se name should be synonymous with whatever
is dangerous, lawless, and subversive.

Nevertheless, the question of wealth limitation cannot be dismissed with
threats, epithets, or sneers. It will not dismiss itself, and we cannot
dismiss it. Every observant person must admit that the great
concentration of wealth, whether it be in corporations, trusts, or
individuals, has reached a point dangerous to the future prosperity of
the nation.

Millions of people idle, wealth piled up for the few by the toil of the
many, paupers and millionaires on every side, and the conditions
growing worse and worse,--these things are enough to make even the most
optimistic painfully apprehensive of the future. Our government in some
respects is in no better condition than was the old Roman Empire just
before its fall, as described by James Anthony Froude. If we are to
believe that eminent historian, the Roman Empire was crushed by the same
power of unlimited, concentrated wealth that to-day is destroying the
life, the liberty, and the happiness of the many in the United States.
In mediaeval Italy, too, popular freedom was lost through a moneyed
oligarchy and proletariat. So in every country where individual wealth
has transcended the bounds of justice, the people--the toilers--have
eventually been enslaved.

Ours is fast becoming a moneyed nation; and a moneyed nation is
generally a weak one. Superfluity of riches, like superfluity of food,
causes weakness and decay. Individual prosperity or the prosperity of a
community does not mean general prosperity, or the prosperity of a
nation. Thus it has been shown that, in New York and Massachusetts and
those States in which the greatest wealth is concentrated, the largest
proportion of paupers are to be found. In 1833, when Tocqueville visited
America, he was struck by the equal distribution of wealth and the
absence of capitalists. Half a century later, when James Bryce, author
of "The American Commonwealth," visited our country, the trusts,
monopolies, and concentrated wealth so amazed him that he exclaimed: "I
see the shadows of a new structure of society--an aristocracy of
riches."

Fifty years ago there were no great fortunes here, and in fact but few
fortunes that could be called large, and in those days there was
comparatively little poverty. Now we have many gigantic fortunes and a
vast number ranging from $100,000 to $10,000,000. In the past, wealth
being more equally distributed, th