lowed to show its hoof and horns inside that
city, for that would be injustice to the weak-willed and their
families. Greed and plunder and the whiskey power has to stay outside,
for the Bible sez without are dogs.

"Robert Strong might wring all the money he could from these workmen,
wrop himself in a jewelled robe and set up in a gold chair and look
down on the bent forms of the poor, sweating and groaning and striking
and starving below him. But he don't want to. He is down there right
by the side of 'em. Capital and labor walking side by side some like
the lion and the lamb. He has enough for his wants, and they have
enough for their wants, and there is mutual good-will there and peace
and happiness. Hain't that better than discontent and envy and
despair, bloody riots and revolutions? Cold, selfish, greedy Capital
clutching its money-bags, and cowering and hiding away from starvin'
infuriated strikers."

Sez I, growin' real eloquent, "Monopoly is the great American brigand
hid in the black forest of politics. It has seized Labor in its
clutches and wrings a ransom out of every toiler in the land.

"Monopoly steals out of Uncle Sam's pocket with one hand and with the
other clutches the bread-money out of the tremblin' weak fingers of
the poor. Is our law," sez I, "a travesty, a vain sham, that a man
that steals millions for greed goes unpunished, while a man who steals
a loaf to keep his children from starvin' is punished by our laws and
scorfed at? Monopoly makes the poor pay tribute on every loaf of bread
and bucket of coal, and the govermunt looks on and helps it. Shame!
shame that it is so!"

Sez Mr. Astofeller, "Where would the world be to-day if it wuzn't for
rich people building railroads, stringing telegraph and telephone
wires, binding the cities and continents together?"

"Yes," sez I, "I set store by what they've done, just as I do on them
good old creeters who used to carry the mails in their saddle-bags for
so much a year. Folks felt tickled to death, I spoze, when they could
send a letter by somebody for 10 cents a letter. And it wuz a great
improvement on havin' to write and send it by hum labor, a boy and a
ox team. But when I see Uncle Sam can carry 'em for two cents and one
cent a-piece, why I can't help favorin' the idee of givin' Uncle Sam
the job. And if he can carry letters so much cheaper why can't he
carry packages at just the same reduced rate, and talk over the wires,
etc., etc.?

"