ress who are tools
of the magnates? What does it avail if Congress enacts laws which the
executive refuses to enforce?
"The ballot has become a weapon to destroy those it should protect.
Elections ruled by coercion are a mockery.
"I am in favor of inaugurating a scientific revolution. There is no need
to raise a guillotine in the city's square and drag to their death those
who are living upon the life's blood of the many. This is the crude way
to reach a desired end.
"The world is never lastingly horrified and deterred from evil by the
mere letting of blood. Crime can be obliterated only by reformation of
the criminal element of society. Condemnation of individuals who are
caught is productive of little good.
"The destruction even of an army momentarily shocks; but in the one
breath the people will cry, 'war is hell; let us have war, for peace
sake.' And when war comes it never affects the cowards, the usurers, the
rogues; they stay at a safe distance from the scenes of action, and,
with the instinct of the hyena, they profit on the nation's calamity.
Our trusts are the result of the jobbing that was started during the
Civil War, and which has never lagged since.
"The fight that I would have you make is against forty cowards and
scoundrels who are sucking the very life out of the country--the forty
who represent the high council of the magnates. Let it be a personal
fight, a tourney; you the Knights Errant who ride against the dragons.
"When the world awakens some morning and reads that at a given hour the
forty Robbers of America were sent to their eternal resting place with
their crimes on their heads, the shock will not pass away in a day. It
will be far different from reading of a battle fought six thousand miles
from Washington. Then will be the time for the men who have the good of
the people at heart to reestablish them in their rights.
"Money is the god that the Nation is asked to worship. It makes fools of
the majority and knaves of the rest.
"It will take some unprecedented occurrence to stir the masses. The
firing on Fort Sumter shook the Nation more than the carnage of
Gettysburg. The Nation has come to be apathetic on a vital question;
even more so than in the ante-bellum days. The dry-rot of Commercialism
is consuming us. We are governed by dividend worshipers. We must act, if
our manifest destiny to be a lasting republic is to be fulfilled.
"If the taking off of the forty men would do t
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