der
the unclean heels of an insolent oligarchy? The capitalists, banded
together for the sole purpose of pillage and loot, had already
succeeded in enslaving the toiler. The appalling degradation of
the working classes, the sordidness and demoralizing squalor in
which they passed their lives, the curse of drink, the provocation
to crime, the shame of the sweat shops--all which evils in our
social system she had seen as a Settlement worker, were directly
traceable to Centralized Wealth. The labor unions regulated wages
and hours, but they were powerless to control the prices of the
necessaries of life. The Trusts could at pleasure create famine or
plenty. They usually willed to make it famine so they themselves
might acquire more millions with which to pay for marble palaces,
fast motor cars, ocean-going yachts and expensive establishments
at Newport. Food was ever dearer and of poorer quality, clothes
cost more, rents and taxes were higher. She thought of the horrors
in the packing houses at Chicago recently made the subject of a
sensational government report--putrid, pestiferous meats put up
for human food amid conditions of unspeakable foulness, freely
exposed to deadly germs from the expectorations of work people
suffering from tuberculosis, in unsanitary rotten buildings soaked
through with blood and every conceivable form of filth and decay,
the beef barons careless and indifferent to the dictates of common
decency so long as they could make more money. And while our
public gasped in disgust at the sickening revelations of the Beef
scandal and foreign countries quickly cancelled their contracts
for American prepared meats, the millionaire packer, insolent in
the possession of wealth stolen from a poisoned public, impudently
appeared in public in his fashionable touring car, with head erect
and self-satisfied, wholly indifferent to his shame.

These and other evidences of the plutocracy's cruel grip upon the
nation had ended by exasperating the people. There must be a limit
somewhere to the turpitudes of a degenerate class of _nouveaux
riches_. The day of reckoning was fast approaching for the
grafters and among the first to taste the vengeance of the people
would be the Colossus. But while waiting for the people to rise in
their righteous wrath, Ryder was all powerful, and if it were true
that he had instituted these impeachment proceedings her father
had little chance. What could be done? They could not sit and