Question 1. I know economics and finance, money, banking, credits, corporations, and business in their broad relations to the people, the American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to the other—not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys where they are daily and nightly set up for the express purpose of being knocked down. I know the relation of each of these important life factors to each of the now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't jokers of the "System." Make no mistake, Mr. Banker, my knowledge is not "a skimming and smattering such as any alert and bright stock speculator would naturally pick up in years of experience as a broker and manipulator," but the straight brand which the "Standard Oil" and the "System" so like to impress into their service when they run up against it in their continuous robbing excursions. You may judge that my knowledge is not of the smattering kind when I say that for years, in spite of my refusal to join the band and wear the collar, whenever Rogers and Rockefeller had a particularly hard nut to crack they called me in to try it on my "knows."
- Yes, I am aware that there have always been, and that there will always continue to be, very rich men, and that there cannot be many of them, and that where they are there must be very poor ones. And I also know that no honest man, rich or poor, objects to the necessarily few very rich ones who have honestly acquired great fortunes as the reward of their own or their ancestors' labors of body or brain in the interest of all the people. Don't misunderstand me—no honest man or woman can object to the necessary great fortunes, but all honest American men and women do object, and are getting ready to make their objection heard, to all unnecessary great fortunes, "made dollar"