
 July orator no longer steps nimbly to the front. Something 
 has happened. Something is the matter. He hardly 
 knows what. But it has dawned even upon his exuberant 
 optimism that thing- are no longer as they were. He has
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 17 
 
 heard of an election in Ohio — a million of dollars eloping 
 with a thimbleful of brains and becoming United State- 
 Senator. He has heard of a syndicate lock-out in the coal 
 fields of Pennsylvania to raise the price of coal, and which 
 has written despair over the doorways of a hundred thou- 
 sand laborers. He has heard of the corner on meat by 
 the four butchers of Chicago. He is saddened. He goes 
 home; his occupation is gone. The sawdust is out of the 
 great American doll-baby — the Fourth of July. 
 
 What has happened? Civilization promised the toiling 
 masses of the world the lifting of its weary burdens. It 
 promised liberty, equality, prosperity. It has not kept it> 
 promise. American civilization promised most of all. It- 
 lips were roses. It promised to all men. There is disap- 
 pointment. A country whose products will nourish a bill- 
 ion of men- whose machinery will supply the planet — 
 scarce sixty millions on its soil, a million of men begging 
 for the privilege to earn their bread. That is civilization 
 with a vengeance! 
 
 Why has the doctrine of equal rights in the State failed 
 to soften the inequality of conditions between men? With, 
 the creed of human brotherhood on its lips, why does our 
 civilization deepen the gulf between classes? The money- 
 less workingman and the cunning millionaire side by side 
 in the gates of the twentieth century! How came they 
 here together? Has the race between these two been hon- 
 est ? 
 
 Three-quarters of a century ago, in the beginning of the 
 epoch of steam, wise men said: " We have arrived at the 
 golden age; the giants have come to bear the burdens of 
 men. The gods of fire and force will enrich this fair world; 
 there will be enough for all. Poverty will vanish like a
 
 18 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 dream. The music of wheels, the laughter of steam and 
 steel, will take the place of the groans of men. There will 
 be leisure for the heart and brain of our race" 
 
 What a mockery that golden vision appeals to-day! 
 Three-quarters of a century have passed. The gods have 
 done their part. The wealth of the world has multiplied a 
 hundred-fold. Civilization has grown rich — rich beyond 
 prophecy. The gold of the Caesars and the treasures of the 
 old East — of the nations by the " Oxus and the Ind " — are as 
 a pallid dream beside the imperial wealth of modern States. 
 That old opulence compared with ours was as their crude 
 galley-boats to the queenly ships that cleave our modern 
 seas. 
 
 The machinery of the two Anglo-Saxon nations — Amer- 
 ica and England — are equal in producing power to one 
 billion of men. Its products would gladden the great hu- 
 man heart of this world. It would soften the poverty of 
 the planet. It would feed the hunger of savage and civ- 
 ilized men — and honest civilized men still ask for bread ! 
 
 In 1860 the wealth of the United States was $16,000,- 
 000,000. To-day it is $55,000,000,000— forty billions in 
 thirty years! Where is that wealth? where is that money? 
 Let us see! 
 
 It was Daniel Webster who said, " The freest govern- 
 ment cannot long endure where the tendency of the law is 
 to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of 
 the few." It has been wisely asserted that the constitutions 
 of free States are made to prevent the encroachments of 
 capital — that the diffusion of wealth is the secret of a na- 
 tion's power. 
 
 " That nation is the most prosperous which contains the 
 greatest number of happy homes," eloquently declares the 
 chief of our national labor department.
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 19 
 
 Thirty years ago you counted the men of this country 
 who owned a million dollars on your finger tips. To-day 
 there are seventy fortunes in the United States of more than 
 twenty millions each. Poor hut respectable people worth 
 only a million or two of dollars each are numbered by the 
 thousands. No country town sets up pretensions to re- 
 spectability without having at least one of these represent- 
 atives of genteel poverty as an inhabitant. 
 
 The town of Chicago has over two hundred persons 
 with fortunes of from one to fifty millions each. A local 
 newspaper of that region points with pride to the fact that 
 every dollar of the wealth of these gentlemen has been 
 made within the past fifteen years! "We would have ex- 
 pected better of Chicago, where conscience is notably act- 
 ive — and where they have all the meat; but this is com- 
 mendable rapidity. 
 
 They do it better in the city by the Golden Gate, where 
 an impoverished citizen worth only a few hundred thousand 
 dollars has made two millions in a day. 
 
 They do it better in some other American localities. 
 Six months before his death, it was known in the commer- 
 cial world that, by the shrinkage of values, the great Van- 
 derbilt had lost nearly fifty millions of his wealth. But 
 almost in the face of that dread hour which swung behind 
 him the gates of all earthly fortune, the great billionaire, 
 by a single gigantic stroke, regained the lost stake. Hang- 
 ing to life by the eyelids, he quietly manipulated a few 
 railroads — a game he understood. He secretly depressed the 
 value of their stocks. Then he sent agents into the market 
 to buy them up wholesale. The stocks, being in demand, 
 rose to unprecedented worth. Then Croesus unloaded, as- 
 tonished the world, and died with the greatest private fort- 
 une known to history intact.
 
 20 THE MASSES ANT) THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 That is what a dying man can do in New York, under 
 the laws of American industry ! But the fifty millions in 
 the purse of the billionaire represented the wreck of the 
 little fortunes of a thousand innocent men and women, 
 while a hundred gamblers of Wall Street fattened on the 
 spoils. 
 
 Three Americans of our generation severally beginning 
 life with a bundle of firs, the deck of a ferry-boat, and a 
 mouse-trap, have amassed fortunes of one and two hundred 
 millions each. That demonstrates the capacity of the 
 American mouse-trap. These are our modern Caliphs of 
 Bagdad. 
 
 There are one hundred private fortunes in the United 
 States, aggregating 03,000,000,000 — one-twentieth of the en- 
 tire wealth of the American people ! There are one hundred 
 thousand Americans whose combined possessions constitute 
 more than one-half of the property of the United States. 
 One-half of the wealth of the nation in one hundred thou- 
 sand purses ! 
 
 That is what has become of the wealth of the American 
 people! That is the answer to the question of what has 
 been done with the riches of the nation produced by the 
 genii of modern science and invention. That is what has 
 been accomplished in thirty years under the best govern- 
 ment the sun ever shone upon ! 
 
 This is the answer of the land of the Declaration and 
 equal rights! These thrifty gentlemen have" simply frozen 
 out more than one-half of their sixty millions of fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 The money made by the common forces and the common 
 toil of the nation is in those private heaps. The till of civil- 
 ization has been tapped.
 
 TIIK MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 21 
 
 la thirty years more the properly of the country, unless 
 prevented, will he in half as many hands as now. Com- 
 pared with the wealth which has been produced, the Amer- 
 ican people have remained poor. Millions of honest toilers 
 have remained only less than beggars. The English phi- 
 losopher, Mr. Frederic Harrison, tells us that ninety per 
 cent of the producers of England have no homes. 
 
 An eloquent pen has written: "It was hoped in the 
 dawning era of modern invention that all servile and ex- 
 hausting toil would be lifted from man ; that all the neces- 
 saries of life would be so multiplied that the pool- would 
 cease to want." It was John Stuart Mill who affirmed 
 that it was questionable whether all the mechanical inven- 
 tions had ever lightened the evil of any human being. 
 
 But there are those mountains of wealth ! Here are 
 these valleys of poverty! Between them is significance. 
 There is a connecting link. What is that link ? Shrewd 
 men in the streets tell us that it is "sagacity," "energy," 
 "enterprise," "brains." " Smart" men in the colleges say 
 that it is the " wages of superintendence." 
 
 American common sense and morality begin to call it by 
 other names not so sweet. These names are "injustice," 
 "fraud," "cunning," " robbery" — "humanity pillaged by 
 buccaneers." 
 
 But let us not go too fast. American intelligence and 
 morality may be wrong. They may need enlightenment. 
 
 There is a curious thing called 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 They have it in the colleges. It is in preservation there. 
 It should be approached with care and reverence. It 
 has sometimes been handled by kings ; but modern legis-
 
 22 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 lators have always been afraid of it. They have been 
 afraid that if they got too near it something might happen — 
 that it might explode. It is two or three thousand years 
 old. Something has been known of it for that time. The 
 Pharaohs had a sample of it. But it has been called a 
 science for not much more than a hundred years. A very 
 wise man stated its laws in the latter part of the last century. 
 His name was Smith. He believed devoutly in the prin- 
 ciples of his science, but he never dreamed what a wild 
 African terror his aristocratic name would inspire among 
 the wise men of this world who should come after him. 
 
 This science assumes that there is enough work in this 
 world for every man and woman ; that they can always 
 find this work near at hand; that there will always be 
 enough products of human labor — food, shelter, and cloth- 
 ing — to go round — and never too few or too many; for a 
 mysterious thing called "Supply and Demand" attends to all 
 that. This science assumes that there will never be too few 
 or too many laborers in one kind of work; because if there 
 are too few, the products of that work will become scarce 
 and dear, the wages high, and other laborers will come in ; 
 if there are too many, the products of the work will be 
 plentiful and cheap, the wages low, and laborers will go 
 into some other occupation where there is greater demand — 
 that another ni3 T sterious thing, called " Freedom of Con- 
 tract," will take care of all that. 
 
 That science tells us that competition in each industry, 
 and between the various industries, will keep the price of 
 products reasonable and the profits of the various industries 
 uniform and equitable, giving each man a fair chance in the 
 struggle for life. 
 
 The scheme of this beautiful science, when they had
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 23 
 
 worked out all its mysterious details, — capital, wages, profit, 
 rent, interest, etc., — they called by an elegant French name, 
 laissez /aire — the "let-alone," or " let-go " scheme. Then 
 they let it go. They asserted that it had been going for 
 two or three thousand years, and that it was the only scheme 
 that would go in this world and leave human beings the 
 chance for liberty and happiness. 
 
 There is a great deal of wisdom in this splendid and elab- 
 orate science. There is a great deal of truth that has not 
 been entirely escaped by its mysterious doctrines. The study 
 of these doctrines has brought a great deal of knowledge 
 as well as a great deal of insanity into this world. There 
 must always be some insanity in anything which is respect- 
 able. This science is respectable, but it is not fascinating. 
 Mark Twain assured his wife concerning their first baby 
 that he respected it, though he did not love it. 
 
 This scheme called political economy is believed in im- 
 plicitly by a great many English and American college 
 professors. That settles its social status. It is a pet in 
 nearly all the colleges of the United States, except Johns 
 Hopkins, where they are studying it, along with other curios- 
 ities, to see what it is made of. Inside of some of these institu- 
 tions called universities, where they teach theology, astron- 
 omy and the dead languages, it is perfectly satisfactory. 
 The professors get five thousand dollars a year; the students 
 are the sons and daughters of comfortable families, where 
 supply and demand are always equal, and laissez /aire 
 works like a charm. 
 
 It is so satisfactory to these institutions that occasionally 
 when it does not work so well outside, and leaves working- 
 people very needy and poor, there are friends of humanity 
 among these scholarly gentlemen who are willing to devote
 
 ■_' I Tin; MASSES AM) THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 their time to composing recipes of shin-bone .soup, on which 
 they assert that the American laborer can live on .six and a 
 fourth cents a day. This soup is not recommended to mill- 
 ionaires ami professors. It is merely the soup of political 
 economy. It is the soup of science. It is the soup of the- 
 ory — it is shadow soup. 
 
 Independently of these facts, Mr. Smith's theory of polit- 
 ical economy, invented bofore the discovery of steam-power 
 and electricity, is fit to he the monument of the genius of 
 any man. It was a great thing to do in his time. I speak 
 of it reverently. 
 
 Hut this splendid and august theory, this wonderful and 
 mysterious entity, called laissez-faire, placed in practice on 
 American soil consecrated a century ago to equal rights, 
 has created in that century as vast a result of human ine- 
 quality — of contrasted want and wealth, of poverty and 
 |iower — as was known to the rotten reign of the Caesars. It 
 has distorted the just conditions of social life. It has es- 
 tranged classes of citizens. It has placed the wages of toil 
 in the hands of idleness. It has made Cunning a prince 
 and Honesty a pauper. It has made Industry a slave to 
 feed Indolence as a parasite. It has written despair over 
 the doorways of millions of homes. It has dwarfed Child- 
 hood with premature toil. It has filled the breast of Labor 
 with discontent, and the streets of cities with the tramp of 
 soldiers in times of peace. It has placed manufacture un- 
 der the surveillance and protection of hired detectives — the 
 Phikertofls and the police. It has laid the dead hand of 
 debt on the ploughman, and pawned the lands of the \\ esf 
 to the princes of the East. It has given to millionaire gam- 
 blers and railroad monarchs the power to lay an embargo 
 on the wheat fields of the prairies, and " with a stroke
 
 THE MASSES AM) THE MILLIONAIRES. 25 
 
 of a pen to make famine crouch in the streets of our 
 cities." It lias made tender women toil for the pittance 
 of beggars, or flee to prostitution for bread. It has made 
 the anarchist ami the tramp. It has handed over to mer- 
 ciless co-operations the gigantic industries of the nation, to 
 unseat the will and debauch the conscience of the nation 
 itself. It has enfeebled the sense of national honor. It 
 has made pillage for private greed of the resources of a 
 nrigtity and generous people. It has kidnapped for monop- 
 oly the government of the United States. 
 
 Under this shooting Niagara they tell us that water does 
 not flow downhill ! 
 
 So much for the immaculate scheme of lalssez /aire in 
 unrestricted play on American soil for a century! This 
 precious professorial doctrine should gladden American van- 
 ity in the stupendous. Its achievements have been miracles. 
 It has shorn this nation, which began in liberty a century 
 ago, of the power of volition — the Delilah to the American 
 giant. In the streets of our cities, on election-days, the vote 
 of an American sovereign is bought for a barrel of flour, 
 because bread has become more precious than the ballot. 
 In twenty States of this Union we innocently ask which is 
 the railroad's candidate for Congress. That settles the 
 question. We are sure that he is the most honest man. 
 
 Every American industry passes rapidly into the hands 
 of monopoly. The millions that are made pass to the pock- 
 ets of the few, the Jack Sheppards and Dick Turpins of 
 American Society. These are the gentlemen who emigrate 
 to the United States Senate, sit like kings at the head of 
 syndicates, give feasts like Lucullus, purchase the admira- 
 tion of a grateful people by flinging back to them in charities 
 a fragment of the spoils of which they have robbed them, and
 
 26 THE MASSES AND Till! MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 lie in marble mausoleums costing a hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand dollars, when they are dead. Wedonot envy them 
 living or dead. They, too, are the victims of the industrial 
 morals of their time. They sell "futures;" they would sell 
 eternity if they could. But while they feast or lie in costly 
 and useless marbles, a million of their honest countrymen 
 are tramping for a crust. 
 
 No dead American has a right to lie under a grave-stone 
 worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars while a live 
 American woman is starving in a garret. 
 
 The wealth of this world belongs to the quick and not to 
 the dead. Civilization is not rich enough to furnish mauso- 
 leums for dead capitalists — or yachts for live ones. Its in- 
 dustries should be devoted to producing the necessities of 
 life as long as one needy human being exists. 
 
 So much for eighteenth-century political economy in 
 nineteenth-century civilization ! So much for the science of 
 an age of dreams in an age of steam! So much for the re- 
 sults of the philosophy of Adam Smith in the New Repub- 
 lic! 
 
 How much for its intelligence? It has not been a suc- 
 cess in practice; it may be wise in theory. It may have 
 failed by accident. The professors assure us that it is wise. 
 They affirm that it is a science. They assert that it is the 
 only scheme by which human beings can live side by side 
 in this world with the assurance of peace and prosperity. 
 They assert that it is the only, scheme by which the indus- 
 trial order of the world can be maintained. We should 
 not be too hasty in disputing their verdict. If there is any- 
 thing in this world approaching omniscience, it is the brain 
 of a college professor of political economy. 
 
 But let us see ! This science is the alleged science of
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 27 
 
 supply and demand. This principle, they say, will regulate 
 and adjust the conditions of human labor. This is the 
 principle under which the order of society now exists. But 
 for two-quarters of a century the most remarkable and per- 
 sistent feature of our modern industrial order has been the 
 war between capital and labor — between employer and em- 
 ployed. Ugly things called strikes and lock-outs cover every 
 civilized land. Not a week, not a day passes, but shops 
 and mills close, industries cease, and thousands and hun- 
 dreds of thousands of workingmen turn to idleness in the 
 streets. The sensitive ear of humanity is assailed with the 
 clangor of human rage and suffering. The man with the 
 purse is testing the supply of labor to purchase it at the 
 7nost beggarly price. The man with a tin bucket is testing 
 capital to get a larger share of profit. The conflict is mer- 
 ciless, endless, deadly. The splendid theory of the profess- 
 ors — Supply and Demand — works perfectly in the air, over 
 their heads. Like the flow T ers that bloom in the spring it 
 has nothing to do with the case. 
 
 The United States Government, through its department 
 of labor, has looked into this matter. It finds that ten mill- 
 ions of <lays' labor are lost through this conflict to the pro- 
 ductive force of this country in a single year. It has found 
 that the loss to the country in the same time by this cause 
 is $300,000,000 — enough to support the havoc of another 
 foreign war at nearly a million a day. This is scientific econ- 
 omy with a vengeance. This is the laissez faire of the col- 
 lege professors at full play. 
 
 There is another feature of this scientific economy. They 
 call it the dismal science. You see that it has been slan- 
 dered, that it is a very entertaining study. Under this 
 beautiful and perfect system, a man or set of men with a
 
 28 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 bank account sets op a manufactory of products — of food or 
 clothing or son]) or pills or iron nails. Other men and other 
 companies set up other manufactories of these goods in 
 other parts of the country. These establishments know 
 nothing accurately of the conditions of the supply or demand 
 in these products. There is no understanding between them. 
 There cannot he by the nature of the case; this is compe- 
 tition. They know nothing accurately of the ability or 
 intentions of each other in regard to production. The 
 inspired principles Of political economy working in the air 
 should teach them all this; hut they do not. So they man- 
 ufacture goods at full steam, launch them by all cun- 
 ning ways on the great unknown sea of demand, the mar- 
 ket; and each tries to steal the trade and crush the busi- 
 ness of his rivals; for this is the Christian principle of 
 modern competition. 
 
 Some day, early in the morning, it is found that there are 
 more soap and starch and shoes and sugar and suspenders 
 and cotton goods, and iron nails, than anybody or every- 
 body will buy. Pills have become, so to speak, a "ding 
 in the market." Factories suspend or close. Workmen 
 are turned into the streets. Without wages they cannot 
 buy these goods or other goods. The)- want them, but can- 
 not buy them. This the professors of Mr. Smith's political 
 economy call "Over-production." Then other manufacto- 
 ries suspend. There is a crash — universal poverty and mis- 
 ery. But the professors are prepared for tins also. They 
 give it a scientific name. They call it an "Industrial De- 
 pression." That vindicates their science. Whenever you 
 wish to.be certain that a thing is scientific just see if you 
 can understand its names. If you cannot understand them, 
 then it is a science.
 
 THE MASSES AM) T1IK MILLIONAIRES. 29 
 
 But this system without organic unity or co-ordination — 
 this chaos turned loose for human suffering — is the scientific 
 
 scheme of political economy in the last quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century among civilized peoples! One wonders how 
 this scheme looks to those who dwell above the stars. 
 
 The poet Watts has told us that there is a land that is 
 fairer than this. Suppose from up there, having a little 
 pardonable curiosity as to how things are managed under 
 the " best government the sun ever shone upon," they should 
 send down a celestial expert to investigate the United 
 States. Suppose that heavenly messenger should arrive in 
 one of these eras of industrial depression. He would float 
 with swift angelic wings over the bosom of this broad land. 
 He would see the prairies waving with golden grain, the 
 barns and bins heaped full with accumulated harvests, the 
 pork fattening in the valleys, the cattle feeding on a thou- 
 sand hills. He would see the warehouses and shops of the 
 hamlets and great cities filled with the supplies of human 
 want — with stores of food and clothing and luxuries. He 
 would see millions of strong men idle and threadbare and 
 hungry in the roads and streets — millions of sad-eyed women 
 and children standing by the shop windows looking long- 
 ingly upon the piled objects of their need — which they 
 could not buy. He would see millions more with the fear 
 of the future shadowing their faces. Then he would ask a 
 few questions and return to that upper world and report to 
 its Sanhedrim. He would tell the strange and pitiful tale 
 of want in the midst of plenty. They would ask him in 
 amazement whether he had received no explanation of such 
 a strange condition of things as this. He would answer 
 that he had ; that he had applied to the college professors — 
 the political economists; that they had made the matter
 
 30 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 quite clear; that these gentlemen had assured him that the 
 
 reason why their fellow-citizens were idle was because too 
 much work had been done in the world; that the reason 
 why women and children were threadbare and ragged was 
 because there was too much clothing; the reason why they 
 were homeless was because there were too many houses; 
 that the reason why men were starving was because there 
 was too much wheat and bread ! that there was a "glut in 
 the market" — an "industrial depression!" 
 
 The Sanhedrim would ask this angelic expert if he was 
 satisfied with this explanation? He would reply that he 
 was; that the professors had demonstrated that the scheme 
 by which these things happened was scientific — that he had 
 become a convert to Mr. Smith. . Then for the first time in 
 the history of Paradise, they would levy a tax to build a 
 celestial idiot asylum, and that fallen angel would become 
 its first inmate. 
 
 So much for the intelligence of laissez /aire! How stands 
 its morality? In one of the royal libraries of the world 
 there was said to be extant a few centuries ago an ancient 
 book, entitled a " History of Snakes in Ireland." That 
 volume, with its many chapters, and its curious binding of 
 massive gilt and gold, contained but a single sentence. 
 That sentence was as follows: "As to snakes in Ireland, 
 there are none there." A similar volume would hold the 
 description of the morality of laissez faire political.economy 
 — the doctrine of the modern competitive system of labor. 
 There is none there. 
 
 Professor J. Stanley Jevons, one of the high priests of 
 this doctrine, informs us in one of his books that the first 
 step in the study of political economy is to rid the mind of 
 the notion that there are any such things iu matters of 
 social industry as "abstract rights."
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 31 
 
 That is the morality of Wall Street — just sufficient to 
 keep out of the penitentiary ! That is the morality of the 
 Paul Cliffords and Jesse Jameses, who hold up railroad 
 trains on the western slopes. That is the morality of Jay 
 Gould, who buys up a hundred coal mines at a stroke to 
 keep up the price of the poor man's heat. These gentle- 
 men are the apt and searching pupils of Mr. Jevons. His 
 political economy furnishes the convenient principle of their 
 trade. They are not troubled about ahstract rights. They 
 are political economists. 
 
 A professor of Yale College, another unextinct pachy- 
 derm of modern learning, assures us that "social classes owe 
 nothing to each other." Why is it that when the schemes 
 of Satan are to be upheld in this world, the wisdom of the 
 university and pulpit is so often at its call? — slavery, au- 
 tocracy, robbery ! 
 
 When they salt a California or Colorado gold mine, a 
 learned professor is always on tap to sell it to a London 
 syndicate. It" these things be modern learning, let us 
 abandon scholarship and betake ourselves to the university 
 of humanity and the streets. 
 
 They prove to us, with curious and labored statistics, that 
 the condition of the laborer of to-day is better than that of 
 the poor man of history. They assail us with the maudlin 
 argument that the modern workingman enjoys comforts un- 
 known to the prince of a few centuries ago; that the feudal 
 lord, like his serf, slept on bulrushes, and the modern 
 poor man under a blanket — as if it were a question of bed- 
 clothes rather than of the security of sleep! 
 
 There is a difference between absolute and relative pov- 
 erty. The poverty of past centuries was relative. That of 
 to-day is absolute. The blankets and bread of the nine-
 
 32 THE MASSES AND THE MIl.l.loNAIl! Ks. 
 
 teenth century are better than the rushes and crusts of the 
 middle ages; but humanity in the middle ages was at least 
 certain of its crusts and rushes; 
 
 The morality of the competitive system, outside of a 
 book, is the morality of medieval barbarism that Made 
 Might the basis of Right — the savage doctrjne of fclie sur- 
 vival of the strongest, that strips Humanity naked at the 
 feel of Cunning; that places manhood at the mercy of 
 meanness; that asserts in the sunrise of the twentieth cent- 
 ury that man is merchandise — his heart and brain to be 
 bought and sold in the cheapest market, like a bundle of 
 old furs ! 
 
 It is the morality of the Roman coliseum. In that sav- 
 age arena they pitted man against his fellows to struggle 
 with grievous and ghastly wounds to the death. When 
 
 the gladiator fell he hailed the bl ly tyrant who had 
 
 devoted him to death, " Morituri te salutamus Ocemr!" 
 That, too, is the cry of dying workingmen to the Caesar of 
 Christian civilization as they fall in the murderous coliseum 
 of competitive labor — men pitted against their fellows by 
 the alternative of life or death— men pitted, by the struggle 
 for bread, against steam and steel — a thousand times more 
 pitiless than the steel of the Roman. 
 
 That struggle filled the arena of a holiday; ours is the 
 perpetual conflict over the amphitheater of a continent. 
 
 The Christian cannot accuse the pagan; The murder of 
 his civilization is slower; its method is finer. Its horrors 
 are tempered to the sensitive neryes of a generation whose 
 lips are moist with the professions of the doctrine of the 
 lowly Nazarcne ; but as sure as this world turns, and 
 those stars come out in nightly majesty into their clean 
 reproachful spaces, beneath this thing called modern civili-
 
 THE MASSES AND Tin: MILLIONAIRES. 33 
 
 zation — beneath this travesty of science that names itself 
 industral competition — there lies a barbarism more than pa- 
 gan, a stupidity that is infinite. 
 
 Primitive man, the man of the woods and caves, would 
 not endure hunger and want. He emerged for conquests 
 and spoils. "The ravages of Atilla and Geneseric began 
 from the stomach." Civilized want is shy and modest. It 
 drosses itself, if it may, in the garb of respectability. It 
 smiles in the face of the pitiless world. But underneath 
 this ghastly complacence there exists to-day in the sharp- 
 ened sensibilities of modern men and women a mass of acute 
 agonies such as never pierced the heart of savage races. 
 
 The industrial competition under which Ave live is ad- 
 justed only to the satisfaction of the fortunate. Those who 
 fall in the struggle with the praises of human dignity and 
 equality ringing in their ears, naturally accuse the scheme 
 which has brought them despair. Victor Hugo has said, 
 "The paradise of the rich is the hell of the poor." Under 
 the American flag there should be no hungry man. On 
 American soil there should be no want. A great philoso- 
 pher has said that while there exists an honest man without 
 enough to eat, no man should have more than enough. 
 
 But they tell us of the freedom of contract — the sacred 
 freedom of contract between wealth and the workingman ! 
 That is freedom indeed! — the "iron law of wages!" 
 Wealth can wait; wages starve in a day. The freedom of 
 contract with Death in the scales against the workingman! 
 
 That is the grim sarcasm of the freedom of contract. 
 
 Cardinal Manning, the great Catholic Englishman, de- 
 clares that the freedom of contract on which political econ- 
 omy glorifies itself "cannot be rightly said to exist,'' He 
 appeals to the great Catholic Church to protect the laboring 
 poor who have build ed the modern commonwealths.
 
 34 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 It was said of the Italian Caesar Borgia, that he was a 
 soldier every inch of him, but a villain to the last fiber. 
 Caesar Borgia said: " If a man wishes for success he must 
 not hesitate to make stepping-stones of the corpses of his 
 neighbors." 
 
 That is the morals of nineteenth-century Industry. 
 A heart of flint and a conscience as devoid of moral consid- 
 eration as an absence of all fear can make it, are the chief 
 stock in trade for success in modern competition. 
 
 But the gentlemen of the colleges assure us that the 
 evils of the competitive scheme arise not from the use but 
 from the abuse of that system. They are right. The unre- 
 stricted use of that scheme anywhere in this world is its abuse. 
 That scheme carries within it the seeds of its own defeat. 
 It insures combination. Where combination is possible, 
 competition is impossible. The wages of labor do not pur- 
 chase back the products of labor. There follows stagna- 
 tion, depression, wrong. 
 
 That is your beautiful Adonis of laissez faire when 
 stripped naked ! It is a padded hunchback. It has neither 
 a brain nor a heart. The dismal science! It is the comic 
 science. It would make the gods laugh. That scheme is 
 not for this world ; it is for some unknown planet — peoi^led 
 with professors of political economy. 
 
 Man is not a commodity. He is not a compound of 
 mathematical quantities or chemical gases. He has a heart 
 and a brain, and between these spring a thousand needs 
 and emotions. He has the instinct of love. He is con- 
 quered by justice. Any scheme for the computation of 
 man which leaves out justice will in this world be a failure. 
 
 But the toilers of the world are told that they should be 
 content. They are assured that they do not grow poorer —
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 35 
 
 that they receive more for their work than a century ago. 
 The answer is no longer enough. The laborer has become 
 intelligent. He is the child of the republic of free schools. 
 He has read the Declaration. He has heard of the doc- 
 trine of Equal Rights. He has taught it to his children 
 until it has become his own faith. He has caught the echo 
 of the words of Mirabeau, "There are only three ways of 
 acquiring property, by work, by begging, and by stealth." 
 Civilization has increased his needs. He cannot live as did 
 his fathers, on the bare floors of a cabin. The glitter of his 
 century would fill him with shame. Respectability would 
 desert him. From his valley of poverty he points to those 
 peaks 'of wealth and answers : " Those splendid heaps I 
 helped to build; they are the product of my generation. I 
 have worked for thirty years; my children are paupers, I 
 have been robbed." 
 
 The laborer is right. He has a cause. He is logical. 
 He is consistent with the teachings of the republic. If he 
 is to be content with work and poverty, he should not have 
 heard of the Declaration. He should have been protected 
 from the New Testament. The only way to make men sat- 
 isfied with work and poverty is to keep them ignorant 
 The slave-masters have understood this in every age. Free 
 schools and industrial pauperism side by side are a mistake. 
 The history of labor from the earliest times shows that cap- 
 ital left to itself forces wages to a bare subsistence. A free 
 government cannot afford to have its citizens dwarfs and 
 paupers. 
 
 The workingman understands all this. He is fond of 
 telling the story of the man with the mule and a patch of 
 ground. The man said to the mule: "I will harness you to 
 the plough and plough this laud, on which I will raise beans.
 
 36 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 I will cat the beans; you shall have the stalks." The mule 
 .said to the man, " That will uot be fair; I should have some 
 beans." "You are unreasonable;" said the man, "your 
 lather was contented to eat thistles all his life." "That is 
 true," said the mule; "but my father — he was an ass." 
 
 If there were any fair distribution of the products of 
 human labor there would go out from all the homes of this 
 land men and women to purchase abundance of the neces- 
 saries of life. There would be none of the "alternating 
 fevers and chills" of our present industrial order. There 
 would be no "gluts of the market" — no "industrial depres- 
 sions." 
 
 Three centuries before our era, the great Chinese sage, 
 Meneius, taught that uncertainty as to the means of exist- 
 ence is the most important factor in the demoralization of 
 a people. jVt the end of two centuries of unrestricted com- 
 petition, three-fourths of the people of the most prosperous 
 commonwealth of the world are insecure of the means of 
 subsistence. We have approached the limit of the great 
 speculative opportunities for wealth. Doubt paralyzes the 
 limbs of industry. Dread poisons the sweetness of the 
 world. Fear sits like a specter at our brief banquet of life. 
 Gloom shadows the way of the toiling millions. What kind 
 of a civilization is that whose heart is Fear? 
 
 Upon the results of this scheme of aggregated and aggre- 
 gating wealth in the hands of individuals and corporations 
 on the political morality of the nation, I need not speak. 
 They are too familiar. 
 
 One-eighth of the total wealth of the United States be- 
 longs to the monopoly of transportation, the railroads. Its 
 use in these hands for oppression and corruption is notori- 
 ous. American statesmanship, like American sovereignty.
 
 THK MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 87 
 
 lias retired into the offices of the corporations. The United 
 States Senate sits directly or indirectly, consciously or un- 
 consciously, for "vested rights." 
 
 We have heard of government by kings, by oligarchies, 
 by aristocrats. We began a century ago as a government 
 by the people. We have ended by giving the world a new 
 study in political science — government by corporations. 
 AVlieu the Pennsylvania railroad has no more business to 
 transact in the legislature of that State, it is said that that 
 political body adjourns.. 
 
 The late Mr. Tweed, of New York, had an acute appre- 
 ciation of American politics. He manipulated a city and 
 stole fifty millions of dollars. He recorded his vocation on 
 the register of Sing-Sing as that of a statesman! He "got 
 even " with his friends outside. 
 
 What is the conclusion? How will it end? The Duke 
 of Weimar, looking upon the schemes of Napoleon in the 
 height of his power, said, " This' will not last; it is unjust." 
 
 I am not here to picture the details of an ideal common- 
 wealth. There will come other days and there will be 
 other gods. When civilized man is less a barbarian, the 
 glitter of gold, the red waumpum of the savage, will not 
 intoxicate his senses. He will cease to be drunken with 
 the lust of vulgar advantage over his fellow-men. The 
 triumphs of the brain will measure his ambition. The 
 triumphs of justice .will ease his heart. The victories of 
 art, the splendor of noble affections, will fill his dreams. 
 That which is said here does not concern Utopian fancies. 
 While there is human weakness there will be human suffer- 
 ing. But organized wrong is curable. It should be assailed. 
 There are ideas which, intrenched for centuries, stop the 
 inarch of our race. They are superstitions. Human soci- 
 
 .'570590
 
 38 THE MASSES ANli THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 ety has the right to examine from time to time the founda- 
 tions on which it rests. It has the obligation to repair or 
 renew these foundation's when they have become rotten. 
 
 The power of human governments is co-extensive with 
 the welfare of peoples. It is limited by that welfare. To 
 that limit it must approach. "Salus popxlli supremo, lex est" 
 is one of the oldest maxims of human government. The 
 open secret of history is that justice and virtue lie deeper 
 than institutions; that honesty is the preserver of nations. 
 Beyond all laws, beyond all government, beyond all insti- 
 tutions, beyond all vested rights, beyond all sneers, lie the 
 indefeasible rights of man. 
 
 Before nothing less than the intrenched citadel of these 
 rights in the organization of human states, will the march 
 of humanity pause. They are demanded by the conscience 
 of mankind. Their security is the goal of the race. 
 
 What are these rights? That oldest of the economists 
 the wisest of the Greeks, Aristotle, treating of the natural 
 wealth of the world — "the source and raw material of all 
 other wealth" — summed it up in a single descriptive phrase, 
 " the bounty of nature." 
 
 Supported by the great teachers of our kind, I affirm, as 
 incontrovertible propositions commending themselves to the 
 instinctive justice of man, that the world belongs to the 
 living race; that the bounty of nature is the inheritance of 
 all ; that the wealth made by the common forces of any civil- 
 ization is the common wealth. I affirm that the human 
 hand is as sacred as the human brain. I affirm that the 
 robbery of Cunning is as malignant as the robbery of Force. 
 I affirm that every problem of the dealings between men is 
 amoral problem. I affirm that no economic scheme for 
 this world which ignores abstract rights is a science. I af-
 
 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES. 39 
 
 firm that man's struggle should be with nature and not 
 with his kind. I affirm that civilization without justice is 
 a failure. 
 
 If for the realization of the rights here intimated, it is 
 necessary to enter the gateway of the future by the partial 
 or the absolute industrial co-operation of men, it is History 
 that has led us to this door. There is no longer choice as 
 to changing the route. The ruggedness of the present path 
 lias turned to an impossible steep. Struggling humanity, 
 hungry and ragged in the presence of the riches it has cre- 
 ated, has grown sick of its tyrants. The purpose of peo- 
 ples is greater than the philosophy of the schools ; and the 
 peoples are saying, not "There should be," but, "There shall 
 be a change! " 
 
 h' the liberty of individual enterprise means only liberty 
 for millionaires and hard luck for the masses, the world will 
 turn once more to its primitive dream, the democracy of 
 labor. That way, at least, lie justice and equality. That 
 way lies escape from the lie of civilization — the preaching 
 of its pulpits denied by the practice of its marts. That 
 way lie the mighty hopes and the mighty instincts of our 
 race. That way lies the solidarity of our kind. That way 
 lies a dawn. 
 
 When the vision of their wrong is a little nearer, when 
 its remedy seems clear, the citizens of this commonwealth 
 will not falter in the fight. Two wars for human freedom 
 they have already fought. Two triumphs for ideals they 
 have won. The soil of this continent is consecrated to the 
 solution of the problem of absolute justice for man. 
 
 The toiling millions of the earth look toward the Great 
 Republic. It has given the world the spectacle of political 
 government based upon the equality of manhood. There
 
 40 THE MASSES AND THE MILLIONAIRES, 
 
 is awaited at its hands the spectacle of industry based <>n 
 the brotherhood of Toil, Over the redoubts of the Past, 
 over the bastions of Wrong, over the dreams of the Old, 
 bearing aloft the flag of the Declaration and the doctrines 
 of the Nazarette, Americans will be the first to scale the 
 heights and enter the citadel of the New Time. 
 
 UNF 
 
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