mill the Government agreed to give it certain contracts, from which it probably paid for the mill. The same method was followed by the Bethlehem works, the Government being impressed with the belief that with competition lower prices would be secured. Instead, however, a combination was effected, and prices for armor plate have shot upward so rapidly that the purse of the country is scarcely long enough to afford such a luxury. They now advance the plain, straightforward proposition that the country will pay $545 a ton for armor or get none at all.

The Ship Subsidy bill was designed to hand over to shipowners the modest sum of $180,000,000; another, the Pacific Cable bill, grants to the company constructing a cable to Manila the sum of $6,000,000 in annual installments of $300,000.

What can the people of this country think when, as was said, and not denied, the profit in the construction of steel armor already authorized for new vessels will be from $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 in excess of a fair remuneration? The men who control these steel trusts and who are charging their own government $545 and $445 a ton for armor plate have been selling precisely the same to Austria and Russia for $259 and $240 per ton. Steel trusts are under implied agreement to make vast contributions to the Republican campaign fund this year, and no Republican Senator had the nerve to deny it.

Mr. Carnegie, it is generally said, wrote the steel schedule in the existing tariff. Through its provisions, at the lowest estimate, he has put not less than $100,000,000 in his pocket.

We delayed the subsidies fearing to defend 186,000,000 gifts on the stump. We can pass them after election. The provisions of one of our bills have no precedent in any of the world's legislation on merchant marine,

What a satire is the finesse of our Power-holding Class financiers upon the precious products of our civilization! PRESIDENT: They have overthrown the basis upon which reposes the nation's tranquillity.

SENATOR: Funded Debt, National Bank, High Tariff, the Gold Standard, the late Currency Measure, and recent Republican subsidies constitute a ganglio priesthood which have plunged the American laity into profound ignorance. The course of the Power-holding Class reminds me of the polity of Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks: They put out the eyes of their slaves in order that nothing might distract their attention and thus interrupt them while churning their master's milk.

PRESIDENT: With the great body of the people, in whom the right of sovereignty resides, whose polar star is right and not expediency, none doubt this proposition but statesmen who, representing the Power-holding Class, make human rights anything or nothing, to suit their varying ideas of expediency, which has been in all ages the pretext of every atrocity, the tyrant's plea, and the Jesuit's watchword. This formidable tyranny is coming home to the business and bosoms of the well-to-do classes, who begin to realize, first, that all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity-namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; second, that all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them; and third, that the end and object of government should be the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community, affirming

the right of a majority to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be deemed most conducive to the public weal.

SENATOR: All work and no play, Mr. President, makes Jack a dull boy. Let us adjourn. You will be in Columbus on Wednesday, July 18. I will report to you upon the adjournment of the Kansas City Convention.

PRESIDENT: Good-night, Senator.

ACT IV.

Scene 4. The President's home at Canton, Ohio. (Enter SENATOR HANNA.)

SENATOR: Good-morning, Mr. President. be the effect of the Nebraskan's convention?

What will

PRESIDENT: The following article in the Democratic platform adopted at Kansas City has failed to attract from us the attention its importance deserves:

We are opposed to government by injunction; we denounce the black list and favor arbitration as a means of settling disputes between corporations and their employees. In the interest of American labor and the uplifting of the workingman as the corner-stone of the prosperity of our country we recommend that Congress create a department of labor in charge of a secretary with a seat in the Cabinet, believing that the elevation of the American laborer will bring with it increased protection and increased prosperity to our country at home and to our commerce abroad.

The Republican platform deals at length with the gold standard, the tariff, with subsidies, reciprocity, and the colonial and foreign policy of the Administration. But it has very little upon the subject of labor, and promises little in the interest of the laboring people, who comprise so large a portion of our population and almost the entire mass of wealth-producers.

To one who considers coolly the subject it will appear that outside of the Power-holding Class Americans in gen

eral enjoy no more liberty at present than under the arbitrary governments during the most flourishing period of the seventeenth century.

SENATOR: How will that affect the independent voter of the well-to-do classes and the people?

PRESIDENT: He will disregard party platforms and vote not as a Republican nor Democrat, but as an American. He will answer the argument of Trust in justification of its enslavement of the Public with the famous reply of the first Republican President to the Slavocracy:

These arguments that are made, that the inferior races are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow-what are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; that they always bestrode the necks of the people; not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. Turn it whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of the country, or from the mouth of men from one race for enslaving the men of another, it is all the same old serpent.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under the rule of a just God cannot long retain it.

SENATOR: If fifty-five out of sixty-five billions of national wealth is divided between the power-holding and well-to-do classes, thirty-three to the former and twentytwo to the latter, one would think that not even Scythian slaves could be so blind as not to perceive the remaining eighty millions have nothing but a minimum wage fund left for the consumption of 150,000,000 of production. Distribution is the handmaid of Production,