And it is worth the while of the workingmen of the country to recall what the attitude toward organized labor has been of these masters of consolidated industries whom it is proposed that the federal government should take under its patronage as well as under its control.  They have been the stoutest and most successful opponents of organized labor, and they have tried to undermine it in a great many ways.  Some of the ways they have adopted have worn the guise of philanthropy and good-will, and have no doubt been used, for all I know, in perfect good faith.  Here and there they have set up systems of profit sharing, of compensation for injuries, and of bonuses, and even pensions; but every one of these plans has merely bound their workingmen more tightly to themselves.  Rights under these various arrangements are not legal rights.  They are merely privileges which employees enjoy only so long as they remain in the employment and observe the rules of the great industries for which they work.  If they refuse to be weaned away from their independence they cannot continue to enjoy the benefits extended to them.

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When you have thought the whole thing out, therefore, you will find that the program of the new party legalizes monopolies and systematically subordinates workingmen to them and to plans made by the government both with regard to employment and with regard to wages.  Take the thing as a whole, and it looks strangely like economic mastery over the very lives and fortunes of those who do the daily work of the nation; and all this under the overwhelming power and sovereignty of the national government.  What most of us are fighting for is to break up this very partnership between big business and the government.  We call upon all intelligent men to bear witness that if this plan were consummated, the great employers and capitalists of the country would be under a more overpowering temptation than ever to take control of the government and keep it subservient to their purpose.

What a prize it would be to capture!  How unassailable would be the majesty and the tyranny of monopoly if it could thus get sanction of law and the authority of government!  By what means, except open revolt, could we ever break the crust of our life again and become free men, breathing an air of our own, living lives that we wrought out for ourselves?

You cannot use monopoly in order to serve a free people.  You cannot use great combinations of capital to be pitiful and righteous when the consciences of great bodies of men are enlisted, not in the promotion of special privilege, but in the realization of human rights.  When I read those beautiful portions of the program of the third party devoted to the uplift of mankind and see noble men and women attaching themselves to that party in the hope that regulated monopoly may realize these dreams of humanity, I wonder whether they have really studied the instruments through which