Note 6 — Footnotes

As a single specimen of this, I would mention that those eminent politicians, John C. New, and Wm. H. English, of Indiana, under the laws engineered by cunning and accepted by ignorance, invested $200,000 in a national bank scheme when greenbacks had been knocked down to forty cents, and in thirteen years from 1864 to 1877 they made a clear profit of $2,133,000—more than ten for one of their investment. But this is very moderate in comparison with land speculation. The Elyton Land Company at Birmingham, Alabama, with a cash capital of $100,000, has declared in five years, ending in 1888, dividends amounting to $5,570,000, and is believed to own property still that will amount to $5,000,000, a return of more than a hundred dollars for every one invested—a clear profit absorbed of over ten millions—the gift of law to monopoly. Will this ever return to the commonwealth? The robbery of the commonwealth goes on in every direction. Shall we continue the present system under which, while the nation is losing its inheritance daily, one man in Chicago tied up the wheat crop of the United States, and one man also tied up or cornered pork, and both levied millions on the people? Return to text