So the prediction of many is that in the end the lion-like form of labor will be hugged to death by the giant trusts. If their vows of love are true, how does it happen that they have not shown "their faith by their works?" How does it come that during the past five years the owners of trusts have amassed the most stupendous fortunes ever accumulated in the history of the globe, while the wages of the laborer have remained the same? What division have they made with the "loved ones" who created this vast wealth, and whom they caress so tenderly? Remember, laboring men, that it is now ascertained that while your wages have remained the same, these trusts and monopolies have raised the cost of living 40 per cent, which, of course, ordinary arithmetic shows a decrease of 40 per cent in your wages. Just as sure as the stars are shining tonight, if the trust is a friend to labor it is a false friend. Iago was truer to Othello, Joab to Amasa, Brutus to Cæsar.

The trust is the enemy of the farmer. I was introduced to a number of farmers here tonight. When I utter the word farm, what happy scenes memory recalls at my old Missouri home!

It is spring time and I am eighteen. I have slept all night without changing position. I hear the birds singing in the trees. I look out of the east window and the gray dawn is streaming. Breakfast is eaten, prayers are had and I am behind my plow, The sun, like a great ball of fire, is rolling above the horizon. I hear the lark over in the meadow. The prairie chicken is cooing on the mound. The bob-white is saluting me on the fence. The blackbirds follow me in the furrow. All nature seems to greet me, as buoyant and light-hearted, I step along in silence, painting the future with the pictures of young ambition.

It is summer. I am a binder in the golden harvest. As I stoop, the sweat trickles from my face, and mingles with Missouri's soil. As I arise I tie the yellow sheaf and, proud of my skill, frequently toss it high in the air. Noon comes. I am drinking out of the gourd at the old home spring. I am lifting for my mother the milk and butter from the covered trough in the branch below. Eventide has come. The heat and burden of the day are past, and the sun has laid him down on his gorgeous couch. The cows, remembering their young as night approaches, come lowing homeward over the western prairie. Milking is done. Supper is over. My father has read a chapter from the well-worn Bible, and though exhausted by the toil of the day, fails not to offer the

evening prayer. My mother bids me goodnight, and Morpheus welcomes a weary guest to his dreamy realm.

It is autumn. I am hauling rails from the woods. The branches gurgle as I pass. The squirrel is barking at me from his tree. I hear the pheasant drumming on his log. No happier lad ever drove a team or cracked a whip.

It is winter. Its blasts have no discordant notes for me. Youth is cheerily bracing every storm and hope is giving a silver tinge to every cloud. Though yet a boy I am teaching a country school, making money to attend school. My father, rendered almost destitute by the war, is teaching in another district. Saturday is not enough, and we bring provender from the field for the stock before sunrise and feed in the evening after dark. By moonlight, reflected from the snow, we cut and haul wood in the night time. Yet no happier youth swings an ax or sits by a winter fire, looking more fondly into the future.

But I must desist. My friends, cursed, blackened be the day --but it can never come-when the juices diffused in my heart by my country life shall be dried up, when I shall forget the toil, the joys and the struggles of my youth, and cease to have a fellowfeeling for the honest men who labor on a farm.

But I must be more practical. Farmers, you have been the special victims of cruelty and extortion in all lands beneath the skies. Rapacity, swollen-eyed and splashed to the waist with blood, has devoured your substance, laid waste your fields, torn down your altars, set fire to your homes and then, leaping from his foaming steed, placed his spurred heel upon your prostrate forms and gloated over the ruin he had wrought. In America your old enemy has concealed his sword, and now appears in a new garb as the trust, the farmers' friend. Beware the day when this garb shall be thrown off and a mailed despot with unsheathed sword appears. Let us look for a moment at some of his conduct in his present role as the farmer's friend.

The great trust managers now sell the American farmer a cultivator for $11.00. They ship this cultivator across the ocean and sell it to the foreigner for $8.40. They sell the American farmer a plow for $14.00. The foreigner buys it on his own soil for $12.00. The American pays wholesale, $3.00 for American barbed wire, the foreigner $2.00. An American sewing machine costs the American $18.00. It costs the foreigner $12.00. So it is with hundreds of other kinds of merchandise. Thus is pre

sented probably the most shameless spectacle of extortion and ingratitude in the annals of time.

ས.

The trust should be destroyed because it is closing the door of opportunity to our young men. Twenty-five years ago when the finger of destiny seemed to point young ambition to our nation the watchword rang out around the world, "The great republic is opportunity! The great republic is opportunity!" Now, unless the present trend of affairs be checked the day has well' nigh come when we may write above our gates, the great republic is industrial slavery. As in Rome "in that elder day," so here, the time was when it was better to be a young American, even though penniless, than to be a king. There was no impediment betwixt the poor boy and the blue skies above. Sic iter ad astra was his motto, even in the business world, because the track to fortune was as clear as the way to fame. In an open field he fought his industrial battles with his own right hand, owned his own time, possessed his own business, was his own master.

Today the door of opportunity is closed to him in the transportation business. It is closed in the manufacturing business and there is written above it, "No admittance to the poor young man.' It still stands somewhat ajar in the business of the distributor and the producer, but as already shown you the majority of those who pass in go to their work much as prisoners go to the rock pile with balls shackled to their feet. The young men of America are as brainy, as muscular, as big-hearted and ambitious as ever, but from sheer necessity a large proportion of them must limit their aspirations to looking for a "good job"-to go when some master says go and come when he says come to be throughout life some man's man.

But I must quit this part of my speech. I feel too intensely here to stick to the cold argument which I promised. I have but a parting word at this particular juncture in my message. I look doubtless into the faces of Missouri fathers and mothers. I know not what you may be doing. I have a boy of fourteen summers. Hamilcar led young Hannibal to the altar of the gods, and swore him to eternal hatred of the Romans. So I am striving to lead my boy to the alter of the True God and swear him there to eternal hatred of the trust.

VI. The trust should be destroyed because it is dishonest. This is enough if all other objections were deemed unavailing. One of the most heinous offenses, both by moral and divine law, is the crime of extortion. Ethical science can depict no

more despicable character than the extortionist.

His business

is far more reprehensible than that of the gambler. In the one case the victim is coerced as in robbery. In the other he is a volunteer. As to divine law it is sufficient to say that some of its most terrible anathemas are hurled at the man who extorts, "who grinds the face of the poor," the financial oppressor of the laborer, the widow and the orphan.

The trust is extortion pure and simple. It is organized for this express purpose. The primal object of its being is usually to control some article necessary to human existence or comfort, and then compel those in need of it to pay its price. No better definition of extortion could be given than that of the Supreme Court of the United States in defining trusts, repeated in your hearing at the outset.

But the heinousness of the trust becomes more apparent when we consider the class of persons who are mainly its victims. Even our principal offenders claim to exhibit something of the milk of human kindness in their crimes. The burglar passes the cottage of the mechanic to plunder the home of the opulent. The highwayman may permit the laborer to escape, though he knows he has money on his person, but rifles the pocket of the rich man. The old pirate on the high seas leaves the small craft unmolested, though bearing precious freight, but scuttles the ship of the wealthy merchant. Not so with the trust. It almost passes by the rich, for they scarcely feel its exactions, and pay comparatively but little into its coffers. In the main it collects its unholy booty by laying its iron hand indiscriminately upon the laborer, the poor, the hard-pressed, the needy, the suffering, the widow, the orphan, the sick, the dying and the dead.

It is well to notice also the stupendous dishonesty in the formation of these trusts. This occurs in the sale of their stocks or bonds "industrials," as they term them-and is more bitterly denounced in the literature upon the subject than their treatment of the consumer. We know but little of this in the West, but in the East millions of dollars of the hard earnings of the laborer and the middle classes have been invested in the past five years in these industrials upon the assurance that every dollar on their face represented a dollar in actual value. The evidence shows that as a rule for every part of the value there are four parts of water. Take the tin plate trust for instance. The actual value of the properties composing it was ten millions. It is capitalized for fifty millions. If time permitted, the evidence of men who

have assisted in forming these great combinations, could be given, substantiating the above statement as to the rule in capitalization. I think I know the elements of the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses, and I sincerely believe that when these billions of dollars of industrials were placed upon the market and sold, there was perpetrated the most stupendous crime of obtaining money by false pretenses ever committed in the world's history.