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services to the State, or services to their party. Now this is universally recognized to be an error.
    Patent monopolies cut off from us the opportunity to take immediate advantage of the world’s inventions. They exert upon many men an influence as baneful as themost corrupt lottery by tempting them from regular work and useful occupations. They interfere with the natural development of invention.
    Useful inventions come naturally and almost inevitably as the next necessary step in industrial evolution. Most of them are never patented. The patents that are granted interfere with this natural development. If inventors must be rewarded it would be better to pay them a bounty than to continue a system productive of so much evil.
    And so by securing in different ways “special privileges to some” and denying “equal rights to all,” our governments, local, State and national, have precipitated the struggle of the people against Privilege.
    It matters not what the question — whether a water or gas franchise, a street railway monopoly, a coal combination, an ordinary railroad charter, or the grabbing of the public domain — the issue between them is always the same.
    Owners and managers of public-service corporations may change; so may their methods. They may respect public opinion or scorn it; they may show great consideration for their employés or treat them as machines; their policies may be liberal or the reverse; they may strive for all the traffic will bear, looking to dividends only, or they may share their profits with the public.
    What of it?
    So, too, political parties may change.
    And what of that?
    A Republican boss or a Democratic boss is equally useful to Privilege. It may seek legislative power through dealing directly with corrupt bosses, or it may find the control of party machinery by means of liberal campaigncontributions the more effective; again it may divert the attention of the people from fundamental issues by getting them to squabbling over nonessentials.
    This is often demonstrated when the contest is made to appear to be between two men, though in reality both are committed in advance to obey the wishes of Privilege. Superficial moral issues are especially serviceable in this particular line of attack.
    But it is on the judiciary that Privilege exercises its most insidious and dangerous power. Lawyers whose employment has been entirely in its interests are selected for the bench. Their training, their environment, their self-interest, all combine to make them the most powerful allies of monopoly. Yet this may be, and often is, without any consciousness on the part of the judges themselves that their selection has been influenced by an interest opposed to the public good.
    Thus unwittingly men, otherwise incorruptible, become the most pliable agents of Privilege and the most dangerous of public servants. No mere change of political names or of men can correct these evils. A political change will not affect judges with their judge-made laws, and so long as Privilege controls both parties, a political change will not affect the legislative bodies which create judges. An effective recall of judges would furnish the machinery to correct many abuses, and this step can be taken without waiting for the economic changes which must afford the final and fundamental relief.
    For it is to economic change , and not to political change, that the people must look for the solution of this problem. Not lawbreakers , but lawmakers are responsible for bad economic conditions; and these only indirectly, for it isbusiness interests controlling lawmakers that furnish the great motive force in the protection of Privilege.
    The economic change that will correct these political abuses is one that must remove the prizes which Privilege now secures from the People. It must reserve to the public the ownership and management of public-service utilities so that they shall be regarded no longer as