Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COLUMBIA'S RACE FOR LIBERTY (April, 1902.) TO many Americans the phrase "Sweet Land of Liberty" sounds like the baldest irony, although there was a time when it was taken in all seriousness. One of the most significant features of the times is the attitude that "Life," a humorous weekly having its circulation almost exclusively among the "400," is taking toward our modern plutocracy. One would think that it would be the last paper to publish such a cartoon as that seen on the opposite page. Just now, no doubt, poor, foolish Columbia is valuing the miserable apples of Greed and Avarice that her competitor, the Trust, casts in her path more than she does the winning of the race for liberty. But the race is not by any means so nearly finished as the plutocrats in the royal box would seem to imagine. The Trust has one more apple to throw, Fraud, and will needs throw it soon, and then his last card will have been played. Columbia can win as easily as could the goddess of old, and certainly will win notwithstanding the tricks of her competitor. The marvel, however, is that she allows herself to be tricked even for a moment. Why is it that a people, as intelligent as we Americans are, allow ourselves to be kept out of our inheritance by such self-evident trickery as the Trust is now imposing upon us? Here we have a country abundantly able to support all of us in affluence. The Trust, by the great economies it has been able to effect in production, has confessedly made the task of producing the things we want infinitely easier than ever before, yet on the other hand, is denying men employment, alleging that they are no longer needed owing to these selfsame economies. This lack of employment, of course, means the impossibility of men procuring the food they need, and all becaus...