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scendants of these shaggy men learned to work in bronze and iron these arts enabled them to improve the first rude carts. Later they learned to make the iron tire and to bind many parts of the wagon with iron or glittering brass. Then came the Roman chariot, built to stand a terrible strain. This was followed by the various improvements down through the Middle Ages to the days of the stage coach, the horse car, the steam railroad, the automobile and finally the aeroplane.
Now, the important thing about this is to know that all the improvements in the tools and the methods of organization have come by a slow process of history, as we have seen in the case of transportation. Another thing to know is that these things, as we know them to-day, are not the results of our own genius. All of them represent the thought and patient toil of all the people of the past. Each generation, from savagery to civilization, worked out many improvements and then handed them on to another generation, who did likewise. So that every factory, every machine, every railroad, every great corporation, represents the thought, experiment, invention and achievement of all the generations that have lived on this planet, and no man can make an improvement without building on the work of all the others.
Now the trust is the latest, best and cheapest way to produce wealth. It is the successor to all the other methods of industrial organization. But the trouble—yes, the crime—is that these great and powerful organizations, that represent the sacrifice, experiment and genius of all the people that have lived for centuries, are now the property of a few wealthy capitalists. In other words, a few millionaire capitalists monopolize the achievements of centuries, while these things are really a social inheritance of all men living. Where did they get their warrant for possessing these social gifts of history?
The remarkable thing about it is that they received these things from YOU! You are a voter and by the ballot you can say whether the big corporations, the factories, the railroads and machinery shall belong to a class for its benefit or whether they shall belong to all for the good of all. You deliberately decide that you
