“I have toiled as a farmer for two score years, and all I have in this world is a farm of two hundred acres, valued at thirty-six hundred dollars, on which there is a two thousand dollar mortgage at six per cent.  When the interest is paid and my yearly expenses are defrayed, I am lucky to have one hundred dollars to my credit in the bank.  For the past six years I have been obliged to send whatever I had remaining to my son, who has married and who is struggling to live in Milwaukee.  He is engaged as a brakeman on the railroad that exacts thirty per cent. of the value of every bushel of wheat I raise.

“I am not one of the discontented, homeless vagabonds who the Plutocrats declare are alone demanding the destruction of Monopoly.  I am a citizen who can foresee the inevitable result that will come from a perpetuation of Commercial Despotism.  I am not afraid to assert my opinions, nor will I fear to act on any suggestion, that will insure independence to the farmer and to all the citizens of the Republic.”

Donald Harrington, a delegate accredited to Maryland, now begins his arraignment: 

“It will not be necessary for me to take the story of my ruin back to the beginning; you are interested only in that part which has to do with the effect of the Trusts upon me.

“I could say that they were the sole cause of my downfall, but in this statement I should be doing the Trusts an injustice.  I felt the first downward impulse given me when I was a lad of sixteen.  I had entered the employ of a banking house and was a clerk in their counting room.  It was my especial duty to see that the books of the company were put in the safes at night.  This duty I faithfully performed for more than three years.

“One day I was tempted to steal.

“It was an easy matter for me to take a sum of money from the drawer and make away with it.  I was not detected in the first peculation; this encouraged me to take more.  So matters went on until I was guilty of having stolen a sum aggregating ten thousand dollars.  I knew that I could not keep the game up much longer, for the annual accounting would disclose the deficit.

“Of the sums I had taken, I had less than half saved.  I did not know how I was to get out of the position in which I was placed.  Then the idea struck me that I might make the entire sum good if I could make a successful turn on the Exchange.

“This I determined to try.

“From the first I was successful.  Soon I had three times the sum required to make up my peculations.

“I restored the money to the safe and breathed easily.

“This was my first venture in dealing with other peoples’ money.

“The experience led to my entering upon a career as a banker and broker.

“For eight years I was actively engaged in rolling up a fortune.  I was sought out by the Magnates of many of the largest Trusts, and they extended me unlimited credit.