The plans we have discussed for the treatment of monopolies have for their object a benefit to the people at large, by enabling them to purchase the products of industry and of natural wealth free from the tax now levied upon them by monopolies. If we can effect this, we shall not have a millennium; there will still be injustice and suffering enough in the world; but we shall have reduced the pressure upon the men who work with their hands for their daily bread, enough so that we shall no longer see the strange spectacle of over-production and hunger and nakedness existing side by side. Men's desires were made by an All-wise Creator to be always in advance of their ability to gratify them. And the commercial supply of that ability—the supply of men willing to work—ought always to be behind the demand for men.
It seems beyond dispute, then, that whatever will remove these obstructions to the wheels of production will increase the demand for labor, as well as increase the wages of labor by lowering the prices of the necessaries of life. This the plan we have discussed promises to do, and it also promises to benefit the whole people by lowering the cost of monopolized articles.
The men and women who work with their hands, and those dependent on them, form 97 per cent. of the population of the country. Instead of combining to stop production in this shop or that factory, why not join hands