A RETROSPECT AND A MORAL
The crime of Amalgamated and its immediate consequences are before my readers. I have fulfilled the promise made in my foreword to expose to the people of America the manner in which they have been plundered and the methods by which the "System" habitually cheats them out of their savings. Robbery conducted on so gigantic a scale as I have pictured must necessarily simulate the natural processes of finance, and to understand the deep devices of the schemers requires a knowledge of banking and commercial practices which the average man has no chance to attain. If I had begun my story by stating exactly what constituted the crime of Amalgamated, my readers would not have grasped its heinousness. In the chapters that I have devoted to leading up to it they have been educated in the piratical practices of finance and financiers, and have acquired familiarity with the jugglery of corporations and the multiplication and division of stock certificates through which most of the great American fortunes have been created.
Depending still on the ignorance of its blinded dupes, the "System" again raises its brazen face from among the poison rushes of Wall Street and hisses, "Listen to what he calls a great crime—a simple business transaction. It is no crime, but a common practice of modern finance and by no means unusual or extraordinary."
No crime to take by a trick from thousands of the people thirty-six millions of the results of our great country's prosperity? Think of what this vast sum represents—the revenues of a year's work of 36,000 men earning each $1,000. Think of it, ye millions who dig and delve and bear heavy burdens that your mothers, wives, and children may in exchange have a bite to eat and a couch to sleep upon!