Hence by this error, made possible by the false relations of government
and industry, the government has not only compelled industry to furnish
the men to fight its battles, win its victories, and maintain its
integrity, but it also compels it to pay all the expenses of the war,
besides to continue adding to the wealth of the rich. The gentlemen in
whose interests it was principally fought, who have sat quietly at home
in luxury, and drawn the life-blood from the poor, now go out of all the
effects of the war with their fortunes trebled by having merely loaned
the government the money it needed to maintain itself in the struggle.
This is a true picture, moderately drawn, of the real facts. While I do
not desire to stir up the wrongs that industry has suffered in this
matter, and drive the weary toilers to seek redress, it is nevertheless
time, when thousands of families are suffering the pangs of hunger as a
consequence of this wrong, to lay it open before the people who have
been its cause and who have profited by it; it is time that the
government should be shown the errors that it has committed and be told
that the people are coming to an understanding of them; time that the
bond-holders should know that the people are aware of the tenure by
which they hold these mortgages on the industries. Let the one protest
as it may and the other plead innocence under the revelations as they
will, I intend to do everything in my power to rouse them to a sense of
the danger in which they stand from the still sleeping masses, who, when
they shall come to a full realization of the impositions that have been
practised upon them, will not hesitate at any means of redress;
especially will they not hesitate when the modern Shylocks, having
relentlessly demanded not only the last “pound of flesh” but their very
life’s blood also, demand likewise the payment of the bonds! The people
already begin to learn that the government has no sympathy for their
sufferings, and that it declares that it has no power to alleviate them,
which they will think is strange enough since it had the power to bring
these evils upon them.