“Brydges, this country is rapidly lining up two opposing sides:  fighting lines, too, by George!  Mobocracy versus Plutocracy!  I’m only a cog in the wheel, myself, a mere marker for the big counters, my boy; but if I have to put up with the tyranny of one or t’other, I’m damned if I don’t prefer the tyranny of the rich to the tyranny of the poor, any day! Why, is any man poor in this country, Brydges?  Because he’s a damned incompetent unfit swinish hog, too lazy to plant and hoe his own row; so he gets the husks of the corn while the competent man gets the cob—­the cob with the corn on, you bet, number one, Silver King, Hard, seventy cents a bushel!  If I have to put up with one or t’other, I’m damned if I don’t prefer the tyranny of knowledge to the tyranny of ignorance!  One butters your bread, anyway, and sometimes puts some jam on with the butter.  The other snivels and whines and begs a crust from the other fellow’s table, and snaps at the hand that gives him the crust, and spends the time in self-pity that he should spend in work!  Look at that row of free-born American citizens, kings in disguise, Brydges!  Not a damned man of them ever did a stroke of honest work in his life except on election day, when we line ’em up; and damn it, aren’t we right, to line ’em up?  What kind of rule are you going to get from that kind of rulership if some one doesn’t jump in and group it and direct it; yes, by George, and compel it to keep in line and vote right, just as a general licks his recruits in shape on pain of court martial?  Think any battle would ever be won, Brydges, if the commanding officer hadn’t the power of a despot?  He makes mistakes.  Of course, he makes mistakes!  So do we!  But we’re keeping those damned rascals in line for the good of the country; and so, I say, the plutocrats who are being cursed from one end of the country to the other to-day, are playing the same part in modern life as the big war chiefs of the Middle Ages.  They are marshalling the forces; leading the advance; conquering the countries with commerce that the old war chiefs used to conquer with arms; building up, constructing, amassing, concentrating in trust and combine all the scattered abilities of men, who would be powerless individually; and we use our tools, that parcel of beauties out there, same as the old war chiefs used their blackguard mercenaries!  It’s cheaper for us to buy ’em than be bossed by ’em, a darn sight cheaper, Brydges; for us to swing ’em into a bunch and control ’em than be blackmailed by ’em, Brydges!  If every penny grafter didn’t hold up the corporation, every damned little squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman, if they didn’t hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn’t hold us up for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn’t be necessary for us to man that gang across the way on voting day!

“Freedom, pah!” The Senator had stopped swirling the stub pencil.  He reached forward to a jar of roses on his desk.  “Equality?  Pah!  Dream of fools, Brydges!  Doesn’t exist!  Never did exist!  Never can exist!  Know how we develop Silver King Corn that gives ninety bushels to the acre instead of old thirty bushel yield?”