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The foregoing incidents are samples of the minor tactics on the field of battle in the vast struggle which was waging for the financial control of America. I shall now outline the major strategy of that struggle as it impressed me from my slight contact with it.

The decade from 1896 to 1906 was the period of the most gigantic expansion of business in all American history, and, indeed, in all the history of the world. In that decade the slowly fertilized economic resources of the United States suddenly yielded a bewildering crop of industries. Vast railroad systems were projected and built into being with magic speed. The steel industry sprang with mushroom-like rapidity into a business employing half a million men, and yielding the profits of a Golconda. The Standard Oil Company spread its production and sales to the ends of the earth. In every field of manufacture, expanding companies were brought together into great trusts to unify their finances and to stimulate their production.

All these swift growths demanded money: money for new plants—money for expansion—money for working capital. The cry everywhere was for money—more money—and yet more money. Wall Street was besieged with a continual supplication for capital—that priceless fluid to water the bursting fields of pulsing prosperities. It is an old law that he who has what all men seek may make his own terms, and in that decade Wall Street controlled the money of America. No wonder, then, that the financiers of Wall Street leaped to a power greater for a time than the power of presidents and kings. No wonder that heads were turned, that power was abused, that tyranny developed, and that finally the nation, sensing a life-and-death struggle between capitalism and organized government itself, arose in fear and anger, and put shackles on the money power that made it again the servant, and no longer the master, of the people.