pportunities, and monopolized all the leading business
enterprises, of this hitherto progressive nation.

"The people of the Republic are divided into two classes; the employers,
and the employed. The invention and introduction of new and expensive
machinery each year, augments the power of the trusts, to control the
markets and the industrial situation. By the same means and at the same
time, they are fast reducing the number of employers, and increasing the
number of those who must seek employment. Under such circumstances, each
year the fate of the worker in any class, either skilled or unskilled,
grows more desperate. He becomes more completely the slave of the trusts
or capitalists who own the tools and who monopolize the industries. The
larger the dependent family of the worker, the more abject the slavery,
and the less his power to resist a constant reduction of wages.

"In the efforts made by organized labor unions, to resist this tendency
to reduce wages, we have both the cause and the beginning of the war
between capital and labor. With a courage and patriotism worthy of the
days of 'Seventy-Six,' this war has been waged by the toilers, with a
determination to maintain rights guaranteed to them by the constitution
of the Republic. A right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A right to labor and to enjoy the fruits of their labor, by having free
access to a reasonable share of the natural advantages belonging to the
public domain.

"In this heroic struggle, so sturdily maintained during the past
twenty-five years against the competitive system and its well trained
hosts; the campaign, which has been marked by many mistakes, followed by
frequent defeat and disastrous failure, has always proved successful as
an educator, both for the toilers and the great middle classes, who
sympathized with them. On the other hand, alarmed by sudden success,
achieved by the disruption of long-lived business methods, and the loss
of confidence in exchange values, on the part of the public in
consequence of this disruption; the generals of the competitive system,
aided with but few exceptions, by the press, university and pulpit, have
shrewdly endeavored to evade responsibility, for the disastrous panics
which have followed such revolutionary methods. These panics have left
the country disturbed and embarrassed, by armies of unemployed men.

"In the same line of tactics, these competitive leaders, have endeavored
to