“But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power; it is the means to power, and power is governmental.  Who controls the government to-day?  The proletariat with its twenty millions engaged in occupations?  Even you laugh at the idea.  Does the middle class, with its eight million occupied members?  No more than the proletariat.  Who, then, controls the government?  The Plutocracy, with its paltry quarter of a million of occupied members.  But this quarter of a million does not control the government, though it renders yeoman service.  It is the brain of the Plutocracy that controls the government, and this brain consists of seven* small and powerful groups of men.  And do not forget that these groups are working to-day practically in unison.

* Even as late as 1907, it was considered that eleven groups dominated the country, but this number was reduced by the amalgamation of the five railroad groups into a supreme combination of all the railroads.  These five groups so amalgamated, along with their financial and political allies, were (1) James J. Hill with his control of the Northwest; (2) the Pennsylvania railway group, Schiff financial manager, with big banking firms of Philadelphia and New York; (3) Harriman, with Frick for counsel and Odell as political lieutenant, controlling the central continental, Southwestern and Southern Pacific Coast lines of transportation; (4) the Gould family railway interests; and (5) Moore, Reid, and Leeds, known as the “Rock Island crowd.”  These strong oligarchs arose out of the conflict of competition and travelled the inevitable road toward combination.

“Let me point out the power of but one of them, the railroad group.  It employs forty thousand lawyers to defeat the people in the courts.  It issues countless thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors, ministers, university men, members of state legislatures, and of Congress.  It maintains luxurious lobbies* at every state capital, and at the national capital; and in all the cities and towns of the land it employs an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians whose business is to attend primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe judges, and in every way to work for its interests.**

     * Lobby—­a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and
     corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent
     the people’s interests.

** A decade before this speech of Everhard’s, the New York Board of Trade issued a report from which the following is quoted:  “The railroads control absolutely the legislatures of a majority of the states of the Union; they make and unmake United States Senators, congressmen, and governors, and are practically dictators of the governmental policy of the United States.”

“Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven groups that constitute the brain of the Plutocracy.* Your twenty-four billions of wealth