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Section 5 - the three American powers

Were the Roman Triumvirs ever more tyrannous than the three American powers, Capital, Trust and Monopoly, coining the life of father, mother and child into gold, in factory, mine and field? Did Carthage in height of power have a more tyrannous reign than is now Ours under grafter, briber and blackmailer? Did ever Persian Shah kill with more savagery than does trade with its per cent. and its impure foodstuff? Did ever heathen priest show more tyranny than modern priesthood in its denunciation of liberal thought in an Ingersoll and Christian Science and in its opposition to divorce? Was ever the reign of Moloch, the fire god of the Phoenicians, worse than the reign of the Goddess Fashion, with her dress that crushes, entangles and enslaves and late hours that kill? Behold her attendant train of insanity, crime, sorrow and disease, joining that great procession which from all the other earth hells make up a great body of our civilization ? Was ever anything worse? No. Was ever anything better? No! Man has always created in every age the biggest hell and the best heaven possible to him. All conditions are relative, and conditions in each age are the best possible; they represent that stage of human development. Man in America has interpreted "Free and Equal" to fit his development. Each succeeding age will do the same, ever writing larger the definition of Liberty. What is tyranny now, was liberty to our fathers; they never dreamed, were not capable of dreaming, to what extent the special privileges they gave away would develop into the present slavery. The Congresses of 1861 to 1868 did not dream that their Acts creating National Banks, for refunding bonds and destroying the greenbacks and State Legislatures in incorporating financial bodies did not, could not, foresee that the