A miner without a mine, a shoemaker without a shoe factory, a farmer without land, are in the same predicament as is the hunter without a gun. They cannot follow their vocations unless they receive the use of capital or land belonging to the other fellow.
The heart and soul of capitalism is the separation of ownership and labor and the resultant division of mankind in two classes, one of which owns the means of life and does not use them, the other that uses the means of life and does not own them.
This arrangement allows a few people to live without work and forces the many to work without getting a living.
The aim of Socialism is to bring about a union between ownership and labor by making the means of production the common property of all the people.
The principal means of life are controlled by great aggregations of capital, commonly called trusts. These giant combinations, by forcing the wages of labor down to the very minimum of subsistence and by charging for their products all that the traffic will bear, have become a serious menace to the well being of the American people, and all kinds of remedies are advocated against the evils of monopoly.
Regulation.
A large portion of the Republican Party has declared itself in favor of trust regulation. This, we are told, is to be accomplished through the federal government. But even if we grant to the state the right to interfere with the private business of its citizens, we seriously doubt its ability to do so, for those who own the principal wealth of a nation usually own the government too. If
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