the government shall act as an agency merely for the exercise and growth of that individual instinct that made the American people great theretofore, and that, followed out in this instance, would people all these great states, making them great states of the American union?

Now it so happened that just at the time that this domain, the greatest that ever came to any people jointly came to us, presenting as it did one of the greatest questions of all times, who should own it? Should it be owned in larger estates or the people individually? Should it be owned by the government or the individual. The corporation was creeping in over the horizon, bringing with it this other domain, larger by far than the domain I have described, larger now than the domain represented by all the agricultural lands of this country put together the growing property of this country, the property that is most in the public eye.

Suppose we had dealt with this new domain as we dealt with the landed domain? Suppose instead of the great corporations of this country being owned by a restricted class of people, they were widely owned by the people at large? Suppose that the railroad corporation that carries you to and from your town was in the proprietorship of the people who live along its line; suppose that the manufacturing corporation that gives you your supplies was in the proprietorship of the people who are its customers; suppose, in other words, that he had been able to deal in some way or another with this new domain of property as we dealt with the land domain, peopleizing it-do you imagine that there would be the outcry, that there would be the prejudice, that there would be the feeling of vengeance and envy that is expressed everywhere over the country against the corporation? Go down into the bottom of your heart. It is not because the corporation charges you this or that price for what you get that you have a feeling against it. As a matter of fact the corporation has reduced prices. As a matter of fact it has put upon your breakfast table that which, but for the corporation, you would not have. The real secret of your opposition, the real secret of the opposition of the

whole country and of every crusade against the corporation lies in the fact that in some way or another the people realize that the men who own this property are not themselves or of themselves; but are, in a certain sense, alien to their way of living; alien to their neighborhood; alien to their sympathies; and therefore a people against whom all the envy of the human race can be easily arouse. Let me draw you a picture showing what has taken place in this thirty or forty years that I have been trying to describe?. When I came down last night from Chicago I saw the harvest fields. The reaper was in some of them. In others the reapers had done their work, and the harvest was standing in shock ready to be gathered into the barn. And it took me back, young as I am, to a day when the reaper did not play a part in the harvesting of the fields. I recall, and I see men before me, many of them, who recall the early harvest morning, the day when the farmer with his boys and his hired hand left the farm house, and wading through the meadow to the music of the welcoming lark, came to the field. Two, three or four cradles hung across the shoulders of the party, other carried rakes. And do you not remember, as you go back to that period, how the first cradle struck into the grain? Will you ever forget the music of that grain as it fell into the cradle of the first reaper? How the second cradler struck into that grain, two steps behind him, and the third cradler two steps behind the second? Will you ever forget how the binders and rakers came after, raking up the sheaves, and binding them with bands torn from their own embrace? Will you ever forget how the boys gathered up the sheaves? How over on the next farm was a like merry group? And on the next farm another group? How under the trees, to the music of the whetstone and the birds, the stories were told? How farm life at that time was a beautiful epoch-a fine poem in the development of the boy and girl? I see now a pair of horses, the man peering stolidly over their ears; and I hear the rattle of a something called a machine. The reapers, the cradlers, the binders, the boys of that rural day-where are they? In the great manufactories of the cities, making harvesters for the

harvester combines. Where is the shoemaker whose boot hung over the village door? Where is the carpenter; where the village flour manufacturer; where the saddler? Are they in the villages any longer? Do they own their own places? Is there a proprietor among them? With my father and mother in the church, I sat with the shoemaker, with the carpenter, with the miller; and I felt that they were just as good as I was; that they owned it just as much as I did; and that to God their souls were just as much worth saving as mine. They do not go to my church now. They are gathered into little communities of their own, governed by societies of their own, having interests of their own, and not one of them a proprietor. The bootmaker is down in Linn or out in Dixon. He is working for a corporation, the proprietorship of which is solely in other hands— men who have no affiliation with him either as neighbors or friends.

This tendency is not growing less. The tendency is increasing. People say to me sometimes: "These corporations, the property of these corporations, is getting more widespread in matter of proprietorship every year." Somebody called my attention the other day to the fact that one of the big corporatoins in this country had near one hundred thousand stockholders on its lists. That is true. There are big corporations in this country that have many stockholders on their lists. There are big corporations, too, in this country that have some stockholders on their lists only for a little while and then they drop out. But I am not making a comparison of proprietorship of the corporation as it was organized five years ago, and the corporation as it is now. The corporation may have been organized to get stockholders. I am making a comparison of the proprietorship of the industries of this country as an entirety forty years ago, with the industries as an entirety now.

And the story that tells the tale-the fact that tells what is transpiring—is the banking account of the country. Let me stop right there a moment. In 1880 the bank deposits of the United States amounted to two billion dollars. At the present time the amount is over eleven billion dollars. I do not include

in that the amount of money that is tied up in the great insurance companies like the Equitable and the New York Life and the Mutual Life and the northwestern companies. I only include those sums that are strictly deposits, in national banks, state banks, trust companies, and others receiving deposits.

Now what is the bank deposit? Of course to a certain extent a bank deposit is that surplus which individuals have over after running their own business-a surplus they do not know exactly what to do with at the time. That was what it was in the day when proprietorship was open to everybody. A bank deposit represents the money that a people of the country have that they have not been able to invest satisfactorily in some other kind of earning, acting proprietorship.

And the bank deposit comes from where? Not from the rich man. The great business men of Chicago for instance, against whom the shafts of this country have been directed for two or three years they are not depositors. They are the big borrowers. The great capitalists of New York who are promoting great enterprises in this country-they are not depositors of this money. They are the great borrowers of these funds. The bank deposits come from the little men; from the farmers who do not know where to make an investment; from the laboring man who having earned two dollars and twentyfive cents, and having twenty-five cents over, wish to save it; from the great mass of citizenship which makes up what you call the people of America. Go into the country town; some of you come from country towns. You will find that your local bankers in nearly every instance have increased their deposits twice, three fold, four fold, not because some millionaire has come to town-there may not be a millionaire in the county— but because of the springs that creep up everywhere, flowing into this common reservoir; and flowing out of this again into the larger streams centers at last in the money centers and constitutes what you call the bank deposit. of America.

Now do my figures include double deposits? I have had that objection made to me. It does not. It is the actual money, the actual sums, that the people of America, the com

mon people of America, the ordinary run of citizenship of America have been unable to find an investment for. Now should it be found that this character of property grew only commensurately with the other property of the country, there would be no significance to the figures. But that is not the case. Since 1880 the wealth of this country has grown per capita about ten per cent. I think it was said, in a recent table from the treasury department, that in 1880, if the property of the country had been distributed among its people, there would have been about $1,000 to the person; and that in 1900 had there been such distribution there would have been about $1100 to the person. So that the per capita growth of wealth of this country has been from 1880 to the present time about ten per cent. And all this shows that the five hundred per cent. growth in bank deposits does not represent any new property, but represents solely the shift of property, the shift of proprietorship from the little ordinary men, from the common run of American citizens, to the men who have the machinery of the corporation at their beck and call, and who borrowing these funds, turn them into their own restricted proprietorship of the great properties of the country.

And why is this so? Why have you and I and the great majority of the people of America stood apart from proprietorship in the industries of the country? I do not call them in this connection incorporated industries, for that word carries with it a stigma. I wish to call it for the sake of the question the new property domain of the country, inherited by us by our conquest over the laws of nature. Why is it that the common run of American citizenship stands aloof from that kind of ownership? I will answer.

When corporations were first organized-and, at the beginning of the last century there were no corporations excepting a few banking companies-they were organized by special legislation. When the bank of the United States was organized it split up parties; it made and unmade presidents; it destroyed and made reputations; it was the most persistent force in American politics for thirty years. It was then looked to, as