only in the interest of the working class, but in a higher interest of all humanity.
"I think of these little children—the girls that are in the textile mills of all description in the East, in the cotton factories of the South—I think of them at work in a vitiated atmosphere. I think of them at work when they ought to be at play or at school; I think that when they do grow up, if they live long enough to approach the marriage state, they are unfit for it. Their nerves are worn out, their tissue is exhausted, their vitality is spent. They have been fed to industry. Their lives have been coined into gold. Their offspring are born tired. That is why there are so many failures in our modern life.
"Your Honor, the five per cent. of the people that I have made reference to, constitute that element that absolutely rules our country. They privately own all our public necessities. They wear no crowns; they wield no sceptres, they sit upon no thrones; and yet they are our economic masters and our political rulers. They control this Government and all of its institutions. They control the courts.
"The five per cent. of our people who own and control all of the sources of wealth, all of the nation's industries, all of the means of our common life—it is they who declare war; it is they who make peace; it is they who control our destiny. And so long as this is true, we can make no just claim to being a democratic government—a self-governing people.
"I believe, your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of life, instead of being the private property of the few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the com-
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