1 86 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS. 



We may judge both the future and the present by the past. 

 Applying this rule, we at once discover that our rights have 

 not only been invaded, but in many cases absolutely taken from 

 us. We find, on all sides, monsters in the guise of trusts, cor- 

 porations, and monopolies, that not only despoil us of our rights, 

 but grimly resist all efforts to regain them. The conditions of 

 the present are a protest against the laws of the past, and a 

 future invasion of our rights may be justly charged as a crime 

 of the present. Thomas Paine said, many years ago : " When 

 old men go to the poor-house, and young men to prison, some- 

 thing is wrong with the economic system of the nation.!' So 

 say I. When one man dies in this country worth one hundred 

 millions of dollars, and his neighbor is buried at public expense, 

 something is wrong with the doctrine of equality before just 

 laws. Nothing but a perversion of our rights could make the 

 vast social differences of the present time. We look about us 

 and find poverty and distress in the midst of plenty ; hunger 

 and nakedness amid bursting granaries and crowded ware- 

 houses. The wails of the starving are wafted into the banquet 

 halls of the oppulent. The cry of the unemployed comes up 

 amid the unused opportunities of God's bounty ; and want and 

 wretchedness confront us at every turn. 



Prior to the war there were but two millionnaires in this 

 country ; at the present time 31,100 persons own $36,250,000,000 

 of the wealth of the nation. Estimating the national wealth at 

 sixty billions, we find that these 31,100 persons own three- 

 fifths. Think of 31,100 persons in this republic worth more 

 than one million each, on 'the average! There are 616,000 

 miles of telegraph lines in this country, and one man controls it 

 all. There are 156,000 miles of railroad, costing nine billions 

 of dollars, yet seven men dictate its profits. We mine 1 20,000,000 

 tons of coal, yet five men determine how much we shall pay for 

 it. We produce 6,000,000,000 gallons of coal oil, but one 

 man establishes the price. 



The above is but a partial record of the past twenty years. 

 During that time prices have declined 6/f per cent. Debts 

 have increased from less than four billions in 1866 to more than 

 thirty-six billions in 1890. Crime has increased 46 per cent; 

 suicide, 97 per cent ; insanity, 145 per cent ; and bankruptcies, 



