ccumulate as a magazine of corruption and
danger to society? No, Mr. Millionaire, poverty, pestilence, and crime,
are making war upon society and tumbling their slaughtered thousands
into Potter's Fields. And if the commonwealth does not demand your
personal service, but simply demands that you shall not make perpetual
for the sake of ostentation all of the present unnatural inequality, you
are surely treated justly and kindly.

When the planter objected to General Jackson's using his cotton bales as
a rampart for the defence of New Orleans, tradition says the General
ordered him to take a musket and stand behind them as a common soldier.
At present we ask only your _superfluous_ cotton bales, and it would not
be wise for you to oppose our demand. The people remember the unholy
distinction of classes thirty years ago, which enabled a favored few
patricians to flourish as vampires on the commonwealth, while the
plebeians were giving it their sufferings, their blood, and their lives,
and hence they seek justice through our enormous system of pensions.

Patricians would retain commanding superiority of wealth for power and
ostentation, but the people object to this power and scorn the
ostentation.

The immense concentration of wealth by syndicates, corporations, and
trusts alarms us all, because we see in it a formidable danger to the
republic.[15] Colonel Higginson admits the evil, but denies that any
method of counteracting it is known, yet it may easily be shown that we
have several effective methods.

[15] It is not only in the strong language of many political
meetings, conventions, and the independent press, that this
danger is recognized, but in that wealthy and conservative
body, the United States Senate, it is distinctly recognized
and frequently expressed; the language of Senators Ingalls,
Stewart, Call, Gorman, Vest, Berry, and others, shows that
they are alarmed and would warn their colleagues.

Senator Call, of Florida, said:--"It is well for the people
to form some idea of the extent to which the powers of the
government are becoming subject to the control of a very
small number of people, and the extent to which these
powers are becoming absolute, despotic, monarchical, almost
as much so as the Czar of Russia.

"The present system places the control of the wealth of
this co