INDUSTRY OVER-BURDENED.
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.