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have been provided with schools, and the range of mental inquiry has become wider and more daring. The sewingmachine does the work of a hundred hands, and gives rest and hope to weary lives. Farming, as my distinguished friend from New York [Mr. Evarts] once said, has become a sedentary occupation." The reaper no longer swings his sickle in midsummer fields through the yellowish grain, followed by those who gather the wheat and the tares, but he rides in a vehicle, protected from the meridian sun, accomplishing in comfort in a single hour the former labors of a day.

By these and other emancipating devices of society the laborer and the artisan acquire the means of study and recreation. They provide their children with better opportunities than they possessed. Emerging from the obscure degradation to which they have been consigned by monarchies, they have assumed the leadership in politics and society. The governed have become the governors; the subjects have become the kings. They have formed States; they have invented political systems; they have made laws; they have established literatures; and it is not true, Mr. President, in one sense, that during this extraordinary period the rich have grown richer and the poor have grown poorer. There has never been a time, since the angel stood with the flaming sword before the gates of Eden, when the dollar of invested capital paid as low a return in interest as it does to-day; nor has there been an hour when the dollar that is earned by the laboring man would buy so much of everything that is essential for the welfare of himself and his family as it will to-day.

Mr. President, monopolies and corporations, however strong they may be, cannot permanently enslave such a people. They have given too many convincing proofs of

their capacity for self-government. They have made too many incredible sacrifices for this great system, which has been builded and established here, to allow it to be overthrown. They will submit to no dictation.

We have become, Mr. President, the wealthiest nation upon the face of this earth, and the greater part of these enormous accumulations has been piled up during the past fifty years. From 1860 to 1880, notwithstanding the losses incurred by the most destructive war of modern times, the emancipation of four billions of slave property, the expenses of feeding the best fed, of clothing the best clothed, and of sheltering the best-sheltered people in the world, notwithstanding all the losses by fire and flood during that period of twenty years, the wealth of the country increased at the rate of $250,000 for every hour. Every time that the clock ticked above the portal of this Chamber the aggregated, accumulated permanent wealth of this country increased more than $70.

Sir, it rivals, it exceeds the fictions of the "Arabian Nights." There is nothing in the story of the lamp of Aladdin that surpasses it. It is without parallel or precedent; and the national ledger now shows a balance to our credit, after all that has been wasted and squandered and expended and lost and thrown away, of between $60,000,000,000 and $70,000,000,000. I believe myself that, upon a fair cash market valuation, the aggregate wealth of this country to-day is not less than $100,000,000,000. This is enough, Mr. President, to make every man and every woman and every child beneath the flag comfortable; to keep the wolf away from the door. It is enough to give to every family a competence, and yet we are told that there are thousands of people who never have enough to eat in any one day in

the year.

We are told by the statisticians of the Department of Labor of the United States that, notwithstanding this stupendous aggregation, there are a million American citizens, able-bodied and willing to work, who tramp the streets of our cities and the country highways and byways, in search of labor with which to buy their daily bread, in vain.

Mr. President, is it any wonder that this condition of things can exist without exciting profound apprehension? I heard, or saw rather, for I did not hear it-I saw in the morning papers that, in his speech yesterday, the senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] devoted a considerable part of his remarks to the defense of millionaires; that he declared that they were the froth upon the beer of our political system.

[Mr. Sherman: I said speculators.]

Speculators. They are very nearly the same, for the millionaires of this country, Mr. President, are not the producers and the laborers. They are arrayed like Solomon in all his glory, but "they toil not, neither do they spin "-yes, they do spin. This class, Mr. President, I am glad to say, is not confined to this country alone These gigantic accumulations have not been the result of industry and economy. There would be no protest against them if they were. There is an anecdote floating around the papers, speaking about beer, that some gentleman said to the keeper of a saloon that he would give him a recipe for selling more beer, and when he inquired what it was, he said, "Sell less froth." If the millionaires and speculators of this country are the froth upon the beer of our system, the time has come when we should sell more beer by selling less froth.

The people are beginning to inquire whether, under “a government of the people by the people for the people," under a system in which the bounty of nature is supplemented by

the labor of all, any citizen can show a moral, yes, or a legal, title to $200,000,000. Some have the temerity to ask whether or not any man can show a clear title to $100,000,000. There have been men rash enough to doubt whether, under a system so constituted and established, by speculation or otherwise, any citizen can show a fair title to $10,000,000 when the distribution of wealth per capita would be less than $1,000. If I were put upon my voir dire I should hesitate before admitting that, in the sense of giving just compensation and equivalent, any man in this country or any other country ever absolutely earned a million dollars. I do not believe he ever did.

What is the condition to-day, Mr. President, by the statistics? I said that at the beginning of this century there was a condition of practical social equality; wealth was uniformly diffused among the great mass of the people. I repeat that the people are not anarchists; they are not socialists; they are not communists; but they have suddenly waked to the conception of the fact that the bulk of the property of the country is passing into the hands of what the senator from Ohio, by a euphemism, calls the "speculators" of the world, not of America alone. They infest the financial and social system of every country upon the face of the earth. They are the men of no politics-neither Democrat nor Republican. They are the men of all nationalities and of no nationality; with no politics but plunder, and with no principle but the spoliation of the human race.

A table has been compiled for the purpose of showing how wealth in this country is distributed, and it is full of the most startling admonition. It has appeared in the magazines; it has been commented upon in this Chamber; it has been the theme of editorial discussion. It appears from this com

pendium that there are in the United States two hundred persons who have an aggregate of more than $20,000,000 each; and there has been one man-the Midas of the century -at whose touch everything seemed to turn to gold, who acquired within less than the lifetime of a single individual, out of the aggregate of the national wealth that was earned by the labor of all applied to the common bounty of nature, an aggregate that exceeded the assessed valuation of four of the smallest States in this Union.

[Mr. Hoar: And more than the whole country had when the constitution was formed.]

Yes, and, as the senator from Massachusetts well observes, —and I thank him for the suggestion,-much more, many times more than the entire wealth of the country when it was established and founded. Four hundred persons possess $10,000,000 each, 1,000 persons $5,000,000 each, 2,000 persons $2,500,000 each, 6,000 persons $1,000,000 each, and 15,000 persons $500,000 each, making a total of 31,100 people who possess $36,250,000,000.

Mr. President, it is the most appalling statement that ever fell upon moral ears. It is, so far as the results of democracy as a social and political experiment are concerned, the most terrible commentary that ever was recorded in the book of time; and Nero fiddles while Rome burns. It is thrown off with a laugh and a sneer as the froth upon the beer" of our political and social system. As I said, the assessed valuation recorded in the great national ledger standing to our credit is about $65,000,000,000.

Our population is 62,500,000, and by some means, some device, some machination, some incantation, honest or otherwise, some process that cannot be defined, less than a twothousandth part of our population have obtained possession,