“One and all you tell the same story,—­the passing away of competition and the coming on of combination.  You, Mr. Owen, destroyed competition here in Berkeley when your branch store drove the three small groceries out of business.  Your combination was more effective.  Yet you feel the pressure of other combinations on you, the trust combinations, and you cry out.  It is because you are not a trust.  If you were a grocery trust for the whole United States, you would be singing another song.  And the song would be, ‘Blessed are the trusts.’  And yet again, not only is your small combination not a trust, but you are aware yourself of its lack of strength.  You are beginning to divine your own end.  You feel yourself and your branch stores a pawn in the game.  You see the powerful interests rising and growing more powerful day by day; you feel their mailed hands descending upon your profits and taking a pinch here and a pinch there—­the railroad trust, the oil trust, the steel trust, the coal trust; and you know that in the end they will destroy you, take away from you the last per cent of your little profits.

“You, sir, are a poor gamester.  When you squeezed out the three small groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by eating up the three small groceries.  It is dog eat dog, and you ate them up.  But, on the other hand, you are being eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore you squeal.  And what I say to you is true of all of you at this table.  You are all squealing.  You are all playing the losing game, and you are all squealing about it.

“But when you squeal you don’t state the situation flatly, as I have stated it.  You don’t say that you like to squeeze profits out of others, and that you are making all the row because others are squeezing your profits out of you.  No, you are too cunning for that.  You say something else.  You make small-capitalist political speeches such as Mr. Calvin made.  What did he say?  Here are a few of his phrases I caught:  ’Our original principles are all right,’ ’What this country requires is a return to fundamental American methods—­free opportunity for all,’ ’The spirit of liberty in which this nation was born,’ ’Let us return to the principles of our forefathers.’

“When he says ‘free opportunity for all,’ he means free opportunity to squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the great trusts.  And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated these phrases so often that you believe them.  You want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize yourselves into thinking you want freedom.  You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic.  Your desire for profits, which is sheer selfishness, you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity.  Come on now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for once.  Look the matter in the face and state it in direct terms.”