efeating the ends of justice--the Trust kings
impudently defied the country and tried to impose their own will
upon the people. History had thus repeated itself. The armed
feudalism of the middle ages had been succeeded in twentieth
century America by the tyranny of capital.

Yet, ruminated the young artist as he neared the Ryder residence,
the American people had but themselves to blame for their present
thralldom. Forty years before Abraham Lincoln had warned the
country when at the close of the war he saw that the race for
wealth was already making men and women money-mad. In 1864 he
wrote these words:

"Yes, we may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing
its close. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The
best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered
upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has been
indeed a trying hour for the Republic, but I see in the near
future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to
tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow and the money power of the country will
endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of
the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and
the Republic is destroyed."

Truly prophetic these solemn words were to-day. Forgetting the
austere simplicity of their forebears, a love of show and
ostentation had become the ruling passion of the American people.
Money, MONEY, MONEY! was to-day the only standard, the only god!
The whole nation, frenzied with a wild lust for wealth no matter
how acquired, had tacitly acquiesced in all sorts of turpitude,
every description of moral depravity, and so had fallen an easy
victim to the band of capitalistic adventurers who now virtually
ruled the land. With the thieves in power, the courts were
powerless, the demoralization was general and the world was
afforded the edifying spectacle of an entire country given up to
an orgy of graft--treason in the Senate--corruption in the
Legislature, fraudulent elections, leaks in government reports,
trickery in Wall Street, illegal corners in coal, meat, ice and
other prime necessaries of life, the deadly horrors of the Beef
and Drug Trusts, railroad conspiracies, insurance scandals, the
wrecking of savings banks, police dividing spoils with pickpockets
and sharing the wages of prostitutes