As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Truly prophetic these solemn words were to-day.

Forgetting the austere simplicity of their forebears, a love of show and ostentation had become the ruling passion of the American people.
Money, MONEY, MONEY! was to-day the only standard, the only god! The whole nation, frenzied with a wild lust for wealth no matter how acquired, had tacitly acquiesced in all sorts of turpitude, every description of moral depravity, and so had fallen an easy victim to the band of capitalistic adventurers who now virtually ruled the land.

With the thieves in power, the courts were powerless, the demoralization was general and the world was afforded the edifying spectacle of an entire country given up to an orgy of graft--treason in the Senate--corruption in the Legislature, fraudulent elections, leaks in government reports, trickery in Wall Street, illegal corners in coal, meat, ice and other prime necessaries of life, the deadly horrors of the Beef and Drug Trusts, railroad conspiracies, insurance scandals, the wrecking of savings banks, police dividing spoils with pickpockets and sharing the wages of prostitutes, magistrates charged with blackmailing--a foul stench of social rottenness and decay! What, thought Jefferson, would be the outcome--Socialism or Anarchy?
Still, he mused, one ray of hope pierced the general gloom--the common sense, the vigour and the intelligence of the true American man and woman, the love for a "square deal" which was characteristic of the plain people, the resistless force of enlightened public opinion.

The country was merely passing through a dark phase in its history, it was the era of the grafters.

There would come a reaction, the rascals would be exposed and driven off, and the nation would go on upward toward its high destiny.