Competitive System x4mongst Lower Animals 767 



two old English universities against all non-conformist en- 

 trants till about a half century ago. But only thus could 

 the antiquated feudal and aristocratic system have been bol- 

 stered up and perpetuated. 



On most gigantic scale in this United States, this land of 

 freedom and opportunity, it has reared a competitive system 

 of most gigantic iniquity and effrontery. It has built up 

 unlimited capital in the hands of a few, who have become 

 Napoleonic tyrants in crushing out weaker or more scrupu- 

 lously organized opponents, under the specious plea of "in- 

 dustrial organization." It has created "trusts" that have 

 gradually stifled, throttled, and destroyed their once greatly 

 vaunted exhibitions of healthy competition. It has cornered 

 and appropriated the soil, the coal, the iron, the cotton, the 

 corn, the wheat, the carcases, the eggs, the tobacco, the tim- 

 ber, the steel, the sugar, the oil, the leather, the glass, and 

 nearly every other commodity. Then it has in bitter practice 

 exclaimed: "When I, the wheat beast of prey, the timber 

 beast of prey, the oil beast of prey desire, then, and only then, 

 can you — ^free people of these United States — get, at my price, 

 the staff of life, the shingles to protect from cold, the cheering 

 light and all other commodities that I alone permit the use of." 



From this school of Adversity, the great masses of mankind, 

 after learning bitter lessons, are slowly but ever more surely 

 graduating, to teach and to enforce better and higher doc- 

 trines, such as are dealt with in the next chapter, and which 

 can alone come when education along the highest mental, moral, 

 and spiritual lines shall have permeated the majority of man- 

 kind. 



