labor for the enrichment of vast corporations, which have no souls,
and for individuals, whom our government have made a privileged class,
by permitting them to usurp or monopolize, through the accepted
channel of barter and trade, the soil, from which the masses, the
laboring masses, must obtain a subsistence, and without the privilege
of cultivating which they must faint and die.[7] It also added four
millions of souls to what have been termed, in the refinement of
sarcasm, "the dangerous classes"[8]--meaning by which the vast army of
men and women who, while willing and anxious to make an honest living
by the labor of their hands, and who--when speculators cry
"over-production," "glutted market," and other clap-trap--threaten to
take by force from society that which society prevents them from
making honestly.

When a society fosters as much crime and destitution as ours, with
ample resources to meet the actual necessities of every one, there
must be something radically wrong, not in the society but in the
foundation upon which society is reared. Where is this ulcer located?
Is it to be found in the dead-weight of illiteracy which we carry? The
masses of few countries are more intelligent than ours. Is it to be
found in burdensome taxation or ill-adjusted tariff regulations? Few
countries are burdened with less debt, and many have far worse tariff
laws than curse our country. Is it to be found in an unjust pension
list? We hardly miss the small compensation which we grant to the men
(or their heirs) who, in the hour of National peril, gave their lives
freely to perpetuate the Union of our States. Where, then, is secreted
the parasite which is eating away the energies of the people, making
paupers and criminals in the midst of plenty and the grandest of
civilizations? Is it not to be found in the powerful monopolies we
have created? Monopoly in land, in railroads, telegraphs, fostered