ain and provisions, and the capitalists here and elsewhere
who do the same thing, know well how the farmers suffer and
the tables of the poor are ravaged by their operations; but
they prosecute their work more extensively and recklessly
than ever. The railroad and telegraph corporations know
that, in putting on "all that the traffic will bear," they
are taking from this country more than the people can stand;
yet their only answer is that of the horseleech....

Our lawmakers know how the people are wronged through
legislation in the interest of privilege and plunder; but
they add statute to statute in that same interest. They know
how advantageous to the producers would be the few measures
asked in their name; yet they persistently refuse to adopt
them. The great employers of labor, the cormorants of
competition, know through what hideous injustice they enrich
themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout
you from their presence. The wealthy corporations owning
these street car lines in New York see that their drivers
and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen
hours every day of the week, including Sundays; but when a
bill is brought into the State Legislature to limit the
daily working hours to twelve, they order their hired agents
of the lobby to defeat it. These gamblers of Wall street
know that their gains are mainly through fraud; yet
forever, fast and furious, do they play with loaded dice.

The landlords of these tenement quarters know by the
mortality statistics how broad is the swathe that death cuts
among their victims; but they add dollar to dollar as coffin
after coffin is carried into the street. * * *

These owners of the machinery of industry know how it bears
upon the men who keep it flying; but they are regardless of
all that, if only it fills their coffers. These owners of
palaces look upon the men by whom they are built; but think
all the time how to raise the rent of their hovels. These
great money-lenders who hold the mortgages on countless
farms know of the straits of the mortgage-bound farmers; yet
they never cease to plot for higher interest and harder
terms. The gilded priests of Mammon and hypocrisy cannot get
away from the cries of humankind; but when do you ever hear