epublic at
the present time, and because the grave evils, which are as
symptomatic to-day as were the signs of the times portentous in the
reign of the easy-going, sensual Louis, are being met by those who
have it in their power to avert a social catastrophe in precisely the
same short-sighted spirit as characterized the conservative
aristocracy when it denied the existence of the universal discontent
among the masses and flippantly dismissed the angry muttering of the
coming storm as merely the expression of a few shallow-brained
malcontents. To-day we find the same brutal indifference and
selfishness as was so conspicuous at the Louvre in 1770, exhibited by
our mushroom aristocracy of the dollar, composed of those who form and
control the great monopolies, syndicates, trusts, and combines, which
are so cruelly oppressing the many that the few may grow many times
millionnaires; together with the great railway magnates, who have
through watering stock on the one hand, and plundering the
commonwealth of farmers by exorbitant freights on the other,
dishonestly amassed colossal fortunes. And that still more baleful
communion which forms such an important part of America's shoddy
aristocracy, the Wall Street gamblers, they who rule "the street,"
paralyzing healthy business, causing panics at will, and annually
sweeping to the wall, to ruin and to death numbers of victims who have
been lured into their snares by deceptive reports industriously
circulated and extensively published by paid agents of these same
brigands of the commercial world.

This mushroom plutocracy, whose representatives hold colossal fortunes
acquired rather than earned, practically rule our business interests
by virtue of the enormous opportunities afforded by their great
wealth. And year by year are they increasing the rising tide of
indignation in the hearts of millions of hard-working men and women,
by grinding down more and still more hopelessly the multitude
dependent on them, whom they can reduce to starvation if they rebel.
Another element, which, viewed from the plane of justice and equity
may be rightly termed _criminal_, is the popular and conservative
economist who caters to the plutocracy and with brazen effrontery
denies facts susceptible of proof, while he denounces every reformer
who seeks to expose the iniquities of the present. This course is
precisely a repetition of the policy of those who minified the real
danger and misrepresented