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Annual Report of the 
it may not be amiss to briefly reason the case; for truth, generally, 
is a tower of strength, still, with the moneyed power, not equal to 
numbers. Say, then, to the capitalists of all Christendom, that 
whan mutually iijterested “you regard your labor and their money 
as known powers of a just equation in the ethics of production.” 
Say to them “ that if they propose to use their brains to disturb 
such ethics, you propose to use your numbers to prevent it.” Say 
to them, “that this is both your choice and your necessity. Your 
choice, because it is just. Your necessity, because if you give them 
ten to fifteen per cent, for the use of their money, while realizing 
only four or five per cent., the difference has to be met by a draft on 
your own, which, as an exhaustive process, would bankrupt you in 
everything but labor.” 
As organized producers, we must say to all artificial persons, “ we 
created you for the public good, we will, help you fulfill but never 
to prevent your mission,” and it may not be amiss to briefly dicuss 
the situation. We may say to them, “ your special privileges were 
granted you to promote your special good, but not at the sacrifice 
of the public good,” that as trustees of the public good, we must 
both judge and control , and that aside fron any constitutional pro¬ 
vision we have the right to do so. That the right of self-preserva¬ 
tion in eminent peril is an mate right of the individual, of which 
peril he alone must judge; and that the aggregation of this individ¬ 
ual right into the general sovereignty of the state is complete and 
unimpaired. That the aggregate sovereignty of the state cannot 
be impaired, and the state being unable to part with any of its 
sovereignty in creating artificial persons, or otherwise, must still 
retain all the functions of absolute control over them which belongs 
to unimpaired sovereignty. That this right of self-preservation 
and consequent control in the state is further established and illus¬ 
trated by its permitting artificial persons to exercise the right of 
eminent domain, which to them is intrusted but not surrendered, 
because it is an attribute of sovereignty and cannot be surrendered. 
We must say to them authoritatively—and especially to their at¬ 
torneys—“that their very existence is a trust.” That charters are 
not contracts. That sovereignty contracts with sovereignty; that 
the sovereignty of a state contracts with the sovereignty of another 
state, as in the cases of treaties, or with the sovereignty left in 
natural persons, as in the building of a capitol, or the purchase of 
i 
