"The centuries that have come and gone since Christianity was first preached have seen the sword turned upon the humble, the meek, the worthy. Now it is to be turned upon the craven few who have fattened at the expense of the many.
"At the very hour when Melz sent Gorman Purdy to his doom, avenging angels, disguised as men, were abroad in our land weeding out the seed of iniquity.
"In San Diego, California, Senator Warwick was killed by the hand of a man who, when he had rid the earth of the most avaricious man who ever worked a mine, completed the chapter by taking his own life.
"Henceforth men will not slave in the mines of California or elsewhere for the sole benefit of misers. The miner will enjoy the fruits of his labor. He will make significant the words 'The laborer is worthy of his hire.'
"In St. Louis at the same hour, the owner of the grain elevators, in which is stored the crops of the great plains, there to be kept until the needs of the people shall place an exorbitant price upon every bushel, was smothered to death in the hold of one of his own ships. With him died the martyr who had succeeded in bringing a just retribution upon the head of an insatiate oppressor.
"Henceforth bread shall not be made a product of speculation. The hungry mouths of women and children shall not go unfed that the stock broker and the grain speculator may amass fortunes.
"The Cotton King of Massachusetts, who has kept men and women out of employment, and in their stead has worked children in his mills, was killed in his office as he refused the fifth appeal for an advance of three cents a day in the pay of the six thousand half-grown children, most of them girls, who tended his looms and spindles for pauper wages.
"The man who thus abolished for all time the further slaughter of innocents, went to eternity with the dragon he had slain. The mill owner went to expiate his sins; the martyr to receive his reward.
"And in New York, the city which I have just left, the ruler of the Nation's money, the President of the Consolidated Banker's Exchange, died in a pot of molten lead which he had been brought to hope would be turned into gold under the touch of an alchemist. The lust of gold that in life had been his only incentive, proved the means of his undoing.
"Bond syndicates will no longer be formed to corner the people's money, that millions may be squeezed from the public treasury.