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tocracies of the Old World. They send their children no longer to public schools, or if they do so, there are separate public schools singled out for them, where the young aristocrats need not come into contact with laborers' children; and in the private schools which they patronize, these young noblemen learn nothing so much as the absurd imitation of European aristocratic manners and views. They have their fashionable churches of every denomination where the gospel of the rich is preached to them, and the poor are not admissible. The words of Christ, "Blessed are the Poor," is there thus interpreted: The poorer we render and keep our wages people, the more they are blessed, and we with them and through them. It is this capitalist class who grudgingly appropriate the funds for our public schools, cut down the salaries and rights of the teachers so that persons of talent and character are less and less attracted to the calling of teachers, and who subordinate the teachers and schools to the government of incapable laymen and vulgar snobs. They never mingle with the working people, when they can help it; they have their fashionable watering places, sea baths, summer resorts, theatres and concerts, lectures and other gatherings; but above all, they spend a_ hundred million a year of the people's earnings in travelling, and in mingling among the aristocratic circles of the Old World. You ought to see them there, how they crave a gracious glance from some despot, an introduction to Kings, Dukes, Counts and Statesmen, and thereby render our Republic contemptible in the eyes of foreign rulers and peoples. On their return they smuggle through our corrupt custom houses jewelry, silks, and costly things of all kinds, and cheat our government and the tax-paying people. They corrupt our press to flatter the rich, to depreciate the working class, to palliate the crimes of the former, to denounce the strikes and trades unions of the latter, and to blind public opinion to party misdoings and the best interests of the people. They corrupt our politicians, and rule through them our legislatures and courts and party politics, so as to obtain special laws for their own benefit at the expense of the workers. They offer their good-for-nothing sons and salaried employes for members of the militia to keep down the rising indignation, and to shoot down the crowds of despairing workpeople; and just now they clamor for a large standing army, because they have found out that our government can easily be converted from a government of the people into one of the capitalists against the people. They have during these fifteen years robbed the nation of many thousands of million dollars through the National Banks, the three Pacific Railroads, and the Credit Mobilier swindles, through war and other contracts
