classes?  Here are the figures.  The Plutocracy owns sixty-seven billions of wealth.  Of the total number of persons engaged in occupations in the United States, only nine-tenths of one per cent are from the Plutocracy, yet the Plutocracy owns seventy per cent of the total wealth.  The middle class owns twenty-four billions.  Twenty-nine per cent of those in occupations are from the middle class, and they own twenty-five per cent of the total wealth.  Remains the proletariat.  It owns four billions.  Of all persons in occupations, seventy per cent come from the proletariat; and the proletariat owns four per cent of the total wealth.  Where does the power lie, gentlemen?”

“From your own figures, we of the middle class are more powerful than labor,” Mr. Asmunsen remarked.

“Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the face of the strength of the Plutocracy,” Ernest retorted.  “And furthermore, I’m not done with you.  There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater because it cannot be taken away.  Our strength, the strength of the proletariat, is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers.  This strength we cannot be stripped of.  It is the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away.

“But your strength is detachable.  It can be taken away from you.  Even now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you.  In the end it will take it all away from you.  And then you will cease to be the middle class.  You will descend to us.  You will become proletarians.  And the beauty of it is that you will then add to our strength.  We will hail you brothers, and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity.

“You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled.  Its share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and household furniture, with here and there, in very rare cases, an unencumbered home.  But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of it, and the Plutocracy will take it away from you.  Of course, there is the large likelihood that the proletariat will take it away first.  Don’t you see your position, gentlemen?  The middle class is a wobbly little lamb between a lion and a tiger.  If one doesn’t get you, the other will.  And if the Plutocracy gets you first, why it’s only a matter of time when the Proletariat gets the Plutocracy.

“Even your present wealth is not a true measure of your power.  The strength of your wealth at this moment is only an empty shell.  That is why you are crying out your feeble little battle-cry, ’Return to the ways of our fathers.’  You are aware of your impotency.  You know that your strength is an empty shell.  And I’ll show you the emptiness of it.