It maintains luxurious lobbies* at every state capital, and at the national capital; and in all the cities and towns of the land it employs an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians whose business is to attend primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe judges, and in every way to work for its interests.** * Lobby--a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent the people's interests.
** A decade before this speech of Everhard's, the New York Board of Trade issued a report from which the following is quoted: "The railroads control absolutely the legislatures of a majority of the states of the Union; they make and unmake United States Senators, congressmen, and governors, and are practically dictators of the governmental policy of the United States." "Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven groups that constitute the brain of the Plutocracy.* Your twenty-four billions of wealth does not give you twenty-five cents' worth of governmental power.

It is an empty shell, and soon even the empty shell will be taken away from you.

The Plutocracy has all power in its hands to-day.

It to-day makes the laws, for it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts, and the state legislatures.

And not only that.